The Four Fundamental Questions...with Answers

Ravi Zacharias always does a great job articulating profound truths in such a way it compels the seeker to continue on the path.

His presentation of difficult subject matters in open forums on college campuses and other high intensity settings often result in people wanting more, not less, of truth.

Are people afraid of the truth? Seeking truth leads to disagreements. The trajectory of truth leads to devaluing and de-personalizing the people with whom we disagree, if we do not have a healthy dose of grace & mercy covering all facets of truth presentation and seeking.

Truth > Love ----> Fight
Love > Truth ----> Flight

He has covered the 4 Questions in many books and speaking engagements, but I wanted to get them down for posterity sake.

Here are the Big Four Questions he spoke about at the University of Florida in his talk, Absolutes in a Relativistic World.

Origin

How did all of this get here? 

1. God made it.

2. Universe came into existence from nothing with no explanation. 

3. Universe has always existed, extending back in time, with no explanation.

All of these options are extraordinary, supernatural! We live in a miraculous world! Everyone believes in the virgin birth. Christians believe Jesus was born of a virgin. Alternatively, atheists do, too. Here is a quote from Stephen Hawking:

...the universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist. 

Here is Quentin Smith:

The fact of the matter is that the most reasonable belief is that we came from nothing, by nothing and for nothing...we should...acknowledge our foundation in nothingness and fee awe at the marvelous fact that we have a chance to participate briefly in this incredible sunburst that interrupts without reason the reign of non being.  

Virgin Birth! Which one do you believe in?

Meaning

What is the meaning of life? Piper quote I ran across this week:

God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him

A classic catechism line found at the beginning of the book states

The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.

Yes! We seem to forget the last part, to enjoy Him forever. How in the world does one enjoy God? Aren't we supposed to obey and vie for God's favor and love?

Randomness is the enemy of meaning. Meaning is only meaningful if there was intent behind the result of an intelligent being. There are many events at the beginning of creation, if not precisely executed, would have resulted in no creation. Many factors exist, and have existed, for life to continue to be possible that could not be any other way. Imagine playing cards and getting 12 straight royal flushes! That is the probability of many of the factors making life possible here on earth and us being sustained by it existing.

The Bible says we are more than a random set of genetic information. In the Bible, the greek word Poema is found and it describes only two things: Natural world and Us. Sestina is a highly expressive, rhythmical literary piece. Are you a sestina?

Morality

We all believe in universals and we impose the universals on others daily. There is one thing equally true for each of us, immutable and fundamental to human nature - The Love of God.

Robert Adams defines grace:

Grace is a disposition to love which is not dependent on the merit of the person loved. A gracious person sees what is valuable in the person he loves, and does not worry about whether it is more or less valuable than what could be found in someone else he might have loved.

How could we ever deserve another person?  Compete or enjoy love? God's love is the same for you on your best day or your worst day. It would be akin to asking me, "Why do you love your sons?". What does that even mean? I can't even begin to justify an answer! Incredulity would set in.

Our natural endowments are not equalizers.

Love is not earned, it is returned. God's love gives us our identity and value and is at the foundation of morality.

Destiny

Where are going and when will it end? God offers the ultimate dream and the fulfillment of that dream. The dreams of God are enormous and unfathomable.

We are not as we are going to be.

Nabeel Qureshi, a philospher/apologist with Ravi Zacharias ministries, died a couple of years back in his mid-30's of cancer. Here's what he had to say about life:

If the resurrection is true, then what that means for you is if it comes to a point in your life where it seems like there is no hope, if it comes to a point in your life where it seems like even death is inevitable, and there's no way to escape it...well, death is not the end. There's more. There's hope no matter what.

Can we trust the One giving the answers? The Cross answers every question we could possibly have. 

The one who suffered with you, died for you or in the place of you. 

Ravi on Materialism

Ravi Zacharias 

Three types of pride:
1. The pride of power: That which seeks autonomy in its absolute sense. 

2. The pride of knowledge: That which thinks it knows and does not need to be added unto. 

3. The pride of virtue: That which thinks it is so good that it does not need forgiveness or any imputed righteousness.

Any resistance to God can be manifest in one of those three areas. 

The same men who devised and built the concentration camps also listened to the music of Wagner. 

If man is the measure of all things, which Man?

Stalin and the example of the chicken

What is it about materialism that is attractive? The logical working out of materialism leads to the atrocities we have seen in Germany, Cambodia from John Paul Sartre. 

Man shall not live by bread alone up from every word that comes from the mouth of God. We are more than a stomach that needs to be filled. 

Jesus forgives sins first before healing people of their physical ailments because the spiritual takes precedence over the physical

Absoluteness of Truth & Freedom to Disbelieve

How absolutes have contributed to the volatility in the Middle East-

Question at Waterloo U in a Ravi Q&A:

If absolutes are esteemed in the Middle East, why is there so much taking of life? In a culture of relativism here in the states, life appears to be valued more.

What does a culture do to make sure that the absolutes believed in are defendable and rationally tenable? Every absolute is based on a worldview. 

Relativism cannot be held onto without a cost.

Ravi asked a leading philosopher about his statement, "There is no compulsion in in religion". He then asked the philosopher "if your daughter was to become a Christian, what would you do?"

The philosopher simply responded, "I'd kill her".

Freedom to believe must go hand-in-hand with freedom to disbelieve. If one's absolutes are defendable, it should never be defended by the taking of a life, rather it should be defended by reasoning and sharing why you believe what you believe is truth.

A worldview answers for important questions: Origin, Meaning, Morality, and Destiny. Christianity answers those four questions coherently while also allowing for those that choose to disbelieve, to disbelieve.

Absolutes have to be grounded. 

Examine the world view behind the absolute and then you will find the cause, and perhaps the problem. 

Absolutes unanchored in a coherent worldview is the problem. 

Question: "Where do you draw the line between pluralism and relativism?"

Shifting priorities of the way we made decisions. Enlightenment/ Empiricism / Rationalism / Existentialism. 

All trying to define the ultimate reality. 

One defining decision made: Has to be a moral framework. Kant: reason can take us there. Moral parameters can be arrived at by reason. 

Kai Neilson, renowned Canadian writer and atheist, said this: "We have been unable to show that reason requires the moral point of view or that really rational persons need not be egalitarian or classical amoralists-reason doesn't decide here. The picture I have painted for you is not a pleasant one for me, and reflection on this actually depresses me. Pure, practical reason even with the good knowledge of the facts, will not take you to morality".

Morality is a titanic question for a pluralistic society to answer. 

There must be an anchor, transcendent reference for right & wrong.  

Seven principles needed for a society to thrive-

1. Sacredness of life

2. Sacredness of the human body

The western culture is the first culture to try and build an ethos without a moral framework. 

Nietzsche said two things will happen with the philosophical murdering of God: It will be the bloodiest century ever recorded and madness will be preeminent. 

3. Sanctity of your word

4. Sanctity of property

5. Sanctity of your neighbor

6. Sanctity of time

7. Sanctity of worship

If the Foundations Be Destroyed

Civilizations thrive when there is a foundation of unity, brought about by a common belief; conversely, civilizations fall apart when that foundation of unity crumbles. 

What shall the righteous do?

Culture - God marginalized in 20th century, so what drives our culture? 

Enables and affirms whatever we choose to do. Culture is a term that is now fluid enough to bring together all of the contradictions with which we choose to live.

Definition 

"Effort to provide a coherent set of answers to the existential situations that confront all human beings in the passage of their lives."

Should life be coherent? Should culture be coherent? 

Well, do you want the answers to these questions to be coherent? 

People living with contradictions struggle with the meaning of coherence. 

Daniel Yelkelovich-

"A genuine cultural revolution is one where there is a decisive break from the shared values of the past, particularly with those that deal with the questions about purpose & nature of life"

Yet fundamental questions remain unanswered. 

When a man stops believing in God he doesn’t then believe in nothing, he believes anything. - Chesterton

Taking away the anchor of truth is the beginning of the end. 

So the final conclusion would surely be that whereas other civilizations have been brought down by attacks of barbarians from without, ours had the unique distinction of training its own destroyers at its own educational institutions, and then providing them with facilities for propagating their destructive ideology far and wide, all at the public expense. Thus did Western Man decide to abolish himself, creating his own boredom out of his own affluence, his own vulnerability out of his own strength, his own impotence out of his own erotomania, himself blowing the trumpet that brought the walls of his own city tumbling down, and having convinced himself that he was too numerous, labored with pill and scalpel and syringe to make himself fewer. Until at last, having educated himself into imbecility, and polluted and drugged himself into stupefaction, he keeled over--a weary, battered old brontosaurus--and became extinct.

-Malcolm Muggeridge

The foundation of our thinking has changed. Ohio State University built the first "post modern" building. The building was designed was "no purpose in mind". Stairs went nowhere, random pillars. The architect was quoted as saying "Life is capricious. If life is random and without meaning, why shouldn't our buildings be the same?".

Ravi asked, "Did he do the same with the foundation?"  

We can be fooled on the infrastructure of reality, but not the foundations of reality. 

1) Eternity- we have a yearning and longing to live. Worship, not love, brings meaning. Created for something beyond our short, physical existence. Redefines existence. 

In speaking of this desire for our own far-off country, which we find in ourselves even now, I feel a certain shyness. I am almost committing an indecency. I am trying to rip open the inconsolable secret in each one of you--the secret which hurts so much that you take your revenge on it by calling it names like Nostalgia and Romanticism and Adolescence: the secret also which pierces with such sweetness that when, in very intimate conversation, the mention of it becomes imminent, we grow awkward and affect to laugh at ourselves: the secret we cannot hide and cannot tell, though we desire to do both. We cannot tell it because it is a desire for something that has never actually appeared in our experience. We cannot hide it because our experience is constantly suggesting it, and we betray ourselves like lovers at the mention of a name. Our commonest expedient is to call it beauty and behave as if that had settled the matter. Wordsworth's expedient was to identify it with certain moments in his own past. But all this is a cheat. If Wordsworth had gone back to those moments in the past, he would not have found the thing itself, but only the reminder of it; what he remembered would turn out to be itself a remembering. The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These things--the beauty, the memory of our own past--are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshippers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited. 

-The Weight of Glory, paragraph 6

Lose dimension of time, you'll live pragmatically, (only in the moment) and we aren't designed to live that way. 

2) Morality - No point of reference anymore. No absolutes. Redefines our essence. 

Truth can be propositionally stated. The law of non-contradiction. Open minded leads to close hearted. 

We need a moral center. What we have tolerated is now being celebrated. 

3) Accountability "It is public scandal that gives offense; it is no sin to sin in secret." -French Dramatist, Moyer

Redefines our conscience 

4) Charity- 

Have we progressed? One on one, concessions are made and recognition of something lost. 

Culture has collapsed. Yet, community is still longed for. Coherence is still sought 

Think Again: Shadows and Light

Posted by Ravi Zacharias on February 16, 2016

Plato said that all philosophy begins with wonder. Wonder, to Plato, was that impulse that probed, investigated, and sought out explanations. Give a toy to a little boy and in moments it is broken because he has opened it up to see what makes it whir or tick or chime or speak. It is our hidden Narnia, into which we long to step and explore. It is the rotating musical merry-go-round that entrances the child. It is the sight of a jet plane or a rocket surging into the skies and the marvel, if only for a moment, at such design and power and beauty. It is also the touch of a hand that makes you wish that time would stand still, the musical score that grips the soul.

Yet it was Francis Bacon who ruefully observed that though it may be true that all philosophy begins with wonder, it is also true that wonder dies with knowledge. Explanation is the termination point of mystery, analysis the death-knell of curiosity. The parts are greater than the whole when you are in pursuit, but they become lesser than the whole when it is no longer a mystery and the toy no longer enchants.

Indeed, most of us can go back to a time in our lives when dreams of a life filled with wonder throbbed within our souls. In fact, that very stage of dreaming finds its own fulfillment in a marvelous disposition we call hope. But time has led us also to believe that Bacon does have a point. Is it not because of the delight of anticipation that all children love Christmas Eve even more than they love Christmas Day? Is it not because the fulfillment of his longings is just moments away that a youngster, though thoroughly fatigued, will deny sleep and fight to keep his eyes open? But then comes the day after Christmas and reality strikes. The longing is now gone and everything that spelled wonder is being packed up in a box. Does unwrapping the gift take away from the gift? Why is the exhausting pursuit of the human heart for contentment so convoluted? Why does the enchantment that we long for seem so elusive and almost scandalously complex?

I believe G.K Chesterton was absolutely right when he astutely observed that the older one gets, the more it takes to fill the heart with wonder—and only God is big enough for that.

Perhaps President Theodore Roosevelt understood this, for he had an interesting routine habit, almost a ritual. Every now and then, along with the naturalist William Beebe, he would step outside at dark, look into the night sky, find the faint spot of light at the lower left-hand corner of Pegasus, and one of them would recite: “That is the Spiral Galaxy of Andromeda. It is as large as our Milky Way. It is one of a hundred million galaxies. It is seven hundred and fifty thousand light years away. It consists of one hundred billion suns, each larger than our own sun.” There would be a pause and then Roosevelt would grin and say, “Now I think we feel small enough! Let’s go to bed.”

Is this not the point of Psalm 8, when the psalmist utters: “O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory above the heavens…. When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers … what is man that you are mindful of him? …You made him ruler over the works of your hands.”

When I ponder the wonder that is around us and see the vastness of its splendor, I also remember what the poet John Donne said: “There is nothing that God hath established in the constant course of nature, and which therefore is done every day, but would seem a Miracle, and exercise our admiration, if it were done but once.” Donne is making the same point that God made in the Book of Job, when He asks Job if he knows the mystery of how a bird homes in on its flight. It is what Jesus was saying in Matthew 6:26–30: “Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? See how the lilies of the field grow…. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field … will he not much more clothe you?” Will not this God of wonder, who has arrayed the creatures of this world with such inspiring traits, fill us with his own sustenance and inspiration?

What is wonder? Wonder is that possession of the mind that enchants the emotions while never surrendering reason. It is a grasp on reality that does not need constant high points in order to be maintained, nor is it made vulnerable by the low points of life’s struggle. It sees in the ordinary the extraordinary, and it finds in the extraordinary the reaffirmations for what it already knows. Wonder interprets life through the eyes of eternity while enjoying the moment, but never lets the momentary vision exhaust the eternal. Wonder knows how to read the shadows because it knows the nature of light. Wonder knows that while you cannot look at the light you cannot look at anything else without it. It is a journey like a walk through the woods, over the usual obstacles and around the common distractions while the voice of direction leads, saying, “This is the way, walk ye in it” (Isaiah 30:21). It is not at all surprising that of the seventy usages of the word “wonder” in the Old Testament nearly half of them are by David, the sweet singer of Israel. Wonder and music go hand in hand. Wonder cannot help but sing. Even nature recognizes that.

There is wonder all around us, and it is God’s desire to fill us with that wonder that makes life enchanting and sacred. We cannot help but sing when that happens. Maybe that is why of all the religions in the world, there is none with the wealth of music that the Christian faith offers. We sing because His name is “Wonderful.”

God is like the light. Wonder is like the shadow. If you chase the shadow you will never catch up to it. It might even disappear. If you walk toward the light, the shadow will always pursue you. That is when the heart sings with gladness, “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life; and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever” (Psalm 23:6).