Just Thinking 28 3

THE QUARTERLY MAGAZINE OF RAVI ZACHARIAS INTERNATIONAL MINISTRIES

JUST THINKING VOLUME 28.3

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WHERE IS GOD IN A CORONAVIRUS WORLD? PAGE 04

WHY AREN’T YOU HELPING ME? PAGE 12

A PERSON OF THE SOIL PAGE 14

OUR VIEW OF GOD PAGE 24

H E L P I N G T H E T H I NK ER BELI EVE. HELPING THE BELIEVER THINK.

Just Thinking is a teaching resource of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries and exists to engender thoughtful engagement with apologetics, Scripture, and the whole of life.

Danielle DuRant Editor Ravi Zacharias International Ministries 3755 Mansell Road Alpharetta, Georgia 30022 770.449.6766

WWW.RZIM.ORG AFRICA I ASIA I CANADA I E UROP E I I ND I A I M I D D L E EAST I U NI TED KI NGD O M I U NI TED STATES

TAB LE of CONTE NTS VOLU M E 28.3 JUST THINKING THE QUARTERLY MAGAZINE OF RAVI ZACHARIAS INTERNATIONAL MINISTRIES

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A PERSON OF THE SOIL Ravi Zacharias examines the uniqueness of Jesus and his ministry, especially compared to Eastern gurus, in an excerpt from his new book, Seeing Jesus from the East.

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03 Editor’s Note TIMES LIKE THESE

WHERE IS GOD IN A CORONAVIRUS WORLD? Whether you are a Christian or not, the coronavirus pandemic is perplexing and unsettling for all of us, writes John Lennox.

How do we begin to think it through and cope with it?

30 Think Again AT ALL TIMES Ravi Zacharias

ROBIN RAYNE NELSON/GENESIS

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WHY AREN’T YOU HELPING ME? Once exhausted by grief and fear, Derek Caldwell shares how he came to discover he was looking for God in all the wrong places.

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OUR VIEW OF GOD A scene from literature stirs Danielle DuRant to consider how we arrive at our understanding of God, particularly in times of crisis.

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EDITOR’S NOTE

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TIMES LIKE THESE As Just Thinking 28.3 goes to press, a pandemic that knows no borders is sweeping across the globe and altering the lives of all in its wake—rich, poor, young, old. This novel coronavirus, named COVID-19, has rapidly precipitated a paradigm shift of tectonic proportions.

The pendulum swing from the “most connected” time in history to social distancing and quarantines has affected every sector of society. From Main Street to 10 Downing Street, from the homeless to world leaders, no one is immune.

“We are living through a unique, era-defining period,” writes John Lennox in his new book, Where Is God in a Coronavirus World? “Many of our old certainties have gone, whatever our view of the world and whatever our beliefs. Whether you are a Christian or not, the coronavirus pandemic is perplexing and unsettling for all of us.”

A few evenings ago out in my yard, and out of the blue, a hymn came to mind that I haven’t sung in probably thirty years: In times like these we need a Savior; In times like these we need an anchor.

Be very sure, be very sure Your anchor holds and grips the Solid Rock!

While the simple song seemed to drag on when I was a young adult, some older church members sung it in earnest. I recently discovered the lyrics were written during World War II. George Beverly Shea and Mahalia Jackson sang it before audiences across the globe. As the story goes, the shattering headlines of war prompted Ruth Caye Jones, a pastor’s wife, to search her Bible and pen “In Times Like These.”

“Be very sure,” Jones implores again, urging us, In times like these we need the Bible.

In times like these O be not idle.

Be very sure, be very sure Your anchor holds and grips the Solid Rock!

Perhaps “Be very sure” is a declaration of a bygone era. In times like these, as John Lennox suggests, “Many of our old certainties have gone.” Inside this issue of Just Thinking is a selection from his new book. Other writings wrestle with questions of heartache and hope when God seems far away. In the feature article, Ravi Zacharias looks at the uniqueness of Jesus and his tender ministry, especially compared to Eastern gurus, in a lengthy excerpt from his new book, Seeing Jesus from the East (coauthored with Abdu Murray).

In his closing Think Again column— and from his hospital room—Ravi remains steadfast, reminding us, “The Bible assures us that at all times God is with us. He is our comforter; He is our healer. He is our physician; He is our provider. He knows better than we do.”

So also the psalmist David, who knew great blessing and sorrow, enjoins us with these words of old, Trust in him at all times, O people; pour out your heart before him; God is a refuge for us. Psalm 62:8

Danielle DuRant is Director of Research and Writing and Editor of Just Thinking magazine.

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WHERE IS GOD

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IN A CORONAVIRUS WORLD? The coronavirus is so called because it visibly resembles a crown (“corona” in Latin). A crown is a symbol of power and authority—and certainly this virus has colossal power over us humans.

It also forcibly reminds us of our vulnerability.

It is easy to forget that we humans are mortal.

W E ARE LIVING through a unique, eradefining period. Many of our old certainties have gone, whatever our view of the world and whatever our beliefs. Whether you are a Christian or not, the coronavirus pandemic is perplexing and unsettling for all of us. How do we begin to think it through and cope with it?

This book excerpt consists of my reflections on what we are experiencing right now. I started writing in March 2020.

Things have changed quickly since then

and no doubt will do so again. There will, inevitably, be some rough edges and inadequacies. For that I apologize.

I would invite you, the reader, to view this reflection like this: I am sitting with you in a coffee shop (if only we could!) and you have asked me this question: “Where is God in a coronavirus world?” I put down my coffee cup and attempt to give you an honest answer. What follows is part of what I would try to say to convey some comfort, support and hope.

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CATHEDRALS AND WORLDVIEWS In times of crisis, hope is what we look for.

In a New York Times article on March 10, 2020, Italian journalist Mattia Ferraresi wrote the following: Holy water is not a hand sanitizer and prayer is not a vaccine….

But for believers, religion is a fundamental source of spiritual healing and hope. It’s a remedy against despair, providing psychological and emotional support that is an integral part of well-being. (It’s also an antidote to loneliness, which several medical experts point to as one of the most worrisome public health issues of our time.)

At a deeper level, religion, for worshipers, is the ultimate source of meaning. The most profound claim of every religion is to make sense of the whole of existence, including, and perhaps especially, circumstances marked by suffering and tribulation.

Take such claims seriously enough, and even physical health, when it is devoid of greater purpose, starts to look like a hollow value.1 When life seems predictable and under control, it is easy to put off asking the big questions, or to be satisfied with simplistic answers. But life is not that way right now —not for any of us. It is not surprising that, whatever your faith or belief system, the big questions of life are breaking through to the surface, demanding attention.

Coronavirus confronts us all with the problem of pain and suffering. This, for most of us, is one of life’s hardest problems.

Experience rightly makes us suspicious of simplistic answers and facile attempts to come to terms with it.

What I want to try to do here, then, is to avoid those kinds of “answers,” and to think with you, as honestly as I can, through

some of the ideas that have helped me to wrestle with these difficult questions as coronavirus has begun to change everything.

RUINED CATHEDRALS Pain and suffering come from two distinct sources. Firstly, there is suffering as a result of natural disasters and diseases, for which humans are not (directly) responsible: earthquakes, tsunamis, cancers, and the coronavirus. This leads to the problem of pain, or, as it is often called, the problem of natural evil. This terminology is somewhat unfortunate, since the word “evil” has moral connotations and neither earthquakes nor viruses are moral agents.

Second, there is suffering for which men and women are directly responsible: acts of hate, terror, violence, abuse and murder. That leads to the problem of moral evil.

Christchurch Cathedral in New Zealand, Coventry Cathedral in England, and the Frauenkirche in Dresden, Germany, are powerful and poignant symbols of these two problems. These three ruined churches bear traces of two things. On the one hand, they show evidence of the beauty and elegance they once possessed.

On the other hand, they are also marred by the deep scars of catastrophe—an earthquake in Christchurch and bombings in Coventry and Dresden. Each ruined cathedral, therefore, presents a mixed picture of beauty and destruction.

Together they remind us that it is unlikely that there are any easy answers to the deep existential questions that arise from catastrophe. For many at such times, the picture is more than ragged—it is extremely raw. Those of us who stand outside the immediate pain of others run the risk of failing to be sufficiently sensitive to that rawness.

However, there is a difference between Christchurch and Coventry. The cathedral in Christchurch collapsed as a result of the shifting of tectonic plates. The cathedrals in Coventry and Dresden collapsed as a

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result of war. Some people compared the Christchurch earthquake to 9/11, because it sent a similar shockwave around the nation; but there is a major difference.

The destruction of the Twin Towers was not a natural disaster: it was a moral disaster. It was a product of human evil. Earthquakes, meanwhile, are natural, not moral, catastrophes.

Of course, moral and natural evil are sometimes connected. The situation is This is an excerpt from complicated because one can Where Is God in a lead to the other: greedy comCoronavirus World? by mercial deforestation may John Lennox, published lead to the proliferation of

by The Good Book desert, which in turn may lead Company, 2020, and to malnutrition and disease. used by kind permission. But the coronavirus outbreak seems to be a case of natural evil (although moral evil lurks nearby in selfish panic buying and hoarding of food). Inevitably, conspiracy theorists will seek to put the blame on some human agent. Humans are involved in virus transmission, but not deliberately or selfishly—and the main presumption is that the virus jumped from animals to humans.

That said, there is evidence that the authorities in China initially suppressed reports of a potentially devastating new virus. In the Guardian newspaper on March 11, 2020, Helen Davidson reported from Hong Kong: Official statements by the Chinese government to the World Health Organisation reported that the first confirmed case had been diagnosed on 8 December. Doctors who tried to raise the alarm with colleagues about a new disease in late December were reprimanded. Authorities did not publicly concede there was human-to-human transmission until 21 January.2

Sadly, Dr Li Wenliang, the Wuhan ophthalmologist who was hailed a hero in China for raising the alarm about the coronavirus in December 2019, himself died less than two months later as a result of catching the infection.

No doubt, there will be recriminations and counter-recriminations for each country’s reaction to the coronavirus for a long time to come. But none of that will help deal with the crisis, nor help us know how best to react personally.

How we respond will inevitably depend to an extent on our perspective.

The way coronavirus appears to an elderly infected woman, hovering between life and death in intensive care, is very different from how it looks to the doctor who is treating her, or to the family member who is unable to visit her, or to the pastor who is trying to help her. Another concern for many of us is whether we have it, or have had it; and whether we could pass it, or have it passed, on to anyone else.

We each need to make sense of coronavirus in three different ways: intellectually, emotionally and spiritually. All are important—and together they present a formidable challenge to anyone.

We all wish to have intellectual clarity, and many people will spend hours watching news programs and trawling the internet in the hope of gleaning some new piece of information that may help them understand what is happening. However, intellectual analysis does not easily penetrate a veil of tears. How does one bring sense—or if not sense then perhaps hope—in situations that are devastating, indeed irreversible?

The deep questions flow in an unending stream, and perhaps they are a torrent for you as you read this: Why has this happened to me, or to them? Why did they get infected and die and I was spared?

Where can I find alleviation of my physical and mental pain? Is there hope?

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WHAT PAIN DOES Human experience and elementary medicine teach us that pain has an important role to play in our lives. First, pain warns us of danger. If, for example, you put your hand too near the fire, your nervous system alerts your brain and you feel pain, which makes you withdraw your hand and so protects it from injury. We cannot say, then, that pain is all bad.

Second, a certain amount of pain is involved in physical development. For instance, if athletics, mountaineering or the physically demanding games of American football, British rugby and boxing are anything to go by, sports enthusiasts will put up with a great deal of pain in order to excel.

Human experience and elementary medicine teach us that pain has an important role to play in our lives.

Third, at a deeper level still, suffering and pain can contribute to character formation. There are many examples of resilience and fortitude in the face of suffering—molding characters of great quality.

There is truth in what the Russian author Fyodor Dostoevsky had his character Raskolnikov say: that he could not imagine a great person who had not suffered. “Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart.”3 Parents are often aware of this. On occasion, they will allow a child to go through a painful experience that they know, from their own journey, will profit them in the end.

I do not claim to know much about this, but let me speak personally for a moment. Some years ago, pain in my chest told me that something was badly wrong. I was rushed into a hospital, where the situa-

tion was deemed so serious that I had to say goodbye to my wife. Skillful medical intervention saved me in the nick of time from a massive heart attack that would, in all probability, have been fatal. In a sense, I had had an earthquake in my heart.

That kind of experience will leave no one unchanged. For me, it taught me a great deal. It taught me that I was mortal and that I was vulnerable; and I now feel that my life was given back to me as a precious gift to be treasured. It brought more urgency into my sense of purpose and calling.

DISASTERS AND WORLDVIEWS At almost the same time as my near-fatal heart attack, my sister lost her (just) married 22-year-old daughter to a malignant brain tumor. If I am going to thank God for my recovery—as I do—what shall I say about God to my sister? And what shall I say about God when it comes to a pandemic like coronavirus, where we can see no positive dimension whatsoever, only unrelieved disaster?

C. S. Lewis once wrote a letter that will resonate with most of us: “It is so [very] difficult to believe that the travail of all creation which God himself descended to share, at its most intense, may be necessary in the process of turning finite creatures (with free wills) into—well, Gods.”4 And we could now add the coronavirus to this concern.

Lewis was a one-time atheist who became a Christian in middle age and who explored the problems of pain, suffering and evil in two books: The Problem of Pain and A Grief Observed. They both illustrate the fact that our attitude to these deep issues is influenced by our worldview— the framework, built up over the years, which contains the thinking and experience that each of us brings to bear on the big questions about life, death and the meaning of existence. We all have such a framework, however much or little we have thought about it.

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James Sire, in a very helpful book entitled The Universe Next Door, points out that there are essentially only three major families of worldviews. First, there is the theistic worldview, held by the three Abrahamic religions—Judaism, Christianity and Islam. This teaches that there is a God who created and upholds the world and who created human beings in his image.

(Notice that I said “families” of worldviews; there are crucial variants within each category, as any Jew, Christian or Muslim who takes their holy book seriously will tell you.)

Second, there is the polar opposite of the theistic approach—the atheistic worldview, which holds that this universe (or multiverse) is all that there is; there is no supernatural dimension. Third, there is the pantheistic worldview, which merges the concepts of God and the world into one impersonal entity.

I am also well aware that there are people who take a skeptical or agnostic perspective. But no one is skeptical or agnostic about everything, and so deep down most people fit somewhere into one of the three worldviews just mentioned.

I fit into this picture, too. I have a worldview. I am a Christian, and I shall therefore try to make clear why I think that Christianity has something to say about the issue of natural disasters like coronavirus— something that is not to be found elsewhere. Perhaps you will agree with me, and perhaps not. But I hope after you read this reflection you might understand why Christians are able to speak confidently about hope and to feel a sense of peace, even in a world of uncertainty in which death has suddenly loomed closer.

EVIDENCE OF LOVE We need convincing evidence of the goodness of God’s character if we are to trust Him. I would therefore ask you at this point to listen to the core of Christian teaching—

whether you are familiar with it or whether it is new to you—and to try to understand it before concluding that belief in God is inconsistent with the existence of the coronavirus, or any other pandemic, disease or fracture in the natural world.

Christianity claims that the man Jesus Christ is God incarnate—the Creator become human. At the heart of its message is the death of Jesus Christ on a cross just outside Jerusalem. The question at once arises: if he is God incarnate, what is he doing on a cross? Well, it at the very least means that God has not remained distant from human pain and suffering but has Himself experienced it.

Therefore, a Christian is not so much a person who has solved the problem of pain, suffering and the coronavirus, but who has come to love and trust a God who has Himself suffered.

That, though, is only half of the story.

If that suffering had been the end of what Jesus did, we would never have heard about it. But it was not the end. The message that set Jerusalem buzzing that first Easter— the message that riveted the first-century world—was that Jesus had conquered death: that he had risen from the dead and would be the final Judge of humanity.

A Christian is not so much a person who has solved the problem of pain, suffering and the coronavirus, but who has come to love and trust a God who has Himself suffered.

The importance of this cannot be overestimated. It addresses a fundamental difficulty that the atheistic worldview cannot cope with—the problem of ultimate justice. As we are all aware, untold millions

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of human beings throughout history have suffered grievous injustice, and after lives of misery have died without any redress. No doubt, that will also be true of some of the many victims of the coronavirus.

These people did not receive justice in this life. According to atheism, since death is the end, there is no next life in which justice could be done. If there is no Final Judge, there can be no ultimate justice.

But the resurrection declares that justice is not an illusion and that our desire for justice is not futile. The abusers, terrorists and evil men and women of this world will one day be brought to justice. When I have tried to make this point to atheists, they often say that the thing to do is to work for justice in this world. I, of course, agree— working for justice is a Christian duty. But I also point out to them that this does not go any distance towards solving the matter of ultimate justice. Atheism, by definition, knows none. Atheism is an affront to our moral sense.

By contrast, the biblical view is that ultimate justice is very real. God is the authority behind the moral law, and He will be its Vindicator. There will, in consequence, be a final judgment, when perfect justice will be done in respect of every injustice that has ever been committed from earth’s beginning to its end. Justice is not a mockery.

When the Christian apostle Paul lectured to the philosophers at the Areopagus Council in Athens, he told his audience that Jesus had been raised from the dead and appointed Judge of the world—a fact that guarantees that there will eventually be an ultimate answer to the deepest human questions.

There is a human tendency to long for justice to be done, but there is also a tendency to react negatively to the message of ultimate justice, because it raises the question of our own position before God. “I couldn’t believe in a God like that,” some say, even as they protest at moral evil and

accuse God of failing to intervene! Here is the problem with our natural response to God’s future judgment: we welcome God’s intervention only so long as it is an intervention in the lives of others and not of ours.

The fact is that we tend to see the evil in others, not in ourselves. So, when we think of what God should do, most of us would hold the view that God should be getting rid of the very evil people around us, but never us.

After all, we are not as bad as all that.

The Bible teaches, though, that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). None of us has kept our own moral standards, let alone God’s—the Ten Commandments tell us that all too clearly (see Exodus 20:3-17).

Therefore, we all need a solution to the problem of the sin and guilt that—whether we know it or not—comes between us and God. According to Christianity, that solution lies once more in the cross and the resurrection of Jesus. These events do not simply give us a way into the problem of evil and pain and a resolution of the problem of justice. They show us what the name of Jesus means—“he will save his people from their sins” (Matthew 1:21). Because of the death and resurrection of Jesus, those who repent of (which means “turn away from”) their own evil and their own contribution to human pain and suffering—those who trust Jesus as their Lord—receive forgiveness; peace with the personal God who created and upholds the universe; a new life with new powers; and the promise of a world where suffering will be no more.

Here Christianity does not compete with any other philosophy or religion—for the simple reason that no one else offers us forgiveness and peace with God that can be known in this life and endures eternally.

A Christian, then, is not a person who has solved the problem of suffering but one who has come to love and trust the God who has suffered for them.

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TWO CROWNS So how can this help us cope with disasters and pandemics?

The coronavirus is so called because it visibly resembles a crown (“corona” in Latin). A crown is a symbol of power and authority—and certainly this virus has colossal power over us humans. It is invisible to the naked eye, and yet just think about what it has forced many millions— indeed, billions—of us to do and not do.

It also forcibly reminds us of our vulnerability. It is easy to forget that we humans are mortal. The coronavirus is evidence that both our relationship with creation and creation’s relationship with us are disordered; and that this is not an accident.

But hope is found in another corona: the crown of thorns that was forced on Jesus’ head at his trial before his execution.

That corona shows us just how deep the break between creature and Creator goes. Earth is God’s creation, not ours.

We are not its owner, but we seek to be.

We are only tenants and stewards, and flawed ones at that—many of us have made a mess of our own lives and even those of others, to say nothing about what we have done to the planet. There cannot be two paradises for humans, one in fellowship with God and one without Him. The coronavirus is very rapidly demolishing the illusion that we can build perfection on earth—and turning our initial lackadaisical, even complacent response into real fear, frustration and anger.

In a fractured world, damaged through the consequences of human sin, pain and suffering are inevitable.

Perhaps we had hidden from this reality until coronavirus rampaged across the globe. Now, we cannot ignore it, nor the big questions about life and death, which it prompts. Here is C.S. Lewis again:

We can ignore even pleasure.

But pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.5 Perhaps the coronavirus might function as a huge loudspeaker, reminding us of the ultimate statistic: that one out of every one of us dies. If this induces us to look to the God we may have ignored for years, but who wore a crown of thorns in order to bring us back into relationship with Him and into a new, unfractured world beyond death, then the coronavirus, in spite of the havoc it has wreaked, will have served a very healthy purpose.

John Lennox is Professor of Mathematics (emeritus) at the University of Oxford and Adjunct Lecturer at OCCA the Oxford Centre for Christian Apologetics.

1

Mattia Ferraresi, God vs. Coronavirus, The New York Times (March 10, 2020), https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/10/ opinion/coronavirus-church-religion.html.

2 Helen Davidson, “First Covid-19 case happened in November, China government records show – report,” The Guardian (March 13, 2020), https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/ mar/13/first-covid-19-case-happened-innovember-china-government-recordsshow-report.

3 Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment (Clayton, DE: Prestwick House Literary Touchstone Classic, 2005), 233.

4 See “To Belle Allen” (November 1, 1954) in C.S. Lewis, The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis, Volume 3: Narnia, Cambridge, and Joy, 1950 1963 (New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 2007), 520. Lewis is not saying here that creatures—humans—literally become God. He is rather referring to the fact that becoming a Christian through trusting Christ means that we are brought into God’s family as his sons and daughters (see John 1:12-13; John 3:1-21).

5 C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1940), 81.

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WHY AREN’T YOU HELPING ME?

By Derek Caldwell

“Are you the one who is to come, or shall we look for another?”

C ONFUSED BY HIS imprisonment, John the Baptist wanted to know if Jesus was really the promised rescuer of God’s people.

If John did not interact personally with Jesus when he was growing up, he surely would have heard through his parents, Zechariah and Elizabeth, that he was meant to prepare the way for Jesus. As a baby in the womb, John had leapt when Mary visited his parents. John was the “prophet of the Most High” who had already heard a voice from heaven declare of Jesus: “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased” (Matthew 3:17).

And yet, John asks if Jesus is the one who is to come. Prison will do that to you.

But so will everyday life.

When I first became a Christian, I pictured myself standing on top of a mountain dressed like the “Man in Black,” Johnny Cash, high above the unright-

eousness below. There are so many problems with this image and what I thought being a Christian was going to be. I thought that life would subjectively feel better and happier and that I would not stumble or struggle or sin anymore.

There are a few points in my life after that where I could have asked Jesus, “Are you the one who is to come?” This is a legitimate question. Sometimes it is an academic question, but most of the time it is an emotional one (not that the two are mutually exclusive). Emotionally, for me, the easy life that was promised (or so I thought) did not come. I did everything right, didn’t I? I went to seminary. I married a Christian girl. I had been delivered from generalized anxiety disorder, and I gave God the credit for it. I am doing this right.

I am one of the good ones. A few years later, after a divorce and in the midst of a severe mental health crisis, I stood screaming to God in an apartment I couldn’t afford, “Why aren’t you helping me?”

A debate raged inside. Are you the one? Is it time to look for another? But where else shall I go, for only Christ has the words of eternal life.

Like many of my fellow melancholics, I love the transcendent God, but I long for the immanent one. Grand aesthetic statements and acknowledgments of the God infinitely more wise, more good, and more powerful give me much hope, but I need the one who wipes my tears and heals my wounds and holds me so close that I can’t tell if the pulse I feel is mine or his. And in truth, I need them to be the same pulse because mine is too tired, frail, and skittish to support itself. It is the pulse of a radar signal in space, just hoping that someone somewhere out there in the infinite void is listening.

I learned from Martin Luther that I was probably looking for God in all the wrong places. I was looking for a warrior king in the sky and missing the long-sufferer crying next to me. I wanted God to make me new, now. I wanted God to take away all pain, now. I wanted God to smite my enemies, so that I might show them

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mercy (and gain praise) now. Ultimately, I wanted an easy life of comfort. I gave Christ my life—didn’t he owe me?

But it was a reflection on Christmas that showed me the way out. I had been trying to stand on that mountain, not realizing that God had called me to witness the Savior in a manger. I had stumbled into a prison of the mind, locked into an exhausting cycle of hyper self-awareness and a grief that felt like hopeless fear. All I could see was my suffering and all I could hear was God’s deafening silence.

In a Christmas letter to a fiancée he would never have the chance to marry, Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote from his own literal prison cell: Be brave for my sake, dearest Maria, even if this letter is your only token of my love this Christmas-tide. We shall both experience a few dark hours—why should we disguise that from each other? We shall ponder the incomprehensibility of our lot and be assailed by the question of why, over and above the darkness already enshrouding humanity, we should be subjected to the bitter anguish of a separation whose purpose we fail to understand....

And then, just when everything is bearing down on us to such an extent that we can scarcely withstand it, the Christmas message comes to tell us that all our ideas are wrong, and that what we take to be evil and dark is really good and light because it comes from God. Our eyes are at fault, that is all. God is in the manger, wealth in poverty, light in darkness, succor in abandonment. No evil can befall us; whatever men may do to us, they cannot but serve the God who is secretly revealed as love and rules the world and our lives.1 Jesus did respond to John the Baptist, by the way. He said to John’s messengers: “Go and tell John what you have seen and heard: the blind receive

their sight, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, the poor have good news preached to them. And blessed is the one who is not offended by me.”2 Theologians point out that the words of Jesus here are allusions back to passages from Isaiah in which God rescues his people.3 It is a declaration of who Jesus is (God) and what he is doing (inaugurating God’s kingdom). It is a glimpse of the reality to come. And it is a comfort to John and to us: The God who seems like pure transcendence from our cell is close in his loving immanence. We may not notice it, but “our eyes are at fault, that is all.”

We are in the throes of a global crisis, a cultural moment in which much has been given up and there is great need for comfort. For Lent, we typically give up some comfort or worldly pleasure for forty days. This year, many of us are inadvertently giving up more than we ever imagined. Let us also relinquish something that stopped giving comfort a long time ago: Pretense. Old eyes. Old ideas. The false idea that our lives here are about maximizing happiness and that a lack of that happiness must correspond to a lack of God’s love, goodness, or existence. Jesus did not just go without food for forty days in the wilderness. He also put to death the devil’s temptations of a painless, exalted life. Our treasures are not here; they are with our Father, with “him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine.”4 Derek Caldwell serves on the correspondence team at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries.

1

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, God Is in the Manger: Reflections on Advent and Christmas (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010), 5.

2 See Matthew 11:4-6 and Luke 7:22-23.

3 See especially Isaiah 35:4-6 and 61:1-3.

Robert M. Bowman, Jr. & J. Ed Komoszewski, Putting Jesus in His Place (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel, 2007), 203.

4 See Ephesians 3:20.

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Through the pages of Scripture, we discover both how profound and how down-to-earth Jesus is. While repeatedly claiming titles that are proper only when used by God, Jesus is nevertheless a person of the soil, one who comes close to us and to our earthly struggles.

A PERSON OF THE SOIL

By Ravi Zacharias O N C HRISTMAS D AY 2018, the Indian publication The Wire posted an article by Rohit Kumar titled, “How Would Jesus Have Fared Amongst Contemporary Indian Godmen?” Kumar had heard the term Yeshu Baba while visiting a jail in the company of a group of children performing a Christmas program for the inmates.

At the end of the program, one of the prisoners thanked the children for bringing their celebration of the birth of Yeshu Baba to the prison.

Kumar had already heard other titles for Jesus in Hinduism like “Isa Masih,” but he felt this new title sounded more familiar and human. He began to compare Jesus to a contemporary Indian baba, a holy man or sage, asking himself the question in the title of the article: How would Jesus have fared among contemporary Indian gurus or godmen? To answer the question, he decided to read the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, which tell the life story of Jesus. He concluded that Jesus didn’t fare very well by comparison with Indian godmen.

Kumar observed, for instance, that while the patronage of the wealthy is essential for any baba, Yeshu Baba seemed to show no favoritism to the rich. He pointed to the story in Mark 10:17–31 of the rich young ruler who wanted to follow Jesus, to whom Jesus said, “Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me” (verse 21). Kumar commented that a modern-day baba would have leveraged the young man’s wealth for his movement rather than pointing out, as Jesus did in verse 25, the incompatibility between wealth and spirituality.

In terms of temple worship, Yeshu Baba did not direct the woman in John 4:21 to any particular place, saying, “God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth” (verse 24)—a stark contrast to what a modern-day baba would request about where to worship.

Yeshu also typically stood with marginalized women of his day (see, e.g., John 8:1–11), treating them as equals and showing them respect and understanding, a clear departure from the attitudes of his day and, to a lesser degree, the attitudes of the modern day. Yeshu further encouraged his disciples in Matthew 6 and 7 to seek forgiveness from each other before making offerings to God, and he emphasized humility and service to others out of sight of anyone’s observation.

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Kumar reached a surprising conclusion: “Yeshu Baba would have been a disaster as a contemporary Indian godman . . . Pro-service, anti-ritualism; pro-poor, anti-elitism; pro-women, anti-patriarchalism; pro-freedom, anti-orthodoxy; Yeshu Baba’s career as a godman would have ended before it began.

“Had he been around,” Kumar continued, “he would have most probably found no traction at all with the rich, the powerful and the religious. He might, on the other hand, have found huge appeal amongst the marginalized, the feminists and the liberal. Who’s to say, I might even have become one of his followers.”1 India, of course, is full of gurus.Many Indians, high and low, revere, respect, and admire their self-attained Knowledge and ability to live an honorable life. You can often see the bony figure of an ascetic walking along the side of a road, carrying a staff with a small bag draped on his shoulders. The ascetic’s spiritual pilgrimage might go on for days. Often a “holy man,” bowl in hand, would knock on the door of our home in Delhi, hoping for an Excerpted from Seeing Jesus extra portion of rice from the East: A Fresh Look and dhal (a traditional at History’s Most Influential Indian soup). While Figure (Zondervan, 2020) their lifestyle is austere,

by Ravi Zacharias and Abdu Murray. Used by permission. gurus often become mentors for sophisticated businessmen and women and welleducated, highly placed officials.

The teachings of these gurus, or babas, can be shallow or deep. A cynical skeptic once summarized a scenario this way: I can get you a real following if you follow my advice. Wear either a saffron-colored robe or a spotless white pyjama and kurta [the loose-

fitting trousers shirt worn by Indian sages] and take up the lotus position with your eyes closed. Have some ash freshly lining your forehead. I will bring ten friends of mine who will sit in your presence, and all you need to do is come up with about fifteen or twenty one-liners such as, “Your hand must be full but your head empty.” “Run and never look back because you give an advantage to the pursuer.” “Follow the light wherever it leads, and the prosperity of your shadow will always follow you.” Just come up with some “wow” statements. They will be entranced by your wisdom, and the next week each one of them will bring ten friends. Within a year, I can make you a millionaire with thousands of followers.2 Such cynicism is often warranted, as many so-called “wise men” prey on the gullible and desperate in India who hunger for answers and meaning in life. Of course, such marketing-oriented versions of mystical thought do a disservice to outstanding Hindu thinkers such as Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902), the Hindu monk whose speech caused a sensation at Chicago’s Parliament of World Religions in 1893. He had studied both Western and Eastern philosophy, bringing a level of philosophical sophistication far superior to popular guruism.

From the depths of philosophy to shallow popular practices, much Eastern thought ranges from the highly sophisticated to the crassly commercial. Does it not strike us as strange that the land that has exported yoga and meditation is also steeped in corruption and oppression?

Yet we see this tragic juxtaposition around the world, and with every religion. These glaring tensions invite scorn from skeptics and doubt from those seeking reasons to believe.

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The claims of Jesus are unique and far surpass the maxims of ethical behavior.

They go to the core of life’s purpose. In the land of gurus, Jesus is seen as, at best, another guru. But is he? Or is he something else entirely?

One of my friends is a professor at a fine university. Of Jewish stock, he maintains that it is impossible to read the gospel of John three times in a row and not be persuaded of Jesus’ extraordinary nature. So I put his challenge to the test and discovered both how profound and how down-to-earth Jesus is.

In Hindi we have an expression to describe a “real” person: dharti ka aadmi.

It means “a person of the soil.” Jesus’ message and his understanding heart come through again and again in John’s gospel.

While Jesus repeatedly claims titles that are proper only when used by God,3 he is nevertheless of the soil.

Merrill Tenney, the famed biblical scholar, refers to the gospel of John as a story steeped in irony. He suggests that in the story of Jesus, we don’t see someone so beyond the realm of our experience that we can’t relate. Instead, we see someone who came close to us and to our earthly struggles but still speaks of another kingdom. Tenney comments: In the life of Jesus Himself irony is apparent. Although He was virtuous, He suffered all possible indignities; majestic, He died in ignominy; powerful, he expired in weakness . . .

He claimed to possess the water of life, and He died thirsting. He claimed to be the light of the world, and He died in darkness. He claimed to be the good shepherd, and he died in the fangs of the wolves. He claimed to be the truth, and He was crucified as an impostor. He claimed to be the resurrection and the life, and He expired sooner than most victims of crucifixion usually did, so that Pilate was amazed.4

We must see that Jesus’ crucifixion is more than ironic. It was a shocking, indeed numbing, ending for the people who believed him to be the victor. As the thief on the cross said, “Aren’t you the Messiah? Save yourself and us!” (Luke 23:39). Given all of Jesus’ titles, the Eastern mind naturally expects a different ending. The downward trajectory of Jesus’ story, if one stops short of the glorious resurrection ending, is nothing less than a monumental tragedy. If, like his disciples, we walk away after Calvary, we will utter the same forlorn words they expressed: “We had hoped” (see Luke 24:21).

In the story of Jesus, we don’t see someone so beyond the realm of our experience that we can’t relate. Instead, we see someone who came close to us and to our earthly struggles but still speaks of another kingdom.

Stories are unfortunately not always read in their entirety. Sometimes we miss the ending. Other times we miss the beginning. Reading the five books of Moses or the historical books of the Old Testament, we see the same pendulum-like swing between triumph and tragedy. The Israelite kings never lived the same pattern, good or bad, one after the other.

Sometimes even the godly ones, such as Josiah, ended badly. There is a jagged edge to the reality of the Old Testament. It is the gospel—the story of Christ’s advent, teaching, death,and resurrection—that provides the logical end and only lasting hope.

Though we sometimes see an incredibly nuanced similarity between religions, we must not miss the defining

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differences. For example, the Bhagavad Gita is the climax of the Mahābhārata, two sacred scriptures of Hinduism. Much like the Old Testament’s promise to the gospel’s fulfillment, the Mahābhārata tells the story while the Gita gives the fulfillment. But in the Gita, “The Song,” while the god Krishna talks of duty and sacrifice, there is no supreme sacrifice (other than the duty to go to war even with your brother). In the Christian gospel, however, the supreme sacrifice of the Savior deals decisively with the war within us.

Tragically, Christ followers too often have watered down this matchless story to transform the Christian message into a “Western faith” of joy, peace, and success.

So many of us in the West would rather talk of the Enlightenment or various philosophical movements than about our own walk in the darkness, or of cultural drift rather than our own soul struggles.

Yes, when tragedy strikes a celebrity or someone close to us, we tend to doubt God and ask, “Why?” But we dare not probe too deeply, busying ourselves instead with mental health awareness and suicide hotlines, which, while good and necessary, don’t get to the heart of the matter.

The Bible addresses the individual struggle for meaning largely in the person of Jesus. His answer is not merely in statements but in himself.

To be sure, the Eastern mind also asks the same question, but not because it doubts God’s existence. Rather, like Job, it wishes to probe the mystery of personal pain and individual struggle. The Bible addresses the individual struggle for meaning largely in the person of Jesus. His answer is not merely in statements but in himself.

One of India’s greatest movies is Mother India, filmed in 1957. It portrays a family struggling with ever-present pain.

Its songs highlight wounded lives in a wounded culture. Some of the lyrics display a struggle with fatalism—others, with survival amidst persecution and death. Mother India is this great nation’s parallel to Fiddler on the Roof, the story of a Jewish family fleeing one home and one pogrom after another to await the Messiah.

John captures this journey by devoting more than half of the book to Jesus’ suffering path. A wounded culture finds its best answer in a wounded Savior.

Let’s trace who this Savior is.

KNOWING THE AUTHOR The gospel of John begins much like Genesis, the first book of the Bible: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him, all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” (John 1:1–5).

This passage does not say, “In the beginning was a guru, or a sage, or a baba,” which would have been securely in the comfort zone of the Eastern reader of a pantheistic bent. But it would not have addressed his or her spiritual hunger. This passage introduces us to a Teacher who comes as a revelation of God himself.

The concept of revelation is far different in the East. The Hindu scriptures are divided into the Shruti and the Smriti.

The first is best described as, “That which was heard,” the second as, “that which was remembered.” In the Qur’an, the focus is on the one who received the revelation. In Buddhism, the sermons of Buddha form the scriptures. Eastern sages are more gnostic in the sense that they “know.”

They have “received” knowledge through

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various means. Whatever technique they have practiced has brought them insight.

That is the starting point.

The Bible’s focus, however, is not on the one who received the message— the receptor—but on the one who revealed truth—the Revealer, who is also the Embodiment of God incarnate, the culminating revelation. It is not so much “what was heard” or “what was remembered” but who did the revealing and who enabled the receptors to remember. Not even a prophet is the revelation. It is God incarnate himself. “In the past God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom also he made the universe” (Hebrews 1:1–2).

John 1 gives us a fascinating metaphor of “the Word.” Somebody said to me once, “It could just as easily have said, ‘In the beginning was a thought.’”

I answered, “Yes, but even that would presuppose a ‘thinker.’ ” What we have is the metaphor of language and revelation. But notice the shift—God’s word, and God as Word; God’s light, and God as light; God as the revealer, and God as the revelation; God as the messenger, and God as the message. God is a communicating God, and God is a self-revealing God. That is why we have voices right from the beginning of the biblical story, as discussed in the previous chapter. As Francis Schaeffer said, “He is there and he is not silent.”5 The background is being set. Light, life, and the message of God are within reach. As Jesus will tell his disciples, we are now the intercessors through the ultimate Intercessor (see John 17). His coming was predicted and his life was demonstrably embodied. That life walked and talked and engaged individuals. Some of these encounters appear in John but nowhere else. John tells us he has told them to us so we might know who Jesus really is (see John 20:30–31).

During Jesus’ arrest, Pontius Pilate asked him a pragmatic and politically nuanced question: “Are you a king?” (see John 18:33). Exposing Pilate’s motives, Jesus asked his interlocutor if this was a genuine question or a setup. But then Jesus went on to say, “My kingdom is not of this world . . . Everyone on the side of truth listens to me” (verses 36–37). The goal of Jesus’ reign is not geographical conquest. It is not about Hindustan or the House of Islam or a Christian country.

The rule of God comes to us as individuals, one by one. We invite his reign; we obey his voice.

Jesus is the focus. Jesus is God incarnate. Jesus brings the miracle of light and life in us because of who he is. In John, the first-person singular is used with reference to Jesus a massive 118 times—more than in the first three Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) combined. John clearly is telling us that Jesus is more than “Yeshu Baba.” He is “Yeshu Bhagwan,” Jesus God. Not merely Jesus Guru; Jesus Savior. It is an all-defining difference. Yeshu Baba is a touching and culturally beautiful description, but it does not express the vast difference between a baba and the divine person of Jesus. In the eyes of God, even a guru needs the Savior.

How does John go about unveiling this mystery and mastery of Jesus Christ?

WHO IS HE? If somebody were to ask me who I am, I would give my name. If he or she were to ask me for more information, I would give my heritage, my vocation, my family background, etc. I would never think of giving myself the prerogative of being a guide to mankind. “I am,” for me, is followed by other qualifiers and defines my relationships.

With Jesus it is transcendentally different. For him, the message of each “I am” in John is as deep as it is broad. These incredibly powerful “I am” metaphors expand our grasp of his person and mission.

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• “I am the bread of life” (John 6:35).

• “I am the light of the world” (John 8:12).

• “I am the gate for the sheep” (John 10:7).

• “I am the good shepherd” (John 10:11).

• “I am the resurrection and the life” (John 11:25).

• “I am the way and the truth and the life” (John 14:6).

• “I am the true vine” (John 15:1).

• Then the most staggering claim of all: “Before Abraham was born, I am!”

(John 8:58).

That last claim motivated Jesus’ opponents to kill him. He did not “come” into being. Jesus was claiming that it is impossible for him not to be. He is the eternal “I Am.” The child was born; the Son is given (Isaiah 9:6). Yet the Son eternally exists. His coming was not a reincarnation; his coming was the incarnation.

HIS TESTIMONIALS—SO THAT YOU MIGHT BE SURE Lest we miss the point, the gospel of John gives us not only titles, claims, and stories about Jesus’ identity; it also provides an intensity of argument. The very ideas of the Logos, the Word—the logic, the concepts—are all connected to reasoning and propositional truth. John offered evidence for Jesus’ authority and authenticity because he wanted the reader not just to believe but to know that Jesus’ claims about himself are true. This is not a gnostic “knowing” available only to the few. It is available to all who seek to know the truth.

Because truth is of paramount importance, claims of truth must be supported. The veracity of the message and the messenger is of primary importance.

There are at least five witnesses in Scripture to validate Jesus’ statements.

1. The witness of his works.

The works or the miracles Jesus performed testified to one greater than a mere man.

As noted by Nicodemus, “No one could perform the signs you are doing if God were not with him” (John 3:2). It is fascinating that Nicodemus doesn’t merely refer to miracles but to “signs”—indicators to those who knew the Scriptures.

Another time, the religious authorities challenged Jesus to provide a sign to prove his authority. He replied, “Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days” (John 2:19). His detractors questioned how something that had taken nearly fifty years to build could be rebuilt in three days. The disciples remembered this too, after he rose from the dead “on the third day” (Luke 24:7–8).

2. The witness of his Father.

Jesus’ works left his detractors perplexed as they tried to explain away what he was doing. So they switched gears and criticized him for working on a Sabbath. But they were in for a shock when Jesus reached even higher for his authority. In John 5:17, Jesus said, “My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I too am working.” In the fourth gospel, Jesus never refers to God as “our Father.” It is either “my Father” or “your Father.” But “my Father” was clearly a claim that was so personal his accusers said he called God his own Father.

Jesus’ clearest affirmation from his Father came at his baptism, when the Spirit of God descended on him as he was praying and a voice from heaven that was heard by others said, “You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased” (Luke 3:22). In John 8:14–18, Jesus also claims that the Father’s authority is his own authority. Their judgments are always in sync, one with the other. God’s

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affirmation of Jesus as his Son and Jesus’ many references to God as his Father together demonstrate the uniqueness of Jesus’ claim. Even if we refuse to accept Jesus’ words about himself, we cannot escape the Father’s affirmation.

which we must cope: the evil in our hearts and death.”6 Jesus helps us deal with these two giants—the evil in our hearts and death.

Let us look at the witness of his presence in the life of one who believes in him.

3. The witness of the Scriptures.

Although some of the other gospel writers give us more prophecies about Jesus, John gives us at least eighteen references to the Old Testament. These include a variety of texts, ranging from the Pentateuch, the Wisdom literature, and both the Major and Minor Prophets, including a very significant prophecy from Micah 5:2: “But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins are from of old, from ancient times.”

These three “witnesses”—the attestations of Jesus’ works, his Father, and the Scriptures—were clearly claimed by Jesus.

They are powerful enough. And after the resurrection, two other significant witnesses were added.

THE WITNESS OF HIS PRESENCE —A SUBJECTIVE APPROPRIATION

4. The witness of the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the disciples (Acts 2:1–12)—witnessed by large numbers.

5. The witness of the sudden boldness of the disciples (Acts 2:14 and throughout the rest of the New Testament)—demonstrated through the disciples’ teaching and conduct.

Those two witnesses round off the objective support of who Jesus was. But we must also look at the subjective evidence. After the death of his son, Yale philosopher Nicholas Wolterstorff commented, “When we have overcome absence with phone calls, winglessness with airplanes, summer heat with air-conditioning—when we have overcome all these and much more besides, then there will abide two things with

From the Eastern point of view, two things immediately stand out from the preceding testimonials. No one ever made such claims of stupendous proportions while bearing the marks of humble humanity.

What is it about Jesus that makes these claims possible? As I read them, my Eastern mind goes to work. What do his claims say about me?

• I am living in darkness.

• I am destined for death.

• I am like a lost sheep looking for my home.

• I read about many bad shepherds.

• I am merely a branch in search of roots.

• I struggle with finding the way; I am often beguiled by a lie; and life simply seems a drudgery one day after the next.

• There was a time when I was not; then there was a time when I came to be.

Just this last point is worth focusing on for a moment.

My mother was a very private person.

But after she moved to Canada, she would often talk of her younger days. One time, she told my wife of the time when she had been formally engaged by her parents to a Hindu man from another city. My mother came from a nominal Christian home, so this news came as a surprise. But as the wedding date got closer, no invitations were sent or arrangements made. Finally, the day of the wedding came and went with no ceremony. So my mother mus-

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FIVE WITNESSES Because truth is of paramount importance, claims of truth must be supported. The veracity of the message and the messenger is of primary importance. There are at least five witnesses in Scripture to validate Jesus’ statements.

1. The witness of his works.

2. The witness of his Father.

3. The witness of the Scriptures.

4. The witness of the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the disciples.

5. The witness of the sudden boldness of the disciples.

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tered the courage to ask her mother what had happened. My grandmother very casually answered, “Oh, that marriage is off; he died of heatstroke some weeks ago when he was riding a bullock cart in his village.” This put her daughter, my mother, into a state of shock, even though she had not wanted the marriage.

Now here’s an important point for the purpose of our discussion. If the woman who became my mother had instead married that Hindu man, I would never have been born. There would never have been a person with my DNA. This fact impressed on me the inescapable truth that all of us are contingent beings who at one time never existed and for whom the possibility existed of nonbeing. My birth was not necessary. It just happened to be.

But that reality is not true of Jesus.

There never was a time when he was not, in his essence. “I am” was his ultimate claim. So if Jesus is who he claims to be, he not only gives me answers; he, in his person, is the answer.

THE LONGING FOR LOVE AND THE FEAR OF THE WORD Everything in the gospel of John points to why the author is called “the disciple whom Jesus loved” (see John 13:21– 30;18:15–18; 19:26–27; 21:7; 21:20) and who in turn loved Jesus. There is a nervousness in India with the word love. In an Eastern home, it is common to hear this statement: “My father has never told me that he loves me.” This does not mean that love is not there. During my entire life before my mother’s death, I never once heard my dad tell my mother he loved her.

My sister is married to a former Hindu.

When her father-in-law was dying, he experienced a deathbed conversion. At that moment of settling his destiny, he called the family to his side to tell them he had just committed his life to Jesus. Then

he asked his wife to come closer, saying to her, “In all the years I have known you, I have never called you my sweetheart, but I want to do that now.”

To a Westerner who sprinkles “honey” into every other sentence as he speaks to his wife, this Eastern cultural characteristic is incomprehensible. Aside from young people who are trying to be more open about how they feel, talk of love in India is mostly confined to the movies, where it is given free rein. This theme of love has played hide-and-seek for a long time in the East. We seek it and then hide it.

So to open the Bible and read that God actually loves us is a breathtaking concept that invades an emotionally barricaded culture. Scripture presents a loving Savior who is unafraid to tell us that he loves us and that we can have a loving relationship with our Creator. He defines who he is and sustains his truth claims by evidences that have transcended time.

This is the true “Yeshu Baba.”

Ravi Zacharias is Founder and Chairman of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Alpharetta, GA. 1

Rohit Kumar, “How Would Jesus Have Fared Amongst Contemporary Indian Godmen,” The Wire, December 25, 2018, https://thewire.in/religion/how-wouldjesus-havefared-amongst -contemporary -indian-godmen.

2 Shared in a conversation with a friend who is a Christian from a Hindu background.

His brother, an atheist skeptic, had set up this scenario to him.

3 See, for example, “bread of life” (6:35), “I Am” (8:58), and “the good shepherd” (10:14). There are many more in John.

4 Merrill Tenney, John: The Gospel of Belief: An Analytic Study of the Text (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1948), 52.

5 See Francis Schaeffer, He Is There and He Is Not Silent, 30th anniv. ed. (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale, 2001).

6 Nicholas Wolterstorff, Lament for a Son (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1987), 72–73.

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This article appeared in a similar form in the Winter 2003 issue of Just Thinking. See the Afterword for further details.

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“Our minds can shape the way a thing will be, because we act according to our expectations.”

—Filmmaker Federico Fellini1

By Danielle DuRant

OUR VIEW OF GOD M ANY CONVERSATIONS and experiences from years past are long forgotten. Yet there are some that remain as vivid as they were decades ago. We may not remember all the details, but they still whisper to us in their beauty, weep to us in their sorrow ... and even startle us from our sleep.

As an aside, I completed this article late one night and awoke the next morning to the terrible news of the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster. Like many of you, I remember where I was when the Challenger was lost: I was watching the launch in my college writing lab with my fellow tutors. I cannot fathom the losses sustained in such tragedies and pray in some way these feeble words might point to the source of all hope.

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A FACELESS FIGURE Although I haven’t read F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby since I was in the eleventh grade, I recall a disturbing motif that Fitzgerald weaves throughout his novel. The recurring scene is an advertising billboard with the eyes of Doctor T.J. Eckleburg looming behind yellow glasses.

Writes Fitzgerald, But above the gray land and the spasms of bleak dust which drift endlessly over it, you perceive, after a moment, the eyes of Doctor T.J. Eckleburg. The eyes of Doctor T.J. Eckleburg are blue and gigantic— their retinas are one yard high.

They look out of no face but, instead, from a pair of enormous yellow spectacles which pass over a nonexistent nose…. [H]is eyes, dimmed a little by many paintless days under sun and rain, brood on over the solemn dumping ground.

The valley of ashes....2 Equally disturbing is what this sign points to: under “Doctor Eckleburg’s persistent stare”3 lies a garage where tragedy soon unfolds. A faceless physician looks over “the valley of ashes,” and he is incapable of responding or being moved.

Of course, the Bible speaks of “the valley of ashes” in numerous instances.

This description is associated with the Kidron Valley surrounding Jerusalem, where David fled from his rebellious son Absalom, and King Josiah, under God’s reform, ordered the burning of vessels made for pagan gods.4 George Wilson, the disturbed garage owner in The Great Gatsby, identifies Doctor Eckleburg with God. But surely this chilling picture of an impotent, faceless figure is not representative of the God of the Scriptures—or is it?

“Why, Lord, do you stand far off?

Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble?” cries the psalmist (Psalm 10:1). The next ten verses of this psalm of lament characterize “the wicked” who taunts the righteous and arrogantly boasts, “God will never notice; he covers his face and never sees” (verse 11). Not insignificantly, of the 150 psalms, over one third of them are expressions of lament—a theme found throughout the Bible.

Nonetheless, this psalmist will soon interject words of hope and comfort: “But you, O God, do see trouble and grief; you consider it to take it in hand. The victim commits himself to you; you are the helper of the fatherless” (Psalm 10:14).

HEARTS AT BAY One of my grandmothers enjoyed F. Scott Fitzgerald’s writing, and we used to chat about literature often. I don’t remember many of those conversations, but I do remember one months before she died.

“Emily” was her name, but everyone called her “Sunny,” and that she was—bright, spunky, and good-natured. She married and had three children, and at seventy, became the oldest graduate at her university.

Yet when she was eight years old, she lost her father, whom she adored, just before Christmas. At the age of 82, she told me that when her father died, she “learned to stop wanting.”

I don’t recall how I responded— I don’t know that I quite understood. But I’ve wondered since, how does one learn to stop wanting and go on to live for so many years? Certainly, like many of her generation, she just persevered and rarely looked back. But sadly, though she was a Christian, I don’t know whether she ever sensed God’s comfort in her loss.

Perhaps many of us understand her response all too well, for in the place of such pain, we may feel abandoned by God. So, we learn to stop wanting anything from God or

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from others. We may whisper or rage in moments when our hearts sink into desolation: want nothing, hope in nothing, then nothing or no one can ever disappoint you.

However, is such a life truly livable?

Loss and longing are inescapable in our broken world, and throughout the Scriptures, God invites us to bring our heartaches to Him that He might renew our hope. In fact, the word “hope” and related words such as “desire” appear hundreds of times in the Bible. “You (God) have granted him the desire of his heart and have not withheld the request of his lips,” we read in Psalm 21:2. “Blessed is the man who trusts in the LORD, and whose hope is in the LORD,” writes the prophet (Jeremiah 17:7).

Likewise, the apostle Paul affirms that even in suffering, such “hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit whom He has given us” (Romans 5:5).

Nevertheless, hope pries one’s heart open again, doesn’t it? For to hope is to place one’s trust in someone, and for the Christian, namely in the God who seemingly deserted him or her. Thus, we keep our hearts at bay, albeit perhaps unwittingly, all the while believing we are resting in God’s providence or “the Lord’s will.” Or maybe we’re not resting at all, but instead angry and running from God’s presence.

YOUR REAL VIEW OF GOD Colleague Os Guinness rightly suggests that only through such crisis experience is our true picture of God revealed. In his timeless book Doubt, he writes, Think back to some crisis…. What did your attitudes then show you of your real view of God? Or think back over some deep personal concern and the way it was brought to prayer. In situations like these we see our real views of God. What faith is asking always reveals what it is assuming.5

Guinness describes the struggling person in a chapter aptly titled “Faith Out of Focus”: For some reason or other a believer gets into his head such a wrong idea of God that it comes between him and God or between him and trusting God. Since he does not recognize what he is doing, he blames God rather than his faulty picture, little realizing that God is not like that at all. Unable to see God as he is, he cannot trust him as he should, and doubt is the result.6 Then he concludes, “If our picture of God is wrong, then our whole presupposition of what it is possible for God to be or do is correspondingly altered.”7 So may I gently ask, when you dig below your doctrine, what does God look like to you—really—when you find yourself in the valley of ashes? Does He appear caring and compassionate, or perhaps unresponsive or dismissive? Does He match the portrait of God revealed in Scriptures—Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace (Isaiah 9:6)—or perhaps someone else?

This past year I found myself, as it were, staring again into the eyes of Doctor T.J. Eckleburg, and discovering, to my bewilderment, that this disturbing caricature symbolized my picture of God. In truth, I had seen these distant, emotionless eyes in a telling dream only a year before. I even wrote upon waking that while they seemed to represent God, “This is difficult to believe because I don’t think I see God in this way”—and most days I can wholeheartedly say that I don’t. However, one evening I perceived that God had closed a door, and He had nothing more to say to me about a certain matter. Suddenly, dread fell upon me. I sat stricken inside my car for three hours, as darkness descended, numbed by seeming abandonment. It was

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as if God walked out the door while I was still speaking with Him, dismissing my pain and me.

I was raised in a conservative, “Biblebelieving” church and was graduated from a leading evangelical seminary where I took most of my courses in biblical studies and theology. The arguments for God’s existence and the problem of evil didn’t trouble me in the light of the evidence of Scriptures and other conflicting worldviews. But there were a few times when I questioned God’s goodness. I see now—and this is critical—that in every instance it was because I perceived Him to be unresponsive, and thus unmoved. It wasn’t that I thought He was incapable of responding, but worse: He was able and yet indifferent to my heartache.

Studying God’s Word didn’t lead me to this conclusion; rather, my experience of loss did, and over time this “doctrine” shaped my picture of God. The night I sat stricken inside my car, though I could cite verses that countered my predicament, in my heart it certainly seemed God was unmoved by my pain.

Ravi Zacharias has often said that when we listen to questions about God, we must consider that there may be a deeper existential concern behind the intellectual queries—because behind every question is a questioner. In other words, might a pointed question about evil mask heartache and the real difficulty: Why did God allow this loss in my life?

GOD HAS A FACE It is not my intent, nor do I believe it is easily possible, to outline step by step how one’s view of God is transformed, and subsequently, one’s hope in Him. But surely, we must begin with his revealed Word. For in reality, unlike the faceless, emotionless Doctor T.J. Eckleburg, the triune God of the Bible has a face—and He seeks after us. Consider Jacob. God descended in the middle of night in the

form of a man to wrestle him and bless him. “So Jacob called the name of the place Peniel (meaning “the face of God”), saying, ‘For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life has been delivered’” (Genesis 32:30).

God also revealed Himself to Moses in a burning bush, announcing, “I AM WHO I AM” (Exodus 3:14). By this namesake, He identified Himself as the unchanging, faithful and living God, both now and forevermore. God said to Moses, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob,” reminding Moses of his covenant with Abraham and his descendants (Exodus 3:6). Incredibly, God intimately associates his name with mere mortals—the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob—calling attention to the truth that He desires a relationship with his people.

We see this portrait of a relational, desiring God throughout the Old Testament, whether in his words through the psalmists’ yearning, Isaiah’s wooing, or Hosea’s heartache: “How can I give you up, O Ephraim? How can I hand you over, O Israel? … My heart recoils within me; my compassion grows warm and tender” (Hosea 11:8). “I AM WHO I AM” is the God of the past, present, and future, who has come near to identify with his people and to call them by name.

The Scriptures declare that this God who comes near is, in truth, the God who “made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ Jesus” (2 Corinthians 4:6). He is Jesus, who, “upon seeing the people, he felt compassion for them, because they were distressed and dispirited like sheep without a shepherd” (Matthew 9:36). This Jesus, who when he “saw the city [of Jerusalem] … wept over it” (Luke 19:41). This Jesus who came “to bind up the brokenhearted … to comfort all who mourn, and provide for those who grieve in Zion, to bestow on them a crown of beauty

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instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair” (Isaiah 61:1-3; cf. Luke 4:18-19). This Jesus who asked his father “to give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever”—the Holy Spirit, our comforter (John 14:16).

Although painful, there is a bittersweet beauty in brokenness, for in this valley of ashes stands Jesus, the crucified one, wounded for our transgressions. He not only walked through this valley but also crossed over it for us, triumphing over suffering, sin, and death. And in actual fact, John 18:1 says, “When he had finished praying, Jesus left with his disciples and crossed the Kidron Valley”—yes, the valley of ashes. Where was he going?

He was on his way to Gethsemane and finally Golgotha.

Only a suffering God with a face can see our hearts and respond to us in our pain and anger. Sadly, if we envision God as emotionless and impersonal, we cut ourselves off from who He truly is and from his touch for which we desperately long. Might we look into his Word, dig under our doctrine, see what has shaped our picture of God, and invite Him to transform our view of Him, and ultimately our hope in Him. Bible scholar Ajith Fernando encourages us likewise: But this I know: God does comfort.

We must go to him in our desperation and cling to him. As we linger in his presence, we become like a frightened child with his head on the lap of his mother. In this position the Lord strokes our head, like the mother does, until our fear and anger subside. A ray of light creeps through the dark clouds. We reason, “God has acted on my behalf.8 An Afterword: Rereading this article from so many years ago, I see a younger woman

trying to resolve painful questions from trauma, a heartache with no easy solutions.

Noticeably absent in my original article were three important pieces: the mention of community, wise counsel, and the promised work of the Holy Spirit in the life of a child of God. (I have since added a line about the Holy Spirit toward the end.) All these pieces came together over the years, and I can attest to the wondrous work of God in my life. When I was unaware and at loss for hope, the Wonderful Counselor was steadily and quietly mending and healing deep wounds. I pray this testimony offers you hope today wherever you may be in your journey with God. He who began a good work in you will be faithful to complete it (Philippians 1:6).

Danielle DuRant is Director of Research and Writing at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries.

1

Quoted in I, Fellini by Charlotte Chandler and Federico Fellini (New York: Cooper Square Press, 2001), 146.

2 F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby (New York: Scribner Paperback Fiction, 1995), 27-28, italics mine.

3 Ibid., 27.

4 2 Samuel 15:23 and 2 Kings 23:6.

See also Jeremiah 31:38-40.

5 Os Guinness, Doubt (Tring, England: Lion Paperback, 1976), 70, italics mine. This book has been reprinted as God in the Dark: The Assurance of Faith Beyond a Shadow of a Doubt (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1996).

See also The Cry of the Soul: How Our Emotions Reveal Our Deepest Questions About God by Dan B. Allender and Tremper Longman III (Colorado Springs, CO: NavPress, 1994). The authors, both biblical scholars, examine the emotions of God we find in the Bible—such as anger and jealousy—and show how our experience of these difficult emotions can be paralyzing or God-affirming.

6 Ibid., 67.

7 Ibid., 69, italics mine.

8 Ajith Fernando, Jesus Driven Ministry (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2003), 112.

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{

THINK AGAIN

}

B Y R AV I Z A C H A R I A S

Ravi Zacharias preaching in Vietnam with his interpreter, Hien Pham

AT ALL TIMES A S I HAVE previously shared with you, during my recent back surgery, the surgeon spotted something that concerned him enough to take a biopsy and the biopsy revealed I had cancer.

Our doctors in Atlanta were concerned I couldn’t start treatment until fully healing from the back surgery. However, since then we have been able to consult with doctors at the renowned MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas. Truly, God did a miracle in getting me here, literally a day or two just before they had to close to treating any patients outside of Texas. My doctor, a Sarcoma specialist, feels confident in starting a regimen of chemotherapy and we have begun that.

Since this treatment is coinciding with the COVID-19 pandemic, I will remain here in Houston for the next few months until I finish chemotherapy. I am so grateful that both my wife, Margie, and daughter Naomi can be here with me. God has given me the best doctor, and I look forward to gradually seeing this disease mend.

The Bible assures us that at all times God is with us. He is our comforter; He is our healer. He is our physician; He is our provider. He knows better than we do.

While some nights have been painful, my heart has been at rest that this is all God’s plan. I want to get better; I want to be well.

I want to be in his will and honoring to Him. As I listen to the news, I have heard many commentators and government leaders say that we are living in a time of war with an unseen enemy, this terrible pandemic that has swept through the globe. We are facing uncertain times, and I pray for all those in need.

When I think of war, I think of my days in Vietnam, where there was so much uncertainty and fear. When I was twentyfive years old, I was invited to speak there,

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hosted by my denomination, The Christian and Missionary Alliance.

Two stories from Vietnam remind me that at all times God is with us. On one occasion, I was being driven from Dalat to Saigon by a missionary named George Irwin. En route, our car started to sputter and chug and died on us. Ironically, minutes before, George’s wife, Harriet, had said to all of us in the car, “We are about to go through the most dangerous part of the country.”

I wondered why on earth she was telling us this now. Couldn’t she have waited ‘til we had passed through it?

Nevertheless, there we were, stuck on the highway in the most dangerous part of the country, trying to figure out what was wrong with our jeep.

Suddenly, a white car came speeding down the road. We tried to stop it for some help by waving our white handkerchiefs.

The man driving the car just swerved it around us and increased his speed even more to avoid stopping. A few minutes went by, and George tried the ignition again and the car started, much to our relief.

As we drove a couple of miles down the road, we saw that the white car had been ambushed. The wounded and dying were on the side of the road, and the Viet Cong were running away in the distance.

They had been waiting to ambush the next vehicle to come along, and that happened to be it. If our car had not broken down, it would have been us.

God has an appointed time for all of us. His protection and security is ours ‘til that moment comes when it’s “closing time.”

Another story from Vietnam probably stirs my confidence in God’s sovereignty and the power of his Word more than any other. When I was ministering there, one of my interpreters was Hien Pham, a young Christian. Sometime after I left, Vietnam fell and Hien was imprisoned. His jailers tried to indoctrinate him against the Christian faith and restricted him to Communist propaganda in French and Vietnamese.

The propaganda began to take its toll. “Maybe,” he thought, “I have been lied to. Maybe God does not exist.” So Hien determined that when he awoke the next day, he would not pray or think of his faith anymore.

The next morning, Hien was assigned to clean the prison latrines.

There he found a scrap of refuse paper with apparent English script. He hurriedly grabbed it and washed it. Later that night, startled and trembling, he read these words from Romans 8: “We know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him. … For I am convinced that [nothing] will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (verses 28 and 38).

Hien wept knowing there was not a more relevant passage for one on the verge of surrendering to a false doctrine.

Hien later escaped the country, again through the course of God’s amazing hand. He has since shared his testimony with many, confident that “nothing can separate us from the love of God.” I have absolutely no doubt that God stops and orders our steps in his sovereign will and grace. The Jesus I know and love today I encountered at the age of seventeen on a bed of suicide. I came to him unsure about the future. I remain with him certain about my destiny.

When we are face to face with God, we will find out how many were the potential catastrophes from which He saved us. Every pain and wound is part of his sovereign plan for us. He is the ultimate guardian over every breakdown. He alone can be our protection. At all times, God is with us.

Warm Regards,

Ravi

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For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of God’s glory displayed in the face of Christ.

2 Corinthians 4:6