Thursday, September 27, 2012
Sunday, July 22, 2012
Tribute to Ravi Zacharias Conclusion
Facing evil with no answers Ravi turns us toward the cross.
Through the cross the soul can be recovered.
New Birth or Rebirth? Jesus Talks With krishna, ---and --- Sense and sensuality: Jesus Talks with oscar wilde on the prusuit of pleasure
Finally,
he began a project to take on the thought systems of the world. I will because
of time only note two: Hinduism in, Jesus
Talks With Krishna, and the world of pleasure in Jesus Talks with Oscar Wilde, are two of my favorites. Written
creatively Ravi draws from his own knowledge of Hinduism, a knowledge that is
deep and personal yet caring and compassionate.
In the imagined dialogue with Oscar
Wilde Ravi’s true evangelistic heart is revealed as he even brings Pascal into
the fray to battle for Wilde’s soul. Here the Gospel is brought forward; the
work of Christ on the Cross is shown to be the compelling answer to the
idolatrous systems of the world. I simply love these two books the most.
It is with great pleasure tonight that
we have heard from you and that here in Toronto we acknowledge the sovereign
and gracious work of the Father in so anointing you to faithfully proclaim the
cross of Jesus Christ to this generation.
Facing evil with no answers Ravi turns us toward the cross.
Through the cross the soul can be recovered.
New Birth or Rebirth? Jesus Talks With krishna, ---and --- Sense and sensuality: Jesus Talks with oscar wilde on the prusuit of pleasure
Finally,
he began a project to take on the thought systems of the world. I will because
of time only note two: Hinduism in, Jesus
Talks With Krishna, and the world of pleasure in Jesus Talks with Oscar Wilde, are two of my favorites. Written
creatively Ravi draws from his own knowledge of Hinduism, a knowledge that is
deep and personal yet caring and compassionate.
In the imagined dialogue with Oscar
Wilde Ravi’s true evangelistic heart is revealed as he even brings Pascal into
the fray to battle for Wilde's soul. Here the Gospel is brought forward; the
work of Christ on the Cross is shown to be the compelling answer to the
idolatrous systems of the world. I simply love these two books the most.
It is with great pleasure tonight that
we have heard from you and that here in Toronto we acknowledge the sovereign
and gracious work of the Father in so anointing you to faithfully proclaim the
cross of Jesus Christ to this generation.
Sunday, July 15, 2012
Ravi Zacharias continued...
The Existential Cry
CRIES OF THE HEART, Bringing God Near When He Feels So Far; Word, 1998
In Cries Of The Heart Ravi writes what he calls an existential apologetic, speaking of the cries of the human heart and how they are heard and met by God.
Skipping ahead in the
book…,
“The Cry for Freedom in Pleasure” is for me the best chapter
in the book. I was struck by the reference to The Screwtape Letters where the novice gives as a reason why his
target has been converted that he took a walk for the purest pleasure of it and
he read a good book, not to quote it but to enjoy it, and the walk and “between
the walk and the good book, he came within the Enemy’s reach.” The pure joy and
pleasure of God is so strongly contrasted to the overwhelming drive for fun of
our day. Zacharias so powerfully references Neil Postman who contrasts Aldous
Huxley and George Orwell on what will destroy western society, Postman sums up
this contrast by noting: “[W]hat Orwell feared were those who would ban books.
What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book…” (p. 125).
So, joy is joy when it is grounded in meaning, and being grounded in meaning
creates natural parameters for true joy, as opposed to joy that is in effect
non-joy, or anti-joy, because it is evil. Zacharias points out these parameters
as Anything that refreshes you without
diminishing you, distracting you, or destroying the ultimate goal is a
legitimate pleasure in life; Any
pleasure that jeopardizes the sacred right of another is an illicit pleasure;
any pleasure, however good, if not kept in balance, will distort reality or
destroy appetite. This from the words of the wise Suzanna Wesley spoken to
her young son John. Ravi ends the chapter by reminding us of the truth that
those of us who might struggle to feel our faith need to be reminded of, the
truth of Psalm 147:11, that God takes pleasure in us.
And, WONDER
Recapture the Wonder, Integrity Publishers, 2003
Here Ravi speaks of the awareness that people have, that
each of us seems to have, that the world is bigger than we think, that it is
full of something that we cannot comprehend fully. Frequently through the book
he references C. S. Lewis who touched on this theme again and again. He begins
with the quotation: “All philosophy begins with wonder” and proceeds from there
to unpack wonder as it surprises us, not only as we interact with creation, but
as we contemplate the story of our own life, a story which we misguidedly try
to discover in sensual pleasure. Instead he tells us to contemplate our story as
it is in truth, a story found in the Bible, a story full of wonder, the story of
God coming to us to save us through the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
And EVIL
No apologetic will have any traction
if it does not face evil head on. I can say that Ravi has been facing evil, not
as an abstraction, but as the fountainhead of human suffering his entire
career. Sometimes he seems to feel compelled to shake his audiences into
awareness of the dimensions of suffering and its ramifications for our belief
in a nice God.
Deliver Us From Evil, Restoring the Soul in a Disintegrating Culture. Word, 1996.
Perhaps the key to this work is Ravi’s exploration of evil
in chapter 12 and the relation of God, redemption in Jesus Christ in chapters
13. Interestingly he begins with a story
of being mugged in Moscow and how leadership in Moscow later said to him: “We
have no hope to give our young people. They have a purposeless existence. Can
you help us?” This story so poignantly brings forth the cry to be delivered
from evil.
Ravi brilliantly characterizes evil as irrational,
reflecting Berkouwer who clearly pointed out that if a rational reason could be
given for sin it would not be sin, for by its nature sin is irrational. Ravi
pushes on, as he frequently does, to the existential, speaking of the banality
of evil, highlighted by Adolf Eichmann, showing that not only is evil not
rational and therefore cannot be explained psychologically, but that the human
spirit recoils at its banality and any attempt at trivializing it. And then he
builds a case for facing evil as a reality and not merely a convention of
thought or a cultural perspective. Wickedness is a fact, and as a fact we
properly feel revulsion when faced with it.
Ravi is breaking ground here by building a case from
subjectivity. Subjectivity can be attacked, and he himself will on occasion
attack it. But, he senses that the revulsion against evil is so universal that
it testifies to evil as something beyond social convention. Ravi recounts a
conversation in which he said: “How incongruous it is, even by your own
philosophy, that while denying the fact of evil you are unable to completely
shake off the feeling. “[F]or even you, sir, said you would not like it [an
example of witnessing the murder of an infant.“
Facing evil with no answers Ravi turns us toward the cross.
Through the cross the soul can be recovered.
To be continued .......
Tuesday, June 19, 2012
Over the next several blogs I will post a tribute to Ravi Zacharias which I gave when he was honored at the Centre for Theological Mentoring and Reflection at Tyndale University College, Toronto.
RAVI ZACHARIAS A Tribute Centre for Theological Mentoring and Reflection June 10, 2010
I have had the privilege of knowing Dr. Zacharias for much of my life. He was wrapping up his time at Trinity Evangelical Divinity school while I was doing an M.Div. at Wheaton Graduate School. I remember preaching in the evening service at an Alliance Church and he and his wife were there. Ravi and I have also sat together on an airplane and discussed C. S. Lewis and since been on various platforms together. I always felt that our mutual background in Youth For Christ and our admiration for – as I have just mentioned – C. S. Lewis have created a certain bond. Underlying that is Ravi’s choice to begin with the Alliance in Canada and to continue as an official worker of the Alliance, something that cannot but help to please denominational types like myself.
In Ravi we meet a person who has given the total energy of his life to proclaiming the Gospel of Jesus Christ. As a young man he became well known for his powerful preaching which sought to bridge the gap between the man on the street and the great philosophic currents of the day. He expanded his outreach in 1992 with the VERITAS FORUMS, the first held at Harvard University. The mission statement for these forums: We create forums for the exploration of true life. We seek to inspire the shapers of tomorrow's culture to connect their hardest questions with the person and story of Jesus Christ.
As we bring Ravi before us tonight we should give special attention to his extensive writing. Over the past two plus decades he has written many books, with each and every one aimed at bringing the full force of the Gospel into the arena of intellectual as well as existential encounter. Let us briefly survey Ravi’s writing project.
The Writing Project
Ravi began his evangelism career in India, his native land, and what we might describe as the cry of India has shaped his preaching and writing in ways that few of us can fathom, but which we sense in his abiding concern for the questions of suffering and pain. As well, he began his preaching as post-modernism was just beginning. Ravi’s apologetic project seeks a two pronged thrust at post-modernism. First, we notice that the modernistic reliance on arguments for the existence of God is by and large passed over. However, he continues to critique both left-over modernism and post-modernism with logic. Logic requires that if we complain about injustice that we actually have a transcendent standard of justice. His direct assault on atheism is found in …
A SHATTERED VISAGE: THE REAL FACE OF ATHEISM; WOLGEMUTH & HYATT, 1990 There are few books like this either in scope or depth. In a way it reminds me of some of the early enlightenment projects in that it maps out the ground that apologetics needs to cover and gives guidance as to how that ground should be covered. The first five chapters sketch out the growth of late nineteenth century atheism fed by Darwin and Nietzsche and its overflow into the sewer of twentieth century totalitarianism and the fields of western academia, both of which have dedicated themselves to the proposition that man is the measure of all things. It is true that the tracing of this journey has been done before, but what Ravi brings is the call of the evangelists, a call issued continually with a certain existential angst. Where does atheism leave us? He answers in reference to morality:
… we are devoid of moral assumptions and responsibilities, we have bankrupted ourselves, so that honor, truth, and morality have been sacrificed at the altar of autonomy and self-worship.” In reference to meaning: “[T]he delights of love, the loveliness of a baby, the wonder of a mother nursing a child, the exquisite strains of majestic music—all these transcend reason yet have real meaning in our lives. What meaning do they have if life itself is meaningless?”
And when facing death, poets and scientists who deny God still seem to exhibit what Ravi calls “Grave Doubts.”
In response to all the devastation of the death of God and the birth of man as the measure of all things, Ravi again preaches, not the abstract God of the philosophers, but God who is the treasure of life, the one whose love “gave us life in creation” (p. 133), whose love calls for a response of gratitude which will be shown in a commitment to morality, a life of meaning suffused with divine and human relationships, a life that answers to Jesus promise that he is not like the thief that has come to kill and to destroy, but that he has come “that they may have life, and have it to the full.” John 10:10 (p.151). Thus, in Shattered Visage the apologetic program is laid out. Pascal said that inside of every human there was a God-shaped vacuum, and I might say that Ravi is seeking to describe that vacuum, or to raise consciousness so that we might know that in fact the vacuum is God shaped.
To be continued....
RAVI ZACHARIAS A Tribute Centre for Theological Mentoring and Reflection June 10, 2010
I have had the privilege of knowing Dr. Zacharias for much of my life. He was wrapping up his time at Trinity Evangelical Divinity school while I was doing an M.Div. at Wheaton Graduate School. I remember preaching in the evening service at an Alliance Church and he and his wife were there. Ravi and I have also sat together on an airplane and discussed C. S. Lewis and since been on various platforms together. I always felt that our mutual background in Youth For Christ and our admiration for – as I have just mentioned – C. S. Lewis have created a certain bond. Underlying that is Ravi’s choice to begin with the Alliance in Canada and to continue as an official worker of the Alliance, something that cannot but help to please denominational types like myself.
In Ravi we meet a person who has given the total energy of his life to proclaiming the Gospel of Jesus Christ. As a young man he became well known for his powerful preaching which sought to bridge the gap between the man on the street and the great philosophic currents of the day. He expanded his outreach in 1992 with the VERITAS FORUMS, the first held at Harvard University. The mission statement for these forums: We create forums for the exploration of true life. We seek to inspire the shapers of tomorrow's culture to connect their hardest questions with the person and story of Jesus Christ.
As we bring Ravi before us tonight we should give special attention to his extensive writing. Over the past two plus decades he has written many books, with each and every one aimed at bringing the full force of the Gospel into the arena of intellectual as well as existential encounter. Let us briefly survey Ravi’s writing project.
The Writing Project
Ravi began his evangelism career in India, his native land, and what we might describe as the cry of India has shaped his preaching and writing in ways that few of us can fathom, but which we sense in his abiding concern for the questions of suffering and pain. As well, he began his preaching as post-modernism was just beginning. Ravi’s apologetic project seeks a two pronged thrust at post-modernism. First, we notice that the modernistic reliance on arguments for the existence of God is by and large passed over. However, he continues to critique both left-over modernism and post-modernism with logic. Logic requires that if we complain about injustice that we actually have a transcendent standard of justice. His direct assault on atheism is found in …
A SHATTERED VISAGE: THE REAL FACE OF ATHEISM; WOLGEMUTH & HYATT, 1990 There are few books like this either in scope or depth. In a way it reminds me of some of the early enlightenment projects in that it maps out the ground that apologetics needs to cover and gives guidance as to how that ground should be covered. The first five chapters sketch out the growth of late nineteenth century atheism fed by Darwin and Nietzsche and its overflow into the sewer of twentieth century totalitarianism and the fields of western academia, both of which have dedicated themselves to the proposition that man is the measure of all things. It is true that the tracing of this journey has been done before, but what Ravi brings is the call of the evangelists, a call issued continually with a certain existential angst. Where does atheism leave us? He answers in reference to morality:
… we are devoid of moral assumptions and responsibilities, we have bankrupted ourselves, so that honor, truth, and morality have been sacrificed at the altar of autonomy and self-worship.” In reference to meaning: “[T]he delights of love, the loveliness of a baby, the wonder of a mother nursing a child, the exquisite strains of majestic music—all these transcend reason yet have real meaning in our lives. What meaning do they have if life itself is meaningless?”
And when facing death, poets and scientists who deny God still seem to exhibit what Ravi calls “Grave Doubts.”
In response to all the devastation of the death of God and the birth of man as the measure of all things, Ravi again preaches, not the abstract God of the philosophers, but God who is the treasure of life, the one whose love “gave us life in creation” (p. 133), whose love calls for a response of gratitude which will be shown in a commitment to morality, a life of meaning suffused with divine and human relationships, a life that answers to Jesus promise that he is not like the thief that has come to kill and to destroy, but that he has come “that they may have life, and have it to the full.” John 10:10 (p.151). Thus, in Shattered Visage the apologetic program is laid out. Pascal said that inside of every human there was a God-shaped vacuum, and I might say that Ravi is seeking to describe that vacuum, or to raise consciousness so that we might know that in fact the vacuum is God shaped.
To be continued....
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