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.