Yesterday, Today, Forever

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 00:00:00 GMT

In their 1965 album Help, the Beatles sang, "Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away. Now it looks as though they're here to stay. Oh, I believe in yesterday..."

Our temptation to live in the "good ole' days" is captured well in this song. It is not surprising, therefore, that the song has more cover versions than any song ever written—over 3000! For some of us, yesterday always seems to enamor. Somehow it seems the weather was better, the pressure lesser, the prices lower, the traffic slower, the currency stronger, the trees greener, the atmosphere cleaner, the youth kinder, the music softer, the world safer, and the trousers longer! "Oh, I believe in yesterday," we hear ourselves sighing.

By contrast to the Beatles, country singer Don Williams sings, "Don't think about tomorrow, it don't matter anymore. We can turn the key and lock the world outside the door." While the Beatles voice the temptation to live in our yesterdays, Don Williams voices the temptation to forget our tomorrows. Between or apart from the wishful romanticizing of our yesterdays and the hasty dismissals of our tomorrows, is there a life worth living?

In her novel, The Namesake, Pulitzer Prize winner Jhumpa Lahiri tells the story of Gogol who is named after his father's favorite author. But growing up in an Indian family in suburban America, the boy starts to hate the awkward name and itches to cast it off. In 1982 on his 14th birthday, his father presents him a specially ordered copy of The Short Stories of Nikolai Gogol. He tells him how he felt a special kinship with the author and that it had taken four months for the book to arrive from Britain, specially ordered for the occasion. To young Gogol the sentiments were not palpable. Time moves on. Gogol's life moves on. His father dies unexpectedly. The story captures his efforts to reinvent his identity by embracing a new name, exploring meaning in relationships, an education, and a career. For all those years his father's gift was set aside. But pain has a way of bringing back more than memory. The story ends in the year 2000 when Gogol is 32, divorced and pondering. It is then that he picks up the gift that his father gave him at age 14 and starts to read.

There are some things in life that are irreversible. Had Gogol wished then to start life all over again, there was no way of going back to when he was 14, or spending time with his father once again. Sadly for some of us, there are no replays in real life.

If this was an option the day after the crucifixion, the apostles would have certainly requested a replay. How much they would have desired to go back! Not only that they might be with Jesus, but that they would be right with him. Remember the time you vowed to live a certain way only to break the promise a few days later? Peter felt the same. For those of us who feel like we are the only ones who fail, the gospel writer has a word about the commonness of our humanness: All of the disciples deserted Jesus and fled from him. The problem with the Christ was not that he had asserted a demand, but that he had gently solicited their support. To think that a king would speak in such a fashion to his subjects is beyond imagination. Returning to his disciples in his hour of anguish, he repeatedly found them sleeping. "Could you men not keep watch with me for one hour?" he asked.

How much he had likened himself to us in order to bear our sins. How much he had bent towards humanity, giving visibility to the psalmist's ascription of "God our Savior who daily bears our burdens for us" (Psalm 68:19). He had given them so much. He had asked for so little. Yet, they had failed him. And still, the great hope of the Christian faith is that, even knowing every past denial and every coming failure of humanity, Jesus set his face like flint on the cross before him and went forward on our behalf.

With the Beatles, one can sing, "I believe in yesterday," with Don Williams, one can sing, "Don't think about tomorrow," but it is only with Jesus the suffering servant, the risen Savior that one can sing, "Because he lives, I can face tomorrow."

Arun Andrews is associate apologist with Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Bangalore, India.

Risking Beauty

Wed, 01 Sep 2010 00:55:43 GMT

In his book The Idiot, Fyodor Dostoevsky sets forth the bold assertion that "beauty will save the world." The sheer number of ways in which this quote has been applied attests to the risk inherent in the idea, and perhaps inherent in beauty itself. Certainly the church during the Reformation recognized the risks involved in imaging God, using beauty to communicate an incommunicable mystery, the impersonal to describe a Person. For good reason, we are cautious when we hear a statement such as the one in this novel.

But Dostoevsky did not pronounce the idea with the naïveté with which it is often quoted. He did not have in mind the kind of beauty we worship in the fashion or beauty industry nor did he have in mind an impersonal object or a purely abstract notion. On the contrary, Dostoevsky entertains the idea in a person, in Myshkin, who lives the quality of beauty as if a distinctive of his very soul. Myshkin's inclination is to help rather than to harm, to give mercy rather than malice, forgiving again and again, though surrounded by people who do not. In fact, it is this group who tirelessly labels Myshkin the "idiot" because he refuses to participate in the disparaging and destructive ugliness of their own ways but instead takes what is cruel and repulsive in them and dispels it.

I sometimes wonder if we have so stripped away the possibility of beauty in our encounters with the divine that we not only miss something real of God to behold in the world, but we miss opportunities to show the world the beauty of God—in hands and faces, in people who bestow crowns of beauty instead of ashes, in communities that repair ruined cities instead of causing further devastation.(1) Theologian William Dyrness laments the modern mentality that has somehow lost the sense of the "wholeness that beauty reflects."(2) We are so mindful of beauty's limitations; but isn't it we who are limited as depicters of God's beauty? "[When I look at] the moon and the stars that you have established," sang David, "what are human beings that you are mindful of them?" (Psalm 8:3). Describing the very wholeness that beauty reflects, Dyrness continues, "Based on God's continuing presence in the Spirit of Christ, God is somehow present in all beauty."(3)

That is to say, the divine presence can be seen in the beauty of bringing the cup of cold water, in the stained glass mural of the great cathedral, or in the life that sits in broken shards before the potter. Moreover, if beauty is revelation, if creativeness is more than an object but an action of both play and work in God's kingdom, if the Incarnation is a call to participate in the glory of God as persons who imbibe that glory, then there is most certainty in beauty the potential to save, for God is both the Source and Subject.

In his 1970 Nobel Laureate lecture in literature, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn made the bold suggestion: "Perhaps that ancient trinity of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty is not simply an empty, faded formula as we thought in the days of our self-confident, materialistic youth. If the tops of these three trees converge, as the scholars maintained, but the too blatant, too direct stems of Truth and Goodness are crushed, cut down, or not allowed through--then perhaps the fantastic, unpredictable, unexpected stems of Beauty will push through and soar to that very place, and in so doing fulfill the work of all three?"(4) In other words, perhaps we can not afford to omit the possibility of God reaching out to the world in beauty, in mystery, and transcendence.

Of course, this is not to say that beauty is not a risk for the community of God. We are sinful and limited creatures in our ability to appreciate true beauty, and it is often an elusive concept to understand practically. We are artistically formed at the hands of a God who is far beyond us. We must indeed remember with David that it is we who fall short, we who must maintain the perspective of humility and keep before us a sense of mystery. But like Myshkin who attempted to rise above the ugliness of his world, we must also have the courage to risk beauty, living as those who recognize the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ and so choose to boldly proclaim and reflect this beauty in a world that would have otherwise.

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

(1) See Isaiah 61.
(2) William Dyrness, Visual Faith: Art, Theology, and Worship in Dialogue (Grand Rapids, Baker Academic, 2001), 90.
(3) Ibid., 90.
(4) Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Nobel Lecture in Literature, 1970, from Nobel Lectures, Literature 1968-1980, Ed. Tore Frängsmyr (Singapore: World Scientific Publishing Co., 1993).

The Will to Power of Weakness

Tue, 31 Aug 2010 00:00:00 GMT

One of Friedrich Nietzsche's sustained critiques of Christianity was that it promoted weakness as a virtue. He argued in his book OnThe Genealogy of Morals that Christianity promotes a "slave morality."(1) Looking at the Beatitude sayings of Jesus as the centerpiece of this morality, Nietzsche railed against this unique vision of the moral life, particularly as it was embodied in Jesus as the "suffering servant." The moral solution, for Nietzsche, was to argue for the exact opposite; the will to power by the ubermensch, serving no one and dominating all others was the virtue of assertive power.

While one might either recoil at Nietzsche's criticism or agree with his radical vision of morality, the clarity of his insights into the heart of Christianity cannot be dismissed easily. For in Jesus's very first sermon, he declares that the poor in spirit, the meek, those who have been persecuted, and the peacemakers are blessed.(2) Indeed, Jesus extends a radical call to weakness: "Do not resist him who is evil; but whoever slaps you on your right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if anyone wants to sue you, and take your shirt, let him have your coat also. And whoever shall force you to go one mile, go with him two. Give to him who asks of you, and do not turn away from him who wants to borrow from you." If this wasn't enough, Jesus elsewhere tells his followers that "whoever wishes to save his life shall lose it; but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel's shall save it" (Mark 8:35).

When I am honest with myself, I recognize a deep aversion to this radical vision of service and sacrifice. It is not difficult to understand Nietzsche's aversion and critique. The recognition of Jesus as the Suffering Servant, and the implications for his followers to "go and do likewise" goes against the grain of my self-serving heart. Why would I choose weakness as embodied by Jesus over the will to power of Nietzsche?

The call of Jesus is the call to lose one's life. If one chooses to be his student, following Jesus means that our lives will be offered up in sacrifice for others—without any guarantee or promise of reward or recognition for doing so in this life. The call to follow Jesus includes relinquishing expectations for what it means to save my life. It is the call to trust that as I lay my life down, someone will pick it up again. It is to cry out to God "into your hands, I commit my spirit."

It is not simply an historical aside that Nietzsche's desire to gain mastery through power did not prevent his own self-destruction. Losing his mind eleven years prior to his death and having his work largely neglected by his contemporaries, he could neither master the forces of academic whim nor unwelcome mental weakness.(3) Yet, we can learn from his insights into Christianity as we wrestle with our own struggles with power and weakness. Ultimately, the will to power must recognize its own limits. All of us—even Nietzsche—are subject to weakness and to finitude.

As the apostle Paul reflected on the weakness of Jesus, he argued that the weakness of God is stronger than human strength. In entrusting our lives to this God who freely chose the weakness of the cross, we can find true strength—indeed, find our true lives in Christ. Author James Loder suggests that choosing weakness and offering our lives presents the opportunity for true self-understanding. He writes, "Christian self-understanding drives toward the goal of giving love sacrificially with integrity after the pattern of Christ. This means the willing breaking of one's wholeness potential for the sake of another, a free choice that has nothing to do with oppression because it is an act of integrity and everything to do with Christ's free choice to go to the cross as an act of love."(4) The weakness involved in laying down one's own life provides the opportunity for the other to walk over, across, and through to the One who first laid down his life. And that is a will to power far stronger than Nietzsche ever conceived.

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

(1) Friedrich Nietzsche, On The Genealogy of Morals and Ecce Homo ed. and trans. by Walter Kaufmann (New York: Random House, 1967).
(2) See Matthew 5:3-11.
(3) Michael Tanner, Nietzsche: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994),3.
(4) James Loder, The Logic of the Spirit: Human Development in Theological Perspective (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1998), 308.

Losing Ground

Mon, 30 Aug 2010 00:00:00 GMT

Mine is not a heritage that deeply associates identity with the land on which that identity was forged. My ancestors packed every belonging they were able to place on a boat (including, I'm certain much to someone's chagrin, a corner cupboard) and eventually made their way to Ohio. It was not easy for them; Irish immigrants were not well-received. But they made a life for themselves far away from all they once knew as home, choosing to distance themselves from the land of their forefathers in more ways than one. They even changed the spelling of their surname so that "home" would be less recognizable. For some immigrants, the land they leave is never far from their minds—and often this is true even of the generations who have never seen this land for themselves. This was not the case with my ancestors.

It was not until I spent time within a Native American community (and later the intertwining worlds of the Palestinians and Israelis) that I came to realize the powerful pull of a homeland, even for those who hold it only in the imaginative longings of their minds. For those of us who view land in terms of property lines and economics, there is a giant chasm that separates us from those who define geography as life and spirit. The tragic role of geography in the story of every Native American tribe is easily recognizable, but the spiritual, personal, and physical weight of that offense is often grossly miscalculated. "To us when your land is gone, you are walking toward a slow spiritual death," says a Shoshone elder who has fought persistently for access to Shoshone land. "We have come to the point that death is better than living without your spirituality."(1)

Such intensity in the name of place and homeland is not unique to Native America. For the people of ancient Israel, the relationship between land and faith was equally profound. The destructive loss of Jerusalem at the hands of the Babylonians in 587 B.C.E. was infinitely more to them than the loss of home and property. For them it was the loss of faith, identity, even God Himself. Walter Brueggemann writes of Jerusalem's destruction: "The deep sense of displacement evoked by the loss led to the conclusion in some quarters that all the old promises of YHWH to Israel—and consequently Israel's status as YHWH's people and Jerusalem's status as YHWH's city—were placed in deep jeopardy."(2)

The book of Lamentations is intricately bound to this all-encompassing loss. The book offers five poems of profound lament, each an attempt to put into words the abrupt reality of physical, spiritual, and personal exile. The poems are acrostic in style, meaning that each line of the poem begins with the next letter of the Hebrew alphabet—as if the loss and grief of Israel is "expressed in totality and completeness from A to Z."(3) Like an ancient funeral song, the writer's words are consumed with the death that is homelessness.

"The thought of my affliction and my homelessness
is wormwood and gall!
My soul continually thinks of it
and is bowed down within me" (Lamentations 3:19-20).

For lives in exiled disarray, spirits torn from their homes, these words declare a misery deeper than many of us know. Yet this is not to say it is a misery unknown. On the contrary, the ache of homelessness is well-recognized. Though I am not among third and fourth generations of immigrants who hold visions of their homelands near, this does not at all suggest that the mark of lostness is foreign. Unexplained hope for a better land, longing for a place unknown but somehow known, feeling like a stranger though at home—such thoughts plague the most nomadic among us.

The writer of Lamentations gives voice to the uncertainty of exile, the finality of a destroyed Jerusalem, and the death of home in the deepest sense. He also dares give voice in the midst of exile to the promise of restoration—in the assurance of coming home to the one who never left. No matter the place of loss, wandering, or exile, no matter the distance, no matter the depth, the arm of God is not too short to save.

"But this I call to mind,
        and therefore I have hope:
The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases,
        his mercies never come to an end;
they are new every morning;
   great is your faithfulness.
'The LORD is my portion,' says my soul,
   'therefore I will hope in him'" (Lamentations 3:21-24).

Why should there be the notion of homelessness at all, if there is no such thing as home? Surely there is one who prepares a room for us, one who answers every real and imaginative longing for a homeland, every injustice of being torn from one's home, and the mountains of sin and sorrow which block our vision of our place forever at his table. For both the wanderer and the exile, surely there is immense hope in a kingdom that is both present and coming, a homecoming we now see in part but one day will experience in person.

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

(1) Sandy Johnson, ed., The Book of Elders (San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 1994), 127.
(2) Walter Brueggemann, An Introduction to the Old Testament: The Canon and Christian Imagination (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2003), 334.
(3) Ibid., 335.

Between Shadow and Reality

Thu, 26 Aug 2010 00:00:00 GMT

In that interesting encounter between Jesus and the paralytic given to us by Luke, we see a defining reminder of the relationship between evidence and faith, the temporal and the eternal. The friends of this paralyzed man did everything they could to bring him within the sight and touch of Jesus (see Luke 5:17-26). They even disfigured the property of the person in whose house Jesus was visiting in the hope that he would perform a miracle for their friend. I suspect they must have reasoned that if Jesus could make a paralyzed man walk again, then replacing a roof would be a minor problem. But as they lowered this man within reach of the Savior, they were not expecting an apologetic discussion.

"Which of the two is harder," asked Jesus, "to bring physical healing or to forgive a person's sins?" The irresistible answer was self-evident, was it not? To bring physical healing because that would be such a miraculous thing, visible to the naked eye. The invisible act of forgiveness had far less evidentiary value. Yet, as they pondered and as we ponder, we discover repeatedly in life that the logic of God is so different to the logic of humanity. We move from the material to the spiritual in terms of the spectacular, but God moves from the spiritual to the material in terms of the essential. The physical is the concrete external—a shadow. The spiritual is the intangible internal—the objective actuality.

Yet we all chase shadows. We chase them because they are a haunting enticement of the substance without being the substance themselves. It takes a jolt, sometimes even a painful jolt, to remind us where reality lies and where shadows seduce. Our Savior was so aware of this weakness within us that he often walked the second mile to meet us in order that something more dramatic might be used to put into perspective for us what is more real and of greater importance to God. Yes, he did heal that man, but not without the reminder of what the ultimate miracle was. Once we understand this, we understand the relationship between touching the soul and touching the body. Both are real, but one is the object; the other is the shadow. In this instance, Jesus followed the act of forgiveness with the easier act of physical healing so that the paralyzed man would feel the touch of the Savior from what was more meaningful to what was more felt. If he was a wise man he would walk with the awareness that the apparently less visible miracle was actually more miraculous than the more visible one—even as his feeling of gratitude for his restored body would remain a constant reminder to him of the restoration of his soul.

As I have pondered this and the many other examples of Jesus's acts of mercy, I look at our hurting world that is desensitized to the greatness of the gospel message—the message that cleanses the soul and heals the inner being. Our world is weighed down with pain, fear, suffering, and poverty. In more than three decades of travel around the world I have seen this reality with my own eyes. Our world is so broken that if we were to stare reality in the face, we would wish it really were only a shadow and not an actual embodiment. Such is the blind eye people turn to the familiar and dismiss as mere shadows what is tragically real. Both body and soul are forgotten. The cost in human suffering is beyond computation.

In such a world, the question becomes: Can we shut our eyes to such need and suffering, or is there a role we can play that lifts the tiles of a roof to bring some of them within the touch of the Lord? The overwhelming answer is yes, there is a role that we can and must play. Love remains the most powerful apologetic. It is the essential component in reaching the whole person in a fragmented world. The need is vast, but it is also imperative that we be willing to follow the example of Christ and meet the need. What does this mean for us? It means giving a cup of cold water in the name of Jesus and telling the recipient to thank God and not man for that gift. Only eternity will reveal how deep and how real such an impact is, but our calling is clear: to let our light so shine that men, women, and children will see our good works and glorify our Father in Heaven.

That is apologetics completed. That is confirming to the mind by the visible touch of the body. The mind is to the soul what the body is to the shadow. When we can touch both we have demonstrated the power of both thought and deed. It lifts the message out of the shadow and brings it into the light. Such is the power of love. Unless we understand a person's pain we will never understand a person's soul. And what a privilege to take the message of the cross upon which "He bore our griefs and carried our sorrows." Christ is the best reminder of what is real and what is shadow.

Ravi Zacharias is founder and chairman of the board of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries.

The Scene of Miracle

Fri, 27 Aug 2010 00:00:00 GMT

The 1748 essay "Of Miracles" by David Hume was influential in leading the charge against the miraculous, thoughts that were later sharpened (though also later recanted) by Antony Flew. Insisting the laws of a natural world incompatible with the supernatural, the new atheists continue to weigh in on the subject today, and likewise, many Christian philosophers and scientists who are less willing to define miracle as something that must break the laws of nature. Physicist and Anglican priest John Polkinghorne, for instance, suggests that miracles are not violations of the laws of nature but rather "exploration of a new regime of physical experience."(1)

The possibility or impossibility of the miraculous fills books, debates, and lectures. What it does not fill is that moment when a person finds herself—rationally or otherwise—crying out for intervention, for help and assurance, indeed, for the miraculous in her life. "For most of us" writes C.S. Lewis, "the prayer in Gethsemane is the only model. Removing mountains can wait."(2) To this I would simply add that often prayer is both: both the anguished cry of Gethsemane—"please, take this from me"—prayed at the foot of an impossible mountain.

Whether this moment comes beside a hospital bed, a failing marriage, a grave injustice, or debilitating struggle, we seem almost naturally inclined in some way to cry out for an intervening factor, somethingor someone beyond the known laws of A + B in front of us. For my own family that moment came with cancer, complicated by well-intentioned commands to believe without doubt that God was going to take it away. When death took it away instead, like many others in our situation, our faith in miracles—and the God who gives them—were equally devastated.

In the throes of that heart-wrenching scene, every time I closed my eyes to pray, the vision of an empty throne filled my mind. It was something like the vision of Isaiah in the temple, only there was no robe and no body filling anything. My prayers seemed to be given not a resounding "no," but a non-answer, a cold, agonizing silence, which was also very much an answer. It was only years after the scene of my failed prayers for the miraculous that I was startled, again like Isaiah, at the thought that the throne was empty because the one who fills it had stepped down to sit beside us as we cried.

Such a miracle wasn't the one we were hoping for, and yet, years now after the sting of death, the incarnational hope of a God who comes near—in life, in suffering, even unto the grave—is inarguably a miracle far more profound. I don't fully know why in the midst of our pain we felt alone and abandoned. Perhaps our eyes were too focused on the scene of the miracle we wanted, such that no other could be seen. "God sometimes seems to speak to us most intimately when He catches us, as it were, off our guard," writes C.S. Lewis. "Our preparations to receive [God] sometimes have the opposite effect. Doesn't Charles Williams say somewhere that 'the altar must often be built in one place in order that the fire from heaven may descend somewhere else'?"(3)

This somewhere else, the place that catches us off-guard, is maybe even quite often right in front of us, near but unnoticed, miraculous but missed. In the words of Pulitzer Prize winning novelist Marilynne Robinson, "I have spent my life watching, not to see beyond the world, merely to see, great mystery, what is plainly before my eyes. I think the concept of transcendence is based on a misreading of creation. With all respect to heaven, the scene of miracle is here, among us."(4)

What if we were to start looking, not for miraculous signs and antepasts from beyond, but for a closer scene of miracle, for invitations to explore that new regime of physical existence brought about by the Incarnation, for tastes of a banquet to which we are invited even today. Miracle and mystery may well be plainly before our eyes. And of course, Christianity is the story of the great Miracle, the story of God coming not where we expect, but where we need him most. Like the kingdom itself and the Christ who came to announce it, the scene of miracle is nearer than we think.

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

(1) John Polkinghorne, Faith, Science and Understanding (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), 59.
(2) C.S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm Chiefly on Prayer (San Diego: Harcourt, 1992), 60.
(3) Ibid., 117.
(4) Marilynne Robinson, The Death of Adam (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1998), 243.

Broken

Wed, 25 Aug 2010 00:00:00 GMT

In my mother's antique shop were a variety of treasures for a curious child. My personal favorite was the Victrola that sat stately in the corner, a large internal phonograph that begged to be heard. The sounds it made were bold and cavernous, like an opera in a wooden box. This one was an early model, I heard adults say, and it was in mint condition. So it seemed peculiar to me that our frequent requests to put it into action were, from time to time, resisted. To me it was a perfect treasure, a magnificent and flawless toy. To the motherly owner of the store, it was a treasure that was capable of breaking before it sold. "As is" was not a phrase she wanted to add to the price tag.

A label that was seen occasionally within the shop, "as is" conveyed an item with damage or brokenness of some sort. "As is" marked the clock that had stopped ticking, or the rocking horse that had a crack in one of its legs. Because I knew my mother as one who could fix almost anything, the label also conveyed to me a certain sense of defeat. Whatever the item, it was a lost cause—a treasure bearing some distinguishable, irreparable flaw.

I suspect from time to time many of us feel something like the object marked "as is," or the treasure with only a matter of time before something goes awry. With a sense of defeat, we view our lives through the lens of what is broken or has been broken, what is irreparable or what might break. Looking ahead, we see the broken down trailer of an irreparable past, which seems to declare emphatically our status "as is."

Yet writing centuries before our own, one man writes of his own brokenness under God:

"You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it;
you do not take pleasure in burnt offerings.
The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit;
a broken and contrite heart,
O God, you will not despise" (Psalm 51:16-17).

Such words run counter to cultures anywhere and everywhere. Brokenness is usually not something we are comfortable admitting, let alone presenting it as something that is pleasing to anyone. Whether in ourselves or in others, we are at times almost averse to fragility. Even Christians who hold knowingly to the cruciform image of Christ can seem distinctly uncomfortable with broken and grieving people, defeated and weakened lives. Yet this is precisely the imperative of the good news: "Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows... But he was pierced for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities" (Isaiah 53:4-5). Isn't it remarkable that God would proclaim as good news a quality so unpopular? That Christ would embrace a condition so rejected as a means of claiming us? That the brokenness of God is not only an invitation to accept our own weakness, but a promise that wholeness is real?

Our fragility is, in fact, an assurance of strength. "We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body" (2 Corinthians 4:7-10). Whether we come to God shattered again by our own failures, like David, or broken from living in an imperfect world, we are never so near to God as when we come with nothing in our hands to offer. Before the cross, there is no lost cause or irreparable flaw; there is only Christ. For in life, as in an antique shop, there would be no recognition of brokenness if there were not such a thing as wholeness.

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

The Beginning and the End

Mon, 23 Aug 2010 00:00:00 GMT

My high school band director was adamant about many things, but none so much as what he called the obligatory rule of good musicianship. That is, the two most important notes in any musical composition are the first and the last. "The audience might forgive you for what comes in the middle," he would say, "but they will forget neither your very first impression nor your final remark."

The last word of the book of Acts in the Greek New Testament is the word akolutos. The word literally means "unhindered," though many translations render it with multiple words. Others move the word from its final position for the sake of syntax. In both cases, I think something is lost in translation. Luke was intentionally making a statement with this last word of his two volume testimony to the life of Jesus Christ. He intended readers to pause at the conclusion of his words, leaving us with the provocative thought of a gospel that is unhindered. After the stories of Jesus's ministry were told, after recollections of his death and ruminations of his resurrection, after Jesus's ascension and the church's beginnings, after all the resistance, disappointment, and surprises along the way, Luke concludes, "Then Paul dwelt two whole years in his own rented house, and received all who came to him, preaching the kingdom of God and teaching the things which concern the Lord Jesus Christ with all confidence, unhindered" (Acts 28:30-31).

Through prisons and angry crowds, the book of Acts traces the birth and growth of the early church. The book begins with a few hundred believers in Christ and a collective will to be his witnesses in Jerusalem, in Judea and Samaria, and to all the ends of the earth. Opposition to this witness is described at every turn. Persecution, beatings, death, and imprisonment all threatened the voice of the early church and ultimately the spread of the gospel itself. But in spite of all this, Luke epitomizes the history of the early church and the spread of the gospel by boldly describing the progression of God's kingdom as going forth without so much as the slightest of hindrances. The good news of God to all, he seems to want the world to remember, goes forth in power.

For any man or woman who will hear his testimony, Luke wants to conclude his eyewitness account with the dimension of the gospel that is most striking—namely, that these evidences are far from the end of the story. Luke wants hearers to be well aware that eyewitnesses to the power of the kingdom will go well beyond his own eyes, his stories, his lifetime. Though variant theologies and distorted gospels will abound, though the world will delight in yet another conspiracy theory that promises to be the downfall of Christianity, the great narration of God's kingdom will continue unhindered. For the Christian, this means we need not live defeated by every emerging plot to undermine Christ. And for the one who has yet to accept him, it is continually and powerfully an invitation. Won't you consider living into a victory like his, walking further up and farther into the great unhindered kingdom of God?

The book of Acts is largely concerned with documenting the history of the early church within the context of the unhindered work of God from the beginning to the ends of time and earth Jesus foretold. "Indeed," says Peter, "all the prophets from Samuel on, as many as have spoken, have foretold these days. And you are heirs of the prophets and of the covenant God made with your fathers" (Acts 3:24-25). We are a part of a story that will not fade away because it is told by the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end. Despite all appearances, the gospel was and is and always will be a testimony that exists without hindrance. No man can thwart the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ, for it is sealed by a Spirit who presses it ever-onward and invitingly unto the unexpected places of the world. Nothing can hinder the presence of God's kingdom among us, for God himself brought it near.

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

Things Not Seen

Tue, 24 Aug 2010 00:00:00 GMT

At any given moment during any time of the year, were you to visit my home, you would find a stack of books on the nightstand beside my bed. Generally, these books represent my varied interests of study: gardening, theology, psychology, and current events. But recently, a new pile of books has sprung up on my nightstand. I’ve begun collecting books on physics.

Now, for those who love science, and particularly physics, this comes as no surprise. Why wouldn’t I have already accumulated a library full of physics books? But for those who, like me, didn’t graduate beyond basic biology, you might think me crazy, or masochistic, or both.

Actually, my interest in physics began by considering this particular statement from Hebrews 11:1: “Faith is...the conviction of things not seen.” What a complex and seemingly paradoxical statement about the nature of faith!   How can we have a conviction in things that are beyond our senses, beyond our perception and understanding? Moreover, how do we maintain the conviction of faith in the midst of suffering and difficult times? Can we really sustain conviction in that which is beyond our experiential circumstances?

Physics in its simplest definition is the study of matter and how it works.(1) Physicists are concerned with the “stuff” that makes up the universe.   As such, they are often concerned with elements so small that they cannot be seen even with the aid of the most powerful microscope.   John Polkinghorne, physicist and Anglican priest, explains, “We now know that atoms themselves are made out of still smaller constituents (quarks, gluons, and electrons....we do not see quarks directly, but their existence is indirectly inferred).” While physicists can only see, as it were, the “shadow” of these tiny realities of matter, they point to and indeed make up materials all around us. I cannot see them, but I trust they are there and at work when I sit down on my office chair each day.

In the same way, the Christian scriptures affirm that faith is able to discern the substance behind the shadows of our reality. The apostle Paul wrote that "what can be seen is temporary, but what cannot is eternal...for we walk by faith not by sight" (2 Corinthians 4:18, 5:7). The conviction of faith, therefore, is the ability to see through our circumstances to the spiritual realities behind them.   The grace and strength promised in weakness, for example, the wisdom that is found in the foolishness of the cross and in the suffering Christ, or the blessing and joy that is found among those who weep, all bind us to a concrete reality in God even while we “see through a mirror dimly” (1 Corinthians 13:12).

In this sense, then, the conviction of faith calls us to go beyond reason and knowledge to wisdom. And when suffering comes, it is the call to go beyond a desire for ease and comfort to embrace endurance. The writer of Hebrews names those great saints of old who endured in faith, endured even when the promise was not received or seen, even when they were "tortured, mocked, scourged, stoned, imprisoned, sawn in two, killed with the sword, impoverished afflicted and ill-treated” (Hebrews 11:35-38). These were the ones of whom the world was not worthy, the writer tells us. They saw beyond their circumstances to the spiritual reality. They saw there is something greater than this world. They saw this world was not their ultimate home, and as such it would never feel like home.

The "conviction of things not seen" is the substance of faith. It is the attention to those spiritual realities that are the true substance behind the circumstances of our daily lives. The conviction of faith is the ability to see in the disparate threads of our lives a beautiful garment, a useful quilt, or a magnificent tapestry. The conviction of faith is the ability to see beyond the finite to the infinite--in much the same way as physicists have discovered the infinite world of sub-atomic particles.   Those invisible particles provide the essential structure for what we see all around us.

In the classic story The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupery writes of a little fox who promises to reveal the secret of life to the young boy in the story. When the secret is finally revealed it is this: "It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."(3) Likewise, faith sees with the heart what cannot be seen with the eye. It is the conviction of spiritual truths that give substance to the shadow of our reality.

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

(1) From physics.org
(2) John Polkinghorne, Exploring Reality: The Intertwining of Science and Religion (London: SPCK, 2005), 3.
(3) Antoine de Saint-Exupery as cited by Thomas Long, Interpretation: Hebrews (Philadelphia: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1997), 114.

People with a Past

Fri, 20 Aug 2010 00:00:00 GMT

I confess that I have never been a student especially enticed by the subject of history. Whether studying the history of the Peloponnesian War or the history of Jell-O, I associate the work with tedious memorization and an endless anthology of static dates and detail. But this stance toward history, coupled with our cultural obsession with the present moment, is a force to be reckoned with and an outlook I have come to recognize as dangerous. It is a thought perhaps to take captive, lest it produce a sense of forgetfulness about who I am and from where I have come.

Richard Weaver is one among many who have warned about the dangers of presentism, the cultural fixation with the current moment and snobbery toward the past. More than fifty years ago, Weaver warned of the discombobulating effects of living with an appetite for the present alone:

"Recurring to Plato's observation that a philosopher must have a good memory, let us inquire whether the continuous dissemination, of news by the media under discussion does not produce the provincial in time. The constant stream of sensation, eulogized as lively propagation of what the public wants to hear, discourages the pulling-together of events from past time into a whole for contemplation."(1)

Weaver contends that carelessness about history is in fact a type of amnesia, producing a mindset that is both aimless and confused. For how can we understand the current cultural moment without at least some understanding of the moments that have preceded it? History is not a static bundle of dates and details anymore than our own lives are static bundles of the same. But instead, history is the vital form in which we both take account of our past and fathom the present before us.

This point was driven home for me in a church history class full of future pastors. We were studying the fourth century, which was privy to a great influx of believers who left their communities behind and fled to the desert in search of solitude. To a group of people called and passionate about the church as a community, the great lengths some of these pilgrims went to live solitary lives was hard for some to understand. Words like "abandonment" and "responsibility" readily crept into our conversations.

But imperative to understanding this flight of believers (and arguably to understanding a part of our own story) is recognizing that this history did not come to pass in a vacuum. Up until the fourth century, the church had been under fierce persecution. Torture and martyrdom were prevalent; believers were recurrently in danger and often met in secrecy. When Christianity was suddenly made legal in 313, the church found itself in the midst of an entirely different set of challenges. People were now coming to Christianity in droves, and for the first time in the life of the church, nominal belief and careless faith was a fearful reality. In this historical context, pursuit of the desert life was an expression of faith in response to faithless times. For the dynamically committed Christian, the desert was viewed as a way to not only secure and live out one's convictions, but to preserve the faith of Christianity itself.

We may not understand the motives of those who chose to live their lives in caves of prayer and solitude, but I believe it is quite possible that God continues to set apart remnants who stand in the midst of time "⁷like dew from the Lord, like showers on the grass, which do not depend upon people or wait for any mortal" (Micah 5:7). Refusing to be historians, we miss truths such as these. And for Christians, we are people with a past that locates us in the very story we live today.

For the follower of Christ, history is all the more a sense of hallowed ground, for it is ground where God has walked and faith is kept. We believe that history resides in the able hands of the one who made time. We believe that who we are today has everything to do with events we have not seen ourselves. And we live as a people called both to remember and to be ready, for we look to the author of the entire story, who was and is and is to come.

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

(1) Richard M. Weaver, Ideas Have Consequences (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), 111.