What happened to Ravi?

Miller & Martin, the Atlanta-based law firm hired by Ravi Zacharias International Ministries (RZIM) to investigate allegations of sexual impropriety against their founder, released its report on Thursday.

It is devastating, to say the least.

Zacharias died in May 2020 from sarcoma. At his funeral, Mike Pence referred to him as “the C.S. Lewis of our day” and “the greatest Christian apologist of this century”, echoing a sentiment shared by millions of evangelicals worldwide.

As the RZIM website puts it, “For over 30 years and across 43 countries, RZIM has met millions of questioners with thoughtful answers concerning faith and God.” At the helm of this influential organization was the phenomenon of Ravi Zacharias – the Indian-born Canadian-American with the gentle spirit and razor-sharp intellect.

For years, the quickest draw in a duel with an atheist has been to grab your phone and swiftly swipe to a YouTube snippet of one of Ravi’s talks or viral answers to a doubting student during a Q&A in a packed auditorium at some or other famous university.

Now, we are all forced to deal with sentences such as “Tragically, witnesses described encounters including sexting, unwanted touching, spiritual abuse, and rape.” This particular statement comes from RZIM’s “Open Letter” that accompanied the release of Miller & Martin’s report, so no rumours or conjecture here.

I cannot help but wonder what the student in that video is thinking.

So what happened? Why? What are we to make of it? How should we respond?

I think the most important thing we should do is not look for new answers, because there aren’t any. Humanity is still the beast it has always been, an issue that has been dealt with in depth in the pages of Scripture. The clearest presentation of the dilemma of being human is found in Paul’s letter to the Romans, and we are all under discussion there. Ravi, you, me; all of us.

Our lives are a composite of two worlds, we read in Romans: The world of the flesh and the world of the Spirit. If we are dead in our sins – unregenerate, as we say – the world of the Spirit is reduced to the voice of the conscience; a law in our hearts that manifests as thoughts accusing or excusing us. Because of the power of conscience, Paul tells us, gentiles are just as accountable as the Jews who have a written law to guide them in matters of wrong and right.

However, neither the voice of conscience nor the Torah can provide the life-energy that is required to live up to their prohibitions and commands. For this to happen, one needs to enter the world of the Spirit and become a citizen there. This can only happen through a very real crucifixion and death to the world of the flesh and a subsequent resurrection in the world of the Spirit.

We have all kinds of fancy words to describe this passage, such as regeneration, new birth, conversion, getting saved, and so on. But it all boils down the same thing: I have died to my flesh and I am alive to the Spirit, who has now become my guide in the place of the fuzziness of my conscience and the impersonal dictates of a written code of regulations.

But here’s the thing, and Romans is pretty clear about it: Even though I have participated in this glorious transition from death to life and flesh to Spirit, it is still quite possible to exit the world of the Spirit and conduct my life in the old way of the flesh. In fact, at a certain level it is inevitable. And that is okay, because the immediacy and finality of the transition takes time to filter through to my cognition and from thereon to my actions. Life unveils itself in a fashion that can only be described as hesitantly; like a woman who guards herself ferociously until convinced that the one who pledges a commitment to her can be trusted with her gifts. It’s all one glorious process of growth and ever-increasing intimacy, until we shed our previous allegiances; not because we have to but because we want to.

In Romans, love fulfils the law and meets its obligation because the problem of illicit desire, underlying all the works of the flesh, has been overcome by non-elicit desire.

An analogy might be suitable here: It is the love that I have for my wife that has delivered me from my attractions to other females. She is the fulfilment of the law my mother gave me when she warned me against a certain type of girl. The commandment could not sustain me, I must confess, and even my nagging conscience proved little help when I was swept away by adolescent lust. But all of it disappeared when the power of love for the girl of my dreams invaded my soul. Those girls now seem bland and boring in comparison to the love of my life. I no longer have a need for mother’s prescriptions.

In Romans, as in the rest of Scripture, immunization against desire and the actions that spring forth from it is found in the realm of love. The Bible is a story of greater love subduing lesser love. It is as simple as that. The two greatest commandments are great exactly because they contain the power to deliver human beings from all their vices and addictions . “If you love me you will obey my commands,” Jesus said, and he was not kidding.

It is here where the world of the Spirit and the world of the flesh part ways. The world of the Spirit is governed by the force of love – love for God and love for neighbour. The satisfaction of intimacy with God banishes the need to be satisfied in other ways. Contentment is the distinguishing characteristic of the true believer. Just and right living is no longer legislated from the outside in, but has become an unstoppable force of passion from the inside out.

If this is true, then it means spiritual growth is nothing but an ever-increasing awareness of the beauty and sufficiency of God; not as some or other doctrine of transcendence but as a very real moment-by-moment life experience. I am constantly being weaned off my infantile dependencies. My maturity exists in my ongoing discovery that the shepherd’s green fields and still waters surpass all other sources of nutrition. My childhood cries are substituted by a single confession: “I shall not want.”

But it also means something else. Those who have wandered back to the world of the flesh and its works have done so because of one reason only: They have broken the first and greatest commandment. They loved something outside of God more than God himself. And the reason for this is that they have found a satisfaction and release in that thing – a satisfaction and release that they never discovered in God.

 “I need it,” the women quoted Ravi as saying. The great apologist understood and could defend the gospel better than anyone on the planet, but he had a need that was never satisfied in his walk with God. Whilst he excelled in the letter of Scripture, he failed in its spirit.

Ultimately, the great challenge is not to understand well, but to love well. I am convinced that our blindness and stubbornness in this regard constitutes the single biggest sin of the church of God in this present age.

This, I believe, is the word that God is speaking to us through the public disgrace of Ravi Zacharias.

Love Story

I have this against you, that you have abandoned your first love. Revelation 2:4

The above sentence is best understood when read in the light of Revelation’s last few chapters. There the church is revealed as “a bride adorned for her husband” who has made herself ready for “the marriage supper of the Lamb”.

The Bible is a story about a Bridegroom and his bride.

The imagery of this divine union is found early in Genesis, and it reaches its climax in the last chapters of Revelation. In Genesis we read about the union of the first Adam and his bride, in Revelation we read about the union of the Last Adam and his bride.

Everything in between is a commentary on this divine romance, a glorious love story of love lost and found.

Humans are obsessed with this story, even if they won’t acknowledge it. Our movies and books are filled with it: Boy meets girl, fall in love, split up and reunite. And then they live happily ever after. This is the grand narrative of the ages. This gospel is written on our hearts, and it is a tragedy if we fail to make the link between this deep intuition, this overriding passion, and our “Christian theology.”

I always marvel how easy it is for new believers to grasp the above. Their love affair with their Lord is plain to see. They are dizzy with joy and oblivious to the call of all other lovers. For them, Jesus Christ is all.

Unfortunately, the passion of the heart tends to become the knowledge of the head after a while, and then “first love” fades away like morning mist.

Love for God was never intended to be temporary. It is freely given at first, but it requires careful cultivation to become permanent.

Lessons from a Lost Son

In his classic work The Return of the Prodigal Son Henri Nouwen offers some penetrating insights into the symbolism behind the younger son’s departure. He says: “Leaving home is living as though I do not yet have a home and must look far and wide to find one. It is a denial that I belong to God with every part of my being, that God holds me safe in an eternal embrace, that I am indeed carved in the palms of God’s hands and hidden in their shadows.”

The prodigal son experienced what we would call today an “identity crisis”, a term coined by the sociologist Eric Erikson to describe that period in our teens when we struggle to dissociate ourselves from our parents with the hope of forming a secure identity. This explains the turbulence of those years. We are like strangers in a storm looking for the bridge that will take us to adulthood and safety.

The prodigal tried to solve his particular crisis by dreaming of a “distant country” where he believed he would discover himself. He had not come to terms with the fact that he was the beloved of the father, and that this constituted his identity. Instead, he chose to be defined by the world.

In his book Nouwen draws a striking parallel between the prodigal’s fantasies and the temptations of Christ. Satan offered Christ instant gratification, worldly treasures and the acclaim of the people – a shortcut to self actualisation. Yet Christ resisted these: He had just heard the voice of his Father, saying “You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.”

These words tell us who we are and where our true home is. When we are in touch with our sonship, as Christ was, we become immune to the onslaughts of the tempter.

A Love that Fills

As promised…

I bow my knees before the Father… that you may have strength to comprehend… the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. Ephesians 3:14-19

The “fullness of God” is a subject that has been receiving a lot of airtime lately. Everyone wants to be full of the Lord, it seems.

The problem is that not everyone agrees on how to receive this fullness. Some think they need an evangelist to pray for them during a revival service and shout “Fill!” Others retreat to a quiet place, such as nature, and spend time in deep contemplation before the Lord, waiting to receive the Spirit’s fullness. Others believe that the Lord only fills the obedient, and so they try to live blamelessly. And so on.

Whilst all of the above may be perfectly legitimate expressions of Christian devotion, the Bible portrays the fullness of God differently. According to Paul, a Christian can only be “filled with all the fullness of God” as the result of a profound revelation: The comprehension of “the breadth and length and height and depth” of Christ’s love.

To know this love, Paul says, surpasses knowledge. It cannot be taught in a classroom, studied at a seminary or learned during a clever sermon. The lover does not use messengers. He himself wants to say to the beloved “I love you.” This explains why Paul does not lecture the Ephesians on this topic, but prays to God that he will reveal it to them.

The Bible is a divine love story. The good news is that you are the bride on whom the Bridegroom wants to bestow his love, and herein lies your fullness.

Love Over Coffee

I went for a bike ride this morning and ended up sipping a hot cuppa in the corner of a delightful coffee shop. What a blessing to enjoy God’s goodness and beauty in the small things of life! Truly, he is everywhere if we would only look.

As I paged through the day’s paper my eyes fell on a quote by Albert Schweitzer: “Success does not lead to happiness, happiness leads to success.” How true.

It took me many years to discover that God’s perfection is best expressed in humanity’s contentment. (By the way, this has been a cornerstone of many Christians’ theological understanding long before John Piper was born, and you most certainly do not need to be a Calvinist to grasp it!) Our satisfaction testifies to the sufficiency of God’s grace, to put it differently. This means that Christians are meant to be truly happy people. It also means that if you are not truly happy, you are missing some pieces of your theological puzzle or its application to your life.

Perhaps a personal reference would be in order here. I came into this world with an inexplicable melancholia that ended up haunting me on a near daily basis. This continued for many years after my conversion. I eventually concluded (rather prideful, I should add), that the hollow emptiness at the core of my being was the downside of my artistic and bookish inclinations. And so I imagined myself as being in the same band as Hemmingway, Churchill and all the tortured poets who constantly had to fight their suicidal tendencies.

I was mistaken. My “impenetrable fog”, as Abe Lincoln used to refer to his depression, vanished when the sun of God’s love shone over it. And in its stead an indescribable joy bubbled up from deep within. I was no tortured genius. I was a poor lost soul who took way too long to grasp the central message of the Bible, namely that God loves me just as (JUST AS, get it?) he loves Christ. When that penny dropped my years of theological training, articles I had written, sermons I had preached and theological battles I had fought underwent a baptism of mammoth proportions. And what emerged was… new. Very new. In fact, so new that it appeared to be a different gospel to the one that I had been spreading for many years. Paul put it well: It all amounted to nothing because it was not based on love.

The man who writes these words is now a very, very happy man. I am indeed obsessed with the love of God. I sleep it, drink it, think it, talk it, preach it. This discovery has been my treasure in the field, and I gladly rid myself of everything in order to buy the field and unearth the treasure. And what a treasure it is! I have subsequently discovered that the two greatest motivators on planet earth, fear and fullness (or happiness, if you wish), are directly linked to the love of God, the former negatively and the latter positively. I have discovered even more, much more than I can ever share with words. This chest has no bottom. Truly, the love of God is beyond description. It is as infinite as God is infinite, for God is love. And if all else pass away, love will remain… and remain… and remain…

I dedicated my weekly newspaper column to this glorious truth. As it will only be out tomorrow, I cannot post it yet. But I will do so the moment it hits the streets.