Jesus, Religion, Spirituality And The Search For Truth

   It's been a long and busy, yet satisfying day at work. I'll be heading off to cook dinner in a few minutes and then settle down to do some study on the background of the apostle Paul for my next post on the book of Romans. While I was relaxing after getting home after work, I had remembered a YouTube video that had caught worldwide attention on the Internet at the beginning of this year, and wanted to watch it again. Here is Jefferson Bethke's poem titled "Why I Hate Religion But Love Jesus", delivered in the style known as "Spoken Word". If you decide to watch it, please remember that you can view it in full 1080p HD!

   I didn't get around to seeing this video till almost a month or more after its release. In a television interview with Jefferson Bethke on GBTV's "For The Record" [1] (also available on YouTube), it was reported that this video was second on the list of the top 100 viral videos to be seen around the globe amongst all the video content posted on the Internet to date. "Why I Hate Religion But Love Jesus" has been viewed in excess of 20 million times to date, spawned several responses in Spoken Word format from Muslims [2], Roman Catholics [3], Atheists, and many other quarters, and generated plenty of debate and conversation on the topic of Jesus, religion, faith, grace and the Gospel. Nonetheless, I was still surprised to see it being discussed by none other than Ravi Zacharias in an interview with Shawn McEvoy, the Managing Director of the Christian website Crosswalk.com, on Dr. Zacharias' latest book "Why Jesus? Rediscovering His Truth In An Age of Mass Marketed Spirituality". Here is the video of that discussion:

   I watched these videos today because of their connection with some of the topics discussed in Paul's letter to the church in Rome - sin, religion, the law and rules, the cross, salvation, justification, grace, and the saving, transforming power of the gospel. These are some of the most important questions that a human being in search of truth will encounter and wrestle with. I want to think through these in great detail for myself as I study the epistle to the Romans. 

   It is clear that Jefferson Bethke has wrestled with these questions himself in his own life, as he makes clear in this video and others. He recites his history as a 22-year old who was conceived out-of-wedlock, abandoned by his father, brought up in the church and presenting the neat facade of a Christian who attended church on Sunday, while struggling with pornography, drink and sex on the sidelines during the rest of the week. Despite the differences people may have with some of his assertions, it is clear that the power of the true Gospel has met him head on, and he cannot but help talk about it and make much of Jesus.

   And with the head-on collision with the Gospel in my life as well, I can't help it either.

Grace and peace to you,

- The Wisdom Seeker

REFERENCES:
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[1] GBTV's For The Record Inteviews Star of "Why I Hate Religion But Love Jesus"
[2] Why I Hate Religion, But Love Jesus (Muslim Response)
[3] Why I Love Religion, And Love Jesus (Roman Catholic Response)

This Just Arrived....

New Arrivals!

Well, I just got home from small group 15 minutes ago, and sipping a cup of my custom hot chocolate mix before heading out for my weekly small group meeting at 5:30.

Before I go, just thought I'd share the contents of a parcel that was waiting for me inside my hallway when I walked through the front door. I guess the landlord must have put them there since they were too big for our mailbox.

I'm excited to have got Ravi Zacharias' new book, "Why Jesus? Discovering His Truth In An Age of Mass Marketed Spirituality." I've been looking forward to reading it since I first heard about it some months ago, and got it from Christian Book Distributors during their special offer last month.

Since there were some other items available on substantial discount, I also got myself DVDs of the movie "Fireproof" and the incredible documentary of "The Star of Bethlehem." I'm looking forward to showing the last one to my small group sometime soon. I think they'll find it really interesting. It amazed me the first time I watched it.

Time to hit the road in a few minutes. I might upload another post tonight after I get back. Till then, God bless!

- The Wisdom Seeker

REFERENCES:
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[1] Fireproof: The Movie
[2] The Star of Bethlehem

A Great Week In Vancouver with RZIM Canada!

     Yesterday marked the end of RZIM's week long itinerary of events in the greater Vancouver area, which I had mentioned in my earlier post. Dr. Andy Bannister spoke at The Point Church's 10 AM service at SFU, and then flew back to Toronto, with a stopover in Winnipeg. Most of the team would have left by late morning, some like Michael Ramsden and David Lloyd heading back to Oxford, and the Canadian team heading back to Toronto. Unfortunately, I was only able to make it to two events during the week - the "Stripped Down Faith" event at SFU on Wednesday, where Michael Ramsden spoke on the topic "Is The Christian God Schizophrenic?", and the RZIM Builder's Dinner at the Ramada Hotel in Abbotsford, held last Saturday for RZIM's financial supporters.

    The event at SFU (in partnership with Campus for Christ) went very well, and the talk was most interesting and engaging. I recorded most of the main talk, and some of the Q&A session, which featured some very interesting, heartfelt and thought-provoking questions. I hope to have video highlights of the evening up on the YouTube channel shortly. Until then, here are some of the photos from the evening:

Andy Bannister and Michael Ramsden during the Question & Answer segment at SFU

Dr. Andy Bannister in conversation with a student after the event

Michael Ramsden deep in discussion. This conversation went on for a long time!

     The Builder's Dinner during the weekend turned out to be a wonderful evening, as I got to meet and connect with a number of RZIM supporters, some of whom were also graduates of RZIM's six-week summer program offered at their Oxford Centre of Christian Apologetics at Oxford University. It has long-been a dream of mine to one day do their one-year course, so it was with excitement (and not a little envy) that I listened to stories of their experiences in class, being taught by and spending time with some of the finest thinking minds in the Christian community. During the course of the evening, in between starters and the main course, we got to listen to Dr. Andy Bannister describe some of their experiences at their speaking engagements in the lower mainland over the last week. After that, Michael Ramsden gave a small talk on the famous doxology of Jude 1:24-15, intertwined with inspiring and powerful stories of their ministry experiences all over the world of the past year. It was a personally humbling experience to sit in the company of such great men and women, most of whom were much older than I yet both supporting RZIM and tirelessly involved in ministry of their own, even in their old age. Here are some of my favourite snapshots of the evening:

The venue at the Ramada Plaza in Abbotsford

Rick Manafo, setting up the soundstage

Testing, Testing...

With Andy Bannister, Rick Manafo and Michael Ramsden at the end of a memorable evening!

     Although I wish I had been able to attend all of RZIM's speaking engagements on the Mainland and Vancouver Island, it was a great week nonetheless. One of the unofficial highlights was being able to go out to dinner with my friend Rick Manafo, one of RZIM Canada's apologists and also their event manager. I had had the privilege of meeting Rick for the first time last year while visiting the RZIM Canada office, and helping him over the last several months with some of the details related to the Stripped Down Faith events at SFU and UBC. It was wonderful to go to dinner on a cold and rainy night in downtown Vancouver on Thursday, at the Banana Leaf restaurant on Denman Street, before he joined the team on Vancouver Island for one of their main speaking engagements. We got to both fellowship and review the events half-way through their itinerary, and possible plans for next year and the short-term future. I was really excited to see God open doors and connect people during this trip, and am looking forward to partnering and participating with more RZIM events in the Lower Mainland in the years to come!

- The Wisdom Seeker

RZIM In Vancouver!

     I've been wanting to put up this post for several months now, and the time has finally come! Ever since I first heard from Ravi Zacharias International Ministries [1] at the beginning of year that they would be coming to Vancouver for a week of speaking engagements at different venues, I've been looking forward to seeing them again. Last year, I had written about how RZIM has been used by God to tremendously impact my life in a post [2] that featured a video of Dr. Zacharias in an interview with 100 Huntley Street [3]. I was elated when I got to visit RZIM Canada's office in Toronto while on vacation last year! Since then, it has been a real privilege to get to know the team that comprises RZIM Canada, and support and help them in whatever way I've been able to. In the process, God has kindled a burning passion in my heart to use my abilities to write, speak and think for Him in a similar fashion. But those are aspirations for the future, and I should come back to the events of the here and now!

    RZIM will be in the Greater Vancouver area (including Vancouver Island) towards the last week of this month, from the 22nd to 28th. As far as I know, their public speaking itinerary is as follows:

• Tuesday, Nov. 22 @ 11:30 AM - TWU chapel @ TWU (Dr. Andy Bannister)
• Tuesday, Nov. 22 @ 5:00 PM - Wood 6 @ UBC (Dr. Andy Bannister, Nathan Betts)
• Wednesday, Nov. 22 @ 11:30 AM - TWU chapel @ TWU (Michael Ramsden)
• Wednesday, Nov. 23 @ 6:30 PM - SSCB 9201 @ SFU (Michael Ramsden, Nathan Betts)
• Wednesday, Nov. 23 @ 7:00 PM - Mark Isfeld Secondary School, Vancouver Island (Michael Ramsden)
• Thursday, Nov. 24 - Vancouver Island
• Sunday, Nov. 27 morning - The Point Church @ SFU (Dr. Andy Bannister)

    I will definitely be attending the events at SFU and UBC after work. They should be really interesting given the topic that Andy Bannister and Michael Ramsden will be speaking on respectively - "Stripped Down Faith", looking at what faith is, and why it is even necessary in this day and age. I really wish I could make it to the event on Vancouver Island, which addresses the perceived "failings" of the Christian faith, raised by those who believe that it has failed them or preached an empty promise that is unable to deliver. You can find more information by clicking the pictures below, or at RZIM's Stay In The Conversation website:

RZIM's University Tour: "Stripped Down Faith" at UBC and SFU respectively

RZIM's main Vancouver Island event: "Christianity - A Failed Hope?"

     There are other public and private events happening during the week, and I will update details here, on Twitter and Facebook as I get to know more from RZIM. Buy your tickets now!

- The Wisdom Seeker

REFERENCES:

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[1] Ravi Zacharias International Ministries

[2] Dr. Ravi Zacharias In Interview!

[3] 100 Huntley Street

"Family" Matters

Our "Family Portrait", taken at Vancouver YVR airport

  Three months ago, something extraordinary happened within a small group of friends whom I have known for some time from C4C @ SFU and attend the same church with. Over the last year and more, I had gotten into the habit of going to the same church service, sitting together, having meals, watching movies, talking, fellowshipping and sharing everyday life. Noticing long-standing patterns of interaction within our group dynamic (which only amplified over time) we gathered one Sunday afternoon to talk and address them. Some matters were touchy and sensitive, others controversial. Quite a bit of it had to do with me.

  I still have trouble expressing what happened at that gathering. I don't think anyone anticipated what happened, least of all me.

  We voiced concerns, grudges, emotions, sensitive matters, memories and processed them together. I had a lot of stuff to disclose, confess and repent for; so did everyone else. We vented, argued, rebuked, cried, shared, forgave, laughed and prayed together. It was strange and in some ways awkward for me, as I'd never done something like that before.

  But in the process, we experienced a very tangible and powerful bonding. I remember some of us talking about it days later and reflecting how we'd never seen or been part of something like that before. In many ways, we felt very much like a family, and some of us said so.

  Above all, I believe we saw the restoring power and grace of God through His Gospel brought to bear upon a community of fallen people. In his latest book "Has Christianity Failed You?", Ravi Zacharias makes a powerful observation:

  "Human beings will always find ways to divide and create hierarchies. Such is the plight of the human heart...This is the first clue to transcending ethnicity. One may call to Jesus out of his ethnic and cultural distinctive, but one's ultimate transformation comes in that personal dimension of trust apart from any cultural elitism...The call of Jesus is an invitation to freedom and trust. I am free only inasmuch as I can trust my fellow human being. If I cannot trust those around me, I am not free...The vision of God for humanity is that we might see his claim on us as an invitation to live and love, transcending all ethnic and cultural boundaries, not because Jesus is David's son, but because He is the instrument of power over all other power, of essential worth over political ideology, of human need over ethnic arrogance. He has eradicated every barrier of race and culture and position in life."

  So why am I writing this now? I stand at a fork in the road of my life, a turning point with a critical decision to make. I look around at those closest to me and see them looking back. I am moved, even unnerved by the depth of affection that I see  in their eyes. Maybe I am forced to confront the possibility that I have assumed myself to be unlovable by anyone, and shut everyone out  for years with that one assumption. 

  More often than not, we fallen human beings don't appreciate what we have, or the people God offers and makes available to us. Sadly, history will testify that the only way we realize value and are forced to grow is by losing and reflecting on what could have been. As the popular saying goes, "you don't know what you have until it's gone". From Genesis to Revelation and our own personal lives, we all have enough and more of those moments to remember and reflect on.

  To my Family and "Family": thank you for loving me in spite of my vacillation, moods, stubbornness, silence, stupidity, sullenness, bickering, sharp tongue, sensitivity, insensitivity, ingratitude, unkindness, and moments when I've shut you all out. As I realized a couple of days ago, I have nothing good to say about myself and everything good to say about my God.

  I love you all very much.

- The Wisdom Seeker

Dr. Ravi Zacharias In Interview!

Recently, I had come across this posting on Youtube of a recent interview with Dr. Ravi Zacharias - Christian theologian, philosopher, apologist, writer and founder of RZIM. I first came across Dr. Zacharias in 2003, while visiting my parents in the Middle East during a summer holiday prior to starting the fourth year of my undergraduate program in India. Having no idea who he was, the name "Ravi Zacharias" meant nothing to me when my parents took my sister and I on a long drive to Abu Dhabi, where he was giving a series of talks at the Sheraton hotel. Although, I have very little memory of the content of his speech, I know something happened to me as I listened to him talk that evening - a defining moment that has quite shaped my life, growth, personality and vision since then.

I found this particular interview as evocative of memories and sentiment in many respects as the actual intellectual content of the conversation itself. Dr. Zacharias' name pops up quite often in one form or the other in my conversations with friends, family and strangers (usually in the context of some discussion related to life and meaning). Most people who know me attribute my liking for Ravi Zacharias because of a particular intellectual bent that I resonate with, or a possible interest in apologetics, or common ethnicity, or various other reasons. Curiously enough, as I watched him talk in this more personal setting, I think I understood much better why I find him so special, and my deep affection for the man. I thought I'd share some of those personal insights and memories here. But first, the interview.

My apologies for the cropping of the videos on the right side due to formatting restrictions; to view them in their full dimensions, please double-click on them to connect to the original posting on YouTube.

Part One:



Part Two:

The mention of his struggles in school brought back memories and reflections of my own wounds while growing up. Unlike Dr. Zacharias, I was educated outside India during my primary and secondary school years (hence sparing me the ruthless pressure and severe competition inherently present within the Indian school system). Nevertheless, my own school culture was one of high expectations, constant comparison and the constant drive to perform, where intellectual achievement was a significant determinant of both social acceptance and self-worth.

A private Catholic institution that was one of the best international schools in the country where I grew up, the consistent scholastic achievements of the students was formidable - the best examination results and admission into top-tier universities worldwide. Thus, I strove to be like 'the others' in my class, dutifully worked hard, and made it into one of the top 5 schools for electrical engineering in the US - only to have all my effort crumble to dust in my hands by my second year there. Dr. Zacharias' description of himself as a 'colossal flop' for much of his schooling years neatly summed up my feelings about myself after my own personal scholastic devastation, exactly a decade ago. Like him, it took the intervention of God to transform both me and where my life was headed, as He put a broken life back together, and propelled my life upwards. But that is a story for another time.

I was once struck by the irony that though one may grow up geographically distant from one's land of ethnic origin, air, land and sea are rendered irrelevant to the strangulating tentacles of deeply embedded negative cultural influences. Sown and grown within, one unwittingly carries them everywhere, and unless made cognizant of them, operates unaware of their influence. I have been painfully discovering this recently; over the last several months God has blown deeply ingrained assumptions that I have held out of the water, one after the other in a most spectacular fashion. More on that in coming posts.

"I lived in India - born and raised there...pressure to perform, in studies, is number one in India. You don't just pass. You better pass right at the top, or you're in trouble, and I was in trouble...the maximum number of suicides in India happens every year after the examinations, because people don't see a future if they haven't performed well and I was one of those statistics. I attempted to take my own life, and I was in a hospital room." I was silent for a little while as Dr. Zacharias recounted his own suicide attempt. I remembered reading countless such stories over the years in the local newspaper when I was in primary and secondary school, of some middle or high school student that had committed suicide because their 10th or 12th grade results were not good enough. I especially remembered one girl in my class that I knew personally during my undergraduate years in university, who locked herself in the washroom of her dorm room and slashed both her wrists with a blade in a suicide attempt during our third or fourth year in engineering. She survived because she was discovered in time by a friend and dorm supervisor and rushed to hospital, and came back to university. All of us in that class had a silent and unspoken sympathy for her, knowing ourselves the massive pressure of social expectation to perform, in a country where every mark in school counts in the battle for economic survival and represents one possible foothold higher up the ladder leading away from poverty. It was a sobering reminder of God's mercy and provision in my own life; I thought of how He had kept me intact through some very difficult years in university, protected me from terrible despair and loss of heart, and kept me going, though intense academic pressure and moments of dejection.

"So there I was at the age of 17 saying 'Jesus, if you are who you claim to be, take control of my life. I don't know how to live. I don't even know if I want to live. But I want life; I don't have it now. If you will take charge of my life and give me what I need, I will leave no stone unturned in my pursuit of truth. That's what happened.'" Ravi's touching prayer reminded me of a similar one that I had prayed along those lines in late 2002, as I hit rock bottom in my own devastating series of seemingly never-ending failures that began after I finished high school. And with tears in my eyes, I remembered God's tender and unfailing answer of rescue in the moment of my own brokenness, as He began the long journey towards healing of a shattered mind and spirit.

In the middle of all these reminiscing and reflection, I think the biggest realization hit me just listening Dr. Zacharias' voice itself as he talked about the 'apologetics of touch', and the character of the man that comes across in those soft spoken, polite and gracious tones. Although there may have been other things of an intellectual nature that may have caught and held my attention as I first heard him talk that evening six years ago, it may finally have been his nature and character that inspired and moved me the most, and continues to do so. It is not so much his intellectual bent, or a love of apologetics, or common ethnicity. It is that genuine outflow of the transformed Christ-like nature - a willingness to honestly engage with and address the deep shared questions and cries of my sinful heart and mind that brings conviction, yet in a tender and gracious manner that is cognizant of the brokenness and fragility of the spirit in need of forgiveness. In a way, he also evokes fond memories of the cultural norms of southern India (where I originate from) that I have witnessed and been imprinted with to some degree by elders, friends and family - lessons of kindness, hospitality, graciousness, empathy and compassion, with tenderness and sensitivity in speech and action. If I had to describe what I am left with time and again as I have listened to, watched or read Dr. Zacharias and RZIM minister for Christ over the years, I believe "peace of mind and comfort of spirit" would sum it up admirably.

As the interview moved on to various other topics, I thought of the testimony of God's transforming goodness to fundamentally broken human beings, which I see beautifully illustrated in the life of this man. I guess in the tapestry that God has woven out of Dr. Ravi Zacharias' life, I see incontestibly depicted the power of God in the words of Christ in the Gospel of John:

"Because I live, you also will live." (John 14:19, ESV)

Over the years, God has used RZIM's ministry and mission, beautifully summed up in their two pithy statements, "What I believe in my heart must make sense in my mind" and "Helping the thinker believe, helping the believer think", to touch me profoundly in my walk with Him. I love them all very much and I'm glad I got to say 'Thank You' through this post!

- The Wisdom Seeker