The Fall of Ravi Zacharias and Taking Sin Seriously
What’s Wrong With Us?
Our society and church loves to elevate men and women. Peering down from the lofty pedestals we make for them, these celebrity pastor/teachers must get dizzy. Or scared. Because the higher the pedestal, the more precarious the fall. Looking down from that height at all the admiring eyes must tempt Christian leaders to hide their secret sins in the dark corners of their heart. The fall would hurtle them crashing down.
Let me be clear. I don’t believe pastors should be celebrities. Leaders, yes. But someone deserving of groupies? Never. With Jesus on the throne, there’s room for no other. That’s important because none of us deal well with adoration. And after all the historical and Biblical precedence, no one should understand that better than a Christian leader.
Yet, they’re/we’re still lulled into the lie that if they/we hide dark secrets, no one will know. But no one gets away with anything. God isn’t afraid of including horrific sins in the Bible, probably because He also includes His judgement. It’s our warning. Above the maddening crowd, overseeing every moment of our lives, reigns the all-knowing, all-seeing Creator of the universe. There’s no secret He doesn’t know.
By TMDrew - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=39545102
I’m not famous, so I know I don’t really understand the pressure. It must be harder than I imagine to rip one’s view from human admirers to the Divine One who deserves all our admiration and our life. Does that explain why so many scandals have flown from the backwaters of Christian leaders' lives in recent years? I thought I had become immune to the disappointment. Always I grieved, but I really thought I couldn’t be shocked anymore.
But then - Ravi.
For years, I’ve learned from his teaching and books. I’ve pointed people to his material. I’ve recommended his apologetics to answer questions that seekers wrestle with. When he died, I grieved and paid him tribute. I never feared he’d hidden another life. A dark life. Secret sin.
Ravi Zacharias
The accusations still feel impossible to me. Could the same man who logically and lovingly expounded spiritual truths around the world have actually cloaked such ugly secrets? Yes, comes the sorrowful answer. And it looks like the more that’s revealed, the worst the facts will be.
My point here is not to list the horrible sins. There are plenty of places to read those reports. And I would never minimize what occurred. I detest the harm perpetrated on young women. But, that is also not my subject.
My question is how can the church (that would be ALL of us) be in such a place that our leaders speak truth publicly and nurture sin privately? What are we doing wrong? What are we thinking wrong?
I don’t know, but I have some thoughts. Please get ready, because I might be about to step on your toes.
I propose we misunderstand grace, we don’t take sin seriously, and we don’t publicly confess.
Grace
I’m grateful for grace. Forgiveness I don’t deserve? What could be better? But does grace mean that I can sin as much as I want, because I will be forgiven? May I interpret Paul - “No way, Jose!”
What then? Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace? May it never be! ~Romans 6:15
Grace doesn’t give us license to sin, any more than having an “important ministry” gives someone permission to cover up their sinful behavior. If we view grace through what it cost our Savior, we would be motivated toward holiness. My allegiance to obey the Lord who showers me with such blessings should constrain my actions, not be an excuse for my worst behavior.
“Grace is never cheap. It is absolutely free to us, but infinitely expensive to God ... Anyone who is prone to use grace as a license for irresponsible, sinful behavior, surely does not appreciate the infinite price God paid to give us His grace.”
-Jerry Bridges, Pursuit of Holiness
Grace should lead us to take sin MORE seriously, not indulge it. Think what this gift cost our Savior!
Or do you think lightly of the riches of His kindness and tolerance and patience, not knowing that the kindness of God leads you to repentance? -Romans 2:4 NASB
If we’re going to live in obedience to the Lord of our life, and value the extravagance of grace, we’re going to have to take sin seriously.
Take Sin Seriously
I’ve been trying to imagine how Ravi could study Scripture one day and then actively perpetrate sin the next. How could he teach truth to a crowd on Monday, and manipulate or abuse a young woman on Wednesday?
Now don’t get me wrong. I understand the difficulty of living out truth. I know the Lord’s commands, yet I often ignore them. I’ll ignore conviction and make excuses for my behavior, too. I’m not speaking this from a place of victory.
I’m speaking from experience.
I must take sin more seriously.
The church must take sin more seriously.
How do we do that? I think our modern, grace-oriented, define-obedience-as-legalism culture needs to step back and rethink our approach to sin. Here’s some suggestions, straight from the Word.
And let me tell you right now: these actions slay pride, expose our underbellies to everyone’s view, and usually hurt.
But, you want to know what else they slay? Hypocrisy. Double-mindedness. Justification of sin.
Obey God
This seems obvious, yet the people of God have struggled with this basic step since Yahweh gave only one negative instruction in the garden. Adam and Eve turned around and did that very thing.
“Too often, we say we are defeated by this or that sin. No, we are not defeated. We are simply disobedient. It might be good if we stop using the terms victory and defeat to describe our progress in holiness. Rather, we should use the terms obedience and disobedience. When I say I am defeated by some sin, I am unconsciously slipping out from under my responsibility. I am saying something outside of me has defeated me. But when I say I am disobedient, that places the responsibility for my sin squarely on me. We may in fact be defeated, but the reason we are defeated is because we have chosen to disobey.
-Jerry Bridges, Pursuit of Holiness
Struggles vary from person to person. Lying might plague one person, while gluttony does another. Greed, lust, perversion, selfishness, envy. Lack of worship, prayer, or fellowship. Addiction to a substance, to work, or to ourselves.
The list of sins equals the population of the world. Yet the Lord’s commands apply principally to every issue. What would happen if we obeyed Jesus?
These days, calls for obedience quickly meets with accusations of legalism. I disagree. Obedience isn’t legalism, it is following. Do I follow Jesus or myself? The word of life or the lusts of the world?
Obeying God doesn’t earn me eternal life. But it protects me and give me life. It protects others from my harmful behavior. Obedience means I won’t cultivate secret sin and dangerous secrets because it acknowledges that my Lord sees, knows, and holds me accountable for everything.
If I take sin seriously, I will obey more. And I will confess more.
2. Confess Our Sin
Growing up in a mainline protestant church, we’d read a confession as a congregation on Sunday mornings. Full of beautiful words and phrases, I loved the cadence. Yet it felt disconnected from me and I understood little of personal confession.
The older I grew, the more I saw my sin. I envied my Catholic friends who could confess to the priest. It sounded relieving to tell someone who couldn’t tell anyone else. I certainly didn’t want to be that revealing or honest to anyone who knew me. What would they think of me?
When I finally understood the reality of Jesus dying on the cross FOR me, paying for MY sins, and that my faith, not my actions, were necessary for salvation, relief flooded in. I knew I’d never be good enough to deserve salvation. Realizing I didn’t have to be was amazing.
So, now I was forgiven, walking in grace. But I still sinned. I didn’t want to reveal that any more now than when I was an angsty teenager. Through my adult life, I’ve occasionally had people I could tell exactly what I struggled with. They couldn’t forgive me, but they could hold me accountable and ask how things were going. They countered the enemy’s lie that I needed to hide my worst parts.
And that’s an effective lie for Satan. Whenever the enemy says, “You can’t tell anyone THAT,” we should shout it from the rooftops. Or at least to a few trusted friends. The powerful hold of habitual sin lessens every time we drag our dark into the light.
Confessing to one another is scriptural.
“Therefore, confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another so that you may be healed. The effective prayer of a righteous man can accomplish much.” -James 5:16 NASB
We need to be accountable with one another. And we need someone who will not excuse our sin or tell us God’s grace covers it so don’t worry or that others do the same thing so it is okay. I think the exposure of our sin to the light of day is why confessing one to another is so important.
3. Expose Our Sins to the Light
We shouldn’t walk like we did when we were of darkness. But if we keep our sins hidden, we build secret spots where sin can flourish under cover. The parts we show everyone else, look holy and blameless.
We run the risk in this double-minded, hypocritical place of even convincing ourselves that our good and godly parts justify and make up for the sinful parts. As if it is all on a balance and as long as the good outweighs the bad we are okay.
One of the great burdens of sin is the worry that someone else will find out. That if everyone knew what I thought or did, they’d reject me. But something happens when we expose the scariest corners of our heart – and the behaviors that flow from them. They lose their power.
Light disinfects. Light exposes. Light reveals.
Light invades darkness and scatters the vermin that gather there.
I’m not saying that there won’t still be wrestling against the habits or strongholds. I’m just saying getting those things into the light hamstrings the enemy’s worst lies. It stops the silent progression of habitual sin. It allows help and healing to begin, for however long that takes.
Light reveals and changes the darkest places.
Photo by Michael Krahn on Unsplash
“for you were formerly darkness, but now you are Light in the Lord; walk as children of Light ... 11 Do not participate in the unfruitful deeds of darkness, but instead even expose them” Ephesians 5:8, 11 NASB
Back to Ravi
I grieve for the disobedient, unconfessed, hidden, dark parts of Ravi Zacharias’s life. It certainly is being paraded in the light of day now. And that’s just another reason to put all our struggles out there. Nothing will stay hidden. God’s not worried about His reputation. He desires His children’s obedience and truthfulness.
“He who conceals his transgressions will not prosper, But he who confesses and forsakes [them] will find compassion.” ~Proverbs 28:13, NASB
What if Ravi had confessed to a few friends when he first started practicing his sexual sin? Or what if after falling down that dark hole, he’d come clean, been ashamed, walked out humility and repentance, and trusted Jesus to redeem his worst fault?
I wonder how many women would have been spared his actions. I wonder how many believers struggling with similar sins would have been convicted of their wrong and seen the road to hope and healing. I wonder what life and ministry would have flowed FROM his confession.
That’s one of the biggest lies of hiding the sin. It feels like a solution, but covering sin condemns us to a life sentence. Confessing the sin and putting it in the light brings healing, just like pain of cauterization heals a wound.
Let’s Walk In Truth
Church, it’s time for us to come clean.
It’s time to walk in the light.
It’s time to confess.
It’s time to trust Jesus to forgive, heal, and change us.