Even modern English Bible versions often end up retaining the rather un-modern term “behold” in their translations of the Hebrew word hinneh and the Greek word idou. This is because there is no other equivalent English word that quite does the job that behold does. All the three terms—Hebrew, Greek, and English—have a certain gravitas, and, whenever used, command us to pay careful attention to what follows.

In John’s narrative of the trial and the crucifixion of Jesus, there are five occurrences of the term—three coming from the mouth of the unwitting prophet, Pilate, and twice from the mouth of our Lord Jesus. Each occurrence summons us to a facet of the person and work of Christ.

In John 19:4, “Pilate came out again and said to them, ‘Behold, I am bringing Him out to you so that you may know that I find no guilt in Him.’” We may render Pilate’s words as: “Behold, the Guiltless One!” Christians have always claimed, and will always claim, that Jesus, the Innocent, bore the sins of a guilty world. When his executioners twisted together a crown of thorns and thrust it upon his head, little did they know that they were enacting a prophetic truth! For in that single image—the crown of thorns on his head—is encapsulated the central Christian claim: that this guiltless-but-crucified one bore upon himself the guilt and curse of the whole of creation. Remember: “Cursed is the ground because of you…. Both thorns and thistles it shall grow for you.”(1)

The following verse is the second time the word occurs: “Jesus then came out, wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe. Pilate said to them, ‘Behold, the Man!’” (v.5). Jesus is the window to God; He is also the mirror to man. In him, we see what is wrong with us, and what we are meant to be. The poetic poignancy of the occurrence is also found in the allusion that, just as the first human being, Adam, takes stage on the sixth day of creation, Christ, the New Human Being, takes center stage on the sixth day—Good Friday—of new creation.(2) And we are summoned to pay close attention to him, the man.

We are no longer helplessly and hopelessly fated to take the course of Adam. There is another pattern for being fully and truly human: Behold, the human!

The third time “behold” appears is in verse 14, where “[Pilate] said to the Jews, ‘Behold, your King.’” In his book, Jesus Rediscovered, Malcolm Muggeridge, in his inimitable way, says, “The crown of thorns, the purple robe, the ironical title ‘King of the Jews,’ were intended to mock or parody Christ’s pretensions to be the Messiah; in fact, they rather hold up to ridicule and contempt all crowns, all robes, all kings that ever were. It was a sick joke that back-fired.”(3) Muggeridge is perhaps being a touch cynical here, and may be guilty of rendering serious political reflection and engagement impossible and pointless. All the same, the Christian claim that Jesus is the Christ (i.e., the King) is a claim that effectively loosens all other claims, renegotiates all other allegiances, recasts all other power, downsizes all other authorities, domesticates all other principalities, and tempers the Christian resolve to not give beings and things, apart from God and his Christ, an ultimacy that they demand but do not deserve. Christ, in short, dismantles idols and unravels idolatries.

The final two occurrences are found in John 19:26-27: “When Jesus then saw his mother, and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby, he said to his mother, ‘Woman, behold, your son!’ Then he said to the disciple, ‘Behold, your mother!’ From that hour the disciple took her into his own household.” We may club the two occurrences to mean, “Behold, your new family!” Theologians have also often noted John’s allusion to the Church in his record of Jesus side being speared: as Eve, the bride of Adam, issued forth from Adam’s side, the Church, the bride of Christ, issues forth from the crucified’s side, with the blood and water symbolizing the two foundational sacraments of the Church, Lord’s Supper and Baptism. At the foot of the Cross, there is the creating and forging of a new family, a new community, a new humanity—the Church: a believing that leads to a belonging.

Kethoser (Aniu) Kevichusa is a member of the speaking team at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Nagaland, India.

(1) Genesis 3:17-18.
(2) This basic thought is borrowed from the various writings of N.T. Wright on the passage.
(3) Malcolm Muggeridge, Jesus Rediscovered (London: Fontana, 1969), 47

http://www.rzim.org/

Cognitive dissonance, the study of psychology tells us, is the internal tension that results when our experience doesn’t match our beliefs and values. It is that sense of unease when we encounter something that contradicts what we have held to be true. We often experience this tension in as we learn new ideas. Cognitive dissonance can also be felt acutely within the realm of faith commitments. Can one be free if God is sovereign? How can suffering and evil coexist with a loving and good God? How can scientific knowledge be reconciled with supernatural events?

Now, those who have never experienced (or noticed) cognitive dissonance might be quick to offer all kinds of explanations for those who don’t find it quite as easy to reconcile the gaps between beliefs and experience: We have drifted away from our moral center. We have not studied enough or prayed enough. We have not understood right teaching. And surely there are times when all of these explanations may contribute to dissonance.

But the Bible itself often challenges an easy dismissal of one’s cognitive dissonance. The gospels depiction of John the Baptist offers a compelling example. The gospel writers placed John in the tradition of the Hebrew prophets. Here was a man filled with all the intensity and moral outrage of Jeremiah, Ezekiel, or Malachi—zealous prophets from the days of ancient Israel prone to weeping and crying out with zeal and tenacity. John, who was the cousin of Jesus of Nazareth, preached a hell-fire and brimstone message of repentance. Those who truly repented of their sins would come to him to be baptized, washed in the river Jordan as a sign of their cleansing from sin. He stood against the immorality and hypocrisy of those who were religious and political leaders. John was resolute in his ministry as the forerunner to the Messiah. Even as his own disciples came undone and complained that the crowds who once clamored to see him were now flocking to his cousin Jesus, John stood clear in his calling: “You yourselves bear me witness, that I have said, ‘I am not the Messiah,’ but ‘I have been sent before him.’”(1)

Continue reading Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Comfortable Assumptions →

“The cross,” someone once said, “has become so ordinary that we hardly see it anymore.” The thought struck me as I walked through a shop with items to buy stashed in every possible crevice: frog-shaped garden statues, multi-colored curios, inventive décor made from soda cans, beach glass, refurbished car parts. Occasionally surfacing through the ornamented walls were cross-shaped or cross-adorned objects, so ordinary in a shop so out-of-the-ordinary, they were almost hard to notice at all. The cross has become so ordinary that we hardly see it anymore. The thought altered the remainder of my browsing. How can this be true? How can an image once shameful enough to bow the proudest heads have ever become ordinary? Could the gallows ever be innocuous? Would the death sentence of someone near us ever fail to get our attention, much less blend in beside earthenware and figurines?

Theodore Prescott is a sculptor who has spent a great deal of time thinking about the cross. In the 1980’s he began working on a series of crosses using different materials, forms, and processes hoping to reconstitute the cultural and scriptural imagery of the Roman cross. In a sense, Prescott attempts to portray the incongruous. The Roman cross was a loathsome manner of execution that inflicted an anguished death; the Cross of Christ held a man who went willingly—and without guilt. Though a reflection of beauty and sacrifice, the cross is also an image of physical torture, inseparable from flesh and blood. There was a body on these beams. Its image bears both startling realities—the presence of outstretched limbs and the mystery of a now vacant cross. These contrasts alone are replete with a peculiar depth. Yet, our daily intake of the cross “precludes contemplation,” notes Prescott. The cross has indeed become so ordinary that we hardly see it anymore.

Maybe he is right. But if the cross has become merely a symbol of Christianity, an emblem of one religion in a sea of others, it is still a symbol that stands secluded from the others. Even as an image among many or an image buried in bric-a-brac, it remains conspicuously on its own. The symbol of the cross is an instrument of death. It is also, curiously, a symbol of God’s kindness. Far from ordinary, it suggests, at the very least, a beautiful and terrible love quite beyond us. Could it be that it is we who have become ordinary, our senses dulled to unconsciousness by the daily matters we give precedence? Even in his own time, the apostle Paul lamented such a blurring of the cross, calling the world to a greater vision: As I have often told you before and now say again even with tears, many live as enemies of the cross of Christ. Their destiny is destruction, their god is their stomach, and their glory is in their shame. Their mind is on earthly things. But our citizenship is in heaven.

Continue reading Ravi Zacharias Ministry – An Ordinary Cross →

There is something comforting about the many characters in the Christian story of which we know very little. There was more to the story of the woman who knew that if she could just touch the fringe of Jesus’s robe she would be well. There was more to tell about the woman who anointed Jesus with a jar of perfume, or the thief who hung beside Jesus on the cross. Yet, we are told only that they will be remembered. And they are. However insignificant their lives were to society, they have been captured in the pages of history as people worth remembering, people who had a role in the story of God on earth, people remembered by God when multitudes wished them forgotten. It is to me a kind reminder that our fleeting lives are remembered by God long before others notice and long after they have stopped.

We know very little about the man named Simeon, but we know he was in the temple when he realized that God had remembered him. Reaching for the baby in the arms of a young girl, Simeon was moved to praise. As his wrinkled hands cradled the infant, Simeon sang to God: “Sovereign Lord, as you have promised, you now dismiss your servant in peace. For my eyes have seen your salvation” (Luke 2:29-30).

Simeon uses the language of a slave that has been freed. There is a sense of immediacy and relief, as if a great iron door has been unlocked and he is now free to go through it. God had remembered his promise even as God remembered the aging Simeon. The Lord had promised he would not die before he saw the Lord’s salvation. Now seeing and holding the child named Jesus, Simeon knew he was dismissed to death in peace.

Marveling at the bold reaction of a stranger, Mary and Joseph stood in awe. Upon laying eyes on their child, a man unknown to them pronounced he could now die in peace. They were well aware of God’s hand upon Jesus; yet here they seem to discover that the arm of God, which is not too short to save, extends far beyond anything they imagined.

Simeon’s blessing and words to Mary only furthered this certainty: “This child is destined to cause the falling and rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be spoken against, so that the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed. And a sword will pierce your own soul too” (Luke 2:34-35). To these words as well, Mary and Joseph stood in awe.

In this Lenten season, followers of Jesus recall the symbol of the cross, the sword that pierced a mother’s heart, and the passion of the one who will continue to be spoken against. An old man in the temple hundreds of years ago, through a fraction of a scene in his life, reminds us still today that to look at Jesus is to physically look at the salvation of God. Whether peering at the child in the manger or the man on the cross, the human heart is yet revealed in its response to him. This is, in fact, our most memorable feature.

Perhaps the small excerpts of the many fleeting lives we find throughout the Christian story were meant to capture this very sentiment. As the thief peered into the bruised eyes of Jesus, like Simeon, he saw the salvation of God. “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom” (Luke 23:42). And it was so.

Jill Carattini is managing editor of A Slice of Infinity at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Atlanta, Georgia.

http://www.rzim.org/

God has been in the news a lot lately. From Christian prayers in council meetings, to statements from the highest echelons of the Royal Family and the government, discussion of the place of God and in particular the role of Christianity in Britain today has been in the news on a daily basis. Professor Richard Dawkins continues to argue that religion has no place in the 21st century and debates over his anecdotes continue to capture the twittersphere. It seems it is now acceptable to discuss the Christian faith and belief in God in public. From radio studios to the school gate I have enjoyed being a part of this. The role of God in Britain is being discussed up and down the country in government, education, legislation, and community life in a way that I can’t remember in recent history.

While secularism insists that nothing good comes from religion, isn’t it actually the case that it is a Christian heritage that actually provides us with this free and open society—encouraging people to question and reason for themselves? For many, religious faith is a process, a journey of discovery on the basis of evidence, reason, and personal experience. Christianity has provided the foundation in Britain for an open and tolerant society. It was the great Christian leader Augustine who coined the phrase tolerare malus. He claimed that political structure influenced by the Christian faith must tolerate that which it disagreed with and perceived as wrong for the greater good of freedom.

Continue reading Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Christ in Public →

For many Jewish people living after the Holocaust, God’s absence is an ever-present reality. It is as tangible as the concentration camps at Auschwitz and Dachau, and as haunting as the empty chair at a table once occupied with a loved one long-silenced by the gas chambers. In his tragic account of the horror and loss in the camps at Auschwitz, Elie Wiesel intones the cries of many who likewise experienced God’s absence: “It is the end. God is no longer with us….I know that Man is too small, too humble, and inconsiderable to seek to understand the mysterious ways of God. But what can I do? Where is the divine Mercy? Where is God? How can I believe? How can anyone believe in this merciful God?”(1)

This experience of absence, dramatic in its implications for the victims of the Holocaust, has repeated itself over and over again in the ravaged stories of those who struggle to hold on to faith, or those who have lost faith altogether in the face of personal holocaust. In a world where tragedy and suffering are daily realities seemingly unchecked by divine government, the absence of God seems a cruel abdication.

The words of Job, ancient in origin, speak of this same kind of experience:

Behold, I go forward, but He is not there,
And backward, but I cannot perceive Him;
When He acts on the left, I cannot behold Him;
He turns on the right, I cannot see Him.(2)

Continue reading Ravi Zacharias Ministry – In Defiance, Hope? →

I remember a cerulean, cloudless sky. It was an extraordinarily beautiful fall day, unusually so for a city with poor air quality most days of the year. The air was still warm, but the cloak of heat and humidity so common in the south, had been taken off and hung up for repose during the season of cooler weather. It was a day much like other days until the unimaginable happened.

At first, rumors circulated quickly about planes, buildings, and New York City. I assumed a private plane had lost its way and flown into the side of the Trade Center tower. But, then, our normal workday routines ended. We all ran to the youth building at the church and watched on the big-screen television, not one, but two planes crash into the Twin Towers. The rumors continued… there were other planes. I panicked—what if we were under attack? What if countless commercial airplanes had been co-opted as weapons of mass destruction? What if my city was next?

Like many others, I watched the Twin Towers collapse and fall to the ground. Like others, I went home that day and sat in my backyard and looked into that same cerulean sky and was scared by the silence. I did not know if I would ever have another restful night of sleep again, and I felt regret over taking for granted something as simple and as lovely as peaceful sleep. At the end of the day, more than three thousand persons, representing countries all over the world, were dead, including one of my high school classmates. I remember the numbness that I felt, followed by a heightened sense of caution, and then outright fear at every stranger, in every public place.

Continue reading Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Stronger Than Fear →

The Christian Vision Project was an initiative that for three consecutive years began with a question. The aim was to stir thought, creativity, and faithfulness within the Christian church around the subjects of culture, mission, and gospel. In 2006, project leaders asked a group of Christian thinkers how followers of Christ could be countercultural for the common good. Their answers ranged from becoming our own fiercest critics to experiencing life at the margins, from choosing wisely what to overlook and what to belabor to packing up and moving into the city.

But today, in the thick of lent, one answer in particular comes to mind. To the question of counterculturalism for the common good, professor and author Lauren Winner proposed: More sleep. She quickly admitted the curious nature of her retort. “Surely one could come up with something more other-directed, more sacrificial, less self-serving,” she wrote. Still, she carefully reasoned through the forces of culture that insist we give up an hour of sleep here, or two hours there—the grinding schedules, the unnerving stock piles of e-mail in need of responses, the early-taught/early-learned push for more and more productivity. Thus, Winner concluded, “It’s not just that a countercultural embrace of sleep bears witness to values higher than ‘the cares of this world, the deceitfulness of riches, and the desire for other things.’ A night of good sleep—a week, or month, or year of good sleep—also testifies to the basic Christian story of Creation. We are creatures, with bodies that are finite and contingent.”(1) We are also bodies living within a culture generally terrified of aging, uncomfortable with death, unable to lament, and desperate for our accomplishments to distract us. “The unarguable demands that our bodies make for sleep are a good reminder that we are mere creatures,” Winner concludes. “[I]t is God and God alone who ‘neither slumbers nor sleeps.’”(2)

The Christian church holds a similar hope near throughout Lent. The season urges humanity to remember its condition with countercultural audacity. For forty days Christians prepare to encounter the events of Easter, beginning with the humble proclamations of creatureliness. The journey through Lent into the light and darkness of Holy Week is for those made in dust who will return to dust, those willing to trace the breath that began all of life to the place where Christ breathed his last. It is a journey that expends everything within us. To pick up the cross and follow him is to be reminded at every step that we are mere creatures, and he has come near our humanity to show us what that word originally meant.

Continue reading Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Sleeping Through Lent →

I found myself sighing with something like relief one day after reading a comment made by C.S. Lewis. He was responding to a statement made by a scholar who noted that he didn’t “care for” the Sermon on the Mount but “preferred” the ethics of the apostle Paul. As you might imagine, Lewis was bothered at the suggestion of Scripture alternatives between which we may pick and choose, and it was this that he addressed first. But his response also included an honest remark about the Sermon on the Mount as well, and this is what caught my attention. He wrote, “As to ‘caring for’ the Sermon on the Mount, if ‘caring for’ here means liking or enjoying, I suppose no one cares for it. Who can like being knocked flat on his face by a sledgehammer? I can hardly imagine a more deadly spiritual condition than that of the man who can read that passage with tranquil pleasure. This is indeed to be ‘at ease in Zion.’”(1)

To be “at ease in Zion” was the deplorable state of existence the prophet Amos spoke of in his harsh words to the Israelites hundreds of years before Jesus was giving sermons and causing commotion. Reeling in false security and erroneous confidence from their economic affluence and self-indulgent lifestyles, the Israelites, Amos warned, would be the first God would send into exile if they failed to heed his words: “Woe to those who are at ease in Zion… who lie on beds of ivory, and lounge on their couches… you have turned justice into poison and the fruit of righteousness into wormwood.”(2)

The Sermon on the Mount is equally startling. Lewis’s comparison of Christ’s words to a sledgehammer is not far off. Those potent chapters are not unlike the electric paddles used to shock the heart back to life, back to the rhythm it was intended to have.

Continue reading Ravi Zacharias Ministry – At Ease or Uneasy →

Ash Wednesday is the beginning of Lent, which many Christians observe with fasting, repentance, worship, and prayer in preparation for Easter.  As Jesus spent forty days of testing and temptation in the wilderness before he began his public ministry, so the Lenten season spans forty self-reflective days.

It is a season of remembrance.  “Remember you are dust and unto dust you shall return.”  These are the words that are uttered in congregations worldwide, as they have for nearly 1500 years.  The congregants’ foreheads are darkened with ashes, reminding each one of their frail humanness, and also of their Creator, for the sign signifies God’s words in Genesis 3:19: “For dust you are and to dust you will return.”

Though there is no mention of Ash Wednesday in the Scriptures, there are many occasions of repentance and mourning linked not only with sackcloth, but also with ashes.  The first mention of ashes occurs in Genesis 18 when Abraham pleads to God on behalf of his family and the people of Sodom: “Now that I have been so bold as to speak to the Lord, though I am nothing but dust and ashes, what if the number of the righteous is five less than fifty?  Will you destroy the whole city because of five people?” Abraham recognizes who he is—a frail and sinful creature—but boldly appeals to his Creator’s mercy.

We read of ashes associated with priestly practices in Leviticus and Numbers, but strikingly, the first instance of someone putting ashes on their forehead is found in the tragic story of Tamar’s rape by her half-brother.  “Tamar put ashes on her head and tore the ornamented robe she was wearing.  She put her hand on her head and went away, weeping aloud as she went” (2 Samuel 13:19).  Her own brother tries to persuade her to keep quiet and to minimize the enormity of her loss, saying, “Don’t take this thing to heart” (v. 20).  Surely, being the children of King David, something could be arranged, for David had the power and resources to keep this quiet.

Yet Tamar publicly mourns her anguish and the consequences of another’s sin, testifying to its horror in the sight of God.  In doing so she also bears an enormous cost by marking herself as a defiled woman in that culture.

Similarly, the ashes upon Christian foreheads are in the form of a cross, reminding each one of our own death’s and of the death on the Cross.  As the catechisms state, “In the Bible a mark on the forehead is a symbol of a person’s ownership.  By having their foreheads marked with the sign of a cross, this symbolizes that the person belongs to Jesus Christ, who died on a Cross.”

Thus the ash is a symbol that testifies to all not only who Christians are—sinners in the sight of God—but also whose they are.  For as David remembers in Psalm 103:13-14: “As a father shows compassion to his children, so the LORD shows compassion to those who fear him.  For he knows our frame; he remembers that we are dust.”

Christians enter this Lenten season in repentance and reflection.  Our lives are also marked with this great promise and hope: We belong to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who calls us his own.

Danielle DuRant is director of research and writing at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Atlanta, Georgia

http://www.rzim.org/

The sun bore down on my neck as I walked through neatly laid stones, each row like another line in a massive book. My eyes strained to take in all of the information—name, age, rank, country—and perhaps also death itself, the fragility of life, the harsh reality of war. In that field of graves, a war memorial for men lost as prisoners of war, slaves laboring to construct the Burma-Siam railway, I felt as the psalmist: “laid low in the dust.” Or like Job, sitting among the dust and ashes of a great tragedy. Then one stone stopped my wandering and said what I could not. On an epitaph in the middle of the cemetery was written: “There shall be in that great earth, a richer dust concealed.”(1)

It is helpful, I think, to be reminded that we are dust. We are material.  When we die, we remain material. It is a reminder to hold as we move through life—through successes, disappointments, questions, and  answers. For the Christian, it is also a truth to help us approach the vast and terrible circumstances leading up to the crucifixion of the human son of God. Beginning with the ashes of Ash Wednesday, the journey through Lent into the light and darkness of Holy Week is for those made in dust who will return to dust, those willing to trace the breath that began all of life to the place where Christ breathed his last. It is a journey that expends everything within us.

There is a Latin word that was once used to denote the provisions necessary for a person going on a long journey—the clothes, food, and money the traveler would need along the way. “Viaticum” was a word often used by Roman magistrates. It was the payment or goods given to those who were sent into the provinces to exercise an office or perform a service. The viaticum was vital provision for an uncertain journey. Fittingly, the early church employed this image to speak of the Eucharist when it was administered to a dying person. The viaticum, the bread of Communion, was seen as sustenance for Christians on their way from this world into another. Sometime later, the word was used not only to describe a last Communion, but as the Sacrament of Communion for all people. It is as if to say: our communion with Christ is provision for the way home. The viaticum is God’s answer to Jacob’s vow, “If God will be with me and will watch over me on this journey I am taking and will give me food to eat and clothes to wear so that I return safely to my father’s house, then the LORD will be my God.”(2)  It is what Christ offered when he said, “Take and eat. This is my body.” The journey from dust to dust and back to the Father’s house would be far too great without it—without him.

Today, our humanity is beckoned to face its humble beginnings on this Ash Wednesday. We are given 40 days to journey with this thought, to follow in the vicarious humanity of the Son where he leads us, until we are leveled by the bright sadness of Holy Week. From the invitation to consume his body and blood in the Last Supper to the desolation of that body on the Cross, we are undone by events that began before us and will continue to be remembered long after we are gone. The season of Lent is a stark reminder that we are, in the words of Isaiah or the sentiments of the psalmist, like grass that withers, flowers that blow away like dust. But so we are, in this great earth, a richer dust concealed. Walking in cemeteries we realize this; communing with Christ we encounter it. Walking through Lent as dust and ashes invites us to see our need for the Father’s unchanging provision: We are offered the Cross, communion and forgiveness, the body of one broken, hope in one raised, and the life everlasting.

Jill Carattini is managing editor of A Slice of Infinity at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Atlanta, Georgia.

(1) This is a line from a poem of Rupert Brookes entitled “1914.”
(2) Genesis 28:20-22.

http://www.rzim.org/

In our contemporary world, a great deal of cultural discussion revolves around the nature of human dignity and human rights. Sadly, there is not a day that passes in which news concerning human trafficking, gross negligence, or large-scale violent oppression/suppression of human thriving arrests attention. International organizations like Human Rights Watch make it their mission to expose and bring to justice all those who would jeopardize the rights of the weakest members of human society. They act, in part, as a result of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was adopted by the UN General Assembly on 10 December 1948 as a result of the experience of the Second World War. This Declaration called the international community to a standard that sought to prevent atrocities like those perpetrated in that conflict from happening again.

Unfortunately, conflicts and atrocities committed against the citizens of the world continue in our day. Yet, this standard assumption of basic human rights enables the international community to act when those rights are violated. And indeed, human rights—for most people—are a basic assumption in the concern for and treatment of others. One might ask from where the deep concern for human rights comes? How is it that the concern for human dignity has become a conversation—welcomed or suppressed—in all cultures? Is it simply the result of the Second World War?

In seeking to answer these questions, many would be incredulous if the suggestion came that the Judeo-Christian tradition grounds the concern for human rights today. After all, the pages of the Bible are filled with narratives of slavery and oppression, bloodshed and violence. How could this tradition be the ground for human rights?

Continue reading Ravi Zacharias Ministry – The Face of Personhood →

On October 30, 1938 a national radio program playing dance music was interrupted with a special news bulletin. The announcer heralded news of a massive meteor, which had crashed near Princeton, New Jersey. The reporter urged evacuation of the city as he anxiously described the unfolding scene: Strange creatures were emerging from the meteor armed with deadly rays and poisonous gases.

The infamous broadcast, which caused panic throughout the country and mayhem all over New York and New Jersey, was made by Orson Welles, a 23-year old actor giving a dramatic presentation of the H.G. Wells novel The War of the Worlds. His compelling performance created traffic jams and tied up phone lines, interrupted religious services and altered bus routes. Several times in the program a statement was made regarding the broadcast’s fictional nature. Still, many Americans were convinced that Martians had really landed. One man insisted he had heard the President Roosevelt’s voice over the radio advising all citizens to leave their cities. Another, on the phone with a patrolman, cried in alarm, “I heard it on the radio. Then I went to the roof and I could see the smoke from the bombs, drifting over toward New York. What shall I do?”(1)

The War of the Worlds broadcast will perhaps forever remain one of the most telling examples of the power of context, and in more ways than one. Whether listeners tuned in after the introduction or happened to miss the declaimers, the convincing portrayal was enough to send waves of fear across the entire country. In the context of breaking news, fiction appeared alarmingly factual.

Continue reading Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Embodied Truths →

Gratitude can be easily forgotten in a world filled with terror, fear, and heightened concern for safety. It is not difficult to understand a pervasive mood of suspicion and guardedness given the regularly disruptive news of violence and tragedy. A hand-wringing anxiety replaces the open-heartedness that accompanies gratitude.

More than this, it can seem naïve or insensitive to articulate gratefulness in the midst of human suffering. How can I be thankful when so many around the world suffer in unspeakable ways? It feels more appropriate to maintain a somber outlook as a way of finding solidarity with those who are hurting. Being grateful for personal “blessing” seems to add salt to the wound.

Perhaps this is why it is always amazing to encounter those who find gratitude to be healing even in the midst of loss and tragedy. A powerful editorial by New York Times writer, David Brooks, introduced readers to Kennedy Odede, a Kenyan man who grew up in the infamous Kibera slums of Nairobi. Odede and his wife, Jessica, have created schools for girls and a community organization called Shining Hope for Communities. In their co-written memoir called Find Me Unafraid, Jessica and Kennedy recount the horrors of life growing up in this slum with all of its abundant evil. Kennedy was molested and abused by a priest, repeatedly beaten by his father, watched friends and family murdered before his eyes, saw others die from drug abuse, and had to survive through petty theft because of constant hunger and poverty. Yet, Brooks described Kennedy as the most joyful person he knows. How can this be, Brooks wondered, given all that he suffered? In an email to Brooks, Kennedy wrote:

“While I didn’t have food and couldn’t go to school or when I was the victim or witness of violence, I tried to appreciate things like the sunrise—something that everyone in the world shares and can find joy in no matter if you are rich or poor. Seeing the sunrise was always healing for me, it was a new day and it was a beauty to behold.”(1)

Continue reading Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Finding Gratitude →

Have you ever had the feeling that an experience you had, whether good or bad, was like a scene from a novel or a movie—like you were a part of at least a small story? With the ubiquitous presence of Facebook pages and blogging platforms, I suspect this phenomenon grows all the more common an experience (and likely one that increasingly communicates we are the leading characters of these stories). If the answer is yes, it’s probably because our lives, after all, do tell a story—and perhaps the increasing presence of such outlets to tell these stories affirms it. Every human being has a unique story unfolding as they live out their lives. Just think of it: literally billions of different stories going on all at once, intertwining, overlapping, as we love each other, hate each other, struggle together, and laugh together. Every minute new human stories are beginning in birth and old ones are concluding in death.

Listen to what author Brent Curtis has to say about the stories of our lives:

“The deepest convictions of our heart are formed by stories and reside there in the images and emotions of [a] story….Life is not a list of propositions, it is a series of dramatic scenes. As Eugene Peterson said, ‘We live in a narrative, we live in a story. We have a beginning and an end, we have a plot, we have character.’ Story is the language of the heart. Our souls speak not in the naked facts of mathematics or the abstract propositions of systematic theology; they speak the images and emotions of story.”(1)

We love stories because life itself is a story. We each have a story that takes place in a particular context, culture, and time in history. Depending on how we grew up, the dynamics of our families, and a million other factors, our stories are going to come out differently.

But is there any common element that runs through all of our stories, an element that we see in every life?

You may have never thought about it this way, but the Christian message really introduces a story of its own; and if it is indeed true, it’s a story that explains the “plot” of each and every human life story. What is this lot? It’s a love story. It’s the story of God’s love for us individually and collectively, God’s seeking to win our hearts again and again, and our responses to this movement toward us. We see this in the well known text of John 3:16: For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son. I would challenge you to look at your life, look at where you are now and where you’ve been, and see if you do not find evidence of God drawing you closer to who God truly is. See if you can find God calling to you in the circumstances of your life, even in hard or painful times, whispering to you in joy, in mystery, in fear, in pain.

God is the ultimate author, God’s story the account that makes sense of our lives and brings beauty into our own stories. As one human author put it, your life could be the very poetry of God.

Ravi Zacharias is founder and chairman of the board of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries.

(1) Brent Curtis, The Sacred Romance (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1997), 39

http://www.rzim.org/

Having a nearly 100 pound German shepherd dog creates both opportunities and challenges. Like most German shepherds, my dog has the intense gaze and keen alertness typical of the breed. He does not have an ‘inside bark’ but rather exerts the full capacity of his lungs whenever a visitor or stranger comes to the door. For the person on the other side, venturing into the house is filled with fear. For all they know, a barking-mad, wild beast of a dog awaits them! I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised at the wide-berth I am given or the anxious looks I receive as I traverse the sidewalks of my neighborhood with my dog. He looks and sounds absolutely ferocious.

Given this description, it might be hard to believe that I have ample opportunities to showcase my dog’s gentle, calm, and loving demeanor despite his apparent ferocity. Kaiser is quick to roll over on his side when he meets another dog. His ears flatten with joy and his tail wags a mile a minute as he greets children and adults alike. For those who give him the opportunity, he proves himself time and time again to be an affectionate, docile canine.

My dog Kaiser is often misunderstood. His size, the reputation of the breed, and past memories of fearful encounters with large dogs will forever preclude a wonderful encounter for some who meet him. While I know this intellectually, I cannot help but take it personally every time I see individuals cross over to the other side of the street. No matter how much convincing I do, or how well-behaved my dog, there will always be those who simply don’t believe me when I tell them how friendly he is and how much he loves to meet other dogs and people. I reluctantly conclude that there will always be some people who misunderstand my dog and his good intentions.

Continue reading Ravi Zacharias Ministry – The Art of Being Misunderstood →

One of the tragic casualties of our age has been that of the contemplative life—a life that thinks, a life thinks things through, and more particularly, thinks God’s thoughts. A person sitting at his or her desk staring out the window would never be assumed to be working. No! Thinking is not equated with work. Yet, had Newton under his tree, or Archimedes in his bathtub, bought into that prejudice, some natural laws would still be up in the air or buried under an immovable rock. Pascal’s Pensees, or “Thoughts,” a work that has inspired millions, would have never been penned.

What is even more destructive is the assumption that silence is inimical to life. The radio in the car, Muzak in the elevator, and the symphony entertaining callers “on hold” all add up as grave impediments to personal reflection. In effect, the mind is denied the privilege of living with itself even briefly and is crowded with outside impulses to cope with aloneness. Aldous Huxley’s indictment, “Most of one’s life… is one prolonged effort to prevent thinking,” seems frightfully true. Moreover, the price paid for this scenario has been devastating. As T.S. Eliot questioned:

Where is the life we have lost in the living?

Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?

Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?

The cycles of heaven in twenty centuries

bring us farther from God and nearer to dust.

Is there a remedy? May I make some suggestions? Nothing ranks higher for mental discipline than a planned and systematic study of God’s Word, from whence life’s parameters and values are planted and Christ is made known. Paul, who loved his books and parchments, affirmed the priority of Scripture as the means to encountering Christ. And Psalm 119 promises that the God who speaks to us keeps us from being double-minded.

The average person today actually surrenders the intellect to the world, presuming Christianity to be bereft of intelligence. And many a pulpit has succumbed to the lie that anything intellectual cannot be spiritual or exciting.

Thankfully there are exceptions. When living in England, our family attended a church where preaching was taken quite seriously and one-hour sermons to packed auditoriums were the norm. Cambridge, being rife with skepticism, demanded a meticulous defense of each sermon text. When we were leaving Cambridge, our youngest child, who was nine years old, declared the preaching of this church to be one of his fondest memories. Even as a little boy he had learned that when the mind is rightly approached, it filters down to the heart. The matter I share here has far-reaching implications. We do a disservice to our youth by not crediting them with the capacity to think.

God places great value on the thought-life and its capacity to shape all of life. “As one thinks in his heart, so is he,” Solomon wrote. Jesus asserted that sin’s gravity lay at the level of the idea itself, not just the act. Paul admonished the church at Philippi to have the mind of Christ, and to the same people he wrote: “[W]hatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think on these things” (Philippians 4:8). The follower of Christ must demonstrate to the world what it means not just to think, but to think justly. That is, in the words of aging David to his son Solomon, to “acknowledge the God of your father, and serve him with wholehearted devotion and with a willing mind, for the LORD searches every heart and understands every motive behind the thoughts. If you seek him, he will be found by you; but if you forsake him, he will reject you forever” (1 Chronicles 28:9).

With hearts, minds, and bodies, we can follow the God of creation and the Son who stepped into it. After all, it is not that I think, therefore, I am, but rather, the great I Am has asked us to think, and therefore, we must.

Ravi Zacharias is founder and chairman of the board of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries.

http://www.rzim.org/

At an open lecture in a leading software company, I made the comment: “Love is seeking the highest best of the other person; it is not about your own interests.” An employee caught up with me at the end and inquired: “Is that kind of love possible?” I gave her an illustration of a mother who takes care of an ailing child—sacrificing her own comforts and well-being to ensure that the child is comfortable. This young lady thought for a moment and quipped: “Perhaps the mother does it because it is her own child.” She was suggesting that the reason for the mother’s selflessness is actually self-centeredness. A few years ago, a leading magazine in India carried a cover page article titled, “Twenty-five ways to be happy” written by a well-known columnist. Her very first point was similar: “Be selfish.”

Khaled Hosseini, award-winning author of The Kite Runner, presents a darkly selfish story about a man who found a magic cup and discovered that if he wept into the cup, his tears turned into pearls. But even though he had always been poor, he was a happy man and hardly shed a tear. So he found ways to make himself sad so that his tears could make him rich. As the pearls heaped up, so did his greed grow. The story ended with the man sitting on a mountain of pearls, knife in hand, weeping helplessly into the cup with his beloved wife’s slain body in his arms.

On the contrary, it is heartening to read of many leading billionaires in the world who are setting a remarkable model on giving. Warren Buffet and Bill and Melinda Gates unveiled the largest philanthropic drive ever. They started a campaign to get the richest men and women in the world to give away fifty percent of the wealth to charity during their lifetime or after their death. Buffett has pledged to give away an unbelievable ninety-nine percent of his wealth.

With a similar altruism, the heroes and heroines of the terrorist attack at the Taj hotel in Mumbai were its employees. Putting their lives on the line, these men and women braved the attack, and although they knew where the exit points were in the hotel, they stayed back to rescue as many guests as possible. In the process, eleven of them paid with their lives. No wonder Professor Rohit Deshpande at Harvard Business School has made this example a case study on customer-centric leadership.

It appears that one camp seeks to be at the giving side and another prefers to be stay put at the receiving end.

The Bible says, “Greater love has no man (or woman) than that he (or she) lay down their life for their friends.” Jesus died on the cross in a supreme example of love for his friends, even friends who turned away from him, and ‘friends’ who had no awareness of what he was doing. He commanded his disciples to love their enemies and at a climactic moment near death, looked at his tormentors who crucified him and prayed; “Father forgive them.”

While we may all be guilty of self-centeredness, Jesus can make a change in our lives. Opening our hearts, he pours his love into our lives.(1) Jesus gave himself up for you and me and the best response we could exhibit is to give back our lives to him in gratitude, for it is far more blessed to give than to receive.

Neil Vimalkumar Boniface is a member of the speaking and writing team at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Chennai, India.

(1) See Romans 5:1-5.

http://www.rzim.org/

The world of belief-systems and worldviews is a complicated playground of stories, storytellers, and allegiances. What makes it most complicated is perhaps what is often our inability to perceive these interacting powers in the first place. That which permeates our surroundings, subconsciously molds our understanding, and continuously informs our vision of reality is not always easy to articulate. The dominate culture shapes our world in ways we seldom even realize, and often cannot realize, until something outside of our culture comes along and introduces us, and the scales fall from our eyes.

Further complicating the great arena of narratives is the fact that we often do not even recognize certain systems for the metanarratives that they are, or else we grossly underestimate the story’s power. Whatever versions of the story we utilize to understand human history—atheism, capitalism, pluralism, consumerism—their roots run very deep in the human soul. This is why Bishop Kenneth Carder can refer to the global market economy as a “dominant god,” consumerism, economism, and nationalism as religions.(1) These deeply rooted ideologies are challenged only when a different ideology comes knocking, when a different faith-system comes along and upsets the system in which we have placed our faith and ordered our worlds.

This is perhaps one reason the Bible calls again and again for the action of remembering: Remember the story, tell of the acts of God in history, remember that there is one who has come near. For into this world of belief-systems and worldviews, God repeatedly tells the story of creation and the pursuit of its redemption and re-creation. God himself comes and proclaims in a body a kingdom both among us and entirely other. The narrative we discover introduces us not only to a new world, but a kingdom that jarringly shows us our own world and a savior who shows us what it means to be human.

Continue reading Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Another Story →