Sober Reflections on the fall of Ravi Zacharias

A Day for Mourning

The fall of the Indian-born American-Canadian Christian apologist Ravi Zacharias should bring every true follower of Jesus to tears.

 

Because the Name of Jesus has been dragged through the mud. Because enemies of the Gospel have more ammunition to attack the Good News. Because an untold number of young Christians could be stumbled as a result of his fall. Because his family will be in utter turmoil: not only mourning his death but now mourning his honour, and perhaps even questioning his salvation. Because women were abused by a powerful manipulative man. Because no-one loved Ravi enough to hold him accountable. Because it is possible for there to be such a preposterous thing as a 'Celebrity Christian.'

 

A day of mourning. And sackcloth. And weeping. For all of us. 

 

How has he fallen? You really do not want to know.  

 

My first reaction when the rumours emerged was 'not yet another big-shot Christian fall.' There have been a string of them lately, we do not need to name names.

Lessons we should all Learn

There are many lessons from the fall of Ravi.

 

First and foremost, Paul's injunction to all Christians in 1 Corinthians 10:12, "So, if you think you are standing firm, be careful that you don't fall."

 

If we read the story  of Ravi with a Pharisaical 'tut tuting' we shall miss the lesson Paul exhorts of us all. If we think 'I would never do that' we are surely arrogant. 

 

I will never forget a godly pastor looking glum one morning when I met up with him. It turned out that a good Christian friend of his had just fallen and he was prayerfully and searchingly pondering the saying "there but for the grace of God go I."

 

"Search me O God and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting." (Psalm 139:23-34)

 

Sober reflection should mark our first and main response.

 

Second, the peril of riches. Although the possession of wealth per se is not sinful, and may be used to advance God's kingdom, wealth comes with so many perils that it leads the wise man of Proverbs to write:

 

“Two things I ask of you, LORD; do not refuse me before I die: Keep falsehood and lies far from me; give me neither poverty nor riches, but give me only my daily bread. Otherwise, I may have too much and disown you and say, ‘Who is the LORD?’ Or I may become poor and steal, and so dishonor the name of my God." (Proverbs 30:7-9)

 

People who want to get rich put themselves in spiritual peril, says the apostle Paul in 1 Timothy 6. Let's be completely content with whatever we have been given, whether little or less little.

 

The longer I am a church pastor, the more I see the destructive effects of wealth on Christians. Money can make a man proud "I must be something special since I have more dosh than most." Wealth enables a man to ponder and make choices that he simply could not make if he were poor. Some of those choices may be laughable but others are lamentable.

 

Ravi was very rich (Google tells me he was worth $7.5 million)  and those riches enabled him to make disastrous choices, choices he simply could not have made if he were poor. No Christian in ministry needs to own health spas, for example.

 

No wonder Paul in 1 Timothy 6 and James in James chapter 2 not only warn of the dangers of money, but exhort rich Christians sharply, "Command those who are rich," and "Is it not the rich that are exploiting you?" Rich Christians need sharper admonitions than poor Christians because they are subject to unique and additional temptations.

Third, the evangelical church has aped the world in setting up a celebrity culture which includes 'big shot celebrity speakers' whose books and podcasts and what nots are paraded at conferences and sold in their millions. (Whether their names will even be remembered in 20 years' time is quite another matter). 

What is even more disturbing is that the traits the evangelical world look for to establish their celebrities, are no different from the world's and bear no resemblance to the traits of those who are honoured in Scripture.

 

We look for educated chappies people with degrees and passing qualities like that - Jesus looks for ordinary people, filled with his divine power

Obsessed by numbers, we look for people who run big churches or have thousands of 'followers' - Jesus is quite happy with just 12 people in his church

 

We look for those who are praised by men - in the New Testament every godly leader, without any exception, was hounded, hated and persecuted

And so, aping the world, we have set up Celebrity Christians - and have therefore established the perfect breeding ground for pride and failure. 

 

Shocking as this may seem, had we been alive in Paul's day, not one of us would have honoured that Christian giant, had we used the modern metrics of greatness. Everywhere Paul went he was despised and rejected by men. (That is sounding a little like... )

 

Let us remember that there are no big-shots in the Christian church - none whatsoever. And the  moment we begin 'following' some figure because they are popular or clever or numbered (i.e. by the number of hits they receive, the number of books they sell, etc.) we put ourselves at the same risk as the followers of RZ. We follow One Man and One Man alone.

 

In Galatians 2:6 Paul makes a passing comment on the disease of big-shot-itis, a scourge, it seems, in every age: "As for those who seemed to be important - whatever they were makes no difference to me; God does not judge by external appearance - those men aded nothing to my message." Paul is not being dismissive of a James or a Peter or a John; he is just telling us not to judge by seemly opinion and reminding us that the Lord makes the judgement of who is great and who is not. 

 

Men should leave off the business of judging. 

 

We say it again, there are no big-shots in the church of Jesus Christ. Not Lloyd-Jones, not Stott, not Keller, not Piper, not MacArthur, not...

Fourthly, we sometimes big-up men who clearly have no accountability in their own local churches. I cannot find anywhere on the web the local-church accountability structure Ravi put himself under. There is no such thing in the church of Jesus Christ as a sheep who is not in a local flock under local undershepherds. No parachurch 'Christian organisation' including RZIM has the authority to shepherd even one sheep in God's flock. 

 

To what pastor and to which elders was Ravi accountable?

 

Sadly he is not the only Christian big-shot who is allowed status and influence within evangelicalism without any accountability to a local church.

 

Fifthly, and back to money again, how outrageous that in 2015 Ravi was paid over half a million dollars, approximately ten times as much as the average American. As if the Gospel was something to become rich from. Pastors and Gospel workers should be paid so they can live (occasionally churches fail to do so) and the national average is a ball park figure. But never ten times as much.

Sixthly, had Ravi been accountable to his local pastor, that said pastor would have challenged him about leaving his wife and family for long periods of time and about owning health spas.

 

Is there a pastor reading this who needs to challenge a rich Christian in his own church? Fearful of losing income? God will more than make it up. Our task is to be faithful and leave the consequences with God.

A New Reformation

What western evangelicalism desperately needs is a new reformation, a reformation that will separate us from the passing methods and idols of the world in which we live. A Reformation which will send us back to the Scriptures for all belief and practice.

 

A Reformation that will end the very idea of Celebrity Christianity.

 

A Reformation that will begin to honour servants of the Lord who bear the true attributes of Christian greatness, which range from godly character to servanthood, all the way to the higher qualifications of unpopularity, rejection and persecution and even martyrdom.

Perhaps that is what the fall of all these Celebrity Christians will lead to. 

 

In which case good will come out of evil.

Photo by Start Digital on Unsplash

"We did Not Go to the Moon" - the origin of Conspiracy Theories

"We did not go to the Moon"?

My first aquaintance with conspiracy theories took place when a documentary on TV tried to persuade viewers that man had never walked on the moon.

I can still remember two of the pieces of evidence they gave, (i) no stars appear on any of the photographs taken by the astronauts - this is true, (ii) and the flag seemed to be fluttering - implying that there was a breeze on the moon, when there was supposed to be no atmosphere at all.

The whole moon thing was a hoax produced in a secret studio somewhere. 

But could there be other explanations for these two pieces of 'evidence?'

The stars do not appear because the surface of the moon is so bright with no atmosphere to cut out radiation from the sun, that the cameras had to stop way way down, much as the pupil of our eyes goes tiny in bright light. As a consequence, no pin pricks of light would be registered, and that includes stars. It is not at all surprising that the photos are starless. No photographer would expect to see them.

And the flag flutters (when touched) for a very good reason too. Without any wind, the flag was given a horizontal support along the top, from which it hangs. As the astronaut digs the pole into the moon dust he gives to the flag material kinetic moving energy. As soon as he lets go, that energy is dissipated in the  fluttering of the flag until the fluttering stops altogether. If the flag fluttered long after it was put up - then you've got evidence of a breeze (or an earthquake), but if it only flutters when and soon after it is touched, that is to be expected. Watch THIS YouTube clip to see what I mean. 

Did we go to the moon? Yes, 100% we went to the moon.

This simple example and explanation gives us our first insight into the origin of all conspiracy theories (CTs) which are becoming a real problem in our world today. Conspiracy Theories and theorists do not consider alternative explantions.

Strange though it may seem, I have much sympathy with Conspiracy Theories and Theorists, not least because they refuse to accept the status quo and question everything. That's a good thing in a world where the spread of knowledge and information is controlled by unbelievers, and increasingly controlled by a minority liberal elite many of whom live in silicon valley. 

To question everything is surely good.

And yet, there are real problems with most Conspiracy Theories. 

Here are just six.

PROBLEM 1 - CTs fail to seek other  (and simpler) explanations

This is the one mentioned above. All seekers after truth should explore alternative explanations to the one being offered by those who put forward CTs.

Is the reason two vaccines are given really because the second one contains a chip? Is that the only reason the vaccine is given twice? 

Could there be another and simpler medical reason - for example to boost the performance of jab 1? That's how it works for children who get the MMR vaccine. They get two doses, the second to boost the efficacy of the first.

Why believe the one explanation without at least exploring other possibilities? CTs thrive when we refuse to explore alternative possibilities. 

PROBLEM 2 - CTs fail to seek more reasonable explanations

We must be very cautious about this one, especially if someone uses it to imply that "clever people don't believe CTs, it's only simple people who do," because there is one CT which most western non-believers hold to - and especially educated ones. 

And that is that the universe came about without the aid of a Designer. This is not the place to discuss, but the notion that this universe just came about is patently absurd and will be tackled well by Stephen Meyer's "The Return of the God Hypothesis" which is out in  March.

So it is arrogant for educated to people to lump all CTs together and label them "uneducated."

Nevertheless, a failure to think deeply enough and to consider more reasoned and reasonable explanations is a real problem for CTs. 

Let's take a different example.

When the twin towers collapsed we were all shocked by how massive concrete buildings should have disintegrated into dust. It gave the CTs grist for their 'explosives theory,' that the governement / someone had laced the building with explosives.  

But there is no mystery at all about a skyscraper disintegrating into dust. Fire played its part, but so did the height of the building.

I've put the maths at the end of this blog, but in summary, when you think more deeply about the scenario, the height of the buildings meant that together the two towers possesed the potential energy of almost one million kilograms of TNT, all of which was released in the few seconds it took to fall. 

Were the Twin Towers wired with dynamite? Is that explanation necessary?  No, there was enough potential energy in all that mass of steel and concrete and glass to pound itself into dust when falling from such a great height.

CTs thrive when we don't think deeply enough about interpretations. 

PROBLEM 3- CTs thrive when the 'bank of data' is enormous

CTs can only take hold when there are large amounts of data available. The moon missions generated millions of pieces of information, when you add up photos, files, and people; the shooting of JFK generated thousands of police and court files, and today an almost infinite bank of data is available with Coronavirus. Every person who has caught the disease is one, and every doctor or nurse who has dealt with a patient is another, plus thousands of research documents, hospital documents, Government statistics and so on. 

There are around 10-15 million doctors in the world. You are bound to find 100, who for one reason or another, reasons genuine and reasons not, will cue up on YouTube and tell you that Coronavirus doesn't exist or that the vaccine will kill you. 

But 100 rogue doctors is only  0.001 % of the world's doctors.

If the data bank is enormous, it is quite possible to take a small fraction of the total number of facts and weave them into an alternative - and perhaps even compelling theory.

It's a little like taking one small part of a large jig saw puzzle and finding in it something that is not there, once you zoom out to the whole.

We are bound to find a dozen people who died immediately after having taken the Covid vaccine (read: "Vaccine kills people"), and it would be easy to find  a dozen doctors who disagree with the Government strategy (read: "Doctors say no need to vaccinate the population.") 

The CTs will not mention the rest of the jigsaw puzzle, the millions of people who were unharmed by the vaccine or the hundreds of thousands of doctors who are happy with the policy.

Events which have spawned large numbers of files or data or reports are far more susceptible to CTs.

PROBLEM 4 - CTs can easily fail to consult those outside their 'ghetto'

We all live in social and information ghettos, whether we like to admit it or not. Including those who only watch official state news. And those ghettos, if we are not diligent, simply become echo chambers, places where all we hear are the things our itching ears want to hear.

I was amazed, for example, when the Biden regime took over how the BBC praised Biden and rubbished Trump - as if it was possible to come to an immediate assessment of the presidencies of these two men. It will be decades before we can assess which man was the best president. And for all we know at this point, it could turn out to be Trump. Even more disturbing was the way so many folk - believers many including - slavishly jumped on the "condemn Trump, praise Biden" bandwagon. 

We dare not live only in the BBC ghetto.

Take YouTube as another example. If you love watching nature clips on YouTube - lions stalking gazelles, that sort of thing, guess what? All YouTube will offer you is nature clips! In this case the "algorithm", the piece of maths that decides what clips should be suggested to you next, directs you to your biases, or what you like.

If someone continually searches "covid conspiracy" on YouTube, eventually all they will get is more CT videos - and they will end up walking down a narrower and narrower corridor of opinion.

But this is true of all of life, for birds of a feather flock together. 

One protection against personal bias is to read and view widely, and especially pay attention to what other camps are (actually) saying.

I deliberatly listen to news channels such as France 24 and Aljazeera TV to balance the BBC, which is profoundly biased - it has to be, because we all are.

PROBLEM 5 - CTs (understandably) mistrust all those in authority

The reason CTs have thrived in truly Christian communities is that as Western society darkens we are all finding ourselves more and more in the oppressed minority. The distinction between church and world is becoming more marked, and we know that before Jesus returns Christians will experience severe persecution. 

Since those in authority - whether in Government or in science or in education  belong to the world, by and large, it is very easy to develop an "us" versus "them" mentailty which makes believers suspicious of all those in authority.

And suspicion breeds mistrust, and mistrust breeds CTs.

But, because of common grace, it is possible for worldy rulers to rule well - and without belonging to some secret world power.

I for one have no doubt in my mind that Boris Johnson is doing his very best at trying to rid our country of Covid. Will he get everything right? Of course not. Is he secretly trying to control the population? Why should I believe that? Is he balancing the invisible spiritual/mental/social health of the population against their physical health correctly? Probably not.

But I do not believe that there is some grand conspiracy to use Covid to control and manipulate his people.

PROBLEM 6 - we all have biases

To compound matters, all of us have built in biases. This, in Christian doctrine, is one of the effects of the Fall of mankind. Professing ourselves wise, we have become fools. That's true of folk who believe in CTs and those who don't.

No-one living on this planet approaches any subject without an inherent, built in, sinful bias.

Take the existence of God. It would be impossible for God to give us more evidence of his existence, without shouting from the sky each moment, "I'm here" or signing his name on every flower. The near-unbelievable way our bodies are intricately designed, the way the laws of the universe are finely tuned, the beauty of the world, and so on, all point to his existence.

We all know that God exists as our minds survey this majestic world. And yet, and here is the point, people very happily supress the knowledge of God and say he does not exist! Why? Because if they were to admit to God's existence, they would immediately find themselves accountable to God, and that would mean a change in behaviour! No way are they going to submit their wills to God's will. So in their wickedness the world supresses the blatant evidence and knowledge of God.

And this twisting of truth takes place in every lesser sphere of life.

 The Antidote?

Is there an antidote to CTs? Globally, I very much doubt it. The existence of social media has now made everything worse and each one of us can easily end up in a virtual echo-chamber of our own opinions, listening in the end only to voices that re-affirm our views and biases.

So there is no global antidote. And the very worst kind of secular antidote would be for Silicon Valley to act as global thought policeman. That would end up with one tiny group of self-appointed billionaires only allowing their own prejudices to spread.

But there are personal antidotes to being swept away by CTs.

Humility is the first. Attributed to Oliver Cromwell is that famous saying addressed to people who were convinced they were right, "I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, to think it possible you may be mistaken."

I may be wrong. You may be wrong. 

(I am not here thinking of central Christian doctrines - we can never be wrong if we believe that Jesus was divine, or if we believe that God is Triune. I am thinking of ideas and theories outside of biblical doctrine.)

Then, secondly, we can question every theory that comes along. We can keep an open mind. One great plus of CTs is that they do not simply accept the reigning opinions. Why should the reigning opinions always be correct?

Third, we should willingly and regularly listen to those "outside our camp."

Fourth, we should acknowledge our own tendencies to bias.

And finally, should we meet someone with whom we totally disagree, we should love and accept them - and never despise them. 

Believers should recognise that only God has access to The Truth. While we have certain truth in Scripture, and sufficient truth for this life, we do not possess exhaustive truth. And so deep humility is demanded of us all.

"I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me."

Isaac Newton 

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Postcript: The Physics and Maths of the Twin Towers

This is nothing more difficult than GCSE physics. 

Every part of those two tall buildings possessed potential energy by virtue of its height from the ground. That energy was turned into kinetic energy - moving energy - as the building fell. 

The equation is:

(Potential Energy) m x g x h = (turns into Kinetic Energy) 0.5 x m x v (squared)

where m is mass, g is the acceleration due to gravity, 9.81 but let's give it the value 10, and v is the speed of the concrete brick when it hits the ground

Every kilogram of concrete 400 metres above the ground (the height of the towers) will therefore possess 4000 joules (1 x 10 x 400) of moving energy by the time it reaches the ground, and all that energy will be used destructively in pounding, grinding and disintegrating other nextdoor kilograms of concrete into dust. 

If a one kilogram block falling from the top hit nothing on the way down it would be travelling at 63 metres every second by the time it hit ground zero (square root of 4000), to give you some idea of it's energy.

Wouldn't want to be standing under that.

The total weight of each tower was 450, 000, 000 kilograms, which means that if on average every kilogram possessed 2000 joules of kinetic energy by the time it all reached the ground (4000 joules if at the top, 0 if at the bottom, so averaging 2000 joules - potential energy is a linear function of height), then 9 x 10 to the power of 11 joules will have been available for grinding purposes.

Since one kg of TNT gives out about 5 million joules, the potential energy possesed by one tower is approximately half a million kilograms of TNT, or around one million kg of TNT both towers together.

The falling towers without the contribution of any additional explosives possesed the energy of one million kilogram sticks of TNT.

In other words, if all the concrete and glass and steel of the two towers was on the ground and someone wired it with a million 1 kg sticks of TNT, then we'd have ended up with the same sort of carnage, with billowing dust blasting down the streets of New York. 

What is more, this moving energy was not wasted but was all focussed vertically. An explosion sends debris in all directions, wasting a good deal of it's power in spherical debris distribution, and a tiny bit of waste in noise. The towers fell silently and all the falling energy was focussed downward into destructive power, far more effectively than TNT.

Is not one million kilograms of focussed TNT enough explosive power to do what we saw on that September morning? I think it is.