We have been sharing some of our favorite A Slice of Infinity essays written by Ravi Zacharias over the years. Thank you for sharing your own stories, testimonies, reflections, and letters. Ravi’s family and the RZIM global team have been greatly encouraged by the outpouring of support during this difficult time.

This is where I think that the Christian faith rises to its most authentic. When Lazarus, a friend of Jesus, came down with a serious illness, his sisters Mary and Martha sent for Jesus.(1) Before Jesus arrived at their home in Bethany, Lazarus died, and the sisters greeted the Lord with the half indicting words, “If you had been here, my brother would not have died.” Martha added, “But I know that even now God will give you whatever you ask” (John 11:21–22).

What an odd construction of thought. She is really saying, “Since you were not here to keep this tragedy from happening, it is now our expectation that you will reverse it.” Jesus did assure her that one day Lazarus’s death would be reversed (verse 23). But that was not good enough; Martha wanted it reversed right then. In effect, she was willing to let Lazarus die twice. (I have visited a grave in Cyprus that purports to be the grave of Lazarus. Inscribed on the grave are the words, “Lazarus, Friend of Jesus, Twice Dead.”)

In a dramatic move, Jesus went to the tomb. When he saw where his friend lay, Jesus wept (see John 11:35). He wept, even though he knew that, at least for then, he was going to reverse death. Death is powerful, but the power of God to raise us indeed shouts the triumph of love over sin.

Lazarus’s resurrection portended what would happen to Jesus himself. And here is the point: if Jesus were a charlatan or had deceived himself, he could have kept his plan going in perpetuity simply by saying, “I will spiritually rise again.” Such a claim could never be contradicted or proven false. But Jesus made no such promise. He promised a bodily resurrection—a concretely demonstrable falsehood if it were not to happen. This is vitally important. Jesus made an empirically verifiable claim and then fulfilled it. This statement has profound implications. It means that these bodies of ours, which the apostle Paul describes as a “temple of the Holy Spirit” (1 Corinthians 6:19) will some day be transformed to be like [Christ’s] “glorious body,” just as the Bible declares (Philippians 3:21). They will continue to exist and our individual identities and personalities will be translated into an eternal realm.

Continue reading Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Creative Evidence →

When Ravi Zacharias was a cricket-loving boy on the streets of India, his mother called him in to meet the local sari-seller-turned-palm reader. “Looking at your future, Ravi Baba, you will not travel far or very much in your life,” he declared. “That’s what the lines on your hand tell me. There is no future for you abroad.”

By the time a 37-year-old Zacharias preached, at the invitation of Billy Graham, to the inaugural International Conference for Itinerant Evangelists in Amsterdam in 1983, he was on his way to becoming one of the foremost defenders of Christianity’s intellectual credibility. A year later, he founded Ravi Zacharias International Ministries (RZIM), with the mission of “helping the thinker believe and the believer think.”

In the time between the sari seller’s prediction and the founding of RZIM, Zacharias had immigrated to Canada, taken the gospel across North America, prayed with military prisoners in Vietnam and ministered to students in a Cambodia on the brink of collapse. He had also undertaken a global preaching trip as a newly licensed minister with The Christian and Missionary Alliance, along with his wife, Margie, and eldest daughter, Sarah. This trip started in England, worked eastwards through Europe and the Middle East and finished on the Pacific Rim; all-in-all that year, Zacharias preached nearly 600 times in over a dozen countries.

It was the culmination of a remarkable transformation set in motion when Zacharias, recovering in a Delhi hospital from a suicide attempt at age 17, was read the words of Jesus recorded in the Bible by the apostle John: “Because I live, you will also live.” In response, Zacharias surrendered his life to Christ and offered up a prayer that if he emerged from the hospital, he would leave no stone unturned in his pursuit of truth. Once Zacharias found the truth of the gospel, his passion for sharing it burned bright until the very end. Even as he returned home from the hospital in Texas, where he had been undergoing chemotherapy, Zacharias was sharing the hope of Jesus to the three nurses who tucked him into his transport.

Frederick Antony Ravi Kumar Zacharias was born in Madras, now Chennai, in 1946, in the shadow of the resting place of the apostle Thomas, known to the world as the “Doubter” but to Zacharias as the “Great Questioner.” Zacharias’s affinity with Thomas meant he was always more interested in the questioner than the question itself. His mother, Isabella, was a teacher. His father, Oscar, who was studying labor relations at the University of Nottingham in England when Zacharias was born, rose through the ranks of the Indian civil service throughout Zacharias’s adolescence.

Continue reading Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Obituary: Ravi Zacharias (1946 – 2020) →

We have been sharing some of our favorite A Slice of Infinity essays written by Ravi Zacharias over the years. If you would like to share your own stories, testimonies, reflections, and letters for Ravi you can share them on social media using the hashtag #ThankYouRavi or through RZIM Connect: https://ravi.care/ThankYouRavi. Ravi and his family family have been greatly encouraged by the outpouring of support during this difficult time.

How do you know that God exists? How do you know that God loves you? How do you know God is present versus absent? These questions, upon the hearts of so many, have answers as real as the formative moments in your life.

As I have aged, I seem to grow more and more prone to nostalgia. Many of us do this instinctively, clinging to memories past, perhaps looking backwards with the hope of seeing a purpose for our lives. When I travel to India, I make it a point to revisit time and again those significant marking points of my own life. As I recall these moments past but not forgotten, I hear the gentle voice of the God very much in the present. And God says: I was there. When on you were on your bed contemplating suicide, I was there. When you were but nine years old and your grandmother died, I arranged for her gravestone to hold in time the very verse that would lead you to conversion. I was there. I was there. I was there.

It is often in these harrowing moments—your parents’ divorce, your child’s birth, the death of a loved one—where God leaves a defining mark. There is reason you remember such moments so vividly. We have a choice to hear or to ignore, but regardless, God’s voice cries out in our memories: I was there. God has been in our past. God is here today. God will be there in our future. We have this promise in the flesh and blood of Jesus Christ.

God exists, as C.S. Lewis worded it so well, in the “eternal now.” And the psalmist, always writing with feet firmly planted in time, but arms ever reaching for the eternal, beautifully explains, “Thou art God from age to age the same.” While hindsight is often God’s means of gently revealing his presence all along, we can be comforted in the peril of the moment nonetheless. For as we encounter these markers in time, our sorrow is held in the beautiful mystery of one who wept with a friend, one who answered her question “Where were you?” with tears of his own. Beside Lazarus’s tomb, Jesus offered Mary a glimpse of the present love of God, though he knew of an even greater future both for Mary and for Lazarus. Christ is God’s living promise: I was with you then. I am there with you now. And I love you. I love you.

William Shakespeare once reasoned, “Love sought is good, but given unsought is better.” How do you know that God loves you? While you and I were yet wandering, Christ was wandering after us, pursuing us, even by way of the cross: love seeking the lost in human flesh. It is this sacrifice that stands as the greatest marker in all time.

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

Read in browser »

http://www.rzim.org/

Some years ago, I was visiting a place known for making the best wedding saris in the world.(1) They were the producers of saris rich in gold and silver threads, resplendent with an array of colors. With such intricacy of product, I expected to see some elaborate system of machines that would boggle the mind in production. But this image could not have been farther from the real scene.

Each sari was made individually by a father and son team. The father sat above the son on a platform, surrounded by several spools of thread that he would gather into his fingers. The son had only one task. At a nod from his father, he would move the shuttle from one side to the other and back again. This would then be repeated for hundreds of hours, until a magnificent pattern began to emerge.

The son certainly had the easier task. He was only to move at the father’s nod. But making use of these efforts, the father was working to an intricate end. All along, he had the design in his mind and was bringing the right threads together.

The more I reflect on my own life and study the lives of others, I am fascinated to see the design God has for each one of us individually, if we would only respond. All through our days, little reminders show the threads that God has woven into our lives.

Allow me to share a story from my own experience. As one searching for meaning in the throes of a turbulent adolescence, I found myself on a hospital bed from an attempted suicide. It was there that I was read the 14th chapter of John’s Gospel. My attention was fully captured by the part where Jesus says to his disciples: “Because I live, you shall live also” (John 14:19). I turned my life over to Christ that day, committing my pains, struggles, and pursuits to his able hands.

Almost thirty years to the day after this decision, my wife and I were visiting India and decided to visit my grandmother’s grave. With the help of a gardener we walked through the accumulated weeds and rubble until we found the stone marking her grave. With his bucket of water and a small brush, the gardener cleared off the years of caked-on dirt. To our utter surprise, under her name, a verse gradually appeared. My wife clasped my hand and said, “Look at the verse!” It read: “Because I live, you shall live also.”

A purposeful design emerges when the Father weaves a pattern from what to us may often seem disparate threads. Even today, if you will stop and attend to it, you will see that God is seeking to weave a beautiful tapestry in your life.

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

(1) This essay also appears in Ravi Zacharias’s The Logic of God, (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2019).

Read in browser »

http://www.rzim.org/

Dear Slice Readers,

In light of the recent announcement about the health of our beloved founder, we will be sharing some of our favorite A Slice of Infinity essays written by Ravi Zacharias over the years. If you would like to share your own stories, testimonies, reflections, and letters for Ravi, you can share them on social media using the hashtag #ThankYouRavi or through RZIM Connect: https://ravi.care/ThankYouRavi. We plan to share these with Ravi and his family, and know they will be encouraged by the outpouring of support during this difficult time.

Gratefully,

The RZIM A Slice of Infinity global team of contributors

There is a striking verse in the New Testament, in which the apostle Paul refers to the cross of Jesus Christ as foolishness to the Greek and a stumbling block to the Jew.(1) One can readily understand why he would say that. After all, to the Greek mind, sophistication, philosophy, and learning were exalted pursuits. How could one crucified possibly spell knowledge?

To the Jewish mind, on the other hand, there was a cry and a longing to be free. In their history, they had been attacked by numerous powers and often humiliated by occupying forces. Whether it was the Assyrians or the Babylonians or the Romans, Jerusalem had been repeatedly plundered and its people left homeless. What would the Hebrew have wanted more than someone who could take up their cause and altogether repel the enemy? How could a Messiah who was crucified possibly be of any help?

To the Greek, the cross was foolishness. To the Jew, it was a stumbling block. What is it about the cross of Christ that so roundly defies everything that power relishes? Crucifixion was humiliating. It was so humiliating that the Romans who specialized in the art of torture assured their own citizenry that a Roman could never be crucified. But not only was it humiliating, it was excruciating. In fact, the very word “excruciating” comes from two Latin words: ex cruciatus, or out of the cross. Crucifixion was the defining word for pain.

Does that not give us pause in this season now before us? Think of it: humiliation and agony. This was the path Jesus chose with which to reach out for you and for me. You see, this thing we call sin, but which we so tragically minimize, breaks the grandeur for which we were created. It brings indignity to our essence and pain to our existence. It separates us from God.

Continue reading Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Ex Cruciatus →

In the still of the night, in the world’s ancient light
Where wisdom grows up in strife
My bewildered brain, toils in vain
Through the darkness on the pathways of life
Each invisible prayer is like a cloud in the air
Tomorrow keeps turning around
We live and we die, we know not why
But I’ll be with you when the deal goes down.(1)

In just a few lines, Bob Dylan describes much of modern dread: every road a path of resistance, every work a Sisyphean exercise in futility, every pathway littered with burnt out lamps, every prayer a fleeting vapor, every tomorrow suddenly a forgotten yesterday, every death impersonal and frighteningly mysterious. These all speak to the deep psychological wounds of life and vulnerability, the trauma of living and loving, the thick of despair and depression. But the ending is what all who long wish to hear: “I’ll be with you when the deal goes down.”

It is hard and uncomfortable to be with people when they face these defeats, though. One of the reasons for this is that, simply put, we don’t want to be dragged down into the pit of despair with anyone. No one wants to be in that pit: neither the person who is in it, nor those of us who can’t imagine why they seem to want to stay there. (Hint: They don’t.)(2)

It is hard to describe depression to one who has not felt it in their bones. It is not mere sadness or pessimism, as I learned but a few years ago. The words that best describe the overwhelming and unshakable darkness inside of my head at the time are hopeless, forsaken, worthless, and guilty. Mere words can never express this extreme despair, though. It was this feeling deep within my soul of being separated from the world, my own self, and my God. Intellectually, perhaps, I knew of my status before God, but I did not feel it at all. One cannot simply “snap out of” this predicament. Most of the time, it feels utterly uncontrollable, and yourself inconsolable.

Continue reading Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Embodied Empathy →

To the people of ancient Israel, God’s house was an image that shaped the way they saw everything. In the minds of ancient Israelites, the house of God was the center of the world. As strange as this might sound to our ears, to their ears, the modern notion of the separation between heaven and earth would have seemed strange and wrong. God’s was a house reaching from the heavens to the liminal, tangible places on earth where God caused his name to be remembered. God’s house was seen in experiences like Jacob’s: “Surely the Lord is in this place, and I was not aware of it.”(1) It was experienced in the tabernacle that once moved among them as pilgrims, and later in their pilgrimages to the temple. Ever-expanding their vision of God’s house, altars were built over the places where God had appeared to them, marking the reach of its walls. Though at times as prodigals, their longing for home was a part of their identity as children of the house of God: “One thing I ask of the LORD, this is what I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD and to seek him in his temple.”(2) In the imagination of the Israelite, the house of God as it reached from heaven to earth was occupied by the Creator. As the people of God, they had been invited inside and they longed to remain. They longed for the healing embrace of home.

As with any group with a clear vision of inside and outside, belonging and not belonging, the Israelite’s understanding of the house of God could have easily become the very rationale for excluding foreigners, neighbors, and outsiders. Yet not long after God had called the people of Israel his own, God instructed them very specifically on the treatment of such people: “Do not oppress an alien; you yourselves know how it feels to be aliens, because you were aliens in Egypt.”(3) “The alien living with you must be treated as one of your native-born. Love him as yourself, for you were aliens in Egypt. I am the LORD your God.”(4) The house of God was to be a house of hospitality, for such a spirit reflected the very God within it: “For the LORD your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who shows no partiality and accepts no bribes. He defends the cause of the fatherless and the widow, and loves the alien, giving him food and clothing. And you are to love those who are aliens, for you yourselves were aliens in Egypt.”(5) Called to ever-remember their own status as foreigners, the people who were invited into the care of God’s house were to become a sign of that care themselves.

Continue reading Ravi Zacharias Ministry – At Home →

To say I was looking forward to watching my team play was an understatement. My excitement was heightened by the fact that the value of the tickets I possessed far outweighed what I had actually paid for them. The high demand and difficulty in obtaining them meant they were worth much more financially than the purchase price. They were also of personal value, as this was to be our oldest son’s first game, to mark his tenth birthday, and I have only ever been a handful of times in my life myself. Lastly, the game had taken on a much greater historical significance, as my club appeared to be on the brink of winning the league for the first time in 30 years, and there was even the possibility that the championship might be clinched at the match we were going to. Everything seemed perfectly poised. Everything, that is, until the world suddenly changed…

COVID-19 has wreaked havoc across the globe and has caused some of the richest and most technologically advanced nations to grind to a halt. Sporting fixtures were of course one casualty of the chaos, prompting the coach of my team to reflect that the game was simply the “most important of the least important things.”

This succinct reflection perfectly captures the way in which the on-going tragedy has put everything else into perspective. It has given us all pause for thought about how we spend our time and what we consider valuable in normal life. Has the crisis caused you to think about or re-evaluate what or who is important in your life?

Continue reading Ravi Zacharias Ministry – The Most Important of the Least Important Things →

In the January 2, 2015 issue of Science magazine, I read a troubling article. Two researchers—one a cancer geneticist and the other a biostatistician—found that approximately two-thirds of all cancers are the result of “biological bad luck.”(1) The ‘bad luck’ they describe is simply the random genetic mutations that happen as a result of healthy cells dividing. Utilizing a statistical model to analyze historical literature on cancer, they examined the rates of cell division in 31 types of bodily tissue. Focusing specifically on stem cells—the specialized population of cells within each organ tissue that provide replacements when cells wear out—they found that the higher the rate of stem-cell division the more increased the risk of cancer. The reason why? Dividing cells must make copies of their DNA. The more they divide (over time), the higher the risk that errors in the copying process could set off the uncontrolled growth that leads to cancer.(2)

These findings are troubling because they create doubt as to whether preventative controls matter at all in the fight against cancer. They are troubling especially as I thought of all those who have come face to face with the “randomness” of cancer. They are more than just statistics; they are family members, friends, and colleagues who struggle with this often-deadly disease. Confidence erodes in any sense of control over one’s safety and health in light of findings like these.

As I read studies like this, or simply look out on the world around me, it is sometimes difficult not to collapse under the weight of what appears to be random catastrophic events. Mistaken identity, for example, was the “reason” a classmate and dear friend of my brother was murdered, not two-weeks into his new marriage. Working as an urban missionary, he was murdered at the front door of a home in which he was coming to share the Christian faith. Those inside mistook him for someone who had done harm to them in the past. In another seemingly random event, two wilderness experts/enthusiasts river-rafting in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge awoke to find a grizzly bear in their campsite. Though they were armed with a rifle and other necessary protection, they were mauled and killed by the bear. They startled the bear as they emerged in the morning to prepare some breakfast. Apparently, being in the wrong place at the wrong time can get one killed. But the ‘wrong’ place often seems to be as arbitrary as a roll of the dice. Now as I write this, a microorganism has spread around the globe and erased all notions of being in the ‘right’ place.

Continue reading Ravi Zacharias Ministry – The Myth of Safety →

My high school band director was adamant about many things, but none so much as what he called the obligatory rule of good musicianship. That is, the two most important notes in any musical composition are the first and the last. “The audience might forgive you for a bad note that comes in the middle,” he would say, “but they will forget neither your very first impression nor your final remark.”

The last word of the book of Acts in the Greek New Testament is the word akolutos. The word literally means “unhindered,” though many translations render it with multiple words because of its complexity. Others move the word from its final position for the sake of syntax. In both cases, I think something is lost in translation. Luke was intentionally making a statement with this last word of his two-volume testimony to the life of Jesus Christ. I think he intended readers to pause at the conclusion of his words, the very last note in his testimony the provocative thought of the gospel unhindered, the Spirit of God continually improvising with a tune that will not be shushed or silenced. After the stories of Jesus’s ministry were told, after recollections of his death and ruminations of his resurrection, after Jesus’s ascension and the church’s beginnings, after all the resistance, disappointment, and surprises along the way, Luke concludes: “Then Paul dwelt two whole years in his own rented house, and received all who came to him, preaching the kingdom of God and teaching the things which concern the Lord Jesus Christ with all confidence, unhindered.“(1)

Through prisons and angry crowds, the book of Acts traces the birth and growth of the early church. The book begins with a few hundred believers in Christ and a collective will to be his witnesses in Jerusalem, in Judea and Samaria, and to all the ends of the earth. Opposition to this witness is described at every turn. Persecution, beatings, death, and imprisonment all threatened the voice of the early church and ultimately the spread of the gospel itself. But in spite of all this, Luke epitomizes the history of the early church and the spread of the gospel by boldly describing the progression of God’s kingdom as going forth without the slightest of hindrances. The Good News of God to all the world, Luke seems to want the world to remember, goes forth despite us, goes forth in power.

For any man or woman who will hear his testimony, Luke wants to conclude his eyewitness account with the dimension of the gospel that is most striking—namely, that these evidences are far from the end of the story. Luke wants hearers to be well aware that eyewitnesses to the power of Jesus will go well beyond his own eyes, his stories, his lifetime; your eyes, your stories, your lifetime. Though variant theologies and distorted gospels will abound, though the world will delight in yet another conspiracy theory that promises to be the downfall of Christianity, Christ will go forth unhindered. For the Christian, this means we need not live defeated by every emerging plot to undermine him. And for the one who has yet to take him at his word, it is continually and powerfully an invitation. Consider living into a victory like his, walking further up and farther into the great unhindered narration of the vicariously human Son of God.

Luke begins on a note intent on crescendo: “Many have undertaken to set down an orderly account of the events that have been fulfilled among us.”(2) He sets out to sing the beginnings of the early church and the work of God from the very start to the ends of time. He wants to be clear that we are invited to be a part of a story that will not fade away. Despite all appearances, despite dim turns in melody, the story of Jesus was and will continue to be Good News that resounds without hindrance. No person or power can thwart the resonant sounds of the new life Jesus proclaims, for it is moved by a Spirit who presses it ever-onward, ringing invitingly into the unexpected places of the world. The redemptive song of Christ and the Spirit who enables creation to add its praise will continue to move forth, unhindered.

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

(1) Acts 28:30-31.
(2) Luke 1:1.

Read in browser »

http://www.rzim.org/

The Bible assures us that at all times God is with us. He is our comforter; He is our healer. He is our physician; He is our provider. He knows better than we do.

As I have previously shared with you, during my recent back surgery, the surgeon spotted something that concerned him enough to take a biopsy and the biopsy revealed I had cancer.

Our doctors in Atlanta were concerned I couldn’t start treatment until fully healing from the back surgery. However, since then we have been able to consult with doctors at the renowned MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas. Truly, God did a miracle in getting me here, literally a day or two just before they had to close to treating any patients outside of Texas. My doctor, a Sarcoma specialist, feels confident in starting a regimen of chemotherapy and we have begun that. Since this treatment is coinciding with the COVID-19 pandemic, I will remain here in Houston for the next few months until I finish chemotherapy. I am so grateful that both my wife, Margie, and daughter Naomi can be here with me. God has given me the best doctor, and I look forward to gradually seeing this disease mend.

The Bible assures us that at all times God is with us. He is our comforter; He is our healer. He is our physician; He is our provider. He knows better than we do. While some nights have been painful, my heart has been at rest that this is all God’s plan. I want to get better; I want to be well. I want to be in his will and honoring to Him.

As I listen to the news, I have heard many commentators and government leaders say that we are living in a time of war with an unseen enemy, this terrible pandemic that has swept through the globe. We are facing uncertain times, and I pray for all those in need.

When I think of war, I think of my days in Vietnam, where there was so much uncertainty and fear. When I was twenty-five years old, I was invited to speak there, hosted by my denomination, The Christian and Missionary Alliance.

Two stories from Vietnam remind me that at all times God is with us. On one occasion, I was being driven from Dalat to Saigon by a missionary named George Irwin. En route, our car started to sputter and chug and died on us. Ironically, minutes before, George’s wife, Harriet, had said to all of us in the car, “We are about to go through the most dangerous part of the country.”

I wondered why on earth she was telling us this now. Couldn’t she have waited ‘til we had passed through it? Nevertheless, there we were, stuck on the highway in the most dangerous part of the country, trying to figure out what was wrong with our jeep.

Suddenly, a white car came speeding down the road. We tried to stop it for some help by waving our white handkerchiefs. The man driving the car just swerved it around us and increased his speed even more to avoid stopping. A few minutes went by, and George tried the ignition again and the car started, much to our relief.

As we drove a couple of miles down the road, we saw that the white car had been ambushed. The wounded and dying were on the side of the road, and the Viet Cong were running away in the distance. They had been waiting to ambush the next vehicle to come along, and that happened to be it. If our car had not broken down, it would have been us.

God has an appointed time for all of us. His protection and security is ours ‘til that moment comes when it’s “closing time.”

Another story from Vietnam probably stirs my confidence in God’s sovereignty and the power of his Word more than any other. When I was ministering there, one of my interpreters was Hien Pham, a young Christian. Sometime after I left, Vietnam fell and Hien was imprisoned. His jailers tried to indoctrinate him against the Christian faith and restricted him to Communist propaganda in French and Vietnamese.

The propaganda began to take its toll. “Maybe,” he thought, “I have been lied to. Maybe God does not exist.” So Hien determined that when he awoke the next day, he would not pray or think of his faith anymore.

The next morning, Hien was assigned to clean the prison latrines. There he found a scrap of refuse paper with apparent English script. He hurriedly grabbed it and washed it. Later that night, startled and trembling, he read these words from Romans 8: “We know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him. … For I am convinced that [nothing] will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (verses 28 and 38). Hien wept knowing there was not a more relevant passage for one on the verge of surrendering to a false doctrine.

Hien later escaped the country, again through the course of God’s amazing hand. He has since shared his testimony with many, confident that “nothing can separate us from the love of God.”

I have absolutely no doubt that God stops and orders our steps in his sovereign will and grace. The Jesus I know and love today I encountered at the age of seventeen on a bed of suicide. I came to him unsure about the future. I remain with him certain about my destiny.

When we are face to face with God, we will find out how many were the potential catastrophes from which He saved us. Every pain and wound is part of his sovereign plan for us. He is the ultimate guardian over every breakdown. He alone can be our protection. At all times, God is with us.

Ravi Zacharias is Founder and Chairman of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Alpharetta, GA. This article was published in the 28.3 edition of Just Thinking magazine. To view the magazine in its entirety, click here.

http://www.rzim.org/

As a Christian writer and speaker, I am often asked what the most frequent questions are regarding the Christian faith. Of course, I am frequently asked questions of an intellectual or historic nature: Did Jesus of Nazareth really exist? Is his resurrection from the dead a historical event? How is one to understand the Bible as the Word of God? For some, the questions never go beyond intellectual curiosity or pursuit. For others, these questions need to be answered for constructing a sound apologetic.

Probe a bit deeper, however, and it isn’t difficult to discover that many questions come from the deepest places of the heart. They come because of personal experience with suffering of one form or another. Is there a God? If so, does that God care about me, know me? If so, why does God seemingly allow so much suffering? When the fervent prayers of righteous men and women do not prevent the cancer from spreading, or the child from dying, or the plane from crashing, or the marriage from failing, these more existential questions come like water bursting through the dam.

The kinds of questions I receive are not unique to my contemporary context. They have been asked for millennia. The technical term for the theist’s response to the issue of suffering is called theodicy. Theodicy is the word given in the seventeenth century by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, one of the great intellectual thinkers of the Enlightenment period.(1) Theodicy attempts to explain how and why there can be suffering in the world if God is all-powerful and loving. In trying to solve this problem, some thinkers have denied the omnipotence of God; God is all-loving, but not able to do anything about suffering. Others dispense of the notion that God is all-loving, at least in any conventional understanding. But neither of these alternatives provides a satisfactory answer.

Intellectual wrangling over this problem, aside, the experience of suffering in light of both the goodness and power of God has caused many to doubt God, and others to walk away from faith altogether. If God does not prevent suffering, and if God does not care about the sufferer, then for some, the only alternative appears to be that God cannot exist in any meaningful way.

The writers of Scripture wrestled with these questions too. Often, they provided different ways of answering these questions. Some believed that suffering resulted from sin. Others believed that God causes suffering as a form of punishment. Still others asserted that suffering brings redemption.(2)

In Mark’s Gospel, a simple story about a boat caught in a terrible storm provides an altogether different answer framed around three profound questions. When evening had come, Jesus and his disciples got into a boat, most likely to cross the Sea of Galilee, in order to “go over to the other side.”(3) In the course of their travel, a fierce storm arose suddenly and violently. It was so intense that the waves were not only breaking over the boat, but the boat was filling with water and on the verge of sinking. The gospel writer tells us that Jesus was asleep in the stern of the boat and resting soundly when the disciples roused him with their fearful, first question: “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” Jesus seems to ignore their question and instead answers the wind and the waves, “Peace, be still.” His exhortation to the natural elements of wind and water was perhaps intended for the disciples as well, for he returns their question with a second question: “Why are you afraid? Have you no faith?” To which the disciples reply to one another with the ultimate question, “Who then is this, that even wind and sea obey him?”

It is not entirely unreasonable for those who want to be followers of Jesus to think that because he is in the boat suffering will not arise. But suffering does come, and the wind roars around and the sky turns black, and the storm of all storms appears to envelop all in darkness and terror. Jesus, don’t you care that we are perishing becomes an incredulous cry for all who would wish for immunity from the troubles of life. Indeed, as noted author Craig Barnes has written “Faith…has little to do with our doctrines or even with our belief that Jesus could come up with a miracle if he would only pay attention. Faith has everything to do with seeing that…the Savior [is] on board“(4)

In the midst of difficult and often unending questions about suffering, Jesus is there in the midst of the storm of doubt, in the tumultuous waves of despair, in the gale-force winds of defeat. He is there with the fearful, and the doubtful and those without faith. He illustrates the assurance of God’s care in the storm. His presence with the disciples in the storm tells us more about who he is—neither removed from suffering, nor always preventing suffering—then why we suffer. “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?”

Margaret Manning Shull is a member of the writing and speaking team at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Bellingham, Washington.

(1) Bart Ehrman, God’s Problem (New York: HarperOne, 2008), page 8.
(2) See for examples Proverbs 3:33, “The Lord’s curse is on the house of the wicked, but he blesses the abode of the righteous”; Amos 4:1-3, “[Y]ou cows of Bashan who oppress the poor, who crush the needy…the Lord God has sworn in his holiness: the time is surely coming upon you, when they shall take you away with hooks, even the last of you with fishhooks”; and Isaiah 53, the redemption by the suffering Servant.
(3) Mark 4:35-41.
(4) M. Craig Barnes, When God Interrupts (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1996), 138.

Read in browser »

http://www.rzim.org/

Most scholars agree that the Enlightenment or “Age of Reason,” which began in the early seventeenth century, set up a great dichotomy that persists in modern time.(1) The great “dichotomy” of the Enlightenment entailed the separation of the public and private realms. The public realm was the world of ascertained by reason alone. Missiologist Lesslie Newbigin explains, “The thinkers of the Enlightenment spoke of their age as the age of reason…by which human beings could attain (at least in principle) to a complete understanding of, and thus a full mastery of, nature—of reality in all its forms. Reason, so understood, is sovereign in this enterprise.”(2) In the realm of reason, therefore, revelation from a divine realm was not needed. Human reason could search out and know all the facts about reality, and “no alleged divine revelation, no tradition however ancient, and no dogma however hallowed has the right to veto its exercise.”(3)

The realm of religious belief was now relegated to the realm of private value and private purpose. It wasn’t that the Enlightenment dichotomy cut out God. Rather, it created a distinction between “natural” religion—God’s existence and the moral laws known by all and demonstrable by reason—and “revealed” religion—doctrines as taught by the Bible and the church. The latter realm, dominant in the Middle Ages and the Reformation, came under increasing attack and was eventually relegated to private expression and personal feelings.

Fueled by scientific and philosophical discoveries, the view of the world as the venue of God’s providence and rule, shifted to the view that sovereign reason could discover all that was necessary to advance humanity toward its highest destiny. All of Christianity’s supernatural claims and all of its revelatory content were unnecessary in a world where the Creator had endowed human beings with enough reason to discern what was important simply through the study of the natural world. As such, the autonomous, rational human became the center of truth and knowledge.

What emerged from this dichotomy was the belief that the real world was a world of cause and effect, of material bodies guided solely by mathematically stable laws. Discovering the cause of something was to have explained it in its totality. There was no need to invoke any supernatural “purpose” or “design” as an explanation any longer.

And yet, purpose remains an inescapable element in human life. Newbigin argues: “Human beings do entertain purposes and set out to achieve them. The immense achievements of modern science themselves are, very obviously, the outcome of the purposeful efforts of hundreds of thousands of men and women dedicated to the achievement of something that is valuable—a true understanding of how things are.”(4) Hence, persisting in the belief that science, for example, is value and purpose-free belies an intentional rejection of reality. The pursuit of science to find causes for effects devoid of any larger purpose seems self-defeating. Why study at all if there is no purpose for study?

Proclaiming that purpose infuses human endeavor, and as such, that purposeful human endeavor can point to purposeful design, and design gives rise to a Designer behind it all will not necessarily convince those who see a world only of mechanical cause and effect. Yet, scratch the below the surface of the most strident materialists, and one uncovers a yearning for something more than what can be understood by reason alone. As atheist Sam Harris wrote: “This universe is shot through with mystery. The very fact of its being, and of our own, is a mystery absolute….The consciousness that animates us is itself central to this mystery and the ground for any experience we might wish to call ‘spiritual.’”(5)

The Gospel of John suggests that reason and revelation need not be dichotomized. In this explanation of the significance of Jesus Christ, the objective and the subjective aspects of truth are revealed in a person: “The Word (logos) became flesh and dwelt among us.” The rational principle that undergirds all things, as the Greeks understood the Logos, is embodied in the human person, Jesus, according to John’s Gospel. And in the proclamation of the resurrection of Jesus we have a new starting point for reason. The resurrection is indeed the very basis “for the perpetual praise of God who not only creates order out of chaos, but also breaks through fixed orders to create ever-new situations of surprise and joy.”(6) Ever-new situations of surprise and joy might involve breaking a false dichotomy between public and private faith and the objective and subjective aspects of reality, even between reason and revelation. This one who brings new life and new ways of knowing invites us to wholeness, and not dichotomy.

Margaret Manning Shull is a member of the speaking and writing team at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Bellingham, Washington.

(1) Stanley Grenz and Roger Olsen, 20th Century Theology (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1992), 16-17.
(2) Lesslie Newbigin, Foolishness to the Greeks (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1986), 25.
(3) Ibid., 25.
(4) Ibid., 35.
(5) Sam Harris, The End of Faith (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2004), 227.
(6) Lesslie Newbigin, Foolishness to the Greeks, 150.

Read in browser »

http://www.rzim.org/

The dominating time-piece is nothing if not thought-provoking. British inventor John Taylor’s “Chronophage” (literally ‘time eater’ from the Greek chronos and phageo) keeps watch outside Cambridge’s Taylor Library of Corpus Christi College.(1) A foreboding metal grasshopper with an ominous chomping mouth appears to devour each minute with eerie pleasure and constancy. The toll of the hour is marked by the clanging of a chain into a tiny wooden coffin, which then slams shut—”the sound of mortality,” says Taylor.(2) The pendulum also speeds up sporadically, then slows to a near halt, only to race ahead again as if somehow calculating the notion that time sometimes flies, sometimes stands still. The invention, according to Taylor, is meant to challenge our tendency to view time itself as we might view a clock. “Clocks are boring. They just tell the time, and people treat them as boring objects,” he added. “This clock actually interacts with you”—indeed, striking viewers with the idea that time is nothing to take for granted.(3)

The Christian worldview is one that recognizes at the deepest level that something about humanity is not temporal. Easter, in fact, is the celebration that this is not just a suspicion, but a reality. Christians believe in eternal dwellings, a day when tears will be no more, and in one who is preparing a house of rooms and welcome.(4) And yet, we also very much live with the distinct experience of these promises within time. Christ is not merely the one who will be with us in all eternity, the one who will dry our eyes at time’s end. Christians believe he is also alive and among us today, welcoming a kingdom that is both present and approaching. “Remember, I am with you always,” ends one of account of the life of Jesus, “even to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:20). For the Christian, all of time is filled with the hope of resurrection, even as it is filled with Christ himself.

Why then, I wonder, are there moments when time seems so oppressive, the hope of eternity a distant glimmer, the presence of a resurrected Christ beside the daily pendulum an inapplicable promise? If the Christian life is about moving closer and closer to the glory of the resurrected Christ, why is there not more light and less darkness, a more vibrant Church and less grumbling, greater outreach and less greed, followers who look more like Jesus and less like the world around them? The expectation in the life of a Christian is that there will be a dramatic difference, or at least steady progression, of lives transformed by Christ. But instead we often find little difference—or we find the opposite of progression, so that both inside and outside of the church people are left wondering: Where is transformation as all this time marches onward?

John Taylor’s menacing grasshopper is an apt image for such a confession. Time marches on oppressively, unapologetically, while the promise of “being transformed into [Christ’s likeness] from one degree of glory to another” seems to remain a distant mirage.(5) Christians begin to doubt. Skeptics point out the obvious fantasy of faith. ^*But perhaps something in Taylor’s clock also challenges this fearful view of time and transformation. Time is indeed a linear progression, marching onward in precise increments, but our experience of time is far less like this. We are at times startled by its passing, other times painfully aware of its tedious movement. We interact with time knowing that some minutes are fuller than others, but that time is always more than a linear, monotonous experience.

Similarly, when I think of transformation, I often think of dramatic change: an acorn turned into an oak tree, the apostle Paul changed from zealous tormentor to zealous Christian, Lazarus moved from death to life. And I believe there is indeed something quite like this that takes place in the life of one willing to follow resurrected Christ—a creature who actually stops being one thing in order to become something else. It should not be surprising that around the world we find Christians in the most unlikely places, administering aid, speaking hope, exhibiting this change of which the gospel speaks. For clothed in Christ’s perfect nature, the nature of a person is truly changed. Though we stand before God imperfect and discouraged, it is the Son the Father now sees. And this part of Christian transformation is as dramatic as it is complete, allowing us—and the world—to stand assured of God’s work within.

But this is not to say that God is finished working. To the one who has been united with Christ, the daily indwelling of God is a gift! Within the Christian’s experience of time, the message of the gospel is all the more transformational, the vicariously human Christ is our moral influence daily, and through the Holy Spirit we are being further transformed into his image. This kind of transformation is neither the dramatic change often expected, nor the steady linear progression for which we might hope. Like Paul himself, we can find ourselves doing the things we don’t want to do, falling back into mindsets that need to be renewed, imitating a broken world more than we imitate Christ. Transformation at these times seems far less like Lazarus rising from the grave and more like a would-be butterfly refusing to come out of its cocoon.

But even here, Christ is surely near, the eternal urging the world of souls to see the potential even in this very moment: “The intermediate hope—” writes N.T. Wright, “the things that happen in the present time to implement Easter and anticipate the final day—are always surprising because, left to ourselves, we lapse into a kind of collusion with entropy, acquiescing in the general belief that things may be getting worse but that there’s nothing much we can do about them. And we are wrong. Our task in the present… is to live as resurrection people in between Easter and the final day.”(6)

That is to say, Easter is being implemented. Whether we make our bed in the depths, whether we fall repeatedly or seem to be moving backward, God is both near and at work, the reality of the resurrection working its way into every ticking minute. In the experience of time before us is the radical promise of both the intermediate hope and transformation and the gift of looking glory full in the face. By the power of the Spirit, God takes the most wretched of creatures and changes it into the likeness of Christ, the most beautiful creature. Whether time is flying or standing still, for the worst of us, even menacing grasshopper types, this is indeed very good news.

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

(1) Maev Kennedy, “Beware the time-eater: Cambridge University’s Monstrous New Clock,” The Gaurdian, September 18, 2008.
(2) Robert Barr, “Fantastical New Clock Even Tells Time,” MSNBC, September 19, 2008.
(3) Ibid.
(4) Luke 16:9, Revelation 21:4, John 14:2.
(5) 2 Corinthians 3:18.
(6) N.T. Wright, Surprised by Hope (New York: Harper, 2008), 29-30.

Read in browser »

http://www.rzim.org/

The image of a concrete slab with a cross shaped hollow speaks to me.

The concrete reminds me of what our cities are made of and maybe even my unspoken perception of what upward economic and social mobility might be to a girl who grew up in a township. It’s seeming sense of durability and superiority as a building material makes me forget that it’s only reconstituted dust and water. However disillusioning and dissatisfying at points, somewhere in my heart I know that the city and its concreteness is redeemable. Life can grow from within its stones.

Also, this cement has a cross shaped hollow.

Being a believer in a city in this particular Easter season has exposed my idols yet again. Consumerism and a false sense of “betterness” based on spatial-economic privilege are not the brokers of personhood. Even though the philosophies and sociologies of our city-planners have resulted in unjust city policies, even though I consciously and unconsciously participate in a market-centered society where buying, selling, and grind culture is the currency of existence, I feel disrupted by this image: an empty cross that tells the story of my barrenness and of God’s unending abundance.

Even spiritual markers of time like the Easter season are typically inundated by symbols of consumerism and monuments prioritized as central signifiers of human progress. But this year, what I buy and have is irrelevant. All of these excesses have been locked outside our homes to give us enough time to notice the idols inside. Do I rely on having things to show me that I exist? These new restrictions help renew my awe in a simpler existence. They cultivate a new longing for the kingdom to be visible through my life, a kingdom that in its very simplicity moves others to join the feast. As our worlds compress into rooms and balconies, we have been awakened to the gift of the little that we have or the plenty that we have, and we are each being invited by pain to remember generosity and kindness.

Continue reading Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Crosses in the Concrete →

I recently sat across from a woman I wanted to adopt as a kind of nonna.(1) Originally from Croatia, she spoke with a soft accent and combination of wisdom and kindness. In observing my 5-year-old son with me, she noted, “He has a high sense of injustice.” I nodded in agreement. My little guy has begun that tortured engagement with life—the wrestling of desire to shield our eyes from sorrow with the opportunity to see our part in the larger broken story around us and participate in facets of restoration.

Years ago it was in a broken place where I met Annie. I was nervous as I walked through the streets of Amsterdam’s famous red light district, so different from anything I had seen before. About four hundred windows line cobblestone streets, a person behind each one. There are women of all ages, transgender and transvestite workers as well. Organized by nationality, it is a market of sorts, where the commodity for sale is the body of another. I was with the director of Scharlaken Koord, a Dutch organization that offers assistance to women working in prostitution.

I realized my nervousness was a reflection of my own insecurity. Truth be told, sex workers represented something threatening to me—a reminder of the enough I might never be, a kind of desirable I couldn’t compete with, a kind betrayal I did not want to know. But when we talked with them, I saw them as women. They were girls I would want to be friends with, and what was alike far surpassed our differences. To be sure, if the same things that happened to them had happened to me, I would be standing on their side of the window. They were human beings trying to survive their own choices and those made for them, just like the rest of us.

So it was with Annie. She shared her story with us: a handsome Dutch man often traveled through the airport she worked at in a distant Asian country. He began to bring gifts each time he passed through—attention and interest too. Soon he proposed to her. Her family advised she would be foolish to give up such an opportunity; she would have a much better life than what could be afforded at home. The two married and Annie went to live in his home country with apprehension and hope. Upon arrival, he confiscated her passport, explained he now owned her, and put her up for sale behind a window. She tried to resist, but he only laughed. She didn’t have her documents. She didn’t know the language. Where would she go? Realizing he was right, she succumbed to beatings and abuse and ultimately performed as required.

When Annie learned she was pregnant, she was grateful for this reminder of life inside of her. But after several intentional blows to her belly by her husband, she miscarried. Later came the day she learned her mother had died. Well over her capacity to hold the injustice, Annie spilled over with regret and rage. Only because he was tired of her and had gotten what he wanted, her husband returned the passport and bid her good riddance.

Annie returned home. But when she told her family all that happened, they disowned her for disgracing the family name. Safety and dignity were stripped from her once again. So she returned to a window in Amsterdam. “This is what I am,” she said with resignation.

My friend asked Annie if she had considered going to church, and Annie let out a laugh. “I believe in God,” she said softly. “I pray to God every night when I try to wash this horrible feeling off myself. But you tell me—if I walk into your churches, will they see me as a woman or as a prostitute?” My friend answered her honestly, “Some would see you as a prostitute. But that is not the way Jesus sees you. And many would be those who would come around you.”

Annie shook her head decisively. “The problem with your people is they tell me I should leave. But they never want to let me forget where I came from either,” she finished.

Her words remain ingrained in my mind. How easily we pin a chosen letter to the chest of another. Yet that is not the gospel message we are to live and tell. I have learned that my earnest desire to come alongside a woman who has been exploited and abused is honestly not enough. Efforts toward restoration certainly must be present, but what she really longs for is justice, an identity beyond what life experience has given her.

The vital hope of the Christian faith is that there is something more—someone more—to counter the nightmarish face of injustice. We want to offer hope to the injustice we see around us. But if we are honest, we have all encountered a sense of injustice on a personal level. Do we believe the answer to be true for us, as it is for Annie? Because a person like Annie is able to read people in an exceptional way—she has learned to do so to survive. If we offer an answer we ourselves have not embraced in the midst of our own brokenness, she will certainly find our simply crafted answers downright offensive to her own powerful injustice.

This is the lifelong lesson my young son has just entered into. He faced injustice when a trusted friend unexpectedly shoved him down in front of others, and when his little sister provoked him into a response he then faced consequences for. But his sense of injustice has reached new levels. You see, he recently had another baby sibling on the way, and he was thrilled. When I delivered the news that the baby’s little heartbeat was struggling and it appeared the little one might go straight to see Jesus, his eyes filled with sorrow. “Can I ask Jesus for a miracle?” he asked earnestly.

Each day he prayed for his miracle with a childlike purity, asking Jesus to keep the baby safe, asking that God allow us to bring the baby home and be a family here. When the dreaded and painful process of losing that little one came upon us, oh how I cried in a new way. For I long to hold and to know that baby, whose tiny form now rests quietly beneath a weeping cherry tree. And I grieved also for my young son’s hope and faith so fresh. “Why didn’t Jesus answer my prayer?” he asked with grave disappointment, betrayal even.

Two disciples filled with sorrow at injustice unknowingly encountered Jesus along the road to Emmaus. Writer Jill Carattini said, “[Jesus] tells them that the suffering and death of the Messiah were not to be understood as a defeat of God’s purpose, but as a necessary pathway to new life. And pointedly, profoundly, Jesus suggests that this is the very pattern of God: from death to life. . . . And out of the death of the Messiah himself God brings us to resurrection—first God’s, then our own.”

The temptation to turn away from the sorrow of injustice is borne out of our shared desire to avoid pain. But the sense of injustice we and so many others around the globe experience does not cease to be if we look away. We are called to respond to injustice, to step into the reality of suffering. We will meet it within our own story, just as it abounds in atrocious forms around us. We have the opportunity to mourn, to grieve, to bear witness, to meet Christ beside us, to remember our shared need for a Savior who divinely counters injustice with his embodiment of pure justice itself, rendering us redeemed, free, and at last whole.

Naomi Zacharias is director of Wellspring International, the humanitarian arm of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Atlanta, Georgia.

 (1) “Stepping into the Reality of Suffering” by Naomi Zacharias originally appeared in Lookout Magazine, January 8, 2017.

http://www.rzim.org/

An important manuscript long thought lost was rediscovered hiding in a Pennsylvania seminary on a forgotten archival shelf. The recovered manuscript was a working score for a piano version of Ludwig van Beethoven’s “Grosse Fuge,” which means “grand fugue.” Apparently, grand is an understatement. The work is known as a monument of classical music and described by historians as a “symphonic poem” or a “leviathan”—an achievement on the scale of the finale of his Ninth Symphony. The work is one of the last pieces Beethoven composed, during the period when he was completely deaf. The markings throughout the manuscript are in the composer’s own hand.

In fact, such markings are a particular trademark of Beethoven, who was known for his near obsessive editing. Unlike Mozart, who typically produced large scores in nearly finished form, Beethoven’s mind was so full of ideas that it was never made up. Never satisfied, he honed his ideas brutally.

A look at the recovered score portrays exactly that. Groups of measures throughout the 80-page manuscript are furiously canceled out with cross-marks. Remnants of red sealing wax, used to adhere long corrections to an already scuffed up page, remain like scars. There are smudges where he rubbed away ink while it was still wet and abrasions where he erased notes with a needle. Dated changes and omissions are scattered throughout the score, many of these markings dating to the final months before his death in 1827.

I think there is something encouraging about the labored work of an artist chasing after genius. Beethoven wrestled notes onto the page. For him, composing music was a messy, physical process. Ink was splattered, wax burned, erasers wore holes in the paper. What started as a clean page became a muddled, textured mess of a masterpiece ever being finished.

Continue reading Ravi Zacharias Ministry – NEW CREATION →