Remembering Ravi Zacharias
Remembering Ravi Zacharias
By Paul Copan | Plus, A Look at the New Book, "Everyday Apologetics"
A Tribute to Ravi Zacharias
by Paul Copan
As you are by now aware, the apologist and evangelist Ravi Zacharias has departed this life, and many of us have appreciated his friendship and been influenced by his speaking and writing ministry. I met Ravi in Albany, NY, over 25 years ago, when I was on the pastoral staff of First Presbyterian Church in Schenectady, NY. Ravi was to be involved in a series of talks in the Capital District, and I had been organizing his two university engagements. During his visit, we had breakfast together—an event that would culminate in my coming on staff with Ravi Zacharias International Ministries. It was an honor to work with Ravi and the RZIM team for over five years. This was a time for our team to experience many wonderful ministry partnerships, opportunities for service all around the world, and strategic stepping stones for the future.
In addition, I am grateful for Ravi’s friendship, support, and encouragement for me personally during those RZIM years. A particular memory is his strong support while I completed my comprehensive exams and my dissertation at Marquette University while working with him full time. Another is that shortly after I began working at RZIM, Ravi immediately stepped in to assist the Evangelical Philosophical Society in its strategizing to restructure itself as a professional society that also took seriously ministry to the church and global mission. RZIM provided funding for the gathering of philosophers such as William Lane Craig, J. P. Moreland, Doug Geivett, Francis Beckwith, and others at the old Simpsonwood conference center near Atlanta to brainstorm and to plan. The EPS and its journal Philosophia Christi have been flourishing ever since. I am grateful for the role he played in helping us move forward in strength.
My wife and I were recently in Savannah, Georgia. Each time we have gone, we have visited the Colonial Park Cemetery and read the epitaphs. We always return to one particular gravestone, which highlights the “sacred…memory of Michael Long…who died in the full triumph of a gospel faith and is now gone to heaven to reap the reward of his labors and with a glorious hope of meeting all he had left behind, never to part [any] more.” This is the message Ravi devoted his life’s labors to proclaiming.
— Paul Copan is the Pledger Family Chair of Philosophy and Ethics at Palm Beach Atlantic University. Learn more about Paul and his work at paulcopan.com.
Quotable—A New Kind of Skeptic
From Everyday Apologetics: Answering Common Objections to the Christian Faith, ed. by Paul Chamberlain and Chris Price (Lexham Press, 2020)
Some time ago, I and my colleague Michael Horner (one of the other contributors to this book) were invited to participate in a public debate with two atheists. This was not a garden-variety debate; it was to be the opening act of an atheist convention attended by a few hundred atheists from around North America, and even a few from overseas. In a strange sort of way, I felt honored to be asked. We readily accepted and began our preparations.
When I mentioned this upcoming event to others, one particular question kept coming up among both Christians and people of no faith, usually accompanied by a shrug of the shoulders: Why would atheists have a convention? As one person put it wryly, “What are they celebrating? Nothingness?” I found the question amusing and said I would try to find out.
Once I arrived at the conference, the answer quickly became obvious. The vast majority of those in attendance did not merely believe there was no God; they were former members of some religious group from which they had been “set free,” and they were now celebrating their liberated status as atheists. The theme of the conference was “Imagine No Religion.” One of the debaters we engaged was a former Southern Baptist who had been preparing for ministry; the other had been a Catholic altar boy. Others were former Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormons, Muslims, and the like.
This conference exemplifies something different happening in the world of faith and religion in the Western world. There has emerged a new and passionate kind of skeptic—one who, in the past, was a devout member of the Christian community, who worshiped alongside the rest of us. These skeptics prayed and read their Bibles and believed what they read. Some, in fact, were leaders in the Christian community: pastors, professors, theologians, authors, church planters, and theology students.
These new skeptics are being supported by a growing number of organizations—usually web-based—devoted to helping and encouraging them in their journey away from the faith. One, The Clergy Project (TCP), exists to “provide a safe haven of protected, anonymous online community for former and active religious professionals who no longer hold to supernatural beliefs.” Another, Christians Anonymous (CA), proclaims itself to be “a resource for recovering Christians.” CA sets out its own twelve-step program, patterned after Alcoholics Anonymous, to help people become free from the “mental enslavement” that comes from “the addiction of Christianity,” which it calls a “disease of the mind.”
Conversations with these new skeptics will be different from conversations with skeptics who have never been part of the Christian community. They do not need to be told what it’s like to be a Christian. In some cases, they know their Bibles, their theology, and their history of Christianity better than many Christians do.
Many of them have also honed their skills in presenting their case against Christianity. If you ask them to take some teachings by faith, they are unlikely to go along. More likely, they’ll ask you if you offer the same concession to people of other faiths when their teachings run into difficulties. Most importantly, the objections they raise against Christianity are not likely to be ones most Christians have thought about. They’ve heard the typical arguments, have found them inadequate, and have concluded that there aren’t any good ones. It’s why they left. Often, their goal is to persuade other Christians to join them in their rejection of Christianity, or at least to provide a safe haven for Christians who become disillusioned with their faith.
Their knowledge of common arguments in favor of Christianity can be unsettling for someone who wants to talk with them about faith. For example, a friend of mine whom I’ll call Steve had read and studied the Bible more than most Christians both in college and on his own. He was active in his church and had gone on to be a respected professional in his field. One of his work colleagues had once been a devout Christian but had rejected the faith and was now an ardent and, as it turned out, very knowledgeable skeptic of Christianity. Steve and this colleague were asked by their company to travel to a different city for a weekend and take care of a project together. Steve saw it as a golden opportunity to share the message of Jesus with him. Perhaps he could encourage him to reconsider his decision to turn away from his faith. He asked his church friends to pray for him, and off they went.
Things did not go according to plan—at least, not Steve’s plan. The colleague was no passive recipient and, like Steve, welcomed the opportunity to present his case. The weekend turned into a bruising encounter in which Steve’s attempts to share his faith were frustrated by a well-prepared skeptic.
Every time Steve made a point, his colleague seemed to be one step ahead of him. He knew the point and immediately raised a problem with it. In most cases, Steve found himself unable to respond. And when Steve was through, his colleague started in, raising new challenges Steve had not thought of. The longer it went, the worse it got. Where was God, Steve wondered, when he really needed him? Didn’t Jesus say in Luke 21:15 that he would give us words to say when tough questions were thrown our way?
My hat is off to people like Steve. They don’t keep their heads down; they take up the challenge, and the privilege, of sharing the message of Jesus with skeptics like these. . . . I’ll return to Steve’s story later, but for now let me ask: How can we better our efforts to share our faith with this new kind of skeptic? I have found the following seven principles to be helpful. They can be used in conversations with any kind of skeptic, but they are especially helpful with a skeptic who has rejected Christianity. I encourage you to consider these and then see if there are others you might add to the list. . .
Book Highlight
Everyday Apologetics: Answering Common Objections to the Christian Faith is a very helpful overview of Christian apologetics aimed at those who are new to the subject. The contributors explain the need for apologetics, consider common objections to Christianity (such as suffering, Old Testament violence, and science), and then build a positive case for the trustworthiness of Christian belief (including God’s existence, the resurrection, and meaning in life). For anyone looking for an informative but accessible introduction to apologetics, this is a great place to start.
“Everyday Apologetics offers many practical insights on a host of topics, providing clear guidance for defending one’s faith. This concise handbook on key faith questions can help embolden believers in their witness for Christ.”
— Paul Copan, Pledger Family Chair of Philosophy and Ethics, Palm Beach Atlantic University; author of Is God a Moral Monster?
“Everyday Apologetics will help you investigate and respond to common objections to Christianity so that you can grow in your personal confidence and share the gospel with your friends and neighbors.”
— J. Warner Wallace, Dateline-featured Cold-Case Detective; Speaker and Senior Fellow at the Colson Center for Christian Worldview; author of Cold-Case Christianity
Find Everyday Apologetics at Amazon, Lexham Press (you can get the Logos version here), and other major booksellers.
*This is a sponsored post.
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