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The tragic Ravi Zacharias story
Friends, it usually takes me quite a while to process before I’m ready to comment on a horrific story.
Many others have already written, and written well, about the fall of Ravi Zacharias from his high standing in the Christian world. But for those of us who have been paying attention in the last 3 years or so, this latest revelation was a surprise not in fact, but rather in scope.
That is, I was knocked back by the vast numbers of women that Zacharias was preying on.
So then, as the report is released and some post it on social media, predictably others want to have none of it.
I understand. Zacharias was highly respected and trusted by many. (So much so that he and his family became millionaires on the donations of the faithful who thought they were giving to help the Word of God go out around the world.)
A young Ravi Zacharias
The predictable accusations and warnings
And so, those naysayers castigate those of us who talk about it. With predictable accusations—I’ve been hearing them since 2014, the days of the Bob Jones University sexual abuse investigation.
The Gospel Coalition published a factual article covering highlights of the RZ report. This factual piece was followed by Joe Carter’s effort to make sense of it. Though I take issue with a few things he said, there’s only one I want to focus on here. Here is what he finally concluded (emphasis mine):
For pastors and other ministry leaders, the lesson of Zacharias is not that “men like that” are prone to horrific crimes and moral failures. The lesson is that if we want to become Great Men who do great and mighty works for the kingdom, we are just as vulnerable to such sin as any celebrity.
Another way a friend told me it’s been put to her is “That could have been any of us.” That is, any of us could potentially commit any sin at any time.
My friend told me she countered this argument by saying that if you think any person could commit any sin at any time, then we’d better be warning good parents that they might become pedophiles if they change a baby’s diaper. She also asked, “Why don’t you say ‘that could have been any of us’ when you hear about serial killers?”
She introduced her friends to the term “sin levelling” and told them that was what they were doing, that is, claiming that all sins are essentially equal.
I’ve written a few posts about sin levelling and how destructive it is, some of which are here and here and here, but I think it’s time to talk about it again.
So first . . .
What is sin?
Sin is turning away from God, to value what He deems worthless (or evil), and to deem worthless what He values.
If you have a right understanding of the word “despise,” that sentence can be shortened, like so:
Sin is turning away from God, to value what He despises and to despise what He values.
Hear me now.
First, when people become followers of the Lord Jesus Christ, in faith, loving Him and being loved by Him, their hearts are changed, to be oriented toward God, to want to understand and know what He loves, what He values, and to be like Him.
They have the Holy Spirit of God, who is there to help them to increase in desiring those things that are in line with the will of God, and to whisper to them when their hearts turn away. This is the process of sanctification.
And we would expect leaders to be farther along in their process of sanctification than those they lead.
However, of course one who has loved and followed God can fall into grievous sin. But how does it happen?
Is it like the Gospel Coalition said?
The lesson is that if we want to become Great Men who do great and mighty works for the kingdom, we are just as vulnerable to such sin as any celebrity.
This conclusion completely ignores degrees of sin.
Yes, Christians can turn away from God. Of course we can. We turn away from God, for example, if we dwell on a lustful thought.
But we can immediately turn back.
What are the degrees of sin?
When I talk about “degrees of sin,” you can think of it as actual degrees, the kind you used your protractor to measure in eighth grade. When you’re facing one way, it takes 180 degrees to turn completely away from that direction.
Let’s say you’re pointed to True North, toward the True God. You love Him with your heart, mind, soul, and strength, as much as you are able in this fallen world.
Then you turn away.
The first turn: thoughts
Ravi Zacharias’s sins started in his thoughts. I know that because that’s where all sin starts. It can be stopped there too.
You might turn away one degree, or five degrees, for even just a few minutes. Like when David saw Bathsheba on the roof and lusted after her.
He turned away from God, valuing what God despised (hypocrisy, lust, degrading the lives of others) and despising what God valued (honor, heart purity, valuing the lives of others).
When this happens, the one who loves God can turn back! “Lord, my heart went away from You just now. I want to come back. I want to turn from that lust [or whatever]. I want to be with You. I love Your presence, Your nearness, Your gladness to be with me. I’m so glad to be with You too, Lord, and I want to turn away from that which drew me aside. I know that is a way of death. I want to be with You.”
This kind of turning back to God, when the sin is at the thought level, is something every Christian can and should do many times a day. We turn away from sin and run quickly back to Him.
If David had engaged in thirty seconds of true repentance when he saw Bathsheba from his rooftop, he would never have needed to write Psalm 51.
What is it that tempted you? Lust? Pornography? The adulation of others? Increasing wealth? A position of power?
The way to keep from being “vulnerable” to great sins is to stop the sins when they are at the thought stage.
This is not impossible—in fact, in the Kingdom of God, it is expected. We are given all the spiritual “equipment” we need to do it.
The length of time a person needs to spend repenting is probably related to the length of time that has passed since the last time he did.
The second turn: actions
But what if you don’t turn back? What if you allow the thing that tempted you to continue to draw you in more and more so that the sin works out from thoughts into actions? You’ve pivoted yourself farther away, in valuing what God despises and despising what He values.
Jesus called lust “heart adultery.” This means that heart adultery is in fact a sin; it doesn’t mean that we are to think that lust—the thought/heart sin—is in degree as bad as physical adultery—the action. (To the religious Jews of Jesus’ day, His words came as a bombshell because they had no concept of “thought sin” or “heart sin,” only that which was outward.)
Did Ravi find out that in receiving “massages” in other countries, if he chose to go too far he could go undetected? (In some countries, these things are “normal” and expected.) After all, he was very trusted. And perhaps he thought of women who worked massage parlors in other countries as “less than.” (I have no inside information here—I’m only surmising.)
But still, for each one who does this, the message is the same: repent and turn to Christ! Receive His forgiveness and His power to overcome that sin. Recognize all people as equally valuable to God! Make humble, penitent restitution in whatever way is necessary to anyone who has been affected by your sin. Get help if necessary to get back on the right track, facing toward True North.
The third turn: practice
There’s yet another movement of degrees away from God. This is allowing the action of sin to work out into practice, more and more and more. More and more thumbing one’s nose at what God values and embracing what God despises.
This could be the stage at which Zacharias began using his mesmerizing power to increase the number of women he corresponded with regularly and draw them in, hiding all his contacts on various phones. And more. Considering his victims as commodities with no regard at all for their welfare, and apparently considering himself invincible.
Without a doubt there is hypocrisy involved in these second and third steps, in covering one’s tracks, considering oneself invincible, and having no regard for the lives you are harming. King David’s actions with Bathsheba and her husband Uriah were indeed horrifying.
But one can yet turn back from that.
The fourth turn: astonishing hypocrisy
The 180 degree turn has one more step that I’m aware of. That step has to do with the degree of hypocrisy.
This stage is indicated by how the hypocrite responds when he is confronted with his sin.
At this stage, when David was confronted by Nathan, when all his terrible sin was exposed, he repented.
It was terrible, yes. But he did repent.
What is an indicator that the person has turned 180 degrees away from God, no matter how good he may sound from the pulpit or on the stage?
He has made himself such a god to himself (invincible) that he becomes stiff-necked, stiff-backed, and stiff-kneed, with no compassion at all for anyone he harmed. He will not bow when the truth is revealed.
At this stage, for some, it means loudly preaching against what they themselves are secretly practicing, and publicly humiliating those who try to bring their sins to light. This is a flavor of sin that those of us in my kind of work have seen over and over.
Though Ravi Zacharias’s stage preaching was about apologetics, still he did plenty of “preaching” about those who tried to call him to accountability and repentance. The details of the last two to three years of his life shocked those who had no idea how toxic the Ravi Zacharias International Ministries workplace actually was, the manipulative ways he spoke to the women he abused, and the stage of “invincibility” he had reached.
He stiffened his neck against calls to repentance from true God. Even when he knew he was dying.
What are we to make of this?
The response of Jesus to that last level of turning away from God
These words paraphrased from Jesus apply to stiff-necked hypocrites who refused to turn to God.
Woe unto you, hypocrite, blind fool! You’re shutting up the kingdom of heaven against others. You will not go in yourself, just as you’re blocking the door for those who want to enter. You will receive the greater judgment.
If you are causing young believers to stumble and go astray, and in some cases to leave the faith entirely, then it would be better for you if a millstone were hanged around your neck and you were cast into the depths of the sea.
If you find that “looking good” is more important than dealing with sin in your midst, lest you lose your “show window” image, then you’re cleaning the outside of the cup, but the inside is full of extortion and excess. Serpents, generation of vipers!
The response of The Gospel Coalition
Many have spoken about this topic, and many have issued an uncertain sound. One of those is the aforementioned The Gospel Coalition.
The lesson is that if we want to become Great Men who do great and mighty works for the kingdom, we are just as vulnerable to such sin as any celebrity.
And I say no, that is not the lesson.
And besides, those who were vulnerable here were the women, his victims. They were exceedingly vulnerable to the charms of a “great man of God.”
The “vulnerable” one was not the perpetrator.
If every “Great Man” who loves God and others is just as “vulnerable” to taking advantage of hundreds of vulnerable women as Zacharias was, then we as God’s people are completely lost when it comes to any sorts of leaders at all.
At every stage of “vulnerability,” if Ravi Zacharias was actually a true follower and lover of Jesus Christ, he had the armor of God available to him. He had the firm foundation of the solid Rock of Jesus Christ to stand on.
He could have stopped the sin and turned to God when it was a thought.
He could have stopped it after the first action and repented.
He could have bowed his knee before the Lord even after it worked into practice.
And when his sin was exposed by the Thompsons and others, he could have, like King David, written a full repentance along the lines of Psalm 51. He would have watched his little kingdom crumble, but his heart would have been right with God.
But instead, his hardened heart, his astonishing hypocrisy, the kind that lashes back at the accusers, kept him from repentance, apparently until his death.
What TGC’s response could have been
The Gospel Coalition could have done leaders everywhere a favor by not saying this:
The lesson is that if we want to become Great Men who do great and mighty works for the kingdom, we are just as vulnerable to such sin as any celebrity.
Instead they could have said something like this:
The lesson here is that if we want to be great leaders who passionately love God and love others, who want to bring souls into the Kingdom of God, we can learn from the “fall” of Ravi Zacharias. We can see how his sin was not really because of “vulnerability” but was because of choices that included his own exalted view of himself and his lack of regard for vulnerable others. That is, his love for God and others was not in evidence, and he appeared to be simply going through the motions in his ministry.
Instead of repenting at the thought level—the level of sin that all of us struggle with—he moved from thoughts to actions to practice to breathtaking hypocrisy.
But by the power of our Lord Jesus Christ we are all able to avoid walking into a snare like that. When we live and move and breathe in the Spirit of God, we can have love and regard for all other people on this planet, just as He does. Furthermore, our Lord Jesus Christ is powerful against sin, and He can keep His people safe from sin. When they do sin, He can give them the humility to turn to Him, bringing them deliverance.
We never need to be “vulnerable” to the kind of blatant disregard for human life and vicious hypocrisy that Ravi Zacharias committed. Where he ended up is the result of a step-by-step process that all of us are given the power to resist and overcome.
No ministry, no matter how large, is worth the price that Ravi Zacharias’s victims—and he himself and his eternal soul—paid to keep it afloat until his death.
Every true Christian—and by that I mean every true believer in Jesus Christ, who lives by faith in Him—can honor all humans, all eternal souls, as equal to ourselves and can avoid turning away from God with hardened hearts, in this progression of sin.
*****
Another note
In their article, The Gospel Coalition says that we owe “obedience and submission” to our leaders according to Hebrews 13:17. I’d like to offer a different perspective based on the Scriptures.
My analysis of Hebrews 13:17 makes up one of the chapters in this new book that came out last week.
Click on the photo below to read more about it.
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Go here to download your free Guide, How to Enjoy the Bible Again (when you’re ready) After Spiritual Abuse (without feeling guilty or getting triggered out of your mind). You’ll receive access to both print and audio versions of the Guide (audio read by me). I’m praying it will be helpful.
To be honest, I find my anger rising when I hear Christians referring to the wicked, predatory and abusive behavior of Ravi Zacharias as ‘falling into sin’. Perhaps at some long ago time, Zacharias ‘fell into sin’ from a genuine, God-honoring place – but if so, that was long, long time ago.
One of the huge issues which the evangelical industrial complex needs to face is that when you build a complex, you will always attract wanna be celebrities. And the recipe for success, as we have seen repeatedly, involves charisma, charm, intuition, persuasiveness and a great ability to schmooze. A genuine heart for God may or may not be involved, as false motives are difficult to separate from sincere ones.
I do not claim to know the full history of Zacharias, or any other of the many ‘fallen’ evangelical leaders, but I can tell you one thing – many of them were not simply men of God who happened to sin.
There is a huge difference between a man who is tempted by and succumbs to temptation in a weak moment and a man who for years, decades even, targets, grooms and preys upon weak, trusting victims. This is the sort of ‘sinner’ Zacharias was.
He used his position, reputation, power and his institution’s funds to enable a sick, evil double life. This is one of the many problems with celebrity ‘pastors’ and ‘teachers’. And if we wish to not enable such hypocrisy and abuse, we would be wise to follow a couple of simple steps.
One, check into the financial setup of any religious organization with which you are considering becoming affiliated. If a ministry which is not a church takes the step of having themselves classified as a ‘church’ for tax purposes, that should send up a huge red flag. I would go so far as to say that if even legitimate churches refuse to make public detailed financial information, including salaries and accountability for all funds, I would refuse to associate with them. And make their practice of hiding financial information well known, so that others may be protected.
Believers must throw off their naiveté and acknowledge that simply getting the stamp of approval from some so-called financial accrediting organization (ECFA) provides no meaningful financial accountability. I will leave it to others to explore the reason for this failing, but it is past time to admit that no genuine assurance of fiscal responsibility is being proven by what appears to be a token gesture. One might ask, ‘Who is holding the accountability organizations accountable’?
Then there is the glaringly ascriptural and unChristlike practice of piling up personal fortunes – tax free – from what is supposedly a ‘ministry’. I’m all for not muzzling the ox, but there appears little risk of starvation on the part of modern religious celebrities. I’m proposing no particular legalistic rule, but it should be obvious that there is a problem when a religious principal and his associates acquire vast fortunes from the well-meaning contributions of countless supporters, whose gifts are often sacrificial in nature. How many mega mansions and private jets will it take for us to question the heart of a ‘servant’?
As for Ravi Zacharias? I have no words. The man was a manipulative, narcissistic predator, a serial abuser who remained unrepentant to his death, continuing to receive photos of young victims in his last weeks of life. He was not merely a ‘fallen sinner’, he was a fraud. His crimes must be acknowledged and condemned and his organization, its board members, the ECFA and all who enabled his horrific abuse should be identified and held accountable.
Yes, it is very sobering. And I suppose it might be the cause of trembling for other “Great Men” who are preying in similar ways and have yet to be discovered.
Your article helped me articulate my feelings. I’m reminded of a saying, “Sow a thought, reap an action. Sow an action, reap a habit. Sow a habit, reap a lifestyle.” Ravi’s lifestyle was one of deliberate perversion and hypocrisy. He was more concerned about these women’s bodies rather than their souls. Heartbreaking!
Yes, exactly, exactly this.
Thank you for this post.
I grew up in a conservative church in which this kind of thinking is prevalent. I am no longer in attendance there, but I occasionally go with my family when I visit my hometown.
In my most recent visit, when the congregation read from The New City Catechism, the answer to Question 29 made me do a double-take. It said, “…we are guilty of having disobeyed God and are still inclined to all evil.” It seems to be saying that even after salvation, you are still not just still able to commit sin, but inclined toward all sin. To this inclination there is no solution but that the grace of God will cover your evil in the end.
If you are incapable of resisting a constant desire for sin, what can you do but give in? The only answer I have heard from that church is that you must discipline yourself to not fall into that behavior. The power of the Spirit and the weapons of warfare are rarely – if ever – acknowledged in their teaching. Nevertheless, if you do sin and have any shred of a conscience, you will probably feel bad for your wrongdoing. In this case, the key is to comfort yourself with the idea, “As long as you’re sorry, God’s grace will cover it.”
If becoming a Christian does no more than give entrance to heaven on Judgment Day, how miserable it is to endure a temptation-filled life! How difficult it is to ever obtain victory! Does a real internal change not take place when God saves us? Is discipline the only way to avoid sin? Do we not have the Spirit to lead us into all truth, and do we not have His power to conquer temptation? After being saved, are we really still inclined to all evil? Are we really just as prone to sin now as before we were saved? If so, it makes sense to completely seclude yourself from the world and create some semblance of a “holy” atmosphere to try to keep yourself from the terrible evil out there.
Oh my goodness, Anonymous, what a wonderful comment! I want to shout this to all the world! This is it EXACTLY–the kind of teaching I refute on my blog all the time, and the very concepts with which I refute it. YES, we have the Holy Spirit and the armor of God and the power to resist sin. Romans says we are FREE from sin. It is a dismal, dismal life if we as Christians are still “inclined to all evil”!
But praise God there is so much HOPE in Jesus Christ, far more than simply hope for ultimate forgiveness. Hope for living the Christ-life that we as His people long to live.
In reading through pages and pages on the Ravi story, I am struck by where the conviction of the Holy Spirit was in his life. In this journey of following Christ we are well aware that when we have a wrong thought, a wrong motive or commit a sin, we immediately know it is wrong and immediately have a conviction in our heart/spirit from the Holy Spirit. You cannot get away from that if you really know Christ! He keeps you on a short leash, as-it-were. So that leaves me to wonder if Ravi really knew the Lord. Was his ministry like a line of business for him where he knew the scriptures well enough to expound on them externally as you would know the ins and outs of your business or work so well you can speak it but never live it? Perhaps like a professor who studies his subject to such a degree it becomes second nature, but in this case, there is no indicator that he lived by the scriptures and personally followed their teaching. I don’t know Ravi’s early life as a believer, but the fact that he used a Hindu practice of Ayurveda in his salons tells me that he never left his old life behind. Was he ever truly “saved” as we believe and teach salvation? I understand fully the points you make of how we fall away from the Lord in degrees of hardening our hearts towards sin and can see how that can happen. King Saul comes to mind here. However, I am wondering if this depth of harming others can be possible for someone claiming the name of Christ. Deception on so many levels, to his family, his followers, his staff and on and on. I have not heard one author of an article broach the possibility that he never truly knew the Lord. I think this is a real possibility.
Actually, Sandi, I have thought that. Exactly as you describe here.
When people come to the place of this hardened hypocrisy–pivot #4 in the progression I outline here, the words that Jesus had for those people indicate that they are not at all children of God.
That was a paragraph I agonized over and wrote and rewrote several times. I was trying to decide if I should indicate that I thought RZ wasn’t truly in Christ because of the way he responded to those who confronted him (pivot#4), as indicated by the words of Jesus. I finally let that go. But yes, since you have said this, yes, I have felt this way.
He spoke a lot of truth. But so did the “generation of vipers” Pharisees.
Sandi, this is the unavoidable question, and a very important one. We will remain vulnerable to deceivers as long as we are ignorant of the very real possibility of false teachers, who NEVER were children of God, simply going through the motions while preying upon the trusting sheep. I neither know the complete history of RZ’s life nor had access to his true motives, but I do not discount the possibility that he was a fraud from the start. A close inspection of all of his actions throughout his “ministry” (I shudder to even use the word for the deeds of this man), as well as an invitation to all victims to speak out, may well shed some light on that question.
In my church circles, I’ve heard “one sin is as bad as another”-there’s no difference to God-thanks for clearing up fuzzy thinking!
They are all sin in that they are all turning away from God, yes. But there certainly is difference to God. If there were no difference, then back in the theocracy of the Old Covenant, He would have issued the same punishment for all sins.
I have more to say about this that I hope I’ll be able to get to soon.
I think there has been some very faulty teaching on the concept of sin and redemption within the Institutional Christian Church. Jesus provided atonement for all ‘sin’, all of our inevitable falling short of the perfect will of God. We also see in the gospel narratives his compassion and willingness to mingle with common ‘sinners’, including tax collectors (thieves) and adulterers.
I tend to believe that there are very separate catagories for the sins we do in ignorance, or even a moment of weakness, and the sin we do when we have Spirit-led understanding. Kicking the dog in a moment of heated passion is in a different category than scheming, over a period of years, to take advantage of innocent women whose previous trauma or abuse made them easy prey to a ‘Man of Gawd’ father figure.
I would have a much different reaction had RZ fallen in love with his secretary, admitted to an affair, confessed and repented, than I do to the intentional, premeditated, serial abuse he was guilty of, along with serious fiduciary abuses, all of which were denied to his death.
No, all sin is not the same, and he who knowingly, deliberately, willfully rejects the leading of the Spirit into a continually more Christlike pattern of behavior, or does not respond to his calls for repentance, is not, in any sense of the word, a child of God.
Sobering and good thought. Thank you, TS00.
I am a survivor of pastoral abuse. I was the ministry assistant at my conservative evangelical church. I was disciplined for adultery by the elders of my church. They considered me complicit even though they recognized it as abuse and confessed that they didn’t protect me. I also was relieved of my position at the church. The one right thing they did is have the presbytery strip the pastor of his ordination and excommunicate him from the denomination. The church views me as unrepentant since I didn’t come before the congregation to confess my sin of adultery. Is that my sin to confess? We came to realize that the pastor was a narcissist predator who had preyed on several women. He was in a position of authority over me as a pastor and a boss. At the least it would have been sexual harassment in the work place, but they viewed me as complicit. What was my sin? They teach submission and I recognize my sin was a twisted submission from a heart that was desperate for approval and feared rejection. It’s been 11 years since the abuse and I’m still struggling and hurt that they didn’t get it and go on with their lives believing they were right and they get to continue as leaders in the church, yet I’m tossed aside as a sinner.
I’m so very sorry that happened to you. It does sound very similar, and Christians REALLY need to understand clergy sexual abuse. I pray that you’ll find the healing you need from this completely wrong situation. God bless you.
I gave them information on pastoral abuse from Dr. Diane Langburg’s study at Baylor. When I asked if they had read the info their response was “we understand abuse.” In other words, they didn’t feel it was necessary to educate themselves so they could better understand what had actually happened. At the beginning, when my story spilled out of me for the first time, ALL the elders sat staring and listening to me tell them what happened. At that time I had no idea what I had been through. An elder who is a local family court judge said “that is text book sexual abuse” and the elder who is a doctor, and had actually been my doctor until all this happened, said “he was grooming you.” I had NEVER heard the terms grooming or narcissist, nor was I aware that abuse also happens I the Protestant churches. I was so naive. They called in a group “Pastor Serve” to help deal with the fallout. I now realize it was about saving their reputations and making sure the church came out smelling like a rose. This all happened around the time of the Penn State scandal and fallout. My husband told the elders they were Penn State and that they should all step down for letting this pastor remain for 4 years. In those 4 years they had to address the pastor’s improprieties along the way but they never had him step down from the pulpit for any of those situations. It’s so sickening to see how leaders allow the stuff to go on all for the reputation of their images and the church! Ugh!!! I do want to thank you for continuing to shine light to reveal the darkness in our churches. Your blog speaks truth to the twisting of God’s Word! Bless you!
I’m just so sorry for the horrendous self protection and double standard. (But what can you expect from a group called Pastor Serve.”) It reminds me of this post: https://heresthejoy.com/2019/08/are-wolves-proliferating-in-the-churches/
That blog post is spot on. In my last conversation with two of the elders (my very own doctor and the family court judge) sitting at my kitchen table with my husband beside quoted this scripture: 2 Timothy 3:6-7 “They are the kind who worm their way into homes and gain control over gullible women, who are loaded down with sins and are swayed by all kinds of evil desires, always learning but never able to come to a knowledge of the truth.” I am the gullible woman, the one loaded down with sins, the one swayed by evil desires and not knowing the truth! I am the one wounded deeply by those I loved and thought loved me as they carry on in the church that was my home and my joy!
I am so sorry. It was terrible what was done to you. I pray that you’ll find the healing you need.
It’s the deceivers who are loaded with sins and evil desires, and who keep the vulnerable women “learning” one set of “things to read” after another, while never letting the women realize the truth — that the false teachers have nothing to teach, they are only baiting a hook with the promise that soon things will make sense. Now they worm their way into homes with screens instead of necessarily going in person, but the effect is the same.
Jesus taught that someone wanting to be “great” in his kingdom should be a servant. If these men who aspire to be Great Men would adopt the attitude of service toward women, they would know that harming women is the opposite of being great. The statement by the Gospel Coalition reveals their underlying belief in their own superiority over women.
That’s a good point–I assume they would say that isn’t what they meant, but it does come across that way.
This is so sad. While I never was a fan of RZ, and never really saw the appeal (to me, there was a certain smugness, at least in the few videos I watched of him speaking), some of my friends were really impressed. They’re in the ‘writing community’, so obviously his penmanship made an impact on them.. One young man – a newly published author – was deeply influenced in his faith by Ravi, and even met him.. I do hope this has not destroyed his faith, as he already was someone who struggled emotionally and spiritually, and wrestled with many questions in recent years…
I’m grateful I never was taken advantage in such a way in the church. A few times, I have come across with leaders, whom I recognised as sexual predators, and immediately rebuffed them.. (thankfully, one such example was fired by the mission board some years later..) Emotionally assaulted, yes, and it can be absolutely devastating as well..
(Incidentally, in the online community where I was a part of last year, so many people adored RZ.. and did not believe the victims at all. It was just hush hushed with a ‘oh, he who is sinless, may cast the first stone’… and many of those women had themselves come out of abusive marriages and been horribly treated by so-called Christian men… still, they could not believe their idol would be a phony..)
An interesting point of view was presented by David Wood in his video (he is a professionally diagnosed psychopath, with no natural empathy – he at least knows this is wrong, and that he needs the Lord to change and to do better in how he is treating people around him…sure enough, he comes across pretty ‘wooden’, and I am certain he would not be offended by that!).. how easily pride combined with intelligence can cause one to be really a horrible person. (he was referring to himself first of all, sharing how his doctorate was finished so quickly, because he was emotionally so distant from his wife and kids.) David mentioned brother Nabeel, who passed a way a few years ago, and how everyone of course was praying for his recovery – as Nabeel was seen as the next, great apologist, with a sign of heaven’s, and Ravi’s approval… what I had never heard was that even Nabeel had the tendency to really show off his intelligence and talk down to people occasionally, as the smartest guy in the room.. and David’s conclusion was, God’s solution was to take him home before he could become another intellectual monster, adored, applaud and, puffed up by his own greatness.
II am not sure I agree with David’s conclusion 100%, but one thing is absolutely true.. Nabeel is forever spared from the temptation of becoming an arrogant mini-Ravi. (For the record, I did pray for his healing and thought his death was a tragic loss..) I just know how deceptive intelligence without humility and maturity can be. Had I got all I wanted in life at a young age, a degree , book deal, and a spouse of my liking, I might be totally heartless, cruel monster, with no compassion for anyone’s struggles or pain.. Then, of course, the society would love me as a productive and successful career person, and my parents would burst in pride.. (again, the pride snooping around…)
Now as my life is the exact opposite I wanted, and hoped, and need the grace just to get up each day, I am still thankful that I am not the successful author I dreamed of being. One day God can do it, but then it will be so obvious to everyone that He alone gets the full credit.
Helpful thoughts, thank you so much.
Of course I don’t mean to imply that intelligence and pride automatically make somene a sexual predator.. but they can lead to that ‘puffed up’ entitlement mindset, which can be a downward slope to deception and hardened heart.
Some very intelligent people still have been kind, decent and compassionate people, as I have read about C.S. Lewis.
“The lesson is that if we want to become Great Men who do great and mighty works for the kingdom, we are just as vulnerable to such sin as any celebrity.”
I think there is another truth that that Gospel Coalition has accidentally uncovered here – SHOULD we “want to be great” at all? I am reminded of the line from my favorite hymn (which unfortunately does not have an easily rememberable title) which states “I would not own a restless will that hurries to and fro, seeking for SOME GREAT THING TO DO, or secret thing to know”
I believe that the desire to be great is a dangerous desire in itself, leaving those who pursue it far more likely to start seeing others who are “not so great” as less valuable, whose exploitation matters less.
Excellent observation. Thank you, Tabitha.