Thoughts on Ravi Zacharias
Hello Church,
As I shared at the beginning of last Sunday’s sermon, I promised to give some comments about the shocking news that hit the evangelical world. Last week, Ravi Zacharias International Ministries (RZIM) revealed to the public that their late founder had been involved in multiple sexual scandals while he was alive. You can read their official statement here. Many of us have been blessed by Ravi’s sermons and books. Our church hosted an RZIM event a couple years ago to learn about how we can reach Muslims and atheists. I shook hands with Ravi and MissionFest years ago and he signed a copy of his book for me. Ravi was an eloquent and passion speaker. He provided, for us, an intellectual defense of our faith in a very winsome package. I, like many others, admired him. I think we also admired him because he seemed to appear free from any grievous scandals. That all came crashing down last week, but there were signs before that, that we wish we had not missed. What can we learn from events like this? Here are some of my thoughts in no particular order:
We should feel sad regarding every part of this scandal. Sad for the victims. Sad for Ravi. Sad for his family. Sad for his organization. Sad for evangelicals and sad that the name of Christ has been tarnished. We should grieve over Ravi’s sins and the damage that it has done.
Don’t virtue-signal. In our virtue signaling we are not only condemning the person or the act, but we’re also condemning everyone else who’s not as offended as you are. I understand the outrage and we should be outraged, but the problem with virtue signaling is that it comes from a place of moral superiority, spiritual pride, and often times spiritual blindness. We all know in our hearts, and more importantly from Scripture, that no one is morally superior. We are all sinners before God.
We should revisit our relationship with and attitude towards sin. From what we know, Ravi hid these sins from his family, his ministry, and the rest of us for many years. I was thinking, where did it go wrong for him? This isn’t a behaviour you pick up when you’re 50 years old. It was likely there for a very long time. The Bible says in Galatians that God will not be mocked. We will reap what we sow. Sin is like a cockroach. It loves to hide. Bring your sin to light, before God and confess it. Bring it to light before trusted Christian friends. Don’t hide it. Don’t bury it.
Sin is never satisfied. Sin is like the glutton at the buffet who says, ‘Just one more bite, just one more plate.” Sin will never say, “You’ve sinned enough. You can stop now.” Sin always seeks to grow until it finally accomplishes its purpose -- the destruction of our souls and the defamation of the name of God. We must always be wary of sin.
We should grow in our fear of God. God hates sin. God hates the sin in us, and he hates the sin in the world. He is holy. He cannot tolerate it. We must not think that since God didn’t do anything about my sin so far, that he will not do anything about it in the future. That is to presume upon God. Fear the Lord. Fear his holy wrath against sin.
As well, we must be careful of our double-life. Everyone has a double-life. A public persona and a private persona. The more difference there is between the two, the more in danger you are. Our goal as Christians is to reach congruence between our public and our private lives. My mom and dad had a pretty volatile marriage, and when my mom had had enough, she’d go on a rant to church members about how bad her husband was. Now, she may have exaggerated a bit, but she wasn’t far off, but the church members didn’t believe her. They said, “Mrs. Yi, come on; Elder Yi could never be like how you’re describing him. You must be exaggerating.” That made her even more upset, because she knew what my father was really like and everyone else was deceived. Do business with God. Do a life inventory. Ask yourself if you’re a fake -- if you’re all talk and no walk. Do you have everyone deceived? Perhaps you’ve even deceived yourself.
I’m not in a position to say what the state of Ravi’s soul is right now, but it made me think of the difference in response between Peter and Judas. Both denied the Lord, but only one repented. If Ravi is in heaven, then his sins have been washed by the blood of the Lamb, even his unconfessed sins. He will be ashamed before the Lord that he didn’t repent before his death, but if Ravi is in hell, then he will forever regret not returning to Christ for forgiveness, like the disciple Peter.
We must be careful of putting Christian leaders on a pedestal, where we forget that they too are sinners, just like we are. The image that we see of these leaders, (which applies to local church pastors), is a public persona. All of us portray ourselves in a better light than we actually are. In public, we hold our tempers, we guard our language, we don’t reveal our thoughts, but in private we are different. We let down our guards. We should give respect and honour to our Christian leaders, but we have to be careful not to put them on an unrealistic level.
Because a trusted human leader has let us down, that shouldn’t cause us to trust Jesus less. If anything, it should cause us to trust Jesus more. Only Jesus is sinless and perfect. He will never disappoint us; he will never let us down. He cannot lie and he always tells the truth. He will always do what will bring glory to God and what is in our best interest. Ravi is not the first Christian leader to let us down, and he won’t be the last. Only Jesus is wholly trustworthy.
I’m sure more could be said about this, but I’ll stop here. Let me conclude with this thought: I do believe that the moral failings of Abraham, Noah, Samson, Saul, David, and everyone else, are there to serve as an example for of what not to do. They serve as warnings to us. At the same time, these same people had some very admirable traits, too and those traits are the ones we are to emulate. These leaders of the faith are not whitewashed; they’re not sugar coated. They’re seen for who they really were -- imperfect sinners loved by God, in desperate need of God’s grace. We’re not any different and it goes to show you, there was only one who was without sin.
Soli Deo Gloria
Pastor Peter