Tag Archives: Zacharias

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Like Treasure Hidden

October 24, 2014 broboinhawaii Leave a comment

A nurse named Melanie was on her way to work when something in the trash bin caught her eye. She was immediately taken with the possibilities in the discarded treasure. It was a cello, slightly cracked in several places, but nonetheless a discard of great character, a piece quite charming to the eye. Her boyfriend, who is a cabinetmaker, also saw the cello’s potential. Together they thought it could be turned into a beautifully distinctive CD holder.

At first glimpse, this story seems to evoke a mantra commonly upon artists’ and antique-hunters’ minds alike: “One person’s trash is another person’s treasure.” With a mother as an antique dealer, I have an endless bank of similar stories. Yet this one was deemed newsworthy and is thus worth retelling.

The discarded cello was indeed old and it in fact had really been abandoned, though authorities are not sure why or how it ended up in the trash that day. But a most shocking revelation to the nurse (and possibly to the thief as well) was the fact that it was not merely an old, interesting cello. It is a one of only 60 like it in the world, made by master craftsman Antonio Stradivari in 1684. The 320-year-old masterpiece, valued at 3.5 million dollars, was stolen from a member of the Los Angeles Philharmonic orchestra just weeks before it sat rescued in Melanie’s apartment with dreams of becoming a CD holder.

In the music world, “Stradivarius” is an untouchable description. Neither scientist nor musician understands the difference between the voice of a Stradivarius versus the voice of modern violins and cellos, but the distinction is real—and costly. They are the most sought after musical instruments in the world—works of art in their own right—coveted by collectors and players alike. To be in the presence of a Stradivarius is to be in the presence of something great, regardless of whether it is recognized or not.

Of course, Melanie knew for sure that she had found a treasure (and there are countless people overwhelmed with thanksgiving that she felt this way). She saved a magnum opus from landing in a truck of garbage because she saw the potential in a piece of trash. But she had no idea how true her thought actually was, until reports of the missing cello transfigured the precious masterwork before her eyes.

I wonder if our experiences of God do not sometimes hint at something similar. Like the disciples on the mount who fell on their faces as the Jesus they knew suddenly became “like the sun” and “as white as light,” God can bring us to that place where we are awed by God’s glory, goodness, mystery—or even fearful existence. And like the disciples, like Job and Isaiah and the long history of surprised followers, we can be unexpectedly reminded that we are in the presence of the Father in all his glory, or remarkably present with the Son, or suddenly aware of the Spirit. Yet whether we are aware of it or not, God is always near, God’s glory declared day after day, the work of God’s hands proclaimed night after night.

A poem penned by Augustine of Hippo describes the delight of soul at being surprised by God, even amid the lament of realizing belatedly that God is there. Writes Augustine, “Slow was I, Lord, too slow in loving you. To you, earliest and latest beauty, I was slow in love. You were waiting within me while I went outside me, looking for you there, misshaping myself as I flung myself upon the shapely things you made. You were with me all the while I was not with you, kept from you by things that could not be except by being in you. You were calling to me, shouting, drumming on deaf ears. You thundered and lightninged, piercing my blindness.”(1) His words plead with the ordinary moment to taste and see the bounty of God today, presently, in this very glimpse. There is surely rejoicing in being found at all times, but perhaps, too, lament in not seeing sooner how near God was all along.

Like Melanie who saw beauty but did not grasp the true splendor of all she was holding, like the thief who held a masterpiece but saw fit to discard it, what if we are unaware of how near we are to God and the vicarious humanity of the Son who makes his kingdom in this world of flesh and bone and soul? It is like treasure hidden in a field, taught Jesus, like a merchant looking for fine pearls.

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

(1) Saint Augustine, Confessions, trans. Garry Wills, (New York: Penguin, 2006), 234.

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Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Why Suffering?

October 23, 2014 broboinhawaii Leave a comment

In one of the first conversations I had on this topic, my aunt Regina told me how difficult it was to see her son Charles—my cousin—struggle with a mental illness. In response, I shared some of my abstract, philosophical ideas about why God might allow suffering.(1) After listening very graciously, Aunt Regina turned to me and said, “But Vince, that doesn’t speak to me as a mother.”

Suffering is very real and very personal, and since that conversation with my aunt I am always hesitant to address it briefly. Here I hope to suggest only that the question is more complicated than it first appears.

It’s typical to think of the problem of suffering like this: We picture ourselves in this world of suffering; then we picture ourselves in a world with far less suffering. And then we wonder, “Shouldn’t God have created us in the other world—the world with far less suffering?” That’s a reasonable thought.

But it may be a thought that relies on a philosophical mistake. It relies on the assumption that it would still be you and me who would exist in that other world. And that is highly controversial. Let me explain.

There was a pivotal moment early on in my parents’ relationship. They were on their second date. They were standing on the Brooklyn Bridge, overlooking the picturesque New York City skyline, and my dad noticed a ring on my mom’s finger. So he asked about it, and she said, “Oh, that’s just some ring one of my old boyfriends gave me. I just wear it ’cause I think it looks nice.”

“Oh, yeah, it is nice,” my dad responded. “Let me see it.”

So my mom took it off and handed it to him, and my dad hurled it off the bridge and watched it sink to the bottom of the East River! “You’re with me now,” he said; “you won’t be needing that anymore.”

And my mom loved it!

Now it was a pretty risky move my dad made hurling my mom’s ring off the Brooklyn Bridge. She loved it, but what if she hadn’t? What if she had concluded that my dad had lost it and then run off with her old boyfriend instead? What would that have meant for me?

I might be tempted to think that if Mom had wound up with her old boyfriend, I could have been better off. I might have been taller. I might have been better looking. Maybe the other guy was royalty. That would have been cool! I could’ve lived in a castle!

But actually, that’s not right. There’s a problem with wishing my mom wound up with the other guy, and the problem is this: “I” never would have existed.

Maybe some other child would have existed. And maybe he would have been taller and better looking and lived in a castle. But part of what makes me who I am—the individual that I am—is my beginning: the parents I have, the sperm and egg I came from, the combination of genes that’s true of me.

Asking “Why didn’t God create me in a world with far less suffering?” is similar to saying, “I wish my mom had married the other guy.” I’m sure my mom and her old boyfriend would have had some very nice kids, but “I” would not have been one of them.

Oftentimes we wish we could take suffering out of our world while keeping everything else the same. But it doesn’t work that way.

Why didn’t God create a very different world? When this world fell into ruin, why didn’t God give up on it and start over? Well, it depends on what God was after. It depends on what God values. And what if one of the things God values, values greatly, is you, and the people you love, and each person you see walking down the street?

Sometimes we wish God had made a different sort of world, but in doing so we unwittingly wish ourselves out of existence. And so the problem of suffering is reframed in the form of a question:

Could God have wronged us by creating a world in which we came to exist and are offered eternal life, rather than creating a different world in which we never would have lived? I don’t think this makes God’s decision to create and sustain this world easy, just as it is not an easy decision for human parents to bring a child into this world. But if human procreation can be an act of love so long as the parents are committed to making sacrifices for their children and to seeing their children through suffering to the best of their ability, then perhaps divine creation too could be an act of love, if a divine parent was willing to make an extraordinary sacrifice for those He created and is committed to seeing them through suffering to a time when “He will wipe every tear from their eyes,” when there will be “no more death or mourning or crying or pain” (Revelation 21:4).

Vince Vitale is a member of the speaking team at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Oxford, England.

(1) This article is adapted from the forthcoming book Why Suffering?: Finding Meaning and Comfort When Life Doesn’t Make Sense, co-authored with Ravi Zacharias. Vince Vitale wrote his PhD on the problem of suffering. He now teaches at Wycliffe Hall of Oxford University and is Senior Tutor at The Oxford Centre for Christian Apologetics.

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Ravi Zacharias Ministry – The Face of God

October 22, 2014 broboinhawaii Leave a comment

Above the massive statue of Abraham Lincoln in Washington D.C. is the inscription: “In this Temple, as in the hearts of the people, for whom he saved the Union, the memory of Abraham Lincoln is enshrined forever.” The seated figure is 19 feet tall, carved from 28 blocks of white marble. To stand in front of the giant sculpture is no doubt to catch a glimpse of the nation’s respect for the man and his important place in American history.

As in many cultures, a statue carved in someone’s image is an honor bestowed upon the one engraved in stone. A portrait painted in someone’s likeness is intended to be a distinguishing tribute to the life captured in color. And yet, in ancient near eastern writ is the repeated warning never to do the same with God. In the ancient words of the Hebrew Bible, the one who would hold our highest esteem, has cautioned against even attempting to make such images because even the best of our imagination will lead us astray. “I am the LORD; that is my name; my glory I give to no other, nor my praise to carved idols” (Isaiah 42:8). Whether in finest metal or costly stone, to create a graven image of God would only reduce this God.

A prayer by C.S. Lewis captures a similar idea in more modern terms, suggesting that not all graven images are of stone and gold. The poem is titled “The Apologist’s Evening Prayer” and is a potent glimpse at what we might call thoughtful idols. Writes Lewis:

Thoughts are but coins. Let me not trust, instead

Of Thee, their thin-worn image of Thy head.

From all my thoughts, even from my thoughts of Thee,

O thou fair Silence, fall, and set me free.

Lord of the narrow gate and the needle’s eye,

Take from me all my trumpery lest I die.

It is not uncommon to hear Christians speak of perpetually finding themselves surprised by again and again with God. Even thoughts of God can easily become idols aligned neatly on theological shelves. Yet God mercifully and repeatedly wakes knowing disciples to new understandings. It is forever surprising for me, for instance, to be reminded that Jesus’s famous words, “I am the way, the truth, and the life,” were not uttered at angry religious leaders, nor directed at the lost and downtrodden. It can so seem a statement that draws a line in the sand with quickened stroke, separating the faithful from the uninterested, providing infinite comfort to the lost, and infinitely disturbing those who thought themselves found. Certainly, Christ’s words have a way of doing just that. But his potent words that day were spoken not to those who did not know him, but to those who knew him best. And they did not understand.

I wonder if these men and women understood any further, when only days later Jesus’s very life was poured out before them. “I am the way the truth and the life.” Did they remember these words on his lips? Could their minds have gotten around the thought that his life made the way, that the life of vicariously human Son of God poured out for the world is somehow the way to wisdom and life and meaning? Could they understand all that was packed in those words? Can anyone?

We are given minds and imaginations that can freely tread into heavenly matters. The desire to see God seems to be set upon our hearts no matter the culture or creed we are raised with. “Show me your glory,” Moses implored of God. “Show us the Father,” the disciples pled with Jesus. But we cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end anymore than we can fathom God, and for this, God seems to remind us of our limitations. We will be shown the Father; we are shown God’s glory; we are continually given glimpses of a self-revealing God. And yet we are warned not to make any of it into an idol lest we miss God in the midst of it. In a letter to a younger colleague, poet and professor Stanley Wiersma advised, “When you are too sure about God and faith, you are sure of something other than God: of dogma, of the church, of a particular interpretation of the Bible. But God cannot be pigeonholed. We must press toward certainty, but be suspicious when it comes too glibly.”

I believe that God moves us to those places where we discover again that God is fearfully alive, that the human Christ is one of us, that the mere hem of God’s robe fills even our holiest moments. We must repeatedly remind ourselves that even our imaginative limitation is good news: “Can you fathom the mysteries of God? Can you probe the limits of the Almighty? They are higher than the heavens—what can you do? They are deeper than the depths of the grave—what can you know?”(1)

“Show us the Father” is a hope our hearts were meant to utter, even as we learn to revel in the mystery of the request. It is also a longing God has promised will be answered for cultures and ages past to our own today: And the glory of the LORD shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.(2) A God who takes humanity so seriously that he joins us within it, offering us his own humanity as the way, the truth, and the life, will surely not disappoint.

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

(1) Job 11:7-8.

(2) Isaiah 40:5.

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Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Telling Stories

October 20, 2014 broboinhawaii Leave a comment

At once an analogy I appreciate and find troubling, it has been said that life is like entering a very long movie that has already started and then learning that you have to leave it before it ends. As a Christian, it is the story I profess: “My days are like the evening shadow; I wither away like grass. But you, O LORD, sit enthroned forever; your renown endures through all generations.”(1) Even so, entering a movie already started and leaving before it ends also means that I could entirely miss the point.

Every time I read St. Augustine’s Confessions I seem to come eerily face to face with myself, and with it, the thought that someone has already told my story—or at least very real parts of it. It is a shock of recognition that suggests an ugly narcissism and makes real the danger of missing the point. In a world where setting oneself apart seems the highest virtue and being “liked” can literally be measured on social medial, seeing yourself in an unoriginal light will either cast a tormenting shadow or offer a freeing vista. In Augustine, as in countless others who have wrestled with God long before me, I’m reminded that I am a small character in a much greater story. I have entered a movie that has already started, and surprisingly, it’s not all about me.

What if there is a vast stage full of lives who have wrestled with questions or struggled with thorns quite similar to your own? Would it be a comforting suggestion that people long before you and long after you may well live with the same sorrow or struggle or doubt? Many have lived aware, often more than we are, of life as it existed before them and time that would march beyond them. Many have lived thinking it a gift to “tell the old, old story” as their own. For they saw with the writer of Ecclesiastes that it is important to realize there is “nothing new under the sun,” lest we miss the sun entirely by focusing only on the shadows we watch it cast. They saw the momentaryness of our lives not as undermining but as dignifying, specifically because there is a permanence to life itself, a story with an end and a beginning.

Jesus once turned to his disciples and said, “Blessed are the eyes that see what you see. For I tell you that many prophets and kings wanted to see what you see but did not see it, and to hear what you hear but did not hear it.”(2) The disciples were seeing in the present all that kings and prophets looked for at a distance. Yet even those who walked intimately with Christ were not always aware of all there was to see. Chances are good we are missing him too even as there is a uniqueness to this moment.

If life is like entering a movie that has already started and leaving before it ends, it is important to look both behind us and ahead of us in order to see what is right in front of us. There is only one place in Scripture where God is referred to as the “Ancient of Days” but it significantly comes from one who justifiably could have been overwhelmed by the present. “As I looked,” says Daniel describing a dream, “thrones were set in place, and the Ancient of Days took his seat. His clothing was as white as snow; the hair of his head was white like wool. His throne was flaming with fire, and its wheels were all ablaze” (7:9). This one addressing God as sovereign over days long before his own is someone who could have been consumed with the picture of life before him. Jerusalem was in ruins; God’s people were scattered. Daniel could have easily viewed his situation as being stuck somewhere in the middle of a movie he wasn’t happy with, yet he chose to see the difficult scene in which he was living as a part of something bigger. He saw the “Ancient of Days” in the midst of the days he was given.

Having a sense of entering a story that has already started and leaving before it ends is a very different vision than the story that begins and ends with me. The freeing vision that comes from standing beside the vicariously human Christ is one that can look back at lives of faith and God in history, forward at all that God has promised, and presently at all God has placed before us. There is a story and a storyteller, far more creative, far more redemptive, than even our best material.

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

(1) Psalm 102:11-12.

(2) Luke 10:22-23.

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Ravi Zacharias Ministry – I Remember

October 17, 2014 broboinhawaii Leave a comment

It is startling to consider the amount of information we carry about in our heads. Think simply of all of the numbers you have by memory: phone numbers, birthdays, ID numbers, zip codes, appointment times and dates. Among these many numbers are some so inscribed in your mind with permanent marker that you could not forget the number anymore than you could forget the person or thing they represent. The significance moves well beyond the boldfaced digits themselves—the birth of a child, the death of a loved one, the street number of the house you grew up in, the number of times you failed before you finally passed the test.

In the days of Mordecai and Queen Esther the people set themselves to remember the days when they received relief from their enemies, the month that had been turned “from sorrow into gladness and from mourning into a holiday.”(1) And so it was determined: “These days of Purim should never cease to be celebrated by the Jews, nor should the memory of them die out among their descendants.” The days were weighted with enough hope to press upon them the need to remember them forever. More importantly, they saw the very certain possibility that they might forget.

I suppose there are moments in our lives when we realize that we are beholding the carving of a day into the great tree of history. On my way to the hospital on the day my son was born I thought about the date and how it was about to be something more. Like any bride or groom or parent I knew from that day forward it would be difficult (and detrimental) to forget this day on the calendar; it would carry the force of forgetting so much more. Like the number itself, my remembering is more than a recollection of detail; it is the recollection of a person.

With a similar sense of anticipation, God told the Israelites that they would remember the night of Passover before the night even happened. “This day shall be for you a memorial day, and you shall keep it as a feast to the LORD; throughout your generations, as a statute forever, you shall keep it as a feast” (Exodus 12:14). Moses and Aaron were given instructions to tell the whole community of Israel to choose a lamb without defect, slaughtering it at twilight. Then they were to take some of the blood and put it on the doorposts of the houses. “The blood will be a sign,” the LORD declared. “And when I see the blood, I will pass over you. No destructive plague will touch you when I strike the firstborns of Egypt.”

The significance of remembering is a theme carried throughout all of Scripture. It is not about static facts or rules or figures, but the mystery of a place, the significance of a person, the marking of lives. Celebrating the Passover was built into the story of Israel. The command to remember was passed down from generation to generation. But they were remembering more than the mere events of their ancestor’s exodus from Egypt; they were remembering God as God showed up and changed them—the faithful hand that moved among them, the mighty acts which exclaim a Father’s untiring remembering of his people.

As the disciples sat around the table celebrating their third Passover meal with Jesus, an observance they kept before they could walk, everything probably looked ceremoniously familiar. The smell of lamb filled the upper room; the unleavened bread was prepared and waiting to be broken. Remembering again the acts of God in Egypt, the blood on the doorposts, the lives spared and brought out of slavery, they looked at their teacher as he lifted the bread from the table and gave thanks to God. Then Jesus broke the bread, and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body given for you; do this in remembrance of me.”

I have always wished that Luke would have described a little more of the scene that followed. Were the disciples hushed and confused? Did their years of envisioning the blood-marked doorposts cry out at the Lamb of God before them? They had spent their entire lives remembering the sovereignty of God in the events of the Passover, and then Jesus tells them that there is yet more to see in this day on the calendar: In this broken bread is the reflection of me. On this day, God is engraving across history the promise of Passover: I still remember you. I still seek you.

I imagine from that day forward the disciples knew it would be difficult to forget that day on the calendar. It is not that different for us today either. Forgetting what was witnessed in the upper room on that Passover carries the force of forgetting so much more.

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

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Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Do You Believe This?

October 16, 2014 broboinhawaii 1 Comment

“I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die. Do you believe this?” (John 11:25-26).

I recently shared these words of Jesus with the father of my oldest friend.(1) Chris’s father, Joe, was suffering from a brain tumor, and the doctors had given him only weeks left to live.

When I walked in to see Joe, I didn’t know if he would want to talk about his approaching death. Joe had always been strong and capable. He had a voice so deep that no matter what he was speaking about, it resounded with confidence and authority, leaving little room for vulnerability.

But as soon as Joe saw me he said, “Hey Vince. Good, I’m glad you’re here. I told Chris I wanted to talk to you.” Joe went on to tell me that although he had always been confident that God exists in some way, he was finding himself increasingly scared about what comes next.

As we spoke, what became clear to me was that Joe’s understanding of the central message of Christianity was that you should try to do more good than bad in your life, and then just hope that in the end your good deeds will outweigh your bad deeds. If they do, something wonderful awaits. But if they don’t, you’re in trouble. And as Joe reflected back over his life, he recognized that if that was the case, then he had reason to fear.

Never was I so incredibly thankful to be sitting before someone as a Christian. As an atheist, I would have had to say there is no hope beyond the grave. If I adhered to almost any other religion, I would have had to tell Joe that he was basically right, and did have reason to fear what was next.

But as a Christian I was able to explain to Joe that while Christianity does say that God wants us to do good, that is not what makes us right with God. I was able to share with him that the message of Christianity is that what makes us right with God is not about anything we do or ever could do, but rather about what Jesus has already done—once, and in full, and for all. I explained that if we trust in Jesus, we no longer need to fear judgment, because when he died Jesus took the judgment for everything we have ever done or will ever do wrong. And we no longer need to fear suffering, or shame, or even death, because Jesus has joined us in all of it, and invited us beyond it.

I explained this at length, and when I asked Joe if this made sense, he responded—in classic New Jersey fashion—”That’s a hell of a realization.” Emphatically he said it again, and then continued, “Sixty-nine years and I never thought of that. I thought Christianity was one thing, but it was something else entirely.” There was an extended pause, and then Joe said, “You know, Vince, you spend your whole life trying to make up for your [mess] ups, but this finally explains how we can deal with guilt.”

I asked Joe if he wanted to pray with me to accept this gift from God. He said he did, and with great conviction he thrust out his arm to me. We clasped hands, and we wept, and we prayed, and as we finished praying he exclaimed a loud “Amen.”

Joe asked me if my wife Jo knows this great truth about Christianity as well. I said that she does, and he said, “It must be a happy life.” And then, after a thoughtful pause, “Now I’m actually looking forward to what’s next.”

When Joe’s family saw him the next day and asked how he was, for the first time in a long time he responded, “Wonderful.” The transformation in him was so visible that his family called me immediately and wanted to know every word that I had shared with him.

Life after death, on its own, does not bring hope. Forgiveness brings hope. And I believe, because I was there to see it, that forgiveness, and therefore hope, can be found with a simple heartfelt prayer.

Vince Vitale is a member of the speaking team at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Oxford, England.

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Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Half-Hearted

October 15, 2014 broboinhawaii Leave a comment

I am notorious for reading sentences—sometimes entire pages—before realizing that that my mind is simply elsewhere. With my eyes moving along the paragraphs, taking in the ordered sentences, it is as if my mind pronounces each word into a room with no vacancy. I am reading in a way that can’t even be called half-hearted. Evidently, the practical spirit of multitasking isn’t always practical. Mentally outlining my to-do list while reading Tolstoy isn’t reading Tolstoy. Hearing the words, I have heard nothing. I walk away from the paragraphs as if never seeing the sentences at all.

So it is distinctly possible, as Jesus once stated, to see without seeing, and to hear without hearing. I do it often, and not only with Tolstoy.

Like all communication, there are degrees to which we hear the stories of Scripture, the words or stories of Jesus. There are levels of interest, concentration, and understanding. Like all metaphors there are levels in seeing, layers to uncover, depths that call for attentiveness. Jesus’s parables and descriptions of reality ring in ears on many wavelengths. We can hear them as moral fables, abstract stories, truthful similes and images, great and awful mysteries at which we do well to pay attention, words we must try our hardest to ignore. Like the Pharisees who fumed as Jesus told the parable of the tenants, we might even recognize ourselves in the storyline. It is how we react to these mirrored images that are of significance.

What does it take to look into a mirror and walk away as if completely forgetting what you have seen? I suspect, as with my less than half-hearted reading, not much. When the Pharisees saw themselves in the words of Jesus’s parable, they were furious. Wholeheartedly, they began scheming a strategy to silence him. Ironically, they were plotting to do exactly what the parable said they would do.

Christianity describes the world with a wealth of detail. But it is more than a system whereby we believe certain information and thus call ourselves Christians or otherwise. What Jesus presents is a transforming way; it is intended to be life itself. If we merely hear God’s words, or half-see reflections of truth, we actually miss everything. Such a response cannot even be called half-hearted. Like the pages I have read mindlessly—lifelessly—in seeing we have seen nothing, hearing we have heard nothing. As one writer describes this common self-deception, “[I]f any are hearers of the word and not doers, they are like those who look at themselves in a mirror; for they look at themselves and, on going away, immediately forget what they were like” (James 1:22-24).

As when the Pharisees saw themselves in Jesus’s words, so our own reflections wait to be really noticed in his words. A response is inescapable; we will hear and live into a new story, or we will walk away as if never hearing.

Upon Jesus’s telling of the parable of the tenants, his hearers walked away from the mirror holding only vacant memories. Though they saw themselves in the story, they walked away from the reflection only to fully embody it.

In seeing will we see? In hearing will we hear? The kingdom Jesus describes is one that beckons all of our senses.

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

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Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Upside Down, Inside Out

October 14, 2014 broboinhawaii Leave a comment

Every society has insiders and outsiders. Groups of people or individuals are defined by a particular characteristic, belief, ethnicity, or behavior marking them as winners and losers. If one was a Jew in Nazi Germany, for example, she was an “outsider” and branded as such by a yellow Star of David sewn into her garments. If one was a Tutsi in Rwanda in the 90s, he would be forced to use an ID card which specified his ethnic group. In addition, his skin color was a general physical trait that was typically used to designate him an ethnic “outsider.”

But just who is inside and who is outside in particular cultures is often a matter of perspective. The Amish community intentionally lives as “outsiders” as a witness to the larger, secular culture. Being outsiders is their chosen identity. In the community in which I live, tattoos and multiple piercings define one as an outsider in the button-down-shirt-world of suits and ties, while at the same time identifying one an insider of this subculture that uses body art as a means to set one apart from the rest of society. It seems that the boundaries around who is in and who is out shift and change with the whims of culture and fashion.

Jesus, as presented in the gospel accounts of his life, often blurred the lines between who was inside and who was outside. Indeed, he often suggested in his teaching ministry that those deemed on the outside of his society were actually on the inside. In his “outside-in” perspective, the first would be last, and the last first. Rejecting the rules that kept the poor, the broken, the sick, or the disabled person firmly on the outside, Jesus instead opened-wide his arms and extended the reach of his hospitality far beyond what would have been acceptable in his day.

Yet standing in stark contrast with Jesus’s welcoming reputation is an encounter with an unnamed Syrophoenician woman. According to Mark’s gospel, Jesus is passing through the predominantly Gentile region of Tyre and Sidon when this unnamed, Gentile woman approaches him to ask for healing for her demon-possessed daughter. As a Jewish male, he is an outsider in this Gentile region. Yet, he speaks to her as a Jewish insider. “It is not good to take the children’s food and give it to the dogs.”(1) In Matthew’s account of this story, this woman’s outsider status is highlighted in even stronger terms. She is a Canaanite woman—a member of the people group Israel was commanded to expel from the land thousands of years earlier.

We who are more familiar with a loving, welcoming Jesus are jarred by his seemingly cruel response. Matthew tells us that the woman was pleading with Jesus to help her, yet “he did not answer her a word.”(2) Is this the same man? How is it that Jesus could ignore her cries for help?

Remarkably, the woman is not deterred by this familiarly abrupt response from an insider. In league with the great negotiators of old—Abraham, who bargained with God over the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah; Moses, who bargained with God over destroying the people in the wilderness; and King Hezekiah who bargained for more years to his life—she very cleverly argues: “Yes, Lord; yet even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.” Both Matthew and Mark highlight Jesus’s delight at her faithful response. In Mark, Jesus is impressed simply by what she has said; “For this saying you may go your way; the demon has left your daughter.” In Matthew, Jesus acknowledges her faith; “O woman, great is your faith!”

A casual reader may not realize the boldness and courage of this outsider, and the gift of Jesus in giving her a public voice. A Gentile woman alone with a daughter did not hold a good position in first century society. As a Gentile and a woman, she was an ethnic alien invisible to the society, greatly amplified since she was without a man to represent her in the public realm. Yet, this woman stepped beyond the prescribed boundaries to seek out Jesus for the sake of her daughter whom she valued, and Jesus praises her publically for it.

This story of the Syrophoenician woman demonstrates that God’s promise to Abraham overflows to the outside. The Syrophoenician woman understands this better than some in Jesus’s own circles and he gives her the opportunity to educate them: There is an overflow of blessing to one such as me, and it does not involve taking away the portion allotted to the insiders. As Peter declares in his own encounter with the Gentile Cornelius, “Truly I perceive that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears God and does what is right is acceptable to God.”(3)

Beyond this ancient story, we who sometimes feel ourselves as outsiders can take heart. For here, this outsider of outsiders is the recipient of healing. Jesus brings the outsider inside, he gives the least a voice, he makes blessing overflow. And that is very good news.

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

(1) See the full story in Mark 7:24-30. Matthew’s Gospel also records this event. Cf. Matthew 15:21-28.

(2) Matthew 15:23.

(3) Acts 10:34-35.

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Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Digging Out the Words

October 13, 2014 broboinhawaii Leave a comment

For the past decade, doctors and psychologists have been taking notice of the health benefits of reflective writing. They note that wrestling with words to put your deepest thoughts into writing can lift your mind from depression, uncover wisdom within your experiences, provide insight and foster self-awareness. From autobiography to blogging, writers similarly laud the benefits of writing. Whether publically, anonymously, or privately, confessional writing can free the writer “to explore the depths of the emotional junkyard,” as one describes. In my own experience, writing has no doubt been a helpful way to sift through the junkyard, though perhaps most effectively when reflecting and not merely reveling in the messes.

Writing is helpful because the eye of a writer seeks the transcendent—a moment where the extraordinary is beheld in the ordinary, a glimpse of clarity within the chaos, beauty in a world of contrasts. When Jesus stooped over the crumbled girl at his feet and wrote something in the sand, the written word spoke more powerfully than the anger of the Pharisees and well beyond any sin of the young woman. For those of us looking on through story, his words remain unknown but no less powerful. Writing is a tool with which we learn to see ourselves more clearly, a catalyst for which we can learn to see thankfully beyond ourselves.

In the C.S. Lewis novel, Til We Have Faces, the main character, Orual, has taken mental notes throughout her life, carefully building what she refers to as her “case” against the gods. Finally choosing to put her case in writing, she describes each instance where she feels she has been grievously wronged. It is only after Orual has finished writing that she soberly recognizes her great mistake. To have heard herself making the complaint was to be answered. She now sees the importance of uttering the speech at the center of one’s soul and profoundly observes that the gods used her own pen to probe the wounds. With sharpened insight Orual explains, “Til the words can be dug out of us, why should [the gods] hear the babble that we think we mean? How can they meet us face to face til we have faces?”(1)

There is something about writing that can introduce us to ourselves and to the image of another—both outside and within us. Daring to utter the words at the center of our souls we may find the words leading us to truer selves. What if God could use your own pen to probe the wounds of your life? In the intimate descriptions of life recorded in the Psalms, the writers of the Psalms express loneliness, joy, even frustration with God. “What gain is there in my destruction, in my going down into the pit? Will the dust praise you? Will it proclaim your faithfulness?”(2) Yet the psalmists seem to walk away from their words, not with tidied moralisms or regret and recanting, but with a clearer sense of what they meant and the one who helped them see. And, I would add, their words have been a source of encouragement to countless lives, pointing many to wisdom, to beauty and depth, to a God enthroned on high.

As Jesus stood with the girl at his feet in the middle of a group armed with power and hatred, the one who called forth creation and worked the heavens with his fingers, crouched down in the sand and with his human finger changed a life. This Word of God in human flesh may well be the gift that moves in our own.

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

(1) C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces (Orlando: Harcourt, 1980), 294.

(2) Psalm 30:9.

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Ravi Zacharias Ministry – On Blessing

October 10, 2014 broboinhawaii Leave a comment

Prolific author F.W. Boreham was once described as a man who went about his life “scattering benedictions.” The description colorfully puts an image of the beloved minister in mind.

For some, the word “benediction” signals the end of a church service, the parting words of a priest or pastor with lifted hands sending forth the congregation in the grace and love of Jesus Christ. The word comes from two Latin words meaning literally “good speaking” and is most often translated “blessing.” In the theological sense, benediction is the act or pronouncement of divine blessing upon another person.

To pronounce a person or group of people blessed was in fact given as a commandment to Aaron and his sons, the tribe chosen to serve as priests among the Israelites. The book of Numbers recounts that God spoke to Moses, saying, “Speak to Aaron and his sons, saying, ‘Thus you shall bless the people of Israel: you shall say to them, The LORD bless you and keep you; the LORD make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you; the LORD lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace’” (6:22-26). It is a beautiful remark, blessing as much as it teaches. The hearer is lifted in the name of the Lord, the keeper of creation, the giver of peace, the one who longs to bless us so much that it was given as a command. As parents look at a child and delight to find a smile they recognize, so God’s face is lifted in kind to those made in God’s own image, shining upon those God has called the “apple of his eye.” The gift of God’s name is a great blessing, and giving it to us, God is glorified.

Herein lies the potency of benediction. At the end of God’s instructions for the Aaronic blessing, God adds distinctly, “So shall they put my name upon the people of Israel, and I will bless them” (v. 27). Whereas doxology is ascribing praise to God, and prayer is conversation with God, a benediction is a word of blessing on behalf of God. The former rise from the heart of the saint, the other overflows from the heart of God. As author Samuel Chadwick writes, “[T]he benediction does not approach the subject from the standpoint of theology but of experience. It is not concerned with definition, nor does it contemplate the glory of God in the absoluteness of his deity.” Rather, notes Chadwick, it sets God forth as God is realized in the soul.

Scattering benedictions, it seems then, is a high calling. And I would add, it is a mysterious gift given to all made in God’s image. The putting of God’s name upon another person as we go about life is our tongue’s greatest utterance. It is a hopeful command, a most uplifted effort. As God’s name is set forth, not only is it God who does the blessing, it is God who is the fulfillment of the words we offer. God is the blessing.

So may the blessing of the LORD be upon you, and may you know the joy of putting the name of God upon others. For indeed, whether hiding or curious or seeking in earnest, blessed are those who rest in the light of the face of God.

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

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October 9, 2014 broboinhawaii Leave a comment

In the first chapter of John a theme begins which John will carry throughout his entire testimony. We read, “The next day, John saw Jesus coming toward him and he said, ‘Look, the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.’” What John is saying here and will say again and again is “Look! Look at Jesus.” In fact, he goes on to use this word fifteen times in his gospel. In the King James Version, it is translated emphatically, “Behold!” Interwoven throughout his stories of the life of Jesus, John repeatedly seems to stop and point his finger to make sure we hearers are getting it: “Look at this. Look at Jesus. This is astonishing. This is amazing. This is mind-blowing. Will you behold?” It is an appropriate question to hold before us as we take in the events of Easter: What are you looking at?

In one of my favorite hymns, Charles Wesley writes in his final verse, “Happy, if with my latest breath I might but gasp his name, preach him to all and cry in death, ‘Behold, behold the lamb.’” An account of Charles Wesley’s death tells us that that is exactly what happened. As he lay dying, he said those words, ‘Behold the lamb,’ and then went to be with the Lord. What is it that you are beholding? John wants to make sure we heed the call to look at Jesus.

In his gospel, John then goes on to give us several signs that tell us something of who and what this Jesus really is. Out of the many miracles that Jesus performed in his ministry, John deliberately chooses seven in order to give us a very particular perspective. The first miracle he recounts is the miracle at the wedding in Cana where Jesus takes ceremonial washing jars filled with water and astonishingly turns the water the red. Choosing this miracle, John shows us a sign of what Jesus has come to do. He has come to wash us, to give his red blood as a gift that we might be purified. John wants us to behold Jesus as the one who comes to bring atonement.

In the second and third miracles John offers are the signs of miraculous healing. In chapter 4, Jesus heals the son of a man in the royal household of Herod. As this man’s son lay dying miles away at home, he begs Jesus to heal him. And right there, Jesus pronounces the words, “Your son will live.” In chapter 5, Jesus heals the man at the pool of Bethesda, literally “the house of mercy,” where the man had come for years hoping for healing but could never attain it on his own. Into this man’s despair Jesus comes and simply tells him, “Pick up your mat and walk.” In both of these miracles, we find the healing Jesus offers reaching far beyond the private corners of faith and into the very public realms of reality.

In the fourth miracle John chooses, we are shown a picture of the abundance in the very person of Christ. In John chapter 6, Jesus feeds a crowd of five thousand by dramatically multiplying the loaves and fish. We are left with a picture of mind-blowing abundance, the Son of God demonstrating the fullness of God in the person of Jesus Christ. Also in chapter 6, the fifth miracle shows Jesus walking on water in the midst of a storm. The disciples are terrified, but Jesus gives them an extraordinary look at his authority, not only over the elements, but over all that would cause fear. Here, he says to them, “It is I. Don’t be afraid.”

In the sixth and seventh miracles John offers, we are given even further reason to thoroughly behold the person of Christ. In chapter 9, Jesus heals a man born blind and we literally see darkness illuminated by the Son of God. Here, John gives us another sign of what Jesus has come to do. Christ has come into a dark and broken and needy world, and he is the light of the world who shines in the darkness. Finally, in the seventh miracle, John gives us a picture of all that is to come in Christ. In the raising of Lazarus, Jesus demonstrates his authority over death itself. It is a sign of his impending resurrection, a sign of the resurrection to come.

Thus the question remains: Will you behold the lamb of God? John wants to make sure we see clearly the one who brings atonement, who shows mercy, who brings healing, who has authority, the one who tells us not to fear, the one who is abundant, the one who illuminates a darkened world and literally opens the eyes of the blind, the one who has power even over death itself. It is Christ. It is this Jesus who we do well to be looking at. Will you behold?

Amy Orr-Ewing is director of programmes for the Oxford Centre for Christian Apologetics and UK director for Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Oxford, England.

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Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Benediction

October 8, 2014 broboinhawaii Leave a comment

With outstretched arms, Aaron blessed the people of Israel, putting the name of the Lord upon the people: “The LORD bless you and keep you; the LORD make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you; the LORD lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.”(1)

These were instructions from God, who told Moses to tell Aaron to bless the people of Israel. “Benediction,” as it is now called, was to be an act of worship, a response of obedience to God’s instruction given to the priestly line. As a priest, Aaron was set apart. He and his descendants were forever “to consecrate the most holy things, to offer sacrifices before the LORD, to minister before him and to pronounce blessings in his name forever.”(2) The Aaronic benediction was a command, given in order that God’s name be placed upon God’s people.

So Aaron spoke the benediction over a people frustrated and wandering, and his words reached beyond him. Today the church continues to believe that there are moments often unknown to us with which God does the same. Like a river whose source does not know the far places it reaches, God’s name moves before the world; we don’t always know where it has come or where it is going. Yet we know that God’s hand is not too short to save. In the desert or on the mountaintop, God’s blessing reaches those who will receive and be filled. It is this God “who calls for the waters of the sea and pours them out over the face of the land.”(3)

Aaron’s blessings on behalf of God were both heard by the people and honored by God. And this duty, done in obedience, acting in worship, was passed down amongst the descendents of Aaron. Under oath, the priestly line vowed to keep the covenant of God before his people and the hope of God’s saving name upon them. Of course, the vow of people is prone to breaking and the service of the priest short-lived, but the presence and touch of God moves even closer than Aaron imagined.

The writer of Hebrews expounds, “Now there have been many of those priests, since death prevented them from continuing in office; but because Jesus lives forever, he has a permanent priesthood. Therefore he is able to save completely those who come to God through him, because he always lives to intercede for them.”(4) Through Christ, a better hope was introduced, by which the Holy Spirit moves the world that we can draw near to God. For as it is written, “Such a high priest meets our need—one who is holy, blameless, pure, set apart from sinners, exalted above the heavens.” Whereas the Aaronic blessing was intermittent, Christ’s blessing is continual.

It is significant here to note Luke’s retelling of the last hours with Jesus on earth, for Christ’s departure is marked with the gesture his life epitomized. Luke writes of Jesus, “Then he led them out as far as Bethany, and lifting up his hands he blessed them. While he blessed them, he parted from them and was carried up into heaven. And they worshiped him and returned to Jerusalem with great joy, and were continually in the temple blessing God.”(5) Near the place where he raised Lazarus from the dead, Jesus ascended to the right hand of the Father where he remains High Priest forever. Before he left, pointedly, he offered the benediction. Hands and arms that days before were outstretched upon the Cross were lifted once more to bless the world.

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

(1) Numbers 6:22-26.

(2) 1 Chronicles 23:13.

(3) Amos 5:8.

(4) Hebrews 7:23-25.

(5) Luke 24:0-53.

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Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Solidarity and Survival

October 7, 2014 broboinhawaii Leave a comment

In 1943, two hundred and thirty women were arrested as members of the French Resistance and sent to Birkenau. Only 49 survived, but this in itself is remarkable. These women were as diverse a group as could be imagined. They were Jews and Christians, aristocrats and working class, young and old. Yet they were united by their commitment to the French Resistance and to one another.(1) In her book A Train in Winter, Caroline Moorhead reconstructs the story of these women through the journals and memoirs of survivors. Noting the mutual dependence that made the difference between living and dying, Moorhead highlights how the solidarity of these women to one another and to their mutual survival sustained them through unspeakable horror and torture.

In many accounts of Holocaust survivors, the hellish conditions of extreme deprivation and torture drove many to hoard whatever meager resources they could save for themselves. And how could they be blamed? Survival became the only goal—no matter what the cost, even to others. Yet, in most of the cases with these French women in Birkenau, their solidarity toward each other trumped the selfishness that engulfed so many others. As Moorhead writes, “Knowing that the fate of each depended on the others…egotism seemed to vanish and that, stripped back to the bare edge of survival, each rose to behavior few would have believed themselves capable of.”(2) Moorhead recounts that when unrelieved thirst threatened to engulf one of their members in utter madness, the women pooled together their own meager rations to get her a whole bucket of water.

Altruism of this magnitude is seldom seen. Putting one’s own needs first is as natural as breathing, and just as unconscious. Yet adversity sometimes coaxes out the best and the most beautiful in human beings.

In the ancient biblical account of Ruth, three women are left widows, and one, Naomi, has lost her sons as well. Bereft of their economic and financial support, the women instinctively stay together even as Naomi insists they return to their homeland of Moab, where the prospect of finding a husband would be more likely. But the women insist on staying. “No, we will surely return with you to your people.”

We moderns miss the significance of this solidarity. In staying with Naomi, the women would forfeit any sense of security. In the ancient Near East, husbands and sons secured a woman’s total wellbeing. Without husband or male heir, women were left to fend for themselves, often forced into prostitution to earn a living. They would not only depend on one another, but would be cast upon the mercy of another land and another people as strangers.

Naomi understands the risks as she laments, “Return, my daughters! Go, for I am too old to have a husband. If I said I have hope if I should even have a husband tonight and also bear sons, would you therefore wait until they were grown? Would you therefore refrain from marrying? No, my daughters; for it is harder for me than for you, for the hand of the Lord has gone forth against me.” One daughter in law, Orpah, finally relents, and after weeping with Ruth and Naomi, returns to her homeland of Moab. But Ruth will not leave. “Do not urge me to leave you or turn back from following you; for where you go, I will go, and where you lodge, I will lodge. Your people shall be my people and your God, my God.”(3) Ruth aligns herself with Naomi—her welfare is Ruth’s welfare—no matter what the cost.

The ancient Hebrew law enforced the care of widows and orphans by the larger community as a sign of solidarity to the weakest and the most vulnerable members and to provide for the most desiccated and desperate among them—just as the women at Birkenau pooled their water rations for the sake of the one who needed it most. Ruth, as a Moabite, was bound by no such law and yet she sees her allegiance to Naomi, nevertheless. Their shared adversity, their shared identity as widows, bound them together and brought about something beautiful.

Ruth wouldn’t ever see how this exceptional act of solidarity would save—not only Naomi—but the people of Israel. She would become the great, great grandmother of King David. Indeed, one would come from David who would also demonstrate solidarity with humanity. So great was his act of altruistic sacrifice that he would “empty himself, taking the form of a servant, and being made in the likeness of men.” This one, would “humble himself by becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross.”(4)

The women of the French Resistance provide a contemporary model of what Ruth demonstrated in ages past, an altruistic solidarity to one another in order to ensure survival. Christian faith tells of the solidarity of God with humanity. This God chose to cast the lot by becoming one of us, walking among us, even sharing the horror of human death with us. For God so loved the world that he gave his only son…solidarity in order to bring life.

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

(1) Caroline Weber, “Sisters Unto Death,” New York Times Book Review, November 13, 2011, reviewing A Train in Winter by Caroline Moorehead.

(2) Ibid.

(3) Cf. Ruth 1:6-22.

(4) Philippians 2:5-8.

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Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Who Is He?

October 3, 2014 broboinhawaii Leave a comment

It would be hard to underestimate the significance of Jesus. No other person has had a greater historical impact. Even those who aren’t Christians acknowledge this: Muslims revere Jesus as a prophet. Hindus consider him a holy teacher. Even many atheists are very willing to say they admire Jesus; for example, Christopher Hitchens once said he respects “the virtue of his teachings.”

Yet a common skeptical remark you hear is that we can’t really know anything about who Jesus actually was. He was probably a great guy, but the early Christians invented so many stories about him that we have no way of separating what’s true in the Bible from what’s false. Most skeptics don’t realize, however, that academic historians take Jesus very seriously. We’re talking historians, not theologians; not least, because we have so many historical sources for Jesus. Many people don’t realize the New Testament is a collection of books, for example, and represents multiple sources about Jesus. Many are very early—for example, Paul’s letters date to the 40s and 50s AD and some of the material he quotes is dated even earlier, to within months of Jesus’s death.

Literary studies of the gospels have also shown that their authors were intentionally setting out to write biography—not fiction or hagiography. Where we can test them against archaeology or other historians of the period, they’re shown to be reliable. Thus, historians take Jesus seriously. No credentialed academic historian in a university ancient history department would suggest that Jesus never existed, for instance. Throw out Jesus and you would have to throw out a wealth of other historical figures for whom less evidence exists, such as Julius Caesar.

In recent decades, there has been a renewed interest in the study of the “historical Jesus,” by which we mean what we can say about Jesus using the methods and tools of the historian. There are a wide number of facts upon which historians agree. To list just a few, it is generally agreed that Jesus was raised in Nazareth. That he was baptized by John. That he had twelve disciples. That he had a reputation as a healer and miracle worker. That he taught in parables and stories. That he clashed with the religious authorities of his day. That he spent time with social outcasts. That he had an extremely high view of his own identity and his relationship to God. That at the end of his ministry he rode into Jerusalem, was hailed by many as the Messiah, performed some kind of prophetic action in the Temple for which he was arrested, tried, and executed.

It’s simply not the case, in other words, that Jesus’s life was invented decades after his death by well meaning Christians. And that means we are forced to take the life of Jesus very seriously—at the very least, we need to read the gospels as we would other ancient literature and weigh them accordingly.

And that brings us face to face with Jesus himself: a Jesus who made astonishing claims about himself. C S Lewis once famously said that Jesus left us only three options. Either he was mad—utterly insane. Or he was bad—a cynical liar. Or else Jesus was who he claimed to be. Whilst this threefold choice may slightly over simplify things, the broad thrust is right. Jesus forces all of us to answer the same question he asked Peter in the Gospels: “Who do you say I am?” One thing is certain: Jesus has left a powerful footprint on history, too great to ignore. “Who do you say that I am?” The answer each of us gives to that question matters profoundly.

Andy Bannister is a member of the speaking team at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Toronto, Canada.

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Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Believing the Builder

October 2, 2014 broboinhawaii Leave a comment

A story is told of a young man who learned of Jesus entirely by listening to a housekeeper who sang hymns as she went about her day. The child had never been to church, seen a Bible, or heard anyone mention God or Christianity directly. But in the music that filled the hallways, he found an unknown affection in his life shaped. As a child he came to know several hymns by memory, but the song that seemed most to confront him was beautifully appropriate to his own situation: “I love to tell the story/ of unseen things above/ of Jesus and his glory/ of Jesus and his love.” What was unseen in his life became the certainty that came to move him most.

The writer of Hebrews provides a definition of faith in similar terms. The chapter begins, “Now faith is being sure of what you hope for and certain of what you do not see.” If I am being honest, this definition of faith has always somewhat escaped me—all the more so after a loved one clung to this verse through the cancer that would never see its miracle. John Wesley once observed of the same words, “There appears to be a depth in them which I am in no wise able to fathom.” In the examples of faith in the verses to follow, we find exactly this—an unfathomable depth of belief. We find faith moving across the pages of a real and fumbling history, God with a motley crew miraculously called “faithful.” We discover in this faith the Spirit of the unseen, the certainty by which countless lives were guided by the very creator who first called the garden ‘good.’ “By faith, Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going. By faith he made his home in the Promised Land like a stranger in a foreign country… For he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God.”(1)

Near the end of Abraham’s story in Genesis—long after God promised his descendants would outnumber the stars and his people would dwell in the promised land—Abraham buries his wife; his only son is yet unmarried, and he owns only a small plot of land in a world in which he is still living as a foreigner. Yet what was unseen continued to move him; he was looking forward in certainty of the architect of heaven and earth.

In C.S. Lewis’ The Silver Chair, Eustace, Jill, Prince Rilian, and Puddleglum are trapped beneath Narnia in the land called Underworld. The Queen of Underworld, who is really a witch, has thrown a green powder into the fire that produces a sweet and drowsy smell. In this enchanting haze, she manages to convince the group that Narnia does not exist—like the sun, moon, and Aslan, the great lion, Narnia is all a dream. The children try their hardest to describe the things they are certain do exist on land. Yet with each argument the Witch makes it all seem more and more foolish.

It is at this moment of despair that Puddleglum makes a brave move. With his bare foot he stomps on the fire, sobering the sweet and heavy air with the unenchanting smell of marshwiggle. Boldly he turns to the Witch, “One word, Ma’am,” he says coming back from the fire, limping, because of the pain. “Suppose we have only dreamed, or made-up, all those things… Suppose this black pit of a kingdom of yours is the only world. Well, it strikes me as a pretty poor one… We’re just babies making up a game, if you’re right. But four babies playing a game can make a play-world which licks your real world hollow… I’m on Aslan’s side, even if there isn’t any Aslan to lead it. I’m going to live as much like a Narnian as I can even if there isn’t any Narnia. So, thanking you kindly for our supper, we’re leaving your court at once and setting out in the dark to spend our lives looking for Overland. Not that our lives will be very long, I should think; but that’s a small loss if the world’s as dull a place as you say.”(2)

In a world where faith in Jesus can seem foolish or outdated or irrelevant, believing in something imaginary, this definition of faith stands by the better country and its maker—even if at times it eludes us. Like Abraham who looked for the city of foundations and the housekeeper who sang of unseen things, we are strangers to our own lives, setting out in the dark to look for the country we were meant to know, guided by the Spirit who wants us to see. It is by this unseen certainty that Abraham lived and died, knowing that the small family he could gather together in his final days would yet one day outnumber the stars in the sky. The one who promised Abraham and the one who moved him along is the builder, architect, and gardener of Overland, the city with foundations, the city of the human Son of God.

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

(1) Hebrews 11:8-10.

(2) C.S. Lewis, The Chronicles of Narnia (New York: Harper Collins, 1982), 633.

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Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Dark Riddle

October 1, 2014 broboinhawaii Leave a comment

In 1952 philosopher Mortimer Adler co-edited a fifty-five volume series for Encyclopedia Britannica titled The Great Books of the Western World. Overseeing a staff of ninety, the editors created a diverse index of topics containing selections from many of the finest thinkers in the history of Western Civilization. Upon completion, Adler was asked why the work included more pages under the subject of God than any other topic. He replied matter-of-factly that it was because more consequences for life and action follow from the affirmation or denial of God than from any other basic question.

What we do with the subject of God is a far-reaching choice, defining life, informing death, shaping everything. The one who lives as though there is no God lives quite differently than the one who lives confidently that there is a God. It is a subject of consequence because it reaches everything and everyone; whether mindfully or indifferently, a decision is always made.

Through avenues of every emotion known to humankind, the Psalms make the astounding claim that God not only exists, but that God is present and can be found. In victory and defeat, illness and poverty, health and prosperity, the psalmist maintains that it is God who gives all of life meaning, that God alone answers the deepest and darkest questions of life whether in the depths or from the highest vantage.

Calling to the multitudes, crossing lines of status and allegiance, the psalmist pleads for care regarding a subject that concerns all. Like Adler, the psalmist makes it clear that what is being communicated is of consequence. “Listen, all who live in this world, both low and high, rich and poor together… I will incline my ear to a proverb; I will solve my riddle to the music of the harp.”(1) This riddle the psalmist wants to bring to the attention of all is a riddle forever before humankind. It is a riddle to which all must diligently attend but many wholeheartedly ignore. Fittingly, the Hebrew word for “riddle” has also been translated “dark saying” or “difficult question.”

The psalmist continues, “When we look at the wise, they die; fool and dolt perish together and leave their wealth to others. Their graves are their homes for ever, their dwelling-places to all generations, though they named lands their own. Mortals cannot abide in their pomp; they are like the animals that perish.”

It is easy to go about life as if we know what we are doing. The psalmist stops us to ask, what is the point of it all? Some accumulate wealth, others remain in poverty, some live well and others live wickedly, but all are destined for the grave. The one who claims there is no God in life, so claims emptiness in death. But then is life also empty? Again the psalmist admits it is all a dark riddle: What is the point of it all?

Solving the riddles of life and death, like religion and politics at a social gathering, means, for many, changing the subject. As Woody Allen once quipped, “It’s not that I am afraid of death; I just don’t want to be there when it happens.” But that our lives are fleeting could awaken a sense of urgency, a sense of inquiry. That life is fleeting, though inarguably full of meaning, is indeed either a peculiar contradiction or a hint that creation is being made new, both now and in what is coming.

This is not to say that death, for the Christian, is not a mystery. We know that death is the last great door through which we must walk, the mark of a broken world. Yet we know also that through death God has declared the end of that broken hold on our lives, that the one who loses his life will save it, and that by Christ’s death the Spirit works Christ’s life in us even now. As C.S. Lewis once said of the Christian, “Of all men, we hope most of death; yet nothing will reconcile us to…its ‘unnaturalness.’ We know that we were not made for it; we know how it crept into our destiny as an intruder; and we know Who has defeated it.” In the riddle of life and death, the psalmist expounds this certainty of God’s action. “But God will ransom my soul from the power of the grave, for he will receive me.”

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

Ravi Zacharias

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – The Way of Grace and the Way of Nature

September 30, 2014 broboinhawaii Leave a comment

As a young girl, one of my favorite games was hide and seek. Gathering all of our friends from the street on which we lived, we played this favorite childhood game that offered the entire neighborhood as a hiding place. The familiar call “Where are you?” echoed down the streets as the seeker looked far and wide to find our hiding places.

A cosmic game of hide and seek is often how many view the search for God. “Where are you?” is the question that echoes throughout the ages as human beings seek for God in a vast universe often filled with inexplicable mystery.

This is no trivial game. Atheist Bertrand Russell was once asked what he would say if after death he met God, to which he replied: “God, you gave us insufficient evidence.”(1) While those who have found God quite evident would balk at Russell’s impudence, it is helpful to remember that theists often wrestle with a similar struggle. Many of the biblical writers themselves have depicted God as hidden. “Why do you stand afar off, O Lord? Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble?” (Psalms 10:1). Indeed, the psalmist accuses God of being “asleep” to his plaintive cries: “Arouse, yourself, why do you sleep, O Lord? Awake, and do not reject us forever. Why do you hide your face, and forget our affliction and our oppression?” (Psalm 44:23-24). Even blameless Job wondered aloud if in fact God viewed him as the enemy: “Why do you hide your face and consider me the enemy?” (Job 13:24). And from the place of his deepest suffering, Jesus himself cried out using the words of the poets of Israel, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

Clearly, the hiddenness of God is problematic for theists and atheists alike. Indeed, the belief in a God who can be easily found, and who has acted in time and space, makes the experience of God’s hiddenness all the more poignant and perplexing.

“Where are you?” serves as one of the central questions in the film The Tree of Life. Recipient of the highest prize awarded at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival, the film explores the paradoxical experience of both God’s astounding presence and God’s apparent absence. The questions concerning God’s whereabouts are posed by an adult man in the throes of a life-crisis resulting from family tragedy. Through a series of cinematic visions, the man reflects back on his life as his question “Where are you?” sounds a thematic refrain when tragic events ensue. It is this question that takes the man on a search for God, not only through recalling the events of his childhood in a small Texas town, but also as he contemplates the grandeur of the cosmos at the dawn of creation.

As the film begins, we hear the voice of this man’s mother extolling a life of grace, as opposed to a life lived according to nature, for the self alone. To the oft-repeated question, “Where are you?” the film suggests God’s presence in this life through grace. The life that is grace-filled lives for others, revels in the beauty and wonder of the created world, and extends a gracious forgiveness toward others. It is this grace-filled life that the now adult Jack remembers as a clue to God’s whereabouts. The gracious way in which his mother lived, and the way his younger brother extended forgiveness to the young Jack after he viciously shot him in the hand with a pellet gun provide the first hints for God’s hiding place. Jack recalls, “Brother, mother, it was they who led me to your door.” In these grace-filled human encounters, the doorway is opened to God’s dwelling place.

This gracious way is set in contrast to the way of nature, which competes and wrestles for control of Jack. The way of nature seeks to make its way in the world forcefully; its acquisitive nature clawing after worldly success, fortune, and power. It is a battle waged within every human being, and the film suggests that it is a path that leads one away from God; it is the way that hides us from God’s grace and God’s presence.

For indeed, the game of hide and seek is not one-sided. The film opens with a quotation from the book of Job: “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth…when the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?” A cinematic kaleidoscope of those foundations—from a one-celled organism to the galaxies beyond invites the viewer to see the gracious hand of God touching all that makes up the universe. From the dawn of time to, by contrast, this seemingly insignificant family living in 1950s Waco, Texas, the film shimmers with God’s presence. We often fail to accept the invitation, the film suggests, as we succumb to the way of nature—a way that reduces one’s vision only to self-interest. But God’s glorious grace is all around us. Sometimes abundantly obvious, sometimes subtle, God’s gracious presence beckons to us in this world and in our relationships with one another. “Always did you seek me” Jack recognizes as he wrestles with his own propensity to hide. Always do you seek for us—we humans who play hide and seek—from the very foundation of the world.

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

(1) Cited in Dr. Paul K. Moser’s booklet, Why Isn’t God More Obvious: Finding the God who Hides and Seeks (Norcross, GA: RZIM, 2000), 1.

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Ravi Zacharias Ministry – God on Trial

September 29, 2014 broboinhawaii Leave a comment

Over a period of several weeks of precious elementary school recesses, a circle of fellow fourth-grade friends set aside dodge-ball matches and swing-sets in order to go to court. There had been a rather serious disagreement between two of the girls in our larger group of friends and sides were being drawn as quickly as notes could be passed between girls’ desks. Before things got any worse, the humanitarian among us reasoned that we had to intervene. It was decided that we would create a makeshift courtroom to get to the bottom of the mess. One of my friends was appointed judge; others were chosen to be witnesses or note-takers, prosecutor or defendant. We even had a bailiff. In our minds we were doing what adults did to get at the truth. In the end, it became one of those defining moments where one wakes from the innocence of childhood to find the world not as simple as first thought and the human heart capable of horrific things. The experience is strangely reminiscent of William Golding’s stranded children in The Lord of the Flies.

In our courtroom I was called to be a witness. I was to tell the judge what I saw and what I knew to be true. I did so, and it felt like we were getting somewhere. But then another witness was called who insisted that she saw something completely different, and that I, in fact, was lying. I was both heartbroken and confused. Sides were quickly drawn, cases sharpened. As the days went by we became increasingly frustrated and vindictive. What we thought would be a simple solution that would lead us to truth and resolution became a hurtful, tangled mess of motive and slander and manipulation—so much so, that teachers finally intervened and our courtroom was forever adjourned. Among other things, I decided I would never go into law.

I was reminded of this childish scene recently while reading the eyewitness Mark’s account of the trial of Christ before the council of religious leaders. Seized from the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus was taken to the courtyard. Peter followed from a distance and watched among the guards as the trial unraveled. Mark imparts that “The chief priests and the whole Sanhedrin were looking for evidence against Jesus so that they could put him to death, but they did not find any. Many testified falsely against him, but their statements did not agree. Then some stood up and gave this false testimony against him: We heard him say, ‘I will destroy this man-made temple and in three days will build another, not made by man.’ Yet even then their testimony did not agree.”(1)

What kind of a courtroom would this make? The expert witnesses from the same side are contradicting each other. The only thing they seem to agree on is that Jesus should be on trial. And yet, like a prosecuting attorney with an airtight case, the high priest exclaims: “Answer these charges!” though which charges remains unclear. In the middle of the chaos of conflicting words and motives, the high priest stood up and faced Jesus: “Have you no answer to make? What is it that these men testify against you?” Jesus was kind for not replying: “If you don’t even know, why should I have to make sense of all of that?” But Jesus remained silent and made no answer.

In the midst of courtrooms such as these, it seems appropriate to pause in that silence. For though accusing crowds put him to death more than two thousand years ago, he has been on trial ever since. Like the court scene I was a part of as a child, we continue to place him before our makeshift gavels and make a mockery of truth and testimony. I know many moments when armed with fiery questions I have forced God to take the stand, presenting my case as if it were airtight. My words have likely made as little sense as Jesus’s accusers that day.

But the culminating events of Jesus’s life on earth depict a very surprising turn of judge and jury. From the waving of palm branches to waving fists demanding crucifixion, human trials of God are often fickle. But what if we discover, as did many within these crowds, that we are engaging an imagined court? Like Peter, we might follow Jesus at a distance, looking in on a great trial, sometimes participating, sometimes denying him, sometimes seeing our role and with a shock of recognition, falling on our knees. If we find ourselves in a court, it is a court altogether reversed: our advocate, the one we have accused, plays the role of mediator. He enters our plea.

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

(1) Mark 14:55-59.

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Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Q&A – DOES RZIM HAVE A POSITION ON CALVINISM OR ARMINIANISM?

September 28, 2014 broboinhawaii Leave a comment

Calvinism (sometimes called the Reformed tradition, the Reformed faith, or Reformed theology) is a theological system and an approach to the Christian life that emphasizes the rule of God over all things. It was developed by several theologians, but it bears the name of the French reformer John Calvin because of his prominent influence on it and because of his role in the confessional and ecclesiastical debates throughout the 16th century. Today, this term also refers to the doctrines and practices of the Reformed churches of which Calvin was an early leader. Less commonly, it can refer to the individual teaching of Calvin himself. The system is best known for its doctrines of predestination and total depravity.

Arminianism is a school of soteriological thought within Protestant Christianity based on the theological ideas of the Dutch Reformed theologian Jacobus Arminius (1560-1609) and his historic followers, the Remonstrants. The doctrines’ acceptance stretches through much of mainstream Christianity, including evangelical Protestantism.

Arminianism holds to the following tenets:

Humans are naturally unable to make any effort towards salvation.

Salvation is possible only by God’s grace, which cannot be merited.

No works of human effort can cause or contribute to salvation.

God’s election is conditional on faith in the sacrifice and Lordship of Jesus Christ.

Christ’s atonement was made on behalf of all people.

God allows his grace to be resisted by those who freely reject Christ.

Salvation can be lost, as continued salvation is conditional upon continued faith.

Arminianism is most accurately used to define those who affirm the original beliefs of Jacobus Arminius himself, but the term can also be understood as an umbrella for a larger grouping of ideas including those of Hugo Grotius, John and Charles Wesley, and others. There are two primary perspectives on how the system is applied in detail: Classical Arminianism, which sees Arminius as its figurehead, and Wesleyan Arminianism, which sees John Wesley as its figurehead. Wesleyan Arminianism is sometimes synonymous with Methodism.

RZIM does not have an official ministry position on the doctrines of Calvinism or Arminianism, and we have staff members holding to a variety of views in both of these doctrinal traditions. Our ministry is not officially affiliated with any particular denomination, and our staff represents a variety of different denominations. The mission and vision of RZIM is evangelism undergirded by apologetics, and we seek to stay true to that mission and calling. Dr. Zacharias is ordained in the Christian and Missionary Alliance Church. For more information on this denomination, please see their website.

For further study on Calvinism or Arminianism, here are some resources that many have found helpful in exploring these teachings:

Alister McGrath has put together a wonderful collection of historical writings on various issues including predestination and free will. It is called The Christian Theology Reader (Blackwell, 1995). This book gives a sampling from the great works of theology on various topics. From this, one reads the primary sources including John Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion, Martin Luther’s Bondage of the Will and John Wesley’s writings, for the “free will” perspective. An excellent edition is John Wesley’s Sermons: An Anthology (Abingdon Press, 1991) compiled by Albert Cook Outler and Richard P. Heitzenrater. Responsible Grace by Randy Maddox is also an excellent treatment of Wesley’s theology.

For a more contemporary reading, InterVarsity Press has published a book (1985) entitled Predestination and Free Will: Four Views of Divine Sovereignty and Human Freedom. Norman Geisler and Clark Pinnock are contributors in this volume. Finally, D.A. Carson has written a book entitled How Long, O Lord? Reflections on Suffering and Evil (Baker Academic, 1991) that deals with the issue of sovereignty and suffering.

Ravi also recommends J.I. Packer’s book Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God (InterVarsity Press, 1991), and has written a brief article describing his own position regarding human freedom and the sovereignty of God.

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Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Q&A DOES RZIM HAVE A VIEW ON THE AGE OF THE EARTH?

September 27, 2014 broboinhawaii Leave a comment

RZIM does not have an official ministry position on the age of the earth. The focus of RZIM is apologetics and evangelism, and thus we do not address particular questions about creation, though we are committed to defending theism against naturalism. Primarily, we seek to address the philosophical assumptions underlying the atheistic scientific theory to reveal their incoherence, and to demonstrate that a world such as ours requires an active and sovereign Creator.

Though there is some diversity of views within RZIM, we are all firmly committed to the integrity of the Bible as God’s infallible Word and believe our world has been intelligently designed and created by God, who made humanity in His own image.

Here are some resources which offer varying perspectives for your own study:

In the Beginning, Henri Blocher (InterVarsity Press)

Knowing the Truth about Creation or Decide for Yourself, Norman Geisler (available at http://www.normgeisler.com)

God, Are You There? William Lane Craig (Craig’s website, http://www.reasonablefaith.org, also has excellent articles on science/arguments for God’s existence.

God’s Undertaker: Has Science Buried God? Dr. John Lennox

Seven Days That Divide the World: The Beginning According to Genesis and Science Dr. John Lennox

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Ravi Zacharias Ministry – The Way of Grace and the Way of Nature

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – God on Trial

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Q&A – DOES RZIM HAVE A POSITION ON CALVINISM OR ARMINIANISM?

Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Q&A DOES RZIM HAVE A VIEW ON THE AGE OF THE EARTH?

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