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Ravi Zacharias Ministry – History and What Really Happened

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In a special documentary, a major television network investigated the beginnings of Christianity and the influence of the apostle Paul in spreading the message of Christ. The narrator noted his fascination with the historical figure, commenting that if not for the voice of Paul, it is “unlikely that the movement Jesus founded would have survived beyond the first century.” Yet of the resurrection of Christ he also noted, “Something must have happened, otherwise it’s hard to explain how the story of Jesus has endured for so long.”

It’s a question that has been asked and is still worth asking. Why has the story of Christ endured? Has it survived through the centuries because of effective speakers in antiquity? Has it endured, as Sigmund Freud argued, because it is a story that fulfills wishes, or as Friedrich Nietzsche attested, because it masks and medicates our disgust of life? Has the story of Christ endured because something really happened after Jesus’s body was taken down from the Cross or was it only the clever marketing of ardent followers?

We live in an age where religion is often examined with the goal of finding a religion, or a combination of religions, that best suits our lives and lifestyles. We are intrigued by characters in history like Jesus and Paul, Buddha and Gandhi. We look at their lives and rightly determine their influence in history—the radical life and message of Christ, the fervor with which Paul spread the story of Christianity, the passion of Buddha, the social awareness of Gandhi. But far too often, our fascination stops there, comfortably and confidently keeping the events of history at a distance or mingling them all together as one and the same.

C.S. Lewis writes of “the great cataract of nonsense” that blinds us to knowledge of earlier times and keeps us content with history in pieces. He speaks of the common tendency to treat the voices of history with a certain level of incredulity and inferiority. Elsewhere, he refers to this as chronological snobbery, a tendency to concern oneself primarily with present sources while dissecting history as we please. Yet to do so, warns Lewis, is to walk unaware of the cataracts through which we see the world today. Far better is the mind that thoroughly considers the past, he reasons, allowing its lessons to interact with the army of voices that battle for our allegiance. For a person who has lived thoroughly in many eras is far less likely to be deceived by the errors of his own age.

We must be wary, then, among other things, of assuming the earliest followers of Christ thought resurrection a reasonable phenomenon or miracles a natural occurrence. Investigating the life of Paul, it seems important to ask why a once fearful persecutor of Christ’s followers was willing to die for the story he carried around the world, testifying to the very event that split history. Investigating the enduring story of Christ, we might ask why the once timid and frightened disciples were abruptly transformed into bold witnesses. What happened that led countless Jews and many others to dramatically change directions in life and in lifestyle? That something incredible happened is not a difficult conclusion at which to arrive. It takes far greater faith to conclude otherwise.

A friend of mine is fond of saying that truth is something you can hang your hat on. Even as we struggle to see it today, her words communicate a reality Jesus’s disciples knew well. Truth is dependable and enduring; it is solid and it is real, present and needed and useful. The disciples and the apostle Paul were transformed by seeing Christ alive—a phenomenon that would be just as unthinkable to ancient minds as it would be for us today. In fact, even the most hesitant among them, and the most unlikely of followers, found the resurrected Christ an irrefutable reality. Comfort was irrelevant; personal preference was not a consideration. They could not deny who stood in front of them. Jesus was alive. And they went to their deaths proclaiming it.

It seems the story of Christ may have endured for innumerable reasons: because in the fullness of time God indeed sent his Son; because knowingly Jesus walked to the Cross and into the hands of those who knew not what they did; because something really happened after his body was laid in the tomb; and because with great power and God’s grace, the apostles continued to testify of the events that surprised them. Moreover, the story of Christ remains today because it is something we can hang our hats on. Through centuries of lives that have withered like grass, those who believe in Christ have stood on that which is enduring:  “And you will see the son of man sitting at the right hand of the mighty one and coming on the clouds of heaven.:

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

(1) Mark 14:62.

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Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Don’t All Religions Lead to God?

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We live in a context of spiritual longing. Many people are searching for that which will satisfy an inner craving for meaning and significance. The artist Damian Hirst recently said this: “Why do I feel so important when I’m not? Nothing is important and everything is important. I do not know why I am here but I am glad that I am. I’d rather be here than not. I am going to die and I want to live forever, I can’t escape that fact, and I can’t let go of that desire.”

But this does not always translate into people finding Christ and starting to follow him. There is a dizzying array of options when it comes to religion, and the culture around us says that they are all equally valid. It seems absolutely bizarre to people that someone would say, “This one way is the truth and the only truth.”  The poet Steve Turner describes brilliantly what many think when it comes to religion: “Jesus was a good man just like Buddha, Mohammed, and ourselves. We believe he was a good teacher of morals but we believe that his good morals are really bad. We believe that all religions are basically the same, at least the one we read was. They all believe in love and goodness, they only differ on matters of creation, sin, heaven, hell, God, and salvation.”

In my experience, there are usually two motivations for dismissing the idea that Christ is the only way to God, and we need to examine them both. The first objection is that it is arrogant to say that Jesus is the only way. How could Christians possibly be so arrogant as to say that all the other religions are wrong and Jesus is the only path to God? Often the parable of the elephant is used to illustrate the sheer arrogance of Christianity. It goes something like this: “Three blind scribes are touching different parts of an elephant. The one who is holding the tail says, “This is a rope.” Another holding the elephant’s leg says, “This is not a rope; you are wrong. It is a tree.” Still another who is holding the trunk of the elephant says, “You are both wrong. It is a snake!” The moral of the story is that all religions are like these men. They each touch a different part of ultimate reality and therefore any one of them is arrogant to say they have the whole truth.

But take a step back and think about what is being said here. Do you see the breathtaking claim that is being made? Jesus, Buddha, Krishna, Moses, and Muhammad are all blind, but in fact, I can see! These leaders all had a small perspective, but I am the one who sees the full picture. Now who is being arrogant? It is just as arrogant to say that Buddha, Muhammad, and Jesus were all wrong in their exclusive claims as it is to say that Jesus is the only way. The issue is not about who is arrogant, but what is actually true and real.

The second motivation in dismissing Christ is often a question of exclusion. How can you exclude all of these religions? Jesus may have said he was the way to the Father, but how can I follow him and become an intolerant person who excludes others? Again, we need to think carefully about this view because the reality is that whatever position we hold will exclude something. Even the person who believes that all ways lead to God excludes the view that only some ways lead to God or that only one way leads to God. Every view excludes something. Again, the issue is not about who is excluding people, but what is actually true and real.

Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life, no one comes to the Father except by me” (John 14:6). There are a number of possibilities here for why he might have said this, and exploring these possibilities is crucial. First, perhaps he was genuinely a good person but he was deluded.  He was sincere, but he was wrong; he believed that he was the Son of God, but he wasn’t. In other words, he was mentally imbalanced. Or second, perhaps Jesus knew he wasn’t God but went around telling people that he was the only way to God regardless. In other words, he was a sinister character purposely telling lies. Or finally, perhaps Jesus was who he said he was. Perhaps he made these radical statements because they were true and real. In other words, he is indeed the way to God.

Amy Orr-Ewing is  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 – God and Body

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The question at the time caught me a bit off guard. I was used to being asked to defend and explain my theology, but this was something different. I had been talking to someone about some old fears, explaining that what had helped me to move past them was largely due to faith that gave me hope in a world beyond them. His response pulled me down from my seemingly hopeful, ascended place. “What is your theology of the body?” he asked. “How does God speak to your physical existence right now?” I didn’t know how to respond.

The physical isn’t a matter the spiritual often consider. But for the Christian, there is a world of hope in doing so. What does it mean that Christ came in the flesh, with sinew and marrow? What does it mean that he lived and breathed, died, and was raised as a body? Perhaps more importantly, what does it mean that the risen Christ today, as a corporal being, is ascended and sitting at the right hand of the Father in heaven? What does Christ’s wounded body have to do with our own? What of his ascended body?

The modern divorce of the spiritual and the physical, heaven and earth, what is now and what will be, has made these difficult questions to consider. But the promise of the Christian is union with none other than Christ himself. In faith and by the Spirit, we are united to the same body that was on the cross and was in the tomb, and which is now also in heaven. We are united with a body who is very much a living, immense, and physical promise. “Since death came through a human being, the resurrection of the dead has also come through a human being; for as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ” (1 Corinthians 15:21-22). It is a most unique hope: God in a body.

The biblical depiction of salvation and sanctification is far more “earthy” than some entertain, whether its critics or lauders. No matter how privatized, removed, irrelevant, or other-worldly we might describe Christianity, it is unavoidably a faith that intends us to encounter and experience both King and kingdom in the here-and-now, everyday, hand-dirtying occurrences of life.

In an unapologetically corporeal account, the book of Acts describes the risen Christ among his disciples: “After his suffering he presented himself alive to them by many convincing proofs, appearing to them during forty days and speaking about the kingdom of God. While eating with them, he ordered them not to leave Jerusalem, but to wait there for the promise of the Father… And when he had said this, as they were watching, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight” (Acts 1:3-4). When the two men in white robes appeared and interrupted the disciples’ stupor, their question was as pointed as the one that stumped me: “Why do you stand looking up toward heaven? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you, will return in the same way as you saw him go forth” (Acts 1:11, emphasis mine).

It is no small promise that Christ came as a body, was wounded as a body, and now sits as a real and living body in heaven until the day he will return and wipe every tear from our eyes. The ascended body of Christ represents something more fully human, more real than ourselves, and it is this reality that he lifts us toward, transforms us into, and advocates on our behalf. Our union with Christ and communion with the Trinity add a certain and heavenly dimension to our lives, and it is indeed one that correctly and profoundly orients us here and now, in real bodies, to the world around us.

Beyond a subject for another time or place, how might God speak to your physical existence now? In these weeks from the physical shock of Easter to the corporal gift of the Spirit at Pentecost, consider in your answer the Christ who walked among the world as a risen body, who invited Thomas to physically put his hands in scars that still mark pain, who ascended as one fully human after sharing a meal with those he loved, and who sent the Holy Spirit to live powerfully among us. Consider the body of Christ, who now sits at the right hand of the Father as advocate, offering his body for the sake of yours, calling you to physically come further into the kingdom now.

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 – The Substance of Faith

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What is the nature of faith? Is faith simply a prescribed rational content? Or is faith an irrational leap into the dark? So often individual understanding of the nature of faith swings widely between these two extremes; either faith is solely an assent to certain beliefs, or it is ultimately devoid of intellectual content and consists exclusively of feelings of total dependence.

The author of the epistle to the Hebrews presents another view grounding faith in the “assurance of things hoped for and the conviction of things not seen.”(1) But what does this mean? How does one have assurance without the end result, or conviction without evidence?

The audience who first received this epistle was Christian believers undergoing tremendous suffering and persecution, and the author reminds them that faith is assurance even in the midst of their trouble. The “assurance of things hoped for” is not merely wishful thinking about a yet to be determined future. It is not the reticence of “I hope it happens, but I doubt it will.” Rather, it is a description of what faith already has: the possession in the present of what is promised for the future. It is a substance that they author of Hebrews locates in the trustworthiness of God.

Faith in the midst of present circumstance grows as it is remembers God’s saving work done in the past. Anchored on the past witness of all those who saw God at work, hopeful assurance rests on the promise that as God acted in the past, God will act in the future. To illustrate this point, the author of Hebrews recounts those who by faith believed God in the past in order to encourage the beleaguered recipients of this letter. Just like those who walked in faith before, not every promise is seen in its telos or completion. The content of faith is in remembering God’s faithfulness in the past, building trust in the future that is yet to come.

The writer of Hebrews even chose a particular word to illustrate this point. The Greek word that is used for “assurance” is hypostasis. This is the same word that is used to describe how Christ is the hypostasis, “the very being” of God. In the same way, faith is the “very being” of things hoped for. While it is often much easier to focus on the bad things that are happening around us, faith opens  eyes to see God’s work going forward in the world.

Ultimately, Christians affirm that the “assurance of things hoped for” is not simply found in rational content, but in a person—Jesus Christ. For in Jesus, we see the promise fulfilled and the very substance of faith. It is to Jesus Christ and to him alone that the writer of Hebrews directs those who would look for the content of faith. We have faith because we look to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of faith. We look to Jesus, who endured in faith on our behalf, so that we might not grow fainthearted in times of hardship and struggle.

Assurance doesn’t come in well-ordered circumstances or trouble-free living. Nor is assurance found in having a rational answer for every question. Assurance comes in relationship with a trustworthy God who fulfilled promises in the past and who will fulfill them in the future. Faith is grounded on God’s work accomplished in Jesus Christ: Jesus is its substance and its hope.

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

(1) Hebrews 11:1.

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Ravi Zacharias Ministry – The March of Easter

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The white hearse drove away from us, headed to some place in which we would never step foot. Though his ashes would later be returned to us, it was the driver, unknown and anonymous, who accompanied his body to the last place on earth it would be. Watching them drive away, I felt instinctively as if I was letting him down, falling somewhere short of my role as one left behind. Shouldn’t I have taken him all the way, accompanied him to the very end?

When I imagine the women who came to the tomb to see the body of Jesus the day after he was crucified, I understand their sickened panic. The body had been taken somewhere unbeknownst and unknown to them. It was out of their sight, out of their care. He was out of their sight—not an empty shell, not “just” a body, but the one they loved. Mary Magdalene was devastated. She ran to Peter in horror: “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don’t know where they have put him!”

There is something about the human spirit that inherently understands the importance of caring for the dead, of moving them carefully from the place of death to a place of rest, finality, farewell. What we have come to know commonly as the funeral is based on this fundamentally human behavior. It is understood that the dead cannot remain among the living, and yet their removal from society is never a task met with levity. Evidences of tender ceremony are noted in the oldest human burial sites ever found.(1) This movement of the dead from the place of the living to a place of parting is full of tremendous symbolic meaning.

For British statesman and avowed atheist Roy Hattersley, this meaning and symbolism has unavoidably been a complicated part of his worldview. For years he has disapproved of the funeral service, finding it a paradoxical attempt to soften the blow of utter darkness, with clergy fulsome about the dead man’s virtues and discreet about his vices, and congregations gathered more as a matter of form than feeling. In the mind (or at the funeral) of one who remains stubbornly addicted to the unpleasant truth that life simply ends as haphazardly as it began, there is no room or reason for the promise of resurrection and the pomp of certain comfort.

And yet, Hattersley writes in The Guardian of an experience that almost converted him to the belief that funerals ought to be encouraged nonetheless. His conclusion was forged as he sang the hymns and studied the proclamations of a crowd that seemed sincere: “[T]he church is so much better at staging farewells than non-believers could ever be,” he writes. “‘Death where is thy sting, grave where is they victory?‘ are stupid questions. But even those of us who do not expect salvation find a note of triumph in the burial service. There could be a godless thanksgiving for and celebration of the life of [whomever]. The music might be much the same. But it would not have the uplifting effect without the magnificent, meaningless words.”(2)

Hattersley’s attempt to remain logically consistent from his views of life to his experience of death is admirable. For it is indeed peculiar that an uncompromising atheist can conclude there is something almost necessary in a distinctly Christian burial. If what makes for human existence is, in essence, the material, bodies without any facet of the sacred, then the act of moving a body to the place of farewell is far more a matter of mere disposal than hallowed journey. In other words, Hattersley’s worldview leaves no room for a “decent send-off,” a beautiful, last farewell. And yet, he is far from alone in his need for it. As Thomas Long notes in his comprehensive study of funeral practice, “[D]eath and the sacred are inextricably entwined.”(3)

 

The Christian burial is moved by this understanding. Human beings are seen neither as “just” bodies nor as souls in temporary shells, but as dust (material) into which God has breathed life. We are embodied within a story that the Christian funeral tells again and again: Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again. Because Jesus traveled through death to God before us, Christians believe it possible to make the same journey. Because Christ has journeyed from birth to tomb to the Father, we take this journey again and again with those we love and let go. In this embodied gospel of death and resurrection, suffering and redemption, humanity’s instinctive need to accompany a body from here to there is strikingly met with the particulars of “here” and “there”—namely, life here among the Body of Christ to life resurrected in the presence of the Father. And so, we go the distance with the body, we accompany them to the grave, we weep at their tombs and we follow them with singing because it is a journey we don’t want to miss.

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

(1) Thomas Long, Accompany Them with Singing: The Christian Funeral (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), 3.

(2) Roy Hattersley, “A Decent Send-off,” The Guardian, January 16, 2006, accessed March 20, 2010,

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2006/jan/16/religion.uk2.

(3) Thomas Long, Accompany Them with Singing: The Christian Funeral (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), 4.

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Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Beautiful Foolishness

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“I don’t believe in God,” begins Julian Barnes in his book Nothing to Be Frightened Of, “but I miss him.” Though he admits he never had any faith to lose (a “happy atheist” as an Oxford student, Barnes now considers himself an agnostic), he still finds himself dreading the gradual ebbing of Christianity. He misses the sense of purpose that the Christian narrative affords, the sense of wonder and belief that haunts Christian art and architecture. “I miss the God that inspired Italian painting and French stained glass, German music and English chapter houses, and those tumbledown heaps of stone on Celtic headlands which were once symbolic beacons in the darkness and the storm.” Such are the thoughts that surface as Barnes attempts to confront his fears of death and dying in this memoir. He believes Christianity to be a foolish lie, but insists, “[I]t was a beautiful lie.”(1)

There is certainly room for beauty in the description the apostle Paul gave of the gospel. Like Julian, Paul saw its foolishness clearly as well: “For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, God decided, through the foolishness of our proclamation, to save those who believe” (1 Corinthians 1:21). He also noted the weakness inherent in the Christian proclamation. At the heart of the Christian religion is one who “emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness, and being found in human form” (Philippians 2:7). On this much Paul and Julian agree: however beautiful, foolishness and weakness imbibe the Christian story.

But unlike Julian, Paul saw the foolishness of the gospel as a reason not to disbelieve, but to believe. “For God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are” (1 Corinthians 1:27-28). It is indeed difficult to explain why at the heart of the Christian narrative there is a child, why God would answer the dark silence of 400 years with the cry of a displaced and homeless infant, why God would take on the weakness of humanity in an attempt to reach humanity with power, dying as the Messiah. Most of us would know better than to create, or to perpetuate, a story so foolish. However beautiful, the story of Christ is difficult to explain; that is, unless it was not crafted with human wisdom at all.

The story of a Savior coming as an infant in Bethlehem is indeed astonishing, as astonishing an idea as the resurrection. That God chose to come into the world with flesh, flesh that would suffer, is strange and paradoxical, beautiful and foolish. Perhaps it is also wise beyond our comprehension. “For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength” (1 Corinthians 1:25).

Though the word incarn is now used infrequently, it was once used medically, describing the flesh that grows over a wound. Applied to healing, the word refers to the recovery of wounded flesh due to the presence of new flesh.(2) The Incarnation, the astonishing event at the center of Christianity, the story that has inspired music, architecture, and hope, is God’s way of doing exactly that: Christ comes in flesh to cover our mortal wound. God comes near in body and in weakness to bring healing to weak and wounded bodies. Indeed, God’s own body is mortally wounded only to rise again in flesh and blood. This may seem a foolish mission, but to the blind who receive their sight, the lame who now walk, the diseased who are cleansed, the deaf who hear, the dead who are raised, and the poor who have good news brought to them, it is the most beautiful foolishness ever known.

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

(1)  Julian Barnes, Nothing to Be Frightened Of (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2008).

(2)  Encyclopaedia Perthensis; Or Universal Dictionary of the Arts, Sciences, Literature (Edinburgh: John Brown, 1816), 53.

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Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Past, Present, Future

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The Christian gospel is often condensed into a story that affirms the basics of the faith: God loves us and has a wonderful plan for us. But we have sinned and are therefore separated from God. Jesus Christ on the Cross is the answer to our predicament, and if we will accept him as our personal savior, we will have eternal life.

Though accurate in what it highlights, such a simplified presentation can wrongly convey much about the gospel, not the least of which that the idea that the gospel is primarily about individual fulfillment and satisfaction. “God loves YOU and has a wonderful plan for YOU.” “Live up to your potential and embrace your best life!” Such a shortened story seems to place Christians in the center of the message and not Jesus.

On the contrary, the heart of both the Old and New Testaments is the fulfillment of God’s creative plan. The story of human redemption is God’s complete and multifaceted movement among history and people and nations. It cannot be reduced to mere highlights without compromising the story. What about the resurrection of Christ? What about his return and the promise of our own resurrection? What about the ascension? What about the new heaven and new earth? What about the kingdom present and among us? There are many books that make up the story of God among us, all of which tell a part of a great and magnificent story.

The Christian faith is rooted in thousands of years of the history of humanity, and it is this rootedness that makes Christianity so relevant to everyone, both individually and corporately. The person of Christ and the salvation he offers are meaningful to us today because Jesus is historical, because he is the same today, yesterday, and forever.

In contrast, many other systems of belief hold history as something that is cyclical. After someone dies, he or she is thought to be reincarnated or rebirthed. As a result, history seems of little significance or meaning. Events are merely occurrences.

For Christians the reverse is true. Our faith is defined by significant events in history. The past and the future are momentous because they greatly inform the present. While the past offers both perspective and purpose for our current situation, the future gives us hope and meaning. No matter what we are going through today, this, too, shall one day pass. Promised is the future that is hinted at in history. There comes a day when all tears will be wiped away, a time of unhindered fellowship with God.

Yet today, regardless of worldview or religion, we seem to be unfortunately suffering from historical amnesia, where we have lost our interest and understanding of history. As evidenced in the popularity of fictitious histories, the fascination with purportedly long-lost gospels, or the contentedness with a lack of historical perspective entirely, history has little existential meaning for us. This ahistorical climate affects the way we perceive truth in relation to reality.

The message of Christianity stands counter to this climate, proclaiming the acts of God in human time and space. For believers in a savior who lived and died and rose, history is imperative; it is a significant part of one’s identity. God has been working out God’s plan for thousands of years, first through the nation of Israel and now through the body of Christ. Where Christ is professed crucified, where his resurrection is proclaimed, we are remembering the historical character of faith, which in turn echoes the all-encompassing love of God. Where the invitation to follow Christ is accepted, we proclaim a narrative that encompasses past, present, and future. We proclaim in finite stories the one who was and is and is to come.

I’Ching Thomas is associate director of training at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Singapore.

 

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Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Implementing Easter

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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. We 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, and 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. Only last week I turned to a friend and asked with a sigh of weariness, “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, 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 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 .

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Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Significant Present

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All of Christian history turns on this one event. An empty tomb, abandoned burial wrappings and startled eyewitnesses heralded the reversal of all that was expected. A new day dawned and presented the reason, the impetus for the entire Christian movement. On its significance, the apostle Paul was clear: “But if there is no resurrection of the dead, not even Christ has been raised; and if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is vain, your faith also is vain” (1 Corinthians 15:13-14).

As Christians emerge from worship services around the world having looked back on the historical significance of the resurrection, and now looking forward to the promise of life after death for an eternal future, I wonder if there is a tendency to miss the significance of Easter present. Does anyone wonder what difference the resurrection of Jesus makes in lives here and now? For if the resurrection is only about life after death—going to heaven when we die—or if Christians are only celebrating something that happened long ago, there is the failure to do the necessary and creative work of what resurrection means for lives today. In addition, if the only significance of Easter is a spiritual metaphor for new life and re-birth, this message is just as easily told through colored eggs and rabbits.

For Christians to affirm the bodily resurrection of Jesus means, at the very least, that God had begun the work of new creation—what began in the bodily resurrection of Jesus—could now, and would now continue into the present time and place. Indeed, Paul writes in Romans 8 that “the anxious longing of the creation waits eagerly for the revealing of the children of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will, but because of the One who subjected it in hope that the creation itself also will be set free from slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now. And not only this, but also we ourselves, having the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting eagerly for our adoption as children, the redemption of our body” (8:19-23). God’s new creation has begun with the bodily resurrection of Jesus. Now, our work in this world is the work of resurrection—bringing new life and re-creation as followers of Jesus. Followers of Jesus are entrusted with the task of raising dead people to life, helping the lost to find home, and healing those who are wounded and broken.

The risen Jesus told his followers, “As the Father has sent me, I also send you” (John 20:21). Jesus’s resurrection is not an evacuation strategy from this life nor is it the promise of a life free from trouble. Rather it commissions those who would remember his resurrection to be his ‘raising’ agents in the world. Jesus sends out his followers with the extraordinary news that the dead can be raised to new life for death and evil do not have the last word! And as we begin to live in light of the resurrection, we can gain insight into its significance for the practical realities of everyday lives even as we anticipate the world to come, of which the resurrection is a sign. As N.T. Wright has concluded: “Jesus is raised, so he is the Messiah, and therefore he is the world’s true Lord; Jesus is raised, so God’s new creation has begun…  Jesus is raised, so we must act as his heralds, announcing his lordship to the entire world, making his kingdom come on earth as in heaven.”(1)

Christians remember the Risen Lord and hope for a future of resurrected life. But in between the past remembrance and the future reality, everything has changed!

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

(1) N.T. Wright, Surprised By Hope (New York: Harper Collins, 2008), 56.

 

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Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Implementing Easter

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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. We 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, and 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. Only last week I turned to a friend and asked with a sigh of weariness, “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, 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 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 .

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Ravi Zacharias Ministry – When Forgiveness Is Impossible

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In war-torn relationships of Northern Uganda, forgiveness is complicated. Betty was a teenager when her village was raided by the Lord’s Resistance Army, a rebel army known for its brutal tactics and widespread human rights violations. She was kidnapped as a sex slave for a commander and ordered to commit callous acts of violence as a child soldier, until gradually she was broken and became an active member of the LRA.

After six years of bloodshed, however, Betty managed to escape, running across the country to freedom. But coming home would not be a simple matter of returning. She had committed violence against the very people she hoped to rejoin. Her own guilt and shame was as palpable as the mistrust and anger of her village. In her absence, two of her own brothers had been killed by the same army Betty fought alongside.

In the midst of such loss, with so many permanent scars, forgiveness might seem hopeful, but naïve at best. Is reconciliation even to be desired when brokenness is so irreversible? Does forgiveness cease to be hopeful when neither party can ever be the same again? From where I stand, these are painful questions to even begin to answer.

But the people of Uganda are trying. For hundreds and hundreds of children like Betty, terrorized by crimes they were forced to commit and returning home to terrorized villages, tribal elders have adapted a ceremony to make it possible for both. In a ceremony that includes the act of breaking and stepping on an egg and an opobo branch, the returnee is cleansed from the things he or she has done while away. The egg symbolizes innocent life, and by breaking and placing themselves in its broken substance, returnees declare before their village their desire to be restored to the way they used to be. In a final step over a pole, the returnees step into new life. In many cases, women returnees come home with babies who were born in the bush, usually a result of rape. When they arrive at the broken egg, the child’s foot is placed in the substance, too. The spirit of reconciliation, like warfare, must touch everyone.

In a single week, Christians around the world remember the last moments of Jesus, the betrayals and predictions, the march to crucifixion, his burial on Good Friday, the silence of Holy Saturday, and the terror and amazement of Easter Sunday. In a week, we are reminded how the disciples failed him miserably, falling asleep when he needed them most in prayer, denying ever knowing him as he was convicted for being himself, watching him die alone from a distance. In a single week, Christians move from recognizing ourselves in this list of failures to sensing the hopeful confusion of the disciples, the overwhelm of Thomas, and the timid longing of the women at the tomb. In a single week, we move from complete despair to shocking hope, total darkness to surprising light, the finality of death to the reordering of reality, from broken and sinful to restored and somehow forgiven.

In this solitary week, Christians remember a story that should make the bold and touching forgiveness of war-torn Ugandans seem natural, expected, and necessary, however shocking or complicated or slow-coming it might be. After the egg-breaking ceremony with her village, Betty went from rebel to ex-rebel, from shamed to restored. “I feel cleansed,” she said of the ceremony. After a day of being welcomed and celebrated, she adds, “Some of the bad things in my heart: they are gone.”(1) Alex Boraine, deputy chair of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, notes of such radical forgiveness: “[With its] uncomfortable commitment to bringing the perpetrator back into the family, Africa has something to say to the world.”(2)

Indeed, it might. And so does Christ. In one eventful, holy week, we remember the ugly depths of our sin and stare into the deep scars of the servant who bore it away. This utter shift in our condition is as overwhelming as this Good Friday, as disquieting as Holy Saturday, and as inconceivable as Easter Sunday. But it is our ceremony. Christ is broken, we are covered in his blood, and we emerge as dead men and women walking. How beyond our knowing, how inexplicable is this gift. Yet because it was given, in a single week, we can claim again the mystery; we can claim the power of reconciliation; we can claim Christ, who moves us from perpetrator to family.

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

(1) Abe McLaughlin, “Africa After War: Paths To Forgiveness—Ugandans Welcome ‘Terrorists’ Back” International Center for Transitional Justice, October 23, 2006.

(2) Ibid.

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Ravi Zacharias Ministry – The Messiah We Hope For

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When considering the Christian message, it is important to remember that the disciples of Jesus were totally surprised by the events that took place in Jerusalem. After the crucifixion of Jesus, the apostles rightfully believed that all was lost.

Though some have argued that the disciples merely refused to accept failure after Jesus’s death and made up the story of the resurrection, a crucified and risen Messiah simply did not fit into Jewish expectations for the One who was to come. Though there was no single understanding of what the Messiah would be like, there were common elements that every Jew would have assumed within their messianic expectations.

First, the Messiah was closely linked to Jewish beliefs regarding the place of worship. He was to institute a renewal of the temple in Jerusalem. It was also commonly understood that the Messiah would be a royal military leader who would overthrow Israel’s enemies and prove his lordship through conquest. Jesus clearly did neither of these things; rather, he came in peace and died in his youth like a criminal. Why, then, would his followers maintain that he was the Messiah? Why did they not just cut their losses after his death and move on?

New Testament scholar N.T. Wright explains:

“There were, to be sure, ways of coping with the death of a teacher, or even a leader. The picture of Socrates was available, in the wider world, as a model of unjust death nobly borne. The category of ‘martyr’ was available, within Judaism, for someone who stood up to pagans… The category of failed but still revered Messiah, however, did not exist. A Messiah who died at the hands of the pagans, instead of winning [God’s] battle against them, was a deceiver… Why then did people go on talking about Jesus of Nazareth, except as a remarkable but tragic memory? The obvious answer is that… Jesus was raised from the dead.”(1)

In this light of resurrection, the disciples had to go through a massive renewal of their thinking. Seeing the once-dead Jesus now standing before their eyes brought them to what was a radical new way of understanding the Messiah. Of course, this is in addition to the radical suspension of the well-understood laws of nature with which they also had to grapple. Despite the quick dismissal from modernity, no mind is so primitive so as to believe that all is usual when bodies rise from the dead.

The events of Holy Week remain similarly radical today. On the day that Jesus rose from the dead, he spoke of himself saying, “Was it not necessary for the Christ to suffer these things and enter into his glory?” (Luke 24:26). As if resurrection was not hard enough to grasp, it is vastly difficult to see how there could be glory in suffering. Yet it is not hard to see that the death of Christ carries with it the force of something much more. The glory of the suffering Messiah lies in the magnitude of the love he showed on the cross.

It was this very point that Jesus’s disciples missed until his resurrection, and it is a point that many are still missing today. The Messiah’s glory was not shown through his power, though it easily could have been, nor was it shown in status or position. Instead, it was shown in his suffering and his love, which remains a far-reaching, albeit stymieing, gift to the world. He may not have been the Messiah all had hoped for, but he is indeed the Messiah of great hope.

Stuart McAllister is vice president of training and special projects at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Atlanta, Georgia.

(1) N.T. Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1996), 658.

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Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Finger Pointing

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For a world of pointing fingers, the day is ripe with opportunity. Today is “Spy Wednesday,” an old and uncommon name for the Wednesday of Holy Week, so-named because it marks the agreement of Judas to betray Jesus. As told by Matthew, Mark, and Luke, Judas approaches the chief priests and asks what they would be willing to give him for turning Jesus over to them. They agree on a sum, and from then on Judas looks for opportunity to hand him over.(1)

Some commemorate the involvement of Judas in the story of Holy Week by collecting thirty pieces of silver, the exact amount Judas was given to betray Jesus, and later returns to the chief priests in regret. Typically, children gather the coins and present them as gifts to the church. In other cultures, the tradition involves children throwing an effigy of Judas from the church steeple, then dragging it around the town while pounding him with sticks. For whatever part of us that might want a person to blame for the events that led to the betrayal, death, and crucifixion of Jesus, Judas makes an easy target.

But nothing about Holy Week is easy, and the gospels leave us wondering if guilt might in fact hit closer to home. It is noted in Mark’s Gospel, in particular, that the moral failures of the week are not handed to any one person, but described in all of the actors equally: Yes, to Judas the betrayer. But also to weak disciples, sleeping and running and fumbling. To Peter, cowardly and denying. To scheming priests, indifferent soldiers, angry mobs, and the conceited Pilate. Mark brings us face to face with human indecency, such that it is not a stretch to imagine our own in the mix.

While we may successfully remain apart and shrouded from the events, conversations, and finger-pointing of Holy Week, the cross invites the world to see that we stand nearer than we might realize. Such a thought might seem absurd or dramatic, a manipulative tool of theologians, or an inaccurate accusation on account of your own sense of moral clarity. Yet the invitation to emerge from our own darkest failings, lies, and betrayals is somewhere in the midst of this story as well; not an invitation to dwell in our own impoverishment or to wallow in guilt on our way to Easter morning, but rather, a summons to death and light.

The difficult message of the cross is that there is room beside the hostile soldiers, fickle crowds, and fleeing disciples. But perhaps the more difficult, and merciful, message of the cross is that it summons us to set that guilt down. Pointing fingers and holding onto a sense of guilt is easier than admitting there’s a way to wholeness of life and hope and liberty, which leads through the death and self-giving love of another soul. Before we found a scapegoat to detract attention from our own failings, before we even considered the endless possibilities of finger-pointing, Christ died pointing at the guilt-ridden and guilt-denying, the soldier and the priests and the disciple and the friend and the adversary, who he would just not let go.

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

(1) See Matthew 26:3-5, 14-16, Mark 14:10-12, Luke 22:3-6.

 

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Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Wounded and Rising

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One of the most terrifying and deeply troubling news stories of the past few years has been one that has escaped broad notice by the Western media. It is the story of extreme and widespread violence against women in Eastern Congo. Raped and tortured by warring factions in their country, women are the victims of the most horrific crimes. As one journalist reported, “Many have been so sadistically attacked from the inside out, butchered by bayonets and assaulted with chunks of wood, that their reproductive and digestive systems are beyond repair.”(1) They bear their wounds in their own bodies, permanent scars of violence and oppression.

In this holiest week for Christians around the world, the broken and wounded body of Jesus is commemorated in services of Maundy Thursday and Good Friday. The broken body and spilled blood of Jesus is remembered in the symbols of bread and wine on Maundy Thursday, and in the black draping of curtains and cloths on Good Friday. Jesus suffered violence in his own body, just as many do around the world today.

Even as Christian mourning turns to joy with Easter resurrection celebrations, it is important to note that Jesus bore the wounds of violence and oppression in his body—even after his resurrection. When he appeared to his disciples, according to John’s gospel, Jesus showed them “both his hands and his side” as a means by which to identify himself to them. Indeed, the text tells us that once the disciples took in these visible wounds “they rejoiced when they saw the Lord” (John 20:20).

The resurrection body of Jesus contained the scars from nail and sword, and these scars identified Jesus to his followers. And yet, the wounds of Jesus took on new significance in light of his resurrection. While still reminders of the violence of crucifixion his wound-marked resurrection body demonstrates God’s power over evil and death.

But his wounds reveal something else. God’s work of resurrection—indeed of new creation—begins in our wounded world. His resurrection is not a disembodied spiritual reality for life after the grave; it bears the marks of his wounded life here and now, yet with new significance. N.T. Wright, who has written extensively on the central importance of Christ’s bodily resurrection for Christians, says it this way:

“The resurrection of Jesus means that the present time is shot through with great significance….Acts of justice and mercy, the creation of beauty and the celebration of truth, deeds of love and the creation of communities of kindness and forgiveness—these all matter, and they matter forever.  Take away the resurrection, and these things are important for the present but irrelevant for the future and hence not all that important after all even now. Enfolded in this vocation to build now, with gold, silver, and precious stones, the things that will last into God’s new age, is the vocation to holiness: to the fully human life, reflecting the image of God, that is made possible by Jesus’ victory on the cross and that is energized by the Spirit of the risen Jesus present within communities and persons.”(2)

Indeed, Paul’s great exposition of the resurrection of Jesus in 1 Corinthians 15 ends by reminding the Corinthians, “Therefore, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that your toil is not in vain in the Lord.” The point of the resurrection is to demonstrate that entropy and death do not have the final word—either for humans or for God’s creation. God’s last word is resurrection in the midst of our human, often-wounded lives now.

The reality of the resurrection marked by the wounds of Jesus can bring this kind of hope and this kind of joy even into the darkest places. The reality of the bodily resurrection also compels a response from those who live in its light. We work and we toil, and perhaps even pour out our blood, sweat, and tears to tend the wounds of others. The hope of the resurrection reminds us that our labor is far from in vain. We bear the scars of toil even as we labor to bring resurrection reality into this world. We bear them as we remember that Jesus continued to wear his scars as part of his resurrected life.

The visible wounds of Jesus after his resurrection also bring hope in the midst of our suffering. Even our suffering does not have to be in vain. Many women in the Congo, despite all their horrific suffering, seem to understand this. Behind the Panzi Hospital that treats the majority of these rape cases, a new center of refuge called “City of Joy” is being built. It will be a place of long-term healing and refuge for women who have been victimized and abused in Eastern Congo. Many of the women, who carry the cement for the building on their heads, were themselves victims of these crimes. Their wounds still visible on their bodies, they are building a city of joy.(3)

Alleluia, Christ is risen!

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

(1) Jeffrey Gettleman, “Rape Epidemic Raises Trauma of Congo War,” New York Times, October 7, 2007.

(2) N.T. Wright and Marcus Borg, The Meaning of Jesus: Two Visions (New York: HarperCollins, 1999), 126-127.

(3) Nicholas D. Kristof, “What Are You Carrying?” New York Times video blog, March 8, 2010.

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Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Silent and Empty

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Gordon Hempton is of the opinion that you can count on one hand the places in the United States where you can sit for twenty minutes without hearing a generator, a plane, or some other mechanized sound. (His estimation is all the more dreary for Europe.) As an audio ecologist, Hempton has traveled the world for more than twenty-five years searching for silence, measuring the decibels in hundreds of places, and recording the sharp decline of the sounds of nature. ”I don’t want the absence of sound,” he tells one interviewer of his search. “I want the absence of noise.”  Adding, “Listening is worship.”(1)

For the Christian church, Holy Week begins a time of silence, a week of sitting in the dark with the jarring events from the triumphal entrance of Jesus into Jerusalem to the march of Christ to the grave. Holy Week moves the world through the shouts of Palm Sunday to the empty space of Holy Saturday. Though the Christian story clearly and loudly ends on the note of triumph and resurrection, there is a great silence in between, a great darkness the church curiously believes it is necessary to sit with.

Writing of Holy Saturday, the day most marked with this silence, theology professor Alan Lewis says of the Christian story: ”Ironically, the center of the drama itself is an empty space. All the action and emotion, it seems, belong to two days only: despair and joy, dark and light, defeat and victory, the end and the beginning, evenly distributed in vivid contrast between what humanity did to Jesus on the first day and what God did for him on the third… [Yet] between the crucifying and the raising there is interposed a brief, inert void: a nonevent surely—only a time of waiting in which nothing of significance occurs and of which there is little to be said. It is rare to hear a sermon about Easter Saturday; for much of Christian history the day has found no place in liturgy and worship it could call its own.”(2)

Perhaps this is because the world is generally uncomfortable with silence, uncomforted by waiting. And who can understand a messiah who stands at the crossroads of an identity as a deliverer, a political hero who could fight with force for our salvation and that of a servant, a messiah who chooses intentional suffering, who chooses to walk us through darkness on the way to redemption. If Holy Week is filled with events that silence all in disbelief, Holy Saturday levels us with the silence and emptiness that is the end of God.

Yet Holy Week attempts to prepare the world precisely for this silence. For certainly, here, after the end of God on Easter Saturday, we find not only the absence of sound, the absence of noise, but a vision of the world’s end—tipping the scales to despair and doubt, giving into suspicions that history is meaningless, evil in control, and our futures perilous. Such silence is one in which some can only manage a redirected cry for “Hosanna,” a reiterating of the lighthearted cheers of Palm Sunday, a desperate prayer for a Messiah to save us now, to deliver us from this evil and emptiness, from our suspicions and fear.

Such is indeed the cry of the Christian.

Professor and psychologist James Loder tells of the case of Willa, a young adult who was hospitalized and classified as schizophrenic of an undifferentiated type. She was born into a home where she was unwanted and abused. She was a bright child, but everyone took advantage of her such that she grew up with no sense of boundary or healthy relationships. Tragically, the very individuals who pledged to help her also became stories of abuse in her life. She was in the second year of graduate school when she finally broke down and could not finish her examinations.

In the hospital, she sat for hours rocking her doll and staring into space. The head nurse on the floor told Dr. Loder that they expected Willa would never leave the hospital. One day, however, while she was sitting in her chair, someone came up behind her, put arms around her and said, “The silence is not empty; there is purpose for your life.” She turned around, but there was no one there. The power of that experience began to build sanity, and to distinguish illusion from reality. While no one thought she would ever leave the hospital, she was released after three weeks. She was eventually baptized and returned to the profession for which she was training. Commenting on this encounter with God in the silence when all else seems lost, Loder writes: “The intimacy of the Spirit runs deeper than family violence and neglect, and has immense restorative power.”(3) The intimacy of God—even unto death—runs deeper than silence.

This is the story Holy Week sets before the world this week. There is much to listen for in between the crucifying and the raising. There is always much silence and darkness to sit with, but we are amiss to call it empty.

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

(1) Diane Daniel, “Listening is worship,” Ode Magazine, July 2008.

(2) Alan E. Lewis, Between Cross and Resurrection:  A Theology of Holy Saturday (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001), 1.

(3) Story as told by James Loder, The Logic of the Spirit (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1998), 264-265.

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Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Stories of Defeat

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In churches all over the world this coming Sunday, children will march among the aisles with palm branches, a commemoration of the first jubilant Palm Sunday. The palm branch is a symbol of triumph, waved in ancient times to welcome royalty and extol the victorious. Palms were also used to cover the paths of those worthy of honor and distinction. All four of the gospel writers report that Jesus was given such a tribute. Jesus came into Jerusalem riding on a colt, and he was greeted as King. The crowds laid branches and garments on the streets in front of him. An audience of applauders led him into the city and followed after him with chants of blessing and shouts of kingship.

Hosanna!

Blessed is he who comes in the name of the LORD!

The King of Israel!

Hosanna in the highest!

The triumph of Palm Sunday is not lost on the young. Long before I could see its strange place in the passion narrative, I loved celebrating this story as a child. It was a day in church set apart from others. In a place where we were commonly asked to sit still, we suddenly had permission to cheer and march and draw attention.

But like many stories in childhood that grow complicated as the chapters continue, Palm Sunday is far more than a triumphant recollection of Jesus’s entry into Jerusalem.  The convicting irony of the holiday Christians celebrate strikes with each cheer of victory, for these cheering people reenact a scene that dramatically changed in a matter of days. In less time than it takes to plan a king’s coronation, cheers of “Hosanna!” became shouts of crucifixion. The honor that was extended with palms and praises was taken back shortly after it was placed before him. The troubling reality to the triumph of Palm Sunday is that we now know the defeat of the cross is yet to come.

But it is also more than this. With Palm Sunday comes the arrival of holy week in all its darkness, in all its blinding mystery, and speculation. Would I have been with the marching crowd that cheered him as king only to cheer again as he was marched to Golgotha? What could be called a fickle crowd, or an illustration of the power of “mobthink,” in truth, only reminds me of my own vacillations with the Son of God. How easily declarations that he is important become denials of his existence with the turn of mood or fortune. How readily hands waving in praise and celebration become fists raised at the heavens in pain or hardship. Like a palm laid down and taken back again, honor bestowed on Sunday can easily be abandoned by Wednesday.

Such are the thoughts my adult mind carries through the story in which I once took only delight. With palms in our hands, we carry the burden of awareness that Jesus himself carried through that first crowd. Riding through the streets of Jerusalem, Jesus knew then what he knows now: This honor will be abandoned, the praises will cease, and these branches will be trampled to dust. The cross will still come.

How fitting, then, that in many churches the remains of Palm Sunday literally become the ashes of Ash Wednesday. The palms are burned and the ashes collected. Then on Ash Wednesday services the following year, the ashes are used to mark foreheads with the sign of the cross, a reminder of our humanity, the beginning of another journey toward the mysterious gift of the cross.

This week the church invites the world to remember the one who comes into the midst of a fickle humanity—duplicity, defeat, violence, injustice, pain, and all. He comes near to good and bad intentions, near the ashes of what was meant to be honor, and the ruins of attempts on our own. Despite oscillating thoughts, despite sin we cannot leave, he invites us into a different story of defeat. The Son has made his triumphal entry. And he comes to bring us the cross, to the one sacrifice that takes away the world’s pain.

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 – Stories of Defeat

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In churches all over the world this coming Sunday, children will march among the aisles with palm branches, a commemoration of the first jubilant Palm Sunday. The palm branch is a symbol of triumph, waved in ancient times to welcome royalty and extol the victorious. Palms were also used to cover the paths of those worthy of honor and distinction. All four of the gospel writers report that Jesus was given such a tribute. Jesus came into Jerusalem riding on a colt, and he was greeted as King. The crowds laid branches and garments on the streets in front of him. An audience of applauders led him into the city and followed after him with chants of blessing and shouts of kingship.

Hosanna!

Blessed is he who comes in the name of the LORD!

The King of Israel!

Hosanna in the highest!

The triumph of Palm Sunday is not lost on the young. Long before I could see its strange place in the passion narrative, I loved celebrating this story as a child. It was a day in church set apart from others. In a place where we were commonly asked to sit still, we suddenly had permission to cheer and march and draw attention.

But like many stories in childhood that grow complicated as the chapters continue, Palm Sunday is far more than a triumphant recollection of Jesus’s entry into Jerusalem.  The convicting irony of the holiday Christians celebrate strikes with each cheer of victory, for these cheering people reenact a scene that dramatically changed in a matter of days. In less time than it takes to plan a king’s coronation, cheers of “Hosanna!” became shouts of crucifixion. The honor that was extended with palms and praises was taken back shortly after it was placed before him. The troubling reality to the triumph of Palm Sunday is that we now know the defeat of the cross is yet to come.

But it is also more than this. With Palm Sunday comes the arrival of holy week in all its darkness, in all its blinding mystery, and speculation. Would I have been with the marching crowd that cheered him as king only to cheer again as he was marched to Golgotha? What could be called a fickle crowd, or an illustration of the power of “mobthink,” in truth, only reminds me of my own vacillations with the Son of God. How easily declarations that he is important become denials of his existence with the turn of mood or fortune. How readily hands waving in praise and celebration become fists raised at the heavens in pain or hardship. Like a palm laid down and taken back again, honor bestowed on Sunday can easily be abandoned by Wednesday.

Such are the thoughts my adult mind carries through the story in which I once took only delight. With palms in our hands, we carry the burden of awareness that Jesus himself carried through that first crowd. Riding through the streets of Jerusalem, Jesus knew then what he knows now: This honor will be abandoned, the praises will cease, and these branches will be trampled to dust. The cross will still come.

How fitting, then, that in many churches the remains of Palm Sunday literally become the ashes of Ash Wednesday. The palms are burned and the ashes collected. Then on Ash Wednesday services the following year, the ashes are used to mark foreheads with the sign of the cross, a reminder of our humanity, the beginning of another journey toward the mysterious gift of the cross.

This week the church invites the world to remember the one who comes into the midst of a fickle humanity—duplicity, defeat, violence, injustice, pain, and all. He comes near to good and bad intentions, near the ashes of what was meant to be honor, and the ruins of attempts on our own. Despite oscillating thoughts, despite sin we cannot leave, he invites us into a different story of defeat. The Son has made his triumphal entry. And he comes to bring us the cross, to the one sacrifice that takes away the world’s pain.

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 – Is Christianity a Crutch?

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In Mere Apologetics, Alister McGrath points out that “one of the most familiar criticisms of Christianity is that it offers consolation to life’s losers.”(1) Believers are often caricatured as being somewhat weak and naïve—the kind of people who need their faith as a “crutch” just to get them through life. In new atheist literature, this depiction is often contrasted with the image of a hardier intellectual atheist who has no need for such infantile, yet comforting, nonsense. This type of portrayal may resonate with some, but does it really make sense?(2)

Firstly, it is helpful to define what we mean by a “crutch.” In a medical setting, the word obviously means an implement used by people for support when they are injured. The analogy implies, therefore, that those who need one are somehow deficient or wounded. In a sense, it is fairly obvious that the most vulnerable might need support, but as the agnostic John Humphrys points out, “Don’t we all? Some use booze rather than the Bible.”(3) As this suggests, it is not so much a question of whether you have one, but it is more of a question of what your particular crutch is. This is an important point to make, as people rely on all kinds of things for their comfort or self-esteem, ranging from material possessions, money, food, and aesthetics to cigarettes, drugs, alcohol, and sex. Rather than being viewed as signs of weakness, many of these are even considered to be relatively normal in society, provided they don’t turn into the more destructive behavior associated with strong addiction. Nevertheless, many of these only offer a short-term release from the struggles of life and they sometimes only cover up deeper problems that a person might be suffering from. To suggest, therefore, that atheists are somehow stronger than believers is to deny the darker side of humanity, which is only too apparent if we look at the world around us. As McGrath explains:

“[I]f you have a broken leg, you need a crutch. If you’re ill you need medicine. That’s just the way things are. The Christian understanding of human nature is that we are damaged, wounded and disabled by sin. That’s just the way things are.“(4)

Moreover, Augustine of Hippo compared the church to a hospital, because it is full of wounded and ill people in the process of being healed.(5) As is the case with any illness, this treatment cannot begin, however, until someone has admitted they are sick or need help. There is plenty of evidence to suggest that religious belief does have an advantageous effect on both mental and physical health. Andrew Sims, former President of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, writes that a “huge volume of research” confirms this, making it “one of the best-kept secrets in psychiatry and medicine generally.”(6) In a culture that often seems to exalt health, well-being, and happiness above other things, this would seem to render religious belief very appealing both to the weak and the strong in society.

Many believers testify to the transformative effect that becoming a Christian has had on their lives and this can include being delivered from some of the crutches they had previously relied upon. Yet, the idea that coming to faith is somehow either liberating or empowering is, of course, anathema to many people. Christopher Hitchens, for example, spoke of the totalitarian nature of Christianity that keeps its followers in a state of constant subservience.(7) G. K. Chesterton saw it differently, however, as he suggested that the “dignity of man” and the “smallness of man” was held in perfect tension, allowing people to have a strong sense of self-worth without becoming big-headed.(8)

Yet God clearly offers much more than this. In 1 Corinthians 12:9 it says, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” The idea of strength flowing from human powerlessness may seem counter-intuitive in today’s risk-averse culture, but as Simon Guillebaud points out, “Paradoxically, our waving the white flag of submission to God’s right over our lives is the key that unlocks the gate to many future victories in his name.”(9) Nevertheless, as C. S. Lewis observed, people will still choose to cling on to their crutches, even though something much better is being offered to them:

“We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.“(10)

It can be helpful, therefore, to reflect on what we really rely upon in our own lives and what impact this has upon us. As the blogger and former atheist, Daniel Rodgers, reminds us, we do not want to miss out on the fullness of life that God offers all of us, whether we think we need it or not:

“The truth of the matter is that Jesus never offered a crutch, only a cross; it wasn’t a call to be a better person with high self-esteem or a plan to help us scrape through our existence. It was a call to acknowledge that the forgiveness we all seek is to be found in him by following him onto the cross… It’s because Christianity is true that it has something to offer every person in every circumstance, regardless of their background or intellectual capabilities.”(11)

Simon Wenham is research coordinator for Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Europe.

(1) A. McGrath, Mere Apologetics (Grand Rapids, 2012), 167.

(2) Article adapted from Simon Wenham’s “Is Christianity Just a Crutch?” Pulse, Issue 10 (Spring 2012), 14-16.

(3) J. Humphrys, In God We Doubt (London, 2007), in J. C. Lennox, Gunning for God (Oxford, 2011), 24.

(4) McGrath, Mere Apologetics, 170.

(5) Idem.

(6) A. Sims, Is Faith Delusion? (London, 2009), in Lennox, Gunning, 77-78.

(7) C. Hitchens, God Is Not Great (London, 2007), 232-234.

(8) G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy (Chicago, 2009), 143.

(9) S. Guillebaud, For What It’s Worth (Oxford, 1999), 171.

(10) C. S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses (Grand Rapids, 1949), 1-2.

(11) D. Rodger, “Is Christianity a Psychological Crutch?” (from http://www.bethinking.org).

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Ravi Zacharias Ministry – The Audacity of Imitation

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Unflattering as an adjective, insulting as a noun, imitation has fallen on particularly hard times. No one wants to be an imitation of a favorite songwriter, a fake impersonator of the grammy-award winning original. No restaurant proprietor wants to be reviewed as the “imitation” of a famed eatery; inherent in the classification is the notion of being a lesser version of the real thing. An idea is never lauded for being a good imitator of another. And imitation vanilla is rarely, if ever, invited to a cookbook. Originality is by far the more the accepted fashion of the day. And the pressure to be original—to be different than, better than, more than—is both constant and intense. It is the modern way of distinguishing oneself after all, whether applying for college or making a pithy tweet. From impressions to possessions to thoughts, being original seems to be everything.

The pressure may be subtle but it is often overwhelming. It is quite likely the reason why social media seems exhausting to me, why meeting someone with similar ideas can just as easily promote worry as it might a sense of camaraderie, or why I sometimes delay writing out of dread that it’s just all been said before. The pressure to be the inventor and not the imitator, the original and not the clone, the drive to make a new statement about oneself ad nauseam is both a strange and exhausting task.

I was thinking about this trend as I read some of the familiar, distinguishing, oft-quoted lines of Martin Luther King Jr. recently. In light of our need for incessantly original tweets and blog entries, it is interesting to note that King’s most trusted advisors were horrified when they heard him launch into his “I have a Dream” speech that fateful day in Washington. To them, this speech was played out. It was old and tired and not at all the new statement they were hoping to make for the Civil Rights Movement. He had given versions of this speech in other places and on other occasions, not the least of which a crowd of twenty-five thousand in Detroit. According to those who had helped him write the new speech the night before, they agreed they needed something far more original to make the greatest mark. Together they wrote a new speech that night, but on the day of the event, King set novelty aside for a less original dream.

Like his advisors, our modern allegiance to originality might make it difficult to imagine staring at a crowd of two hundred thousand, charged with a new and bold opportunity to make a statement heard by more of the United States than ever before, and deciding in a split moment not to say something new. Thankfully, Dr. King had the courage to believe that what we needed was not reinvention but, in fact, very old news. His acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize reflected a similar conviction:

“I have the audacity to believe that… what self-centered men have torn down men other-centered can build up. I still believe that one day mankind will bow before the altars of God and be crowned triumphant over war and bloodshed, and nonviolent redemptive good will will proclaim the rule of the land. ‘And the lion and the lamb shall lie down together and every man shall sit under his own vine and fig tree and none shall be afraid.’ I still believe that we shall overcome.”(1)

To those inclined to obey the unrelenting orders of repackaging, reinventing, and re-presenting oneself ever-anew, proclaiming an ancient hope, being a follower of an ancient way, indeed, imitating a rabbi from the first century, likely seems as boring and unattractive as it is strange. Who wants to be an imitator, let alone an imitator of an antiquated mind and crucified body?

It may well be one of the most countercultural stances the church takes today. The Christian is an imitation. She walks a curiously ancient path toward a Roman cross of torture; he stands, unoriginally, with a humiliated body that bore the sorrow and pain of crucifixion. The way of Christ is not new. But the invitation of this broken body is paradoxical in this world as the broken body itself. For more curious than the invitation to be a follower in a world looking for trailblazers is the invitation to follow one who, though equal to God, emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, humbling himself to the point of death on a humiliating cross. Imitations of this unordinary love might almost be as gripping as the real thing.

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

(1) Martin Luther King, Jr.,
“Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech,” A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King Jr., 226.

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Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Fully Alive

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The glory of God is the human person fully alive. I first read this quote by Irenaeus of Lyons while still a graduate student. In my early rendering of this evocative statement, I imagined people at play in a field of flowers, the sun shining brightly. Everyone is happy and smiling, laughing even, as they dance and play in the fields of the Lord. As I pictured it in my mind’s eye, the human person fully alive was a person alive to possibility, never-ending opportunities, and always happy. How could it not be with God’s glory as the enlivening force?

One author poses similarly in his commentary on Irenaeus’ statement:

“God’s intentions towards me might be better than I’d thought. His happiness and my happiness are tied together? My coming fully alive is what He’s committed to? That’s the offer of Christianity? Wow! I mean, it would make no small difference if we knew–and I mean really knew–that down-deep-in-your-toes kind of knowing that no one and nothing can talk you out of–if we knew that our lives and God’s glory were bound together. Things would start looking up. It would feel promising…the offer is life.”(1)

Despite my romantic imagination and the author’s exuberant interpretation, I am often perplexed as to just what “fully alive” looks like for many people in our world. How would this read to women in the Congo, for example, whose lives are torn apart by tribal war and violence against their own bodies? What would this mean to an acquaintance of mine who is a young father recently diagnosed with lymphoma? What about those who are depressed? Or who live with profound disabilities?

 

If feeling alive is only that God is happy when we are happy, then perhaps God is quite sad. Surely God’s glory is much larger than human happiness, isn’t it? Certainly, happiness is a gift and a blessing of the human experience, and for many it is there in abundance. Yet, are those who have reason for sorrow—those who do not find themselves amidst fields of flowers or bounty, those who have to work to find goodness—are they beyond the reflection of God’s glory?

The reality is that Irenaeus’ oft-used and oft-interpreted statement had a specific, apologetic context that was not really about human happiness. Irenaeus lived during a time when gnostic sects were trying to deny the real flesh and blood reality of Jesus. In their alternative view, only the spirit was redeemed, and the body should be ignored at best, or indulged at worst, since nothing regarding the body mattered. As a result, they denied the full humanity of Jesus. He could not have died a physical death on the cross, since he was merely an enlightened spirit, or some form of lesser deity. And he was certainly not one who would enter into the created world to take on the messy nature of life.(2)

When Irenaeus describes the glory of God as the human being fully alive he is correcting this aberrant and heretical notion that Jesus was not fully human. Irenaeus countered that in fact, the glory of God so inhabited this man from Nazareth that he was fully alive to all of what it meant to be human. Jesus experienced hunger, thirst, weariness, frustration, sorrow, and despair—and he experienced the joy and beauty that came from complete dependence on God. To be fully alive, as one sees in the life of Jesus, includes all human experience—the joys as well as the sorrows.

The journey through Holy Week for Christians around the world offers another picture of this reality. Holy Week includes Good Friday and Holy Saturday just as surely as it includes Easter morning. As Jesus experienced the miraculous new life of resurrection on Easter morning, he first experienced the sorrow of rejection, betrayal, and the physical brutality of crucifixion and death. Jesus lived the depths of the human experience as one of us.

Irenaeus’ continues his thought by saying: “[T]he life of man is the vision of God. If the revelation of God through creation already brings life to all living beings on the earth, how much more will the manifestation of the Father by the Word bring life to those who see God.”(3) Human beings are fully alive as they find life in this One who in his human life reveals both the eternal God and the vision of God for fully alive human beings. Certainly, our lives include events and seasons that we wish were not part of the fully alive human experience. But perhaps those who seek true life might recognize these appointments with both death and resurrection as an entryway into a deeper understanding of this human experience. And as that door is opened, we can be ushered into the deep and abiding fellowship of the Divine Community—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—not phantom spirits, not distant deities, but intimates to all that it means to be human.

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

(1) John Eldridge, Waking the Dead (Nashville: Thomas-Nelson Publishers, 2003), 12.
(2) Cyril Richardson ed., Early Christian Fathers (New York: Collier Books, 1970), 345.
(3) Irenaeus of Lyons, Against Heresies, (IV, 20, 7).