The meaning of life
It's not too often that I've been in this country, in fact possibly just a second time in two or three decades, so it's wonderful to be here.
I wrote to a friend just before I came here saying: belgian chocolates are not good for the back.
Because I have back problems and I'm already carrying more on the front here in order to carry the back out there.
But they're delicious to the pellet.
The question of meaning, and the search for meaning.
Really it's a worldwide struggle.
It has been a worldwide phenomenon.
And my interpreters are gonna kill me with these first two illustrations but they'll at least get the gist of it, and I'm slowing down.
I remember when I spoke for Billy Graham in Amsterdam eighty three in Amsterdam eighty six.
I remember walking in to the interpreter's hold where about a hundred and twenty interpreters, and they do it simultaneously.
And as I walked in I overheard one interpreter saying to the other: here comes machinegun Zacharias.
Now as the years have gone by it's more like a water pistol, rather than a machine gun, but they're gonna struggle with some issues.
I hope they'll at least be able to gather...
One gentleman or ladies when you're talking if I just waxed too eloquent at times just tell 'em right now it's nothing important ,
we'll get to it as soon as he gets to the matter of what is gonna say.
I don't know how many of you heard the story of Sherlock Holmes with Watson on a camping trip.
You know they had an excessive amount of liquid refreshment that night and went to sleep under their tent.
And halfway through the night Holmes woke up and looked at Watson and said:
Watson look up into the night sky and tell me what you see!
And Watson said:
you know astronomically I see that there are millions of galaxies and potentially billions of planets.
He said: astrologically I see that saturn is in leo.
Horologically I see that it's about quarter to three in the morning.
Meteorologically I see that tomorrow will probably be a nice day.
And theologically I see that this is a vast universe and we are I just a minute part of the great whole.
Why Holmes what do you see?
He said: Watson you idiot, somebody has stolen our tent.
You can give all of the big sounding words of how to define the universe.
But in the process often times that tent that holds together the basic ideas of human essence and value has been stolen.
All the big terms are used, but you look out into the night sky and you say: what does it really mean to be a human being anymore?
I remember being asked to do a lecture on this at Johns Hopkins along with Francis Collins the co-mapper of the human DNA.
And in the great genom project that he did along with another scientist.
And as we were there and many other of other world views were speaking, I kept looking at the subject: what does it mean to be human?
And i told to myself is that funny, that we are here in the twenty first century and we don't know what it means to be human?!
If we don't know what it means to be human what is humanism really mean?
It's just an 'ism' to a term we don't understand.
But big words are used all along.
And you think to yourself, you say:
you know dogs really don't get together for a conference to discuss the meaning of dogginess.
It's not an issue to them by instinct they just live out dogginess.
We're the ones with the smartest ones on the planet and we don't know who we really are.
But the terms are getting bigger and bigger.
Coming from the east we wrestle with these issues, we've wrestled with these issues historycally, philosophically.
I don't know any eastern philosopher who hasn't struggled with this.
And I remember growing up in Delhi, India was my homeland.
I lived in India till I was twenty.
Growing up in Delhi, so very comfortable very fluent in hindi.
My mother was from Chennai in the South so I'm quite comfortable with the southern indian language of tamil as well.
And listening to those songs it's the poets that really ask the haunting questions.
In Northern India, in Delhi there was a song that went like this:
the hindi may not mean anything to you, but I will translate it.
In one of india's most famous movie, probably it's all time greatest movie just called: Mother India.
Went like this:
...
...
"if I have come into this world I have to leave."
"if living means a gradual consumption of poison I have to drink it."
So the way it's said...
...
"I'm not God, i'm not satan."
...
"Oh, world think whatever you will."
...
"I'm merely a human being."
I'm not God, I'm not satan,
I'm only a human being, coming into this world.
I don't know what it means, but if it means a gradual drinking of poison, I will drink it.
And so the philosophers wax eloquent
and the poets wax eloquent and they ask the question of meaning.
Malcolm Muggeridge writing in the nineteen seventies the great british journalist said:
it is difficult to resist the conclusion
that twentieth century man has decided to abolish himself,
tired of the struggle to be himself,
he has created boredom out of his own affluence
impotence out of his own erotomania,
and vulnerability out of this own strength,
he himself blows the trumpet that brings the walls of his own cities crashing down,
until at last, having educated himself into imbecility,
having drugged and polluted himself into stupefaction,
he keels over - a weary, battered old brontosaurus - and becomes extinct.
Educated himself into imbecility,
we become so educated and so idiotic at the same time.
Aldous Huxley writing in the nineteen forties as a skeptic said:
"We are living today not in the delicious intoxication of the early successes of science,
rather in the grisly morning-after where it has become quite apparent that what science may have actually done,
is to introduce us to improve means in order to obtain hitherto unimproved or rather deteriorated ends."
What scince may have done is increased our methods for ultimately contemptible goals.
So if thinkers and philosophers raise this issue of human destiny,
while at the same time not really knowing what is the meaning of human essence:
it's a quandary of unimaginable proportions.
How do we deal with it, how do we respond to it?
You know we can respond to it from theological terms and the world's religions will pitch in,
hinduism may make you equal with the divine in its pantheistic world view,
Islam may make you so distant from the divine that you wonder
if there's ever a bridge between the totally transcendent god and a minute finite human being.
Christianity may confer upon you the Imago Dei, the image of god,
which tells you that you have that propensity for moral movement and direction.
But you still cannot lift yourself up by your own moral bootstraps.
All these definitions may come, and when you and I are alone in our rooms we ask ourselves the question: what does life really mean?
I heard today while we are driving in here, that over a hundred people chose to take their lifes by jumping in front of a train in Belgium last year.
Japan records of very high number of suicides.
As a matter of fact my own journey to Christ began on a bed of suicide when I was seventeen years old.
Why?
Because I could not find any meaning in life, or any explanation.
You see when you go to the history of thought:
you going to maybe from the eleventh to the fourteenth centuries,
you're dealing with the philosophy that moved towards Rationalism with a capital R.
Men was going to become the measure of all things, by human reason alone.
That mathematics was the only indubitably certain discipline.
But you moved beyond that, and you realize that
as the renaissance and the enlightenment came, man was go indeed going to be become the measure of all things.
But nobody said which man?!
So you gonna strive to get there.
And you arrived in the eighteenth century,
and people like David Hume, the Scottish philosopher and others were looking for certainty and said:
it was only ultimately in the empirical world view,
by the ways of scientific measurement that we would find out what was true.
So from Rationalism with the capital R, we went to the empiricist who was going to define life,
after the empiricist had done his work in the nineteen hundreds,
nihilism came to be, the philosophy of unyielding despair.
And on the heels of that came existentialism:
will to power, will to passion, will to meaning,
that in the face of despair you choose to arrogate to yourself whatever meaning you want to follow.
Ála Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus and the rest of them will became very popular existentialist writers.
So from rationalism to empiricism to existentialism, and now where are you and I?
In the world of postmodernism, which debunks all of these,
and arrives at categories of no truth, no meaning, no certainty.
Language itself is questioned, whether the author reserves the right to fuse the word with the rightful meaning,
or the reader reserves the right to interpret the author in any way he or she chooses.
So meaning is tossed up into the winds, and you grab the grains that you really want.
Moving from the mathematical in indubitable uncertainty,
through the laboratory, to man becoming the measure of all things,
and will to passion and power ultimately, that none of these have absolute points of reference.
You have to find it in your own way and in your own time.
And that's where the postmodern world view is.
But nobody really wants a postmodernist for a pilot.
Yeah I know my instruments say ten thousand feet, but why believe the instruments?
I have a feeling it's not ten thousand feet.
There are absolutes there are unshakable absolutes.
so what I want to do ladies and gentleman,
in the time that we have this morning or this evening...
It's morning for me.
I've just flown in from Thailand last night, and it's a twelve hour difference.
I looked at it here and it's actually two AM. for me.
So I might sound like that as well.
But you move into these categories and you ask yourself the question:
what is meaning?
How do I find it?
Some years ago in western Canada in the city of...
I won't name the city it's in midwest of Canada.
It was a packed audience and a woman from my part of the world was sitting in the front row every night.
And she would take notes, copious notes as I would speak.
And I wondered what she was really writing?
Very heavily into her notes.
And on the last night she came up to me, and she said: can I talk to you?
I said yes.
So we sat out in the front row and she talked, she said:
my husband was a very prominent medical doctor in the city.
She said I can take you to one street where three or four apartment buildings owned by us.
Very well to do.
She said every night he would wake up in the middle of the night,
go out and do some rounds, he was a very conscientious doctor for all the surgeries performed.
He would go and check into his patients come back again,
about three or four in the morning get a little sleep,
go back to work the next day and do his surgeries.
She said so on this one night he got up and left, and I didn't think anything of it.
She said I was aware that he had come back because I could sense the kitchen light was on,
but it was a usual routine for him, so I didn't do anything.
I just went back to sleep, she said all of a sudden I was awakened with the tremendous fudd(?) a bang, a loud noise, I shook up in bed.
I called for my husband he didn't answered, I got out of bed, walked over to the kitchen,
and there he was with this head down on the kitchen table, and I knew something was wrong.
I walked over towards him and he was gone.
And in front of him a note paper, with the pen beside it: "some people die natural deaths.
Other people unable to face life anymore.
Choose to take it, that is my choice.
I wish you all goodbye, as my family and I'm sorry I'm leaving you like this."
And this indian woman, crying in the front row of an auditorium,
angry at all of this, him leaving her with all the young children to take care of.
And all of the affairs that had to be settled.
She said I want to ask you: why?
Why does anybody do this?
I looked at her, said I cannot answer that question for you.
I didn't even know your husband, It's first I'm talking to you, but I will tell you one thing:
for many human beings despair is not a moment, it's a way of life.
Despair is not just a moment it is a way of life.
It's true and it's not true necessarily of the world of poverty, it is often more true of the world of wealth.
When you have got everything you ever dreamed about,
it was Jack Higgins the award winning novelist,
who was interviewed after his award winning book, the eagle has landed.
He was asked the question what do you know now,
that you'd wished you'd known as the younger man:
He said I wished I'd known then what I know now,
that when you get to the top there's nothing there.
I wished I known then what I know now that when you get to the top there's nothing there.
Can I try and give to you in the simplest terms i can, what are the rudimentary components, that bring meaning to life?
And it'll start off from the picture and the eyes of a child and ultimately move into the world of an adult.
So please bear with me.
But these I believe all the components needed.
So when I talk about meaning in life I believe these four have a confluence of coming together into a composite, into a whole.
They cannot stand in isolation.
So if you take any one of these in isolation, it'll implode under its own weight.
But you bring them together with the other components and you will see exactly what I mean.
So bear with me till I unfold my argument.
I wrote a book called: recapture the wonder.
And that is really the outline of what I want to bring to you.
How does one find meaning in life?
What are the hints we find at this stages of life if you will, in which these components ultimately must come together.
The first is the component of what I call: the sense of wonder, or enchantment.
The sense of wonder, or enchantment.
We all know that in the eyes of a baby, we all see that in the eyes of an infant.
Whether it's a Christmas tree, that the eyes get wide at, or whether it's hearing some sound that is enchanting for the first time.
G.K. Chesterton the moralist philosopher said: I learned more from observing a nursery, than I ever did in my lectures in philosophy.
I have knowingly in the last seven months become a grandfather.
I know I don't look at like it, but it is quite a daunting thought to suddenly realize you are married to a grandmother.
That's the way life is.
And she would have her own say on that, I have no doubt.
But you know when you're young and you have your kids the first time around, life is hectic.
You're earning a living, doing all of this, and you don't really take time to watch all that thrills as much as you need to.
Now at this stage in life when you hold a tiny little one,
thats your grandchild in your arms, and you begin to see the thrill of a little one with each new experience,
you realize how marvelous and how beautiful life is all about really.
I've been traveling for seven weeks with my traveling associate Crinn.
And we've been gone to many countries and I've been praying each day that,
whenever this little grandchild was born, that I would be there.
And I was on pins and needles for those seven weeks that he would come a little too early,
and I'll be miles away, and my daughter would never forgive me.
We arrived on a certain day at three PM.
And I was in a train in the atlanta airport (?) going to the baggage claim,
and I turned to Crinn and I said: I wonder if it'll happen today, now that I'm home.
We got home at five fifteen PM.
At six fifteen our phone rang, my son in law saying we're are on the way to the hospital the baby is coming any minute.
And within an hour we were there and I held my little grandson in my arms.
I have been known to induce labour in a lot of people,
but it was nice to have done that in my own daughter's case.
I had that little one in my arms, all of five pounds and ten ounces.
It's a magnificent sense, to hold that child.
Two days later I was in the bank, talking to one of our bank Tellers, they asked me: how's a Naomi doing?
I said you know - they know my daughter Naomi - I said: the baby is here,
newly born baby and I looked at the Teller and I said: you know what?
When I look at a baby like that I say to myself: how does anyone not believe in God?
You know what she said?
And how does anyone ever think of huring a little one like that?
The two realities of life immediately converged in discussing a newborn baby.
The wonder of life and the hideousness of human depravity.
That you can see something so magnificent and yet recognize that there are capacities...
In fact, the first thing the nurse said to her when she came into the room,
when my wife and I was there, are to give her the security protection for the baby,
and the wristband, so that if that child where ever taken into an elevator on that floor anywhere it would trigger an alarm system.
And imagine a young mother was just held her little baby in her arms, being told of the possibility of a child being kidnapped.
Shocking absolutely shocking.
Now you watch that little child grow, and the enchantment and wonder, and then you find out how marvelous the fairy tales really are.
And you start reading the fairy tales as they get older.
And you notice two things about every fairy tales: there is the extraordinary thing,
that you notice the wonderworld of enchantment but then two things come into that fairy tale very quickly:
if you don't come back by such and such, you will become a such and such.
There is always a condition, if you don't come back by twelve o'clock you'll become a pumpkin, that sort of stuff.
And no one ever says to the fairy godmother: how come?!
G.K. Chesterton says because if you say to the fairy godmother how come,
you may as well be prepared for the fairy godmother to say to you:
how come there is even a fairy land?
There is always a condition and there's always the recognition of the mystery but you don't always question every condition.
The conditions are there for life.
Now what I want to say to you is this: if you take wonder away,
and you take enchantment away, you take the mystique and the mystery away of a little life, and as a life goes on two things will happen:
you know what the first thing that will happen?
The first thing that will happen is you will lose a sense of gratitude,
and think you owe nothing to anybody, you are really the provider of all of your needs.
The loss of gratitude always follows the loss of a sense of wonder.
I lived, and grew up in Delhi, I never ever owned a penny in my pocket until I left India and twenty years old.
I never even received any pocket money, I just knew how to make friends with kids who got pocket money.
And I knew how to enjoy all those things with people who had it, I never had it.
And I always dreamed of the great day that you could go somewhere to the west and start earning money, and making it big time.
And in a strange way that dream came, I went when I was twenty and moved to Toronto, Canada and lived in Toronto, studied there.
Went into business and was preparing all of that.
And I noticed some of the loneliest people in the world, I was in the hotel business.
Some of the loneliest people in the world would be sitting there at night,
whith something in their hand to drown their sorrows, and drown the monotony and drown their boredom.
And I found myself trying to answer questions of people who had ten times more than I did.
Now in America we're in a quandary, financially we borrowed and borrowed and borrowed against that which we could not repay.
In english you have a saying of certainty, you can take that to the bank.
But you better not say that now.
Have you ensured that?
You're not sure about the insurance companies now.
You're not sure about the banks now.
And for the first time in about forty years of living in the west,
I drive past shopping centers and malls where you see tiny business shut down.
And it is all come on the heels of the last twenty or twenty five years of irresponsible living
that has come hand in hand with the rejection of the place of God in human destiny.
You can go to the forbidden city in Being today on a given day in December, and sing Merry Christmas
and jet in the united states you take your life in your hands in a public institution, if you put up a sign called: merry Christmas.
Somebody from the american civil liberties union will want to sue you for that.
They want to ban prayer in the schools.
I saw a bumper sticker that said as long as they're a mathematics examinations there will always be prayer in schools.
It's true.
Because you may know that two plus two is four but the next question is gonna stomp you.
God please help me.
That's what's happened to us in the west, we've lost our belief in the transcendent power because we've lost our sense of gratitude.
They don't want to call it Christmas anymore, or thanksgiving anymore they call it Turkey day.
Which may say more about the people, than it does about the turkey. amazing, amazing.
You know what?
When you don't pause long enough to thank God even for your health and your strength,
you are actually saying, you are totally self contained in all that you need.
A man looked at Winston Churchill one day and said I'm a self made man.
Churchill looked at him and said: you have just relieved God of a very solemn responsibility.
You lose your sense of wonder, you lose your sense of gratitude.
You know some years ago there was an Air Canada flight coming in from somewhere I think in Connecticut to Cincinnati or something like that.
It was flying into Toronto.
And there was a fire that started in the in the washroom of the plane, and the fire started to spread.
I remember being there at that time and reading about it, and this plane literally had to plummet in height.
And it landed in Toronto and hit the ground so hard on the runway the wheels broke on landing and, when the doors opened it was turned into an inferno.
And what happened was: the fire engines were all ready.
People were rescued, the last man to leave the cabin was the pilot himself, while his uniform began to catch fire and the flames would arosed.
He refused to give any interviews on it because it was such a sobering scary moment.
But he rescued with this his staff all of the passengers on board.
What happened the next day was one passenger after another saying: we thank that pilot for his skill and his courage,
he brought us down safely and he was the last man to leave after every passenger had been disembarked and been rescued.
If you're on that plane you'd wanna thank that captain too.
It was just a few days later in american airline I was coming back from the Bahamas somewhere, and it lost power and one engine two three and finally the fourth.
And the pilot's voice was heard saying: ditching is inevitable.
Until all of its own one engine started. and he limped back to safety, who do you thank then?
As G.K. Chesterton said if I have Santa Claus to thank for [[[BAKI: putting two feet into my stocking on Christmas day have I know.
To for]]] putting candy in my stocking on Christmas day have I got nobody to thank for putting to feet into my own stockings?
You lose the sense of wonder, you will lose the sense of gratitude. not only will you lose the sense of gratitude
it will ultimately lose the sense of obligation and limitation as well.
We don't like the ten commandments.
Why?
Because they limit us but if you were to take the ten commandments and reduce it to one word, do you know what that word is?
Sacred.
Sacred.
Your life is sacred my life is sacred.
I cannot violate you.
Your property is sacred, your marriage is sacred, your time is sacred, your worship is sacred, that's what the ten commandments are all about.
The sacredness of your life and your work and your relationships and your commitment, and you desacralize life everything becomes profane.
Chesterton once said anytime you remove a fence, always pause long enough to ask why it was put there in the first place?!
Whenever you remove any fence, ask why it was put there in the first place.
You take away wonder you will lose gratitude, you take away wonder you will lose a sense of limitation.
And you take away wonder, and you will ultimately lose a sense of fulfillment.
Wonder is indispensable and I'll tell you why this is so critical to understand.
You know we have three children.
And I noticed something very fascinating from my Reading and applying it to them.
They are three years apart, they're all grown and married and settled, and I have the privilege of them working with me now, its a great thrill.
But when they're were young, if i took the three of them age one four and seven, and started to tell them the same fairy tale.
If I told Sarah at age seven a fairy tale, and I went something like this:
Sarah little Tommy got up and walked up to the door and opened the door and the dragon jump in front of Tommy... Sarahs eyes would get wide.
If I told the same story to Naomi at age four, I won't have to go that far, you know what I would have to say:
little Tommy got up and walked up to the door and Tommy opened the door and Naomi's eyes would get like that.
With Nathan it would be the shortest story at age one, I'd have to say: Nat': little Tommy got up and walked up to the door.
At age one it's pretty big just to walk up to a door.
What's happening here the older you get the more it takes to fill your heart with wonder and only God is big enough to fill that heart.
Thats why in December of nineteen sixty eight when the human eye was given a glimpse of this Earth that no human eye had ever seen.
When the american astronauts went around the dark side of the moon.
We were all sitting with baited breath in front of our televisions to watch what would happen,
and when we'd hear the first words, and they came round the dark side of the moon and so Earth rise over the horizon of the moon,
draped in a beautious mixture of blue and white, against the black void of space garlanded by the glistening light of the Sun.
What were the first words coming from the astronaut: unrehearsed, no philosopher, no poet, no scientist told him to say this,
he looked at that Earth from a distance and he said: in the beginning God.
In the beginning God.
The sense of wonder it's needed.
But you know what?
Life has a way of moving on, and you come to a very difficult conclusion.
The conclusion is this: you can't always live with wonder.
You can't.
You see the girl of your dreams, you put your hand in her hand, and you look into her eyes and you think one plus one would make a million.
And you stumble, and you know you find the nicest words... you don't look at her and say: how would you like to be buried with my ancestors?
Thats not what you say.
You look at her and your heart is beating a mile a minute, and you just want to... I remember when my in laws...
My wife is from Canada and my in laws, when they were married he was with the canadian air force and all of that and became an engineer...
She got mad at him, because when they registered for the first night for their honeymoon,
the name he just put down Lift Hennent, HLC Ronalds, and she nudged him and said: what about me?
So he said I'm awfully sorry, Lift Hennent and Mrs(miszisz! (?)) HLC Ronalds and he apologized her.
He said: don't make the same mistake I did.
I said: okay I won't.
So i took their daughter when we were at Niagara falls, Ontario.
Spending the first night in our honeymoon, and boldly i wrote Mr and Mrs Ravi Zacharias,
and she nudged me because in the number on party I put one. (Tehát a jegyre, személyek számának csak egyet jelölt meg.)
and the man behind the counter noticed and said: at least it shows you, that he is led a good life. --------------------- [35:19]
just put one.
You're walking in a dream, you're walking in a cloud, and then comes the first disagreement.
And when you come to the first disagreement you're absolutely convinced, if she would only listen to your wisdom, you'd both be right.
And the years go by and you find out, that you're not always floating on cloud nine.
But what keeps that commitment in tact is not the feeling but the fact of your commitment.
And with wonder, if you only lived with the enchantment, you'll find out that these fairy stories are not true they are merely fantastic.
What you need to find in life is that which is fantastically true.
It's not fantasy, but it's fantastically true.
So the most important component in life is not merely the sense of wonder, but the recognition of what is ultimately true.
That's exactly what the greeks talked about: truth, beauty, goodness, liberty, equality, justice.
Truth, beauty, goodness, liberty, equality, justice.
Ideas by which we live and ideas by which we judge.
But it did the Hebrews to remind you and me that these are not abstract ideas they are enveloped in the very person, the person of God.
You can't talk about absolutes, without a transcending point of reference.
You cannot talk about ultimate beauty, because even beauty has to have boundaries.
You cannot talk about liberty unless human beings have essential worth.
I looked at the european newspaper today and it reads like almost any newspaper in any continent today.
All having to do with fiscal need, environmental issues, and all of that they are very very important.
But the one thing that's conspicuous by its absence, in many of these newspapers is: why?
Why?
Why is a human being valuable?
Why is your freedom valuable?
Why is your self sustenance valuable?
It's because God has endowed you with essential worth.
You are not worthy because of community gives you worth you are essentially worthy.
That's the important point that I think we have to find in meaning.
You know somebody looked at a tax...(?)(baki) a tax collector looked at Jesus once and said is it alright to pay taxes to Cesar?
I wish Jesus had answered that differently.
I wish he had sad: absolutely not.
Then at least in america on April fifteenth, I could be rebellious and godly at the same time.
So I refuse to pay my taxes and i'm doing it because I'm a godly man.
Jesus said: do you have a coin?
The man said yes.
He said: give me that coin.
And He lifted that coin, and looked at the coin, and he said to the man: whose image do you see on this coin?
The man said Cesar.
Jesus said give to Caesar that which is Caesar's and give to God that which is God's.
The man walked away, he should have had one more question: you know what question he should have had?
What belongs to God?
You know what Jesus would have said?
Whose image is on you? whose image is on you?
Here's the coin, the image of Caesar, give to Caesar that which is Caesar's Give to God that which is God's.
What belongs to God?
Whose image is on you?
That I think is something so conspicuous by its absence.
Malcolm Muggeridge raises the question of truth in two ways: follow me very carefully, very carefully please.
Because the first is experiential the second this philosophical.
Here's the experiential one: in this Sargasso Sea of fantasy and fraud, how can I or anyone else hope to swim unencumbered?
How can I learn to see through and not with the eye?
How can I take off my own makeup, raise the iron shutter put out the studio lights, silence the sound effects and put the cameras to sleep.
Will I ever see the sunrise on sunset boulevard, and set over forest lawn?
Can I ever find future among the studio furniture, among the studio props?
Silence in the discotheque, love in a striptease, Read truth off an auto cue, catch it on a screen, chase it on the wings of muzak?
Can I view it in living color with the news or hear it in living sound along the motorways?
No, not in the wind that rent the mountains and broke in pieces of the rocks;
not in the earthquake that followed, nor in the fire that followed the earthquake.
It is in a still small voice. The voice of God.
Not in the screeching of tires, or in the grinding of brakes; nor in the roar of jets or the whistle of sirens, or the howl of trombones, or the rattle of drums,
or the chanting of demo voices.
Again, again and again i say to myself: it must be in that still small voice.
The voice of God, if one can only catch it.
Muggeridge was a journalist especially in Russia in the dark days, for the Manchester guardian said this:
you know truth is very beautiful. more than justice.
Which easily puts on a false face, in the nearly seven decades I had lived through the
world is overflowed with bloodshed and explosions, who's dust has never had time to settle before others have erupted.
All in supposedly 'just' causes for the quest of justice continues while the weapons of hatred pileup.
But truth was an early casualty, the lies on behalf of which are wars have been fought and our peace treaties concluded.
The lies of revolution and counter revolution, the lies of advertising of news of salesmanship of politics, the lies of the priest in his pulpit,
the professor at the podium, and the journalist at his typewriter. The lies stuck like a fishbone in the throat to the microphone.
The handheld lies of the prowling camera men.
Ignatius told me once how when he was a member of the old common turn, some stratagem was under discussion,
and a delegate, a newcomer who had never attended before made the extraordinary
observation in the middle of the discussion that if such and such a statement were to be made, it wouldn't be true so it ought not to be made.
There was a moment of dazed stunned silence, and then everyone began to laugh.
They laughed and laughed until tears ran down their cheeks and the Kremlin walls seemed to shake.
The same laughter echoes in every council chamber and cabinet room where two or more are gathered to exercise authority.
It is truth that has died, not God.
It comes from a world renowned journalist, the lies stuck like a fishbone in the throat to the microphone.
Ladies and gentleman a man sit in front of Jesus once and said: what is truth and walked away without waiting for the answer.
You know what the truth is?
The truth is that your heart and my heart are both desperately wicked.
But we don't like it.
You know what the truth is? Only God is big enough to change it, and transform it.
And unless we find that point of reference for an absolute truth.
What is an absolute?
An absolute is an unchanging point of reference.
Have you ever been at a stop light when the light is red and you've stopped.
I'm sure that happens in Belgium, in India we think it's a Christmas light and we move on.
But you stop at the red light, and then you're daydreaming and you look at the next lane and you see his car moving but you're not sure if it's his car or your car.
And the light is still red.
What do you do?
Automatically you press the brake harder, to make sure you're not moving.
But after you press your break harder and you're not sure whether that guys moving or you're moving what do you do next?
You look onto the road to look for a tree or a lamp post or something that's not supposed to be moving and you're measuring yourself by that object.
What would happen if the trees and the lamppost moved as well?
That's what postmodernism is done to you and me.
There is no point of reference to find out whether you are progressing or regressing.
Thats what it's done.
And the fact of the matter is we need to find the way of the truth.
And that way of truth is an absolute unchanging point of reference.
You know, the interesting thing about the message of Jesus Christ, he doesn't tell you: here is truth.
He says to you: I'am the truth. he's the point of reference for truth.
And they that are on the side of truth said he: listen to me.
Let me tell you one quick thought here and move to my final two thoughts.
Wonder and truth.
I was on a peace mission in the middle east with the former archbishop of Canterbury, William Carey,
and we were meeting with all of the leaders of religious leaders from the jewish side, and the palestinian side.
It was a tough five or six days.
Very tough.
We were exhausted.
And the last but one day we were meeting with one of the four founders of a Hamas his name was Sheikh (?)(a nevet nem ertem)
solidly built man he had lost several members of his family, very courteous and he served us a beautiful lunch.
And we were...
I was just one of the five and the archbishop carried the lead so we would just listen but before any session was over,
the archbishop would give the five of us a chance to ask one question.
And the sheikh had all of his cohorts around him.
I asked him a question, and I didn't like the answer.
I said sheikh, you and I might never meet again and you may not like my saying this, but I really don't like your answer to my question.
I said: but can I say something to you Sir?
I said: five thousand years ago not far from where you and I are sitting, is mountain.
And a man by the name of Abraham went up that mountain and took his son up to offer his son as a sacrifice.
Do you remember the story?
He said yes.
I said please do me a favor let's not argue now what which son that was.
I said let's agree it was Abraham and his son.
He said okay.
I said: takes his son up to that mountain, and he sees it as a test of his faith before God wether he is willing to give up his son.
And the axe is about to come down on the son and God stops that arm, do you remember the story?
He said yes.
I said remember what God said to him?
Sheikh just stared at me.
I said: do you remember that?
He said: no.
I said, you have it in the scriptures.
God said: STOP.
Stop Abraham.
I myself will provide.
He said yes.
I said Sheikh very close to where you and I are sitting, two thousand years ago, God kept that promise.
He took his own son up that hill, and this time the axe did not stop.
He just stared at me.
I said Sheikh!
Until you and I receive the Son, that God has provided we will be offering our own sons and daughters on the battlefields of this world
for land position power ownership and prestiege.
Silence in the room full of smoke.
The archbishop said: well I guess we can now go back to our hotels.
I said oh brother, I have blown it big time.
So we were walking in just as I was about to go down the stairs the archbishop put his arm around me, and said: thank you Ravi.
So that was of God.
I said I sure hope so.
I went down and the archbishop as the guest of honor, so we were all getting into our car on the other side.
The Sheikh followed me, he came over to me and he took me by the shoulders and I that farewell world, it's been good.
He said Mr Zacharias, I said yes Sir. He just stared at me, kissed me on both sides of the face, he said you're a good man, I hope I see you again someday.
Ladies and gentlemen in this book is a story.
It's a story that has historically sustained on the crucifixion of Christ.
And to reveal to you and me that third component of meaning: wonder, truth, and love.
What is love mean?
Love means where you are loved for your own sake, in spite of yourself.
You're not to become anybody else, you are loved and an essential worth is given to you.
This is now my fortieth year of travel.
With many many many many countries I spent half the year on the road, and I'll tell you what.
I'm been now on the road for nearly four weeks, and the day after tomorrow we go home.
And as wonderful as the rest of the stops are.
It's wonderful to get back home.
Where you are loved in spite of yourself.
God's love for you is very unique.
God has blessed this continent of Europe, in spite of all of its pain and agony.
You have food on your table, you have the luxury of a comfortable life, don't let the goodness of God lead you to reject Him.
That's what's so easily happens.
When I think of love, I find it very hard to understand how anybody can live without it.
Burton Russell once made the comment: that there are three things in life I have not understood, for I've never had it.
One of them he said was love.
A great philosopher, never had a love, and therefore never found he actually belonged(hovatartozását) in this world.
You know the greatest search in life is ultimately to belong, and to love.
I'll deal with that a greater extent tomorrow.
You grew up in Delhi hearing stories you know it's unbelievable in my culture you learn through proverbs and through stories and then argument.
Not the other way around.
In the west we learn through argument and put up with stories, there you learn stories and proverbs and then you find the argument.
So let me give you this quick one and I'll lead to last point.
I remember as a little boy, every night the lady who worked as the maid in the home would took us to bed if my parents were out.
And we'd always ask her to tell us a story.
And she told us a story once which I have reinforced years later and found how rich it was.
It's not a true story, it's a parable.
It's a parable of a young man in one village who loved another young girl in another village.
And he wanted to marry her, but she was not well intentioned, she was just trying to exploit him, and mock him, and use him, and all of that.
But he really loved her.
And finally one day she said to him, I will only marry you if you prove to me, that you love me more than anyone else in this world.
He said of course I do, that's why I'm asking to marry you.
He said no no no.
You love your mother I know, much more than you love me.
He said don't be silly, it's a different relationship.
They are my parents, you'll be my lover, my wife it's a complete...
She said no, I want you to prove it to me, if you really love me more than your mother,
I want you to take her life and bring me, her heart in your hand as my trophy, the trophy of my victory.
He said you're getting ridiculous, she said no, if you prove to me that you love me more than her I will marry you.
He goes back home, wonders about this, ponders about it, and the story goes on.
The parable goes on.
He finally finds a knife, stabs his mother takes the heart out of her chest and he holds it in his hand and he's running across the distance to present it to her.
Running through a wilderness he can hardly wait to give it to her, and he stumbles over thicket and the heart bounces out of his hand and he can't find it.
He's rummaging through the bushes and the thorns and everything, and all of a sudden he hears a voice as he himself has fallen,
as he finds the heart, and he's getting up and he dusts his knees he hear's a voice coming out of the heart saying: son are you hurt?
Son are you hurt?
As a little boy, nobody needed to interpret for me what this made was telling us.
That the love of a mother is so strong, that no dastardly act can stand in the way of that.
You tell me where did that love come from?
Chemistry?
Oh no.
In fact you will find a weaker mother doing the same thing as a stronger mother.
A mother maybe stronger in body who would take care of a child, who is on the verge of death.
And counter evolution will be willing to pay with her life so that waker son, the child of hers may still live.
It's a love that God pours into your heart and into mine.
And here's the key: to clue to meaning in life is in a relationship.
It's in a relationship.
And you will never have that relationship until you have that relationship with the author of all relationships: God himself.
Wonder, truth love, and finally: security.
Where God promises to you and me that death is not the end, death is does not hold us, that in the end we stand before Him.
And recognize that life goes on beyond the grave, the eternal.
I say to you this: if there is no life beyond the grave all definitions are up for grabs.
All definitions are up for grabs.
But if there is life beyond the grave, then there is such a thing is justice.
There is such a thing as absolute love, there is such a thing is absolut truth.
If there's no life beyond the grave then these three school years and ten(?)(ezek az évek...)
if you wanna be a rationalist or an empiricist or an existentialist or postmodernist it's up to you.
But if there is an eternal way of measuring truth, then you had better measure by the absolutes of God himself.
When I was in my twenties, I was a student in Toronto and I offered to go to Vietnam.
Because America was at war and I was living in Canada, but I wanted to go and work with the military chaplains and I was invited to speak.
I was only in my twenties, i was invited to speak mainly to the youth, or two maybe some military bases and so on.
And I went there.
And I'll tell you what, some amazing things happened.
I was twenty five my interpreter was seventeen total age of forty two.
We were flying by american helicopters, we were on motorbikes I was single at that time, and I said well if anything happens it happens you know...
And thousands of men and women gave their lives to Jesus Christ.
I want to tell you a couple of stories of which I close.
Because it's amazing how these things come to be.
After these thousands came to know Christ, I left and bit(?58:30) my interpeter, his name is Hien Pham.
Goodbye.
And I was sure we never meet again.
But during that time one american soldier wrote this poem, and it came into my hands.
Lord God I have never spoken to you,
but now I want to say: how do you do?
You see God, they told me you didn't exist.
And like a fool I believed all this.
Last night from a shell hole I saw your sky,
I figured right then, they had told me a lie.
Had I taken time to see the things you made?
I'd have known you want they want calling a spade a spade.
I wonder God if you'll take my hand,
and somehow I feel that you'll understand.
Funny I had to come to this hellish place
before I had time to see your face,
well I guess there isn't much more to say,
but I'm sure glad God I met you today.
I guess zero hour will soon be here,
but I'm not afraid since I know you're near.
The signal well God I'll have to go
I like you lots, I want you to know,
look now this will be a horrible fight,
who knows I may come to your house tonight.
Though I wasn't friendly to you before,
I wonder God if you wait at your door.
Look I'm trying I'm shedding tears,
I have to go now God,
goodbye strange now,
since I met you I'm not afraid to die.
We saw stories like this again and again and again.
Men and women desperately seeking hope for life beyond the grave.
Here's what I want to leave you with.
I wrapped my arms around Hien, he was seventeen, myself twenty five, never gonna see you Hien again, good bye. we left.
Seventeen years later, at eleven o'clock at night, i was speaking in Vancouver british Columbia and my phone rang in my hotel room.
I picked it up, and the voice says: Broter Rafi.
I said: Hien?
He said: you recognized my voice?
I said: you're the only one who ever said Broter Rafi!
I said: where are you?
He said: in California.
I said: what?
I said: what are you doing there?
He said: i'm doing my MBA.
I said: you're in California doing your MBA...
He said: yeah.
I said: what happened? He said, have you got a few minutes?
I said: I've got a lots of minutes. He said after you left Vietnam fell.
I was among those arrested and accused of working for the CIA. "I told them I newer worked for the CIA."
They said: Yeah, your english is so good you have to be working...
No!
I would be interpret for guest speakers, and work for the americans but I newer worked for the CIA.
So they wouldn't believe me, they put me in prison.
There's nobody ever admits working for the CIA.
So they put Him in prison.
He was on a prison camp they wouldn't allow him to read anything in english, only in vietnamese and french.
Marx and Engels, Marx and Angles, vietnamese and french.
That's it Marx and Angles, vietnamese and french.
Finally he said Broter Rafi they pounded it into my head that there was no God.
And one day I said: okay.
I'm gonna live as there if is no God.
He said: that day the assigned me to clean the latrines.
He said: you've never seen a latrine.
He said: you tought you so horrible latrines when you were with me.
He said: you never seen anything like this.
He said: you have to tie a cloth around your nose and mouth to clean it.
And i had this bucket and mop, and I was cleaning it.
And i looked into one bucket next to a toilet.
And I was about to empty the paper but I noticed that was one piece of paper in english.
He said: I looked around, I just quickly washed it and putted into my pocket.
He said: everybody went to sleep that night, I waited.
Took out that wet piece of paper and with a flashlight I looked on that piece of paper on the right it said: romans chapter eight.
And I started to read.
And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God,
and that are called according to His purpose.
What shall separate us from the love of God?
Shall life or death, or this principalities or (?).
He said: I started crying.
I said God today I woke up in the morning saying I will never pray to you again,
and now I'm holding in my hand one verse that I needed more than anything else.
That all things can work together for good to them that love God.
You said I got on my knees and beg God for forgiveness.
So I woke up in the morning and went to the commanding office and said: do you mind if I clean the latrines again today?
He said i picked up pages from the new testament every day.
The commander had been given a bible.
He used to tear pages out of it use it as toilet paper.
And throw it into the bin.
I washed it put, it into my pocket, and had my devotions at night.
He said finally, one day they told me they were going to release me, and I was released.
I've got about fifty one or fifty two others together.
Including the son or daughter of the vice president someone.
We were gonne build a boat to escape, and we built a boat.
Several weeks went by when four Vietcong came knocking on my door, Broter Rafi.
And said to me: "you're trying to escape aren't you?"
And he said: I looked at them, plain expression: and said "no".
They said: are you telling us the truth?
He said: yes.
You not gonna escape?
No.
You telling us the truth?
Yes.
He said they left, he said I slapped my forehead and said oh my dear God I have done it again.
He said I prayed a prayer that I hoped would never be answered.
I said God forgive me, and if you want me to tell them the truth, bring them back before we escape.
Hours before they were to leave these four guys, will back.
Armed to the the teeth grabbed him by the collar, rammed him against the wall: you're lying.
You're trying to escape arent you?
He said yes, with fifty two others.
Are you gonna kill me?
They said no, we want to go with you.
He said: four of these Vietcong came on the boat with us.
He said: Broter Rafi on the high seas we were in a storm, we were about to capsize but these four men were the best mariners we could've wanted.
As skippers they finally brought us safely to Thailand, I became a refugee there, and ultimately got my papers.
I'm in California now doing my MBA.
We flew him to my home because he wanted me to officiate at his wedding he found a beautiful young vietnamese gal, he was gonna merry.
And he looked at my kids across the kitchen table and they were young,
and he said to them: you know you always think you're going to manage it your own way.
It never works.
He said: the most important thing in your life is to find that intimacy with God and he will guide you,
he will hold you he will take you through safely in your journey as you walk hand in hand with him.
When everything comes together and you have wonder, then you have truth, then you have love and you have security.
That's what gives life meaning.
And you'll find, that only God is big enough to do that for you.
God bless you, and thank you for listening to me so carefully.
Ravi Zacharias International Ministries
http://rzim.com
