Is Tolerance Intolerant? Pursuing the Climate of Acceptance and Inclusion - Ravi Zacharias at UCLA

welcome to the Veritas forum engaging University students and faculty in discussions about life's hardest questions and the relevance of Jesus Christ to all of life thank you here you I hope you feel the same when it's over it's good to be with you a real delight and to say that it's a comfortable setting in which to stand would be really saying something that's not true it's happy to be here and delight to be here but very daunting a task and the subject before me the only comforting thing to me is that the emcee is called Michael and my colleague who helped me with the Q&A time is also Michael so it's nice to have two Archangels beside me as I begin the session such as this I'm just coming off a week of writing I was in Thailand where I get away two or three times a year to just start or finish a book and so this is the first time I'm speaking about two weeks it might give my voice a bit of a challenge as I begin but once it gets going it'll get going so we'll be all right I want to tell you as I start that I wish I could say to you that when you begin a subject such as this you're quite optimistic that you can find some ready solutions I doubt that I doubt we'll be able to agree on everything that is said and I doubt also whether it'll change the course for some but my singular goal therefore is this whatever our worldview whatever our convictions because a conviction is different to an opinion an opinion is something that you have a preference for in a sort of hierarchy of options and you make a choice this way somebody else makes a choice another way but a conviction is that which is actually then in many ways rooted in your soul it is in your conscience and to change a conviction will involve a changing of who you are as a person so we're really not talking about preferences or opinions and so when two worldviews collide when two convictions collide the best thing that one can hope for is at least the cordiality with which we can disagree and the civility with which we can interact in the midst of that disagreement it has been my calling in my life to be in different settings as a matter of fact very interestingly enough I was given a very similar theme to speak at of all places in Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates at Zayed University just a few weeks ago now the approach there I had to take was somewhat different because it's a completely different religious worldview and the issues before them are quite significantly foreign to ours but to be given a hearing to be given the kind of cordial listening to and by the faculty and members are pretty senior at senior levels in the country and to be invited by the Sheikh was itself quite an honor and we walked away as friends with the hopes of coming back and discussing issues so to be a heavy subject on hand before I get into the weightiness of it I'd like to read for you a little bit of a lighthearted story it's called a touching story as a bagpiper I play many gigs recently I was asked by a funeral director to play at a graveside service for a homeless man he had no family of friends so the service was to be at a papas Cemetery in the Kentucky back country as I was not familiar with the back woods I got lost I finally arrived in our late and saw the funeral guy had evidently gone and the hoary hearse was nowhere in sight there only the diggers and crew left and they were eating their lunch I felt bad and apologized to the men for being late I went to the side of the grave and looked down and the vault lid was already in place I don't know what else to do so I started to play the workers put their put down their lunches and began to gather round I played out my heart and soul for this man with no family and friends I played like I'd never played before for this homeless man and as I played Amazing Grace the workers began to weep they wept I wept we all wept together when I finished I packed up my bagpipes and started for my car though my head hung low my heart was full as I opened the door to my car I heard one of the workers saying never seen nothing like that before and I've been putting in septic tanks for 20 years never seen nothing like that before and I've been putting in septic tanks for 20 years what a way to end that with Amazing Grace you know there's nothing like being completely out of touch with what is actually going on around you you may come away feeling rather elated or rather deeply moved or profoundly touched only to find out you actually said nothing pertaining to what the people were there about and it can often happen and talk such as these or in conference especially where ideas of truth are dealt with that you can come away saying an awful lot and not getting to the nerve of what it is we really need to address I hope I don't make that mistake but my goal will be to get you thinking and to move you in the direction of trying to understand why we even are at a context like this why is it that we are in a setting here in the United States talking about tolerance maybe 15 20 years ago when the issues were being discussed hotly and debated it sort of set the stage for where we were to get to in these matters and now the divisions are rather deep the sensitivities are right at the core the outer surface and it is so easy to offend and you when you do something like that it has never done with impunity the cost can be very heavy when wrong things are said with the wrong motive or a wrong attitude and especially as an at an academic arena such as this so I hope I will do my best to to at least get you to think in an area that I think is critical for understanding I'm coming to this from a Christian viewpoint I am a follower of Jesus Christ I came to become a follower of him in my teenage years I go back in my own background my ancestors became from the highest cost of the hindu priesthood they were called an Ambu Darice of the deep south at the in the middle of my teen years I began a search because of the emptiness that was in my life I was always in the minority one way or the other Christians are a menorah in India two to three percent I was born in the South raised in the in the North there were a lot of sensitivities at that time ranging all the way from color of skin to language and so on when I was the age of 20 I moved to Canada only 5000 Indians in Toronto at that point today there are 500,000 Indians in Toronto the whole demographic situation is drastically changed I'll never forget once getting off a plane in Paris when I was doing my graduate work in Chicago at 45 of the students I was the only non Westerner in that group so we got off the plane in Paris and my professor and renowned professor of philosophy and worldviews and so on we got off the plane and as we were going through the immigration there the man looked at my passport enter from India and he said Indians need a visa to get in here you don't have a visa I said well I'm just with the group sir I thought I was here on a historic tour of Europe and so on so forth and I we can't let you in and the toughness that ensued for about 30 minutes as my professor tried to make a plea out of the 45 was where one was told he could not enter and finally my professor did not succeed for two days I literally sat in the airport while the other 44 did a tour of Paris and the environments environs and I had to wait till we got on the plane and you know when Tom Hanks did his movie being situated the airport if he talked to me I could have given him an awful lot of lines of what to do for about 48 hours what do I do after that go back and stop buying everything French stop eating their cheese stop talking about their cuisine never walk into a French restaurant is that way you react no they were living with some laws I had not I was not aware of them had not dealt with it correctly I did what I was told to do but ended up in that situation and so you find yourself often times on a fringe looking in from the outside I was that way with life itself I was not doing well in my studies and in India if you don't succeed in your studies you're really living in a shame oriented culture so the age of 17 I attempted to take my own life and there are layers in a hospital bed for the first time really cracking open a Bible on my own and that's where my spiritual journey began so as I talk to you tonight I'm not talking sort of off the cuff I'm not talking undestand the reality of a life that pursues meaning or from coming from a minority background a minority world I'm coming to you hopefully interacting in a way that we can make sense out of our diversities and our differences and learn to live even with our disagreements I want to trace for you what I see as the progenitor is the ideas that brought us to this point and so what I'll do is I'll take an extended period of my talk to set up these three moods that came about I believe in the 1960s that were forever going to change the West especially the United States and then in the last moment I'm going to hang a small piece of thought on these three pegs and tell you what the bottom line is on the struggle I'll lay the groundwork set up the backdrop take you to an application ulm ode and after we finish with that I will have my colleague Michael Drew Ramsden join me and we will do our best to answer your questions many years ago Daniel Yankelovich writing in Atlantic Monthly tour was talking about the changes in American culture and he quoted the dead sociologist Daniel Bell in defining what culture means and he said this culture is an effort to provide a coherent set of answers to the existential situations that confront all human beings in the passage of their lives notice again please it is an effort to find a coherent set of answers to the existential questions that confront all human beings in the passage of their lives but then he goes on to say this a genuine cultural revolution is underway when it makes a decisive break from the shared meanings of the past when it makes a decisive break from the shared meanings of the past particularly those which relate to the deepest questions of the purpose and nature of human life when it makes a decisive break with the shared meanings of the past culture then when it's looking to find a coherent set of answers to the existential questions that confront all of us in the passage of our lives that coherence is sought but is there's assumed in that pursuit that we are we've got some shared meanings from the past but a cultural revolution is underway when we make a decisive break from those shared meanings and we made that break beginning in the 1960s what were those breaks that were made how did it all come about the three moods that took effect number one was the mood called secularization secularization is the process by which religious ideas institutions and interpretations have lost their social significance it is a process by which religious ideas institutions and interpretations have lost their social significance and since I was relatively new to the West in the 60s I remember the battles that were raging at that time the cultural revolution underway although I was living in the city of Toronto Canada then I could just see all the upheavals that were taking place the volatile issue of that time that was being discussed was really on the sanctity of life and whether a person had the right to abort a baby or not to abort a baby but in the backdrop was this horrific thing of the Vietnam War and the young people totally fed up with all that was going on and the upheaval actually began but religious ideas then were losing their social significance how would you witness that if you'd had people on a platform discussing some social issue and he had a university president you had a lawyer you had a medical doctor you had a homemaker you had their people experts and counseling in psychology and physiology and all of that and you put a minister in the midst of that panel you could be sure that if it were immoral to the audience would have concluded that the minister was the most prejudiced of the group that everyone else was saw the rather objective in their worldviews and so on that the minister came with rather an agenda and a prejudicial worldview the problem that began then has lingered and it has gone on and religious ideas institutions and interpretations in the West have been marginalized to a point if not evicted where they have lost their social significance what happens when things like that take shape I recall reading some poets and some philosophers and some journalists were beginning to talk about the things that were underway one of my favorite writers at that time was a man by the name of Malcolm Muggeridge and I remember mug ridges very profound words when he said this it is difficult to resist the conclusion that 20th 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 his 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 this was Muggeridge one time editor of punch magazine talking about how we had created boredom out of our affluence in put inside of erotomania vulnerability out of strength how we were blowing the trumpets to pull down our own cities and how we were educating ourselves literally into imbecility when we were pontificating on ideas not aware of the terrain into which we were literally headed I think it was Huxley himself who said that the the dangers that lay ahead of us was that with the increase in knowledge in science and all of that he said knowledge would become a deadly friend if we did not know where to lay the rules and how to draw the boundary lines for all of these things it was this the English journalist Steve Turner who put it in this way talking about the 60s and 70s we now believe in Marx Freud and Darwin we believe everything is ok as long as you don't hurt anyone to the best of your definition of hurt and to the best of your definition of knowledge we believe in sex before during and after marriage we believe in the therapy of sin we believe that taboos are the only thing that are taboo we believe that everything is getting better despite evidence to the contrary the evidence must be investigated and you can prove anything with evidence we believe there's something in UFOs horoscopes and bent spoons Jesus was a good man just like Buddha Muhammad and ourselves he was a good moral teacher although we think some of his good morals were basically bad we believe that all religions are basically the same at least the ones that we read were they all believe in love and goodness the only different matters of creation sin Heaven Hell God and salvation we believe that after death comes the nothing because when you ask the dead what happens they say nothing if death is not the end and if the dead have lied then it's compulsory heaven for all excepting perhaps Hitler Stalin and changies Khan we believe in masters in Johnson what's selected is average what's average is normal what's normal is actually good we believe in total disarmament we believe there are direct links between warfare and bloodshed Americans should beat their guns into tractors and the Russians would be sure to follow we believe that man is essentially good it's only his behavior that lets him down this is the fault of society society is the fault of conditions conditions are the fault of society we believe that each man must find the truth that is right for him and reality will adapt accordingly the universe will readjust history will alter we believe there is no absolute truth except for the truth that there is no absolute truth we believe in the rejection of creeds and the flowering of individual thought and then he puts this as a postscript if chance be the father of all flesh disaster is his rainbow in the sky and when you hear state of emergency sniper kills 10 youths go looting bomb blast school it is but the sound of man worshiping his if chance is the father of all flesh disaster is as rainbow in the sky and when you hear state of emergency sniper kills tani youths go looting bomb blasts school it is but the sound of man worshiping his maker who would have ever thought that we are living today with dangers in areas that ought to have been the safest places in our towns I'm a being invited to Virginia Tech after that tragedy to Colorado after the tragedy there and the shooting and the day after the shooting in Newtown we got a call wanting know we come there and help people's lives try to be put back together if chance be the father of all flesh that's the kind of worship you end up seeing express expressed in such settings what's the problem here the problem as I see is not with secularization per se because ultimately we really don't want a theocracy we don't want a religious authority ruling the country history is replete with pathetic examples of what happened when power was arrogated to those who ensure of representing God started to play God wherever the church became a state Church the exploitation of the masses became horrendous and the entire French Revolution as the lid was tightened and tightened and tightened as Robespierre & Voltaire began to react when the lid was blown over soand religion at the same time because of how they had seen it as abused and abused so many of its people at the core same thing happened in Germany prior to the Reformation but if secularization comes to mean the eviction of the sacred in the public square where it's not given a free chance at its discourse that's when you run into the big problem of what I call necessary definitions CS Lewis for example had leads us in a solution here but let me move back a little bit in the 1980s in the city of Atlanta Georgia where I make my home there was a tremendous trial going on for one of the world's leading pornographers name was Larry Flynt they said his stuff was so perverse that it actually made Playboy magazines stuff look tame but Larry Flynt had a brilliant lawyer who had one goal in mind he had a goal of erasing distinctions in the way he questioned the witnesses so first of all it took them over five days to find the first member of the jury because in order to be a member of the jury Flint's lawyer did not want you to belong to a church if you belong to a church you could not qualify to be a fair juror in terms of making any judgment on pornography they finally got that jury together and when the witnesses were being questioned by mr. Flint's lawyer he would ask them something like this have you ever been into an art gallery yes sir have you ever been into an art gallery if you had to pay to get into that yes sir have you ever been in it or not Gallery where you've paid to get into it we have seen the paintings of undisturbed people by the great masters of art yes sir would you please now explain to the jury why you believe that to be art and my clients stuff to be pornographic and of course on a witness stand what are you going to say you're going to get into a philosophy of art discussion nobody if you're sitting at a table one on one with a lawyer I talked to myself he gave me a chance to talk about this I would probably have a tough time and would try to I'm not a I'm not a philosopher of art by any stretch of imagination but I am I do I did study moralist philosophers and their reasoning and moral theory and so on and so I would have said something to him like this do you remember the story of Michelangelo when he began his paintings and he started to pour paint disrobed people his teacher one day looked at him and said Michael why are you doing this he said because I want to see man as God sees man he said but you're not God and a fascinating discussion followed point one worthy of discussion but point number two CS Lewis's Challenger is so immense it is something like this in his philosophical journey to Christ in an allegorical form he does it in the book of pilgrims regress the reason he calls it regress rather than progress and this year by the way is the 50th anniversary death of CS Lewis he was he died the same day that John Kennedy was short I think Aldous Huxley lewis and john kennedy died on the same day twenty-second of mber 1963 so 50 years have gone by since the death of that great apologist but in his book a pilgrims regress he talks about allegorically how this young man called John was searching for the truth floated for a long time with pantheism and he turned his back upon it didn't know precisely why came to humanism and atheism and the spirit of the age something made him terribly uncomfortable it is only after he found his life in Christ he said he took a regressive journey because he had the answers for why it was he had turned away from the other options that were given to him but at this point in his book the pilgrims regress he is in a mountain called the spirit of the age and he's sitting in front of the neuron Xterra of he who heads up that mountain staring down at its occupants and Lewis pictures himself handcuffed which is quite fascinating that a man in total liberty is actually allegorically portraying himself as handcuffed enslaved and the man the waiter comes representing the spirit of the age and serves him his breakfast and he takes a drink of the milk and comments on how nourishing nutritious it is and when he finishes commenting on that the waiter says you just call it nutritious nourishing milk all it is is the secretion of a cow isn't it like urine milk one is the secretions other secretion John says I do know how to respond to this kind of nonsense that was coming but I just let go and he said then I made a mistake of commenting on the nutritious nests of the eggs he said then you should have heard the analogy and I won't repeat it for you but as those analogies were drawn and Louis's autumn now squirming having taken those eggs into his system and the milk into his system and the waiter goes away and then he says this reason came riding on a horse and rescued me and said you lie because you don't know the difference between what nature's meant for nourishment and what nature has meant for garbage you don't know the difference between what nature's meant for nourishment and what nature has meant for refuse you see the man or the woman in front of the lens of a camera whose body is being used purely to try to titillate the imagination of the fanciful thoughts of a man or woman in front of you there in order to provoke just the baser instincts and ultimately leave you unsatisfied and insatiable because what they are pandering to you is not a person what they are enslaving you to is a feeling that no one person can ultimately satisfy they are creating you in a hunger the imagination is assaulted to the degree that no one human being has the capacity to fulfill this kind of a longing in somebody in front of that camera ought to say sir don't do this to me but ladies and gentlemen here I think is the tragedy when secularism with a capital S has evicted everything that is sacred and made a free-for-all grabbed for sensation and feeling alone it will ultimately eradicate a sense of shame within a culture shame is a desperately needed sensation when things are wrong deep within you you know psychiatrists are dealing with the possibility of a medication of post-traumatic stress disorder for those who come back from the battlefield to be them this morning after pill to help them to erase all the memory of all the trauma they went through one of their greatest challenges what if a rapist decides to take in the morning after a rape what happens to the medication then to disperse dispenser to somebody who can consider can commit criminal acts and yet at the same time want to eradicate the entire memory ladies and gentlemen I want to tell you you show me a man or a woman or a culture without shame and I will show you monstrosity and it's making I'm at a young man in Malaysia who had just escaped from Saddam Hussein's army he had lunch with my wife and myself he told me he was taught to do two things and Saddam's army number one to build false passports and number two to kill without feelings he said I've become an animal I have become an animal how to kill without feelings secularization can ultimately eradicate shame secondly the idea of pluralization pluralization is also a good thing we must have a plurality of sounds languages cuisines options and ideas somebody told me of a Korean who has a fast food outlet selling kosher tacos here in Los Angeles you talk about a born capitalist he knows exactly what he's doing when I arrived in Canada there was only one Indian restaurant in Toronto and that was a fake when I sat down there said this boys either never been there or he thinks we've never been there and so not Indian food people often ask me why Indians die young and I say because God needs the chef's for the marriage supper of the lamb so he's saying the Indians up first you know a mouth full of Indian food is the closest thing to ecstasy you will ever find so we go in thereat I love I love the pluralistic society I'm a product of pluralistic culture if Canada hadn't opened its doors to me and my family there were never been the possibilities that we have now enjoyed pluralization defined ideologically is where there's a competing number of worldviews available to its members and no one worldview is dominant the important thing to know is that if that is the case and it ought to be the case it is very legitimate but at the same time if pluralism or pluralization is extrapolated to mean relativism then we are on a deadly course again I don't often tell this anymore in the early days I did so it's familiar to some of you you'll have to forgive me for it but years ago when I was first starting out I was in California not far from here and I was speaking at an open forum presenting various ideas and one professor from one of the nearby universities came up to me at the end of a talk where a packed auditorium and he said to me so you're presenting the defense of Christianity I said yeah he said I'd like you to give a talk one night this week on why you are not a Hindu certain American gentleman I said why do you want me to do that he said because I've become a Hindu I said so you want me to talk to you in front of the whole auditorium and why I'm not a Hindu he said no I'll bring my whole class and we'll take you on he was baiting me I didn't bite so I said you know sir I don't like to do things like that I try to char it cheer him up a bit I said when you throw mud at others not only do you lose a lot of ground you're bound to get your hands dirty as well he did thing that was very funny so he just looked at me said are you going to do it or not I said I tell you what I'll make a deal with you on the final night I'm presenting my total defense of why I believe Jesus Christ as we claim to be you bring your students and they can tear me apart then all right have it your way I'll bring them so he brought them and he sat and I had to avoid looking in his direction because his body language is totally distracting me from my subject on hand and at the end of it he came up to me and he said to me he said you know what he said you don't understand Hinduism I said I don't I said no he said no you don't he said if you understood it you would never have said the things that you did about the kind of logic they use and this and that and all of that I said I piss basically talking about the logic of the law of non-contradiction and so on why do you even talk about my lack of understanding in it he said I said look I'm not trying to impress your students let's go out and have a bite you pay I'll pray we'll have lunch let's go so he said all right and he said can I bring the professor of psychology with me I said is he going to study huh sorry is he gonna have a discussion listener I want a witness there I said okay so he sat down and while the psychologist and I enjoyed our meal this boy hadn't put a morsel in it his mouth he just taken all the placemats from our table and every other table he was drawing out his argument he was the professor of philosophy at the institution fine American gentleman and then he was drawing out this basic idea said mr. Zacharias he said there are two types of logic actually that is wrong there many more but you don't stop a person that soon he said there are two types there are two types of logic he said there is the either/or logic the either/or logic either this or that it's the law of non-contradiction either this proposition or not this proposition and that is a Western way of thinking I said no it is not he said yes it is I said knows not said yes it is I said no no if you say who you to tell me no it's not I said all right continue he said and then there is the dialectical system Allah Karl Marx you know and to try to find the law classless society not the owner or the employer-employee but you find both of them in that classless society Allah Hey they're the thesis sponsor 10th assesses and you bring together for a synthesis from a thesis doing in distances to a synthesis and that's how history moves on the dialectic what he Hegel had in his ideation ilysm Marx took in his material theory and he's giving me all this big talk you know it's the bolt and system it's not either/or and he said it's an Eastern way of thinking I said no it is not he said yes it is I said no it's not he said yes it is I said it was not he said what do you say these things so even don't to say said you see Ravi in the Eastern way of thinking contradictions are not a problem you can take two mutually exclusive statements and accept both of them your problem is you're studying philosophy like a Western over the either-or rather than an Eastern over the both and if you studied Eastern philosophy with the both hand the contradictions wouldn't bother you before be believing the same thing I said are you finished now please have your lunch sir I said enjoy it I said I have only one question for you what you're telling me is when I'm studying worldviews I either use the both hand system or nothing else is that right I either use the both in logic or nothing else is that right the fork was to his mouth he puts it down and he says the either-or does seem to emerge doesn't it I said yes sir in fact I've got some shocking news for you even in India we look both ways before we cross the street it's either the bus or me not both of us I have a Hindu convert friend is now my brother-in-law he started laughing halfway through this argument he said that's why you're the apologist and I'm now a pastor he actually used to be a nuclear physicist he's a pastor now he said you see if he'd said that to me out I said there's both hand all that you cracked up it to be why can't I use both of the both hand and the either/or why do I have just use the Burbidge I just use the both hand same idea I said you see sir what you've got wrong is this Eastern philosophy also subscribes to the law of non-contradiction what do you think Islam is all about if it didn't subscribe to the law of non-contradiction I said Shankar Acharya the greatest Hindu exponent who followed the Vedas firmly believed in the law of non-contradiction Gautama Buddha was born a Hindu and renounced that and moved into Buddhist philosophy to quickly create his own business philosophy why if the both hand could occur why did he move in that direction see ladies and gentlemen contradiction is a very serious thing in ideas it is ultimately deadly in life you live in a contradictory way to philosopher to truth and you will find you'd pay the price in it listen to G K Chesterton in one of his writings the new rebel is a skeptic and will not entirely trust anything he has no loyalty therefore he can never be a true revolutionist and the fact that he doubts everything gets in his way when he wants to denounce anything for all denunciation implies a moral doctrine of some kind and the modern revolutionist doubts not only the institution announces but the doctrine by which he denounced it so he writes one book complaining the compare all oppression in salsa purity of women then he writes another book a novel in which he insulted himself he curses the Sultan because Christian girls lose their virginity then curse and mrs. Grundy because they keep it as a politician he cries out that war is a waste of life and then as a philosopher that life itself is a waste of time a Russian pessimist will denounce a policeman for killing a peasant then proved by the highest philosophical principles that the peasant ought to have killed himself a man denounces marriage is a lie then denounces our Esther Craddock profligates for treating it as a lie he calls a flag a bauble then blames the oppressors of Poland or Ireland because they take away that bauble the man of the school goes first to a political meeting where he complains that savages are treated as if they were beasts then he takes his hat and umbrella goes on to a scientific meeting where he proves that they practically are beasts in short the modern revolution as being an infinite skeptic is always engaged in undermining his own minds in his book on politics he attacks men for trampling on morality in his book on ethics he attacks morality for trampling on men therefore the modern man in revolt has become practically useless for all purposes of revolt by rebelling against everything he has lost his right to rebel against anything this contradictory way of thinking you see in secularism if it leads to a society without shame society cannot survive in pluralization if you had abandoned the law of non-contradiction you ultimately lose your way in Reason loss of shame loss of Reason secularization and pluralization which brings you brings me to the third privatization and by the way my work in Cambridge University was in the Romantic poets I love poetry I love to see how the poets oftentimes grapple with reality much more than those who do merely as philosophers or in prose had a wonderful time yesterday with your great professor Lowenstein and we were taught his love for literature and law of cause and my love for literature and philosophy we had a great conversation talking about the poets and the great writers and literature and so on but I remember the rock group in this 70s I think King Crimson rock group it was it they wrote one something like this cat's foot iron claw neurosurgeons scream for more from paranoia's poisoned or 21st century schizoid man blood rack barbed wire politicians funeral pyre innocents raped with napalm fire 21st century schizoid man dead seed blind man's greed poets starving children bleed nothing he's got he really needs 21st century schizoid man take a note now the walls on which the prophets wrote is cracking at the seams upon the instruments of death the sun light brightly gleams will no one lay the laurel wreath a silence drowns the screams between the iron gates of fate the seeds of time are sown and watered by the deeds of those who know and who are known knowledge is a deadly friend when no one sets the rules the fate of all mankind I see is in the hands of fools confusion will be my epitaph as I crawl a cracked and broken path if we make it we can all sit back and laugh but I'm afraid tomorrow I'll be crying no reason no shame privatisation leads you ultimately where you are compelled in your spirit to sever your ties with your deepest commitment of the soul and relegate it to the private world you don't bring it into the public world if you'd told me 40 years ago that the America of today would be here the way it is I would never have believed it I've just flown in from Bangkok Thailand two days ago I use a little apartment they where I write my books and as I arrived late at night all by myself and the security guy takes me to the elevator and I he presses the button and the doors closed I look at a wall may you know the joys of Christ this Christmas and may you have a blessed New Year Thailand there are 98% Buddhists years ago I remember arriving Beijing and going into the Forbidden City on a cold January day it was the first week of January I walked and walked you go through I think seven portals and all of a sudden past the seventh portal in the Forbidden City in Beijing just past tienamin square you walked in there and as I walked past that last portal Starbucks and a sign outside Starbucks Merry Christmas try that here these days you can walk through Kuala Lumpur Singapore Delhi in the malls and hear the carols you try playing a carol in a school here and the American Civil Liberties Union will be after you last year in one school in New Jersey they prohibited even the instrumental versions of Christmas carols because the children knew the words and the words would be triggered in their mind which would bring religious thoughts into their thinking come on tolerance he said that intimidating fine look at a man who is a Muslim man and I said to him you know hope your Ramadan is going well to you I wish her good Ramadan these days am I am i succumbing to his faith is it that hard to wish people a Merry Christmas so even Thanksgiving is now turkey day which may be more reflective of what's becoming of us rather than what the season is really all about what's happened to take away that which is the sacred most thing within your heart and relegated to the private world do you know what happens then you end up without meaning this is the single expression of our time when I was 17 and tried to take my own life I was not independent in my thinking there were many others who are in the same category and I travel through the campuses all over the globe and I find young people coming and telling me the same thing struggling with meaning struggling with meaning trying to make sense out of it this morning I had 45 minutes with a man who's a complete skeptic it doesn't all make sense says he doesn't all make sense in the spiritual world in the world of your faith in your belief your connectedness in the deepest confines of your soul if the allah relegated into the only to the private it is an amputation and breaks away your your connection with meaning Sakurai's ation no shame pluralization no reason privatization no meaning can I take the consequences and anchor it for you now it is this cultures ultimately reduced themselves to three forms of manifestation on moral issues based on this backdrop three three forms I want you to follow me carefully the words are big but the ideas will became become clear I think Paul Tillich was the first one who talked but in these terms there are three kinds of culture the anima s' heteronomous and autonomous the-- anima s-- not a theocracy tharros meaning god no mas mining law the idea in Athey animus culture is that God's law is so self-evident within the human heart that there are some imperatives within you that find a consensus in society that's God's law in you the normos the law of the Pharaohs God is so ingrained in your soul that there is an emerging consensus within society of certain norms that everyone agrees in our noble or the opposite of them being evil and not to be pursued if there is a culture today that comes close to a Theano mass culture I would say it is India they refer themselves to themselves in Hindi as Darth Academy the people of the soil then music talks about it their lyricist talked about it their poetry talks about it the values that the culture tries to hold on to principally respect for the parents love for the children the transmission from generation to generation the closeness of the family tie all of those values they consider ingrained within them to say it's deep within them there's a Theon a'mma snatcher to it it's not identical but it's close to a Theon a mass culture but then you get a heteronomous culture what is a heteronomous culture heteros meaning different normal slaw a different law where there are two distinct sets in operation there's the controlling view and the masses down here in secular terminology Marxism is a heteronomous culture with a handful at the top dick 8 F or the masses below in religious terms Islam functions as a heteronomous culture either the ulama or the Imam or whoever the dictates are given to you from above and the masses are then told to follow along there is a header on imme to it the law comes from above dictated to the masses whether you want to do it or not and then there's an autonomous culture the autonomous culture otto's meaning self normos meaning law you're a self law you're a law unto yourself you follow your individual what ah nummy America would not fit into a Theon omus culture it would not fit into an autonomous culture by definition we pride ourselves in the fact that we are not on immerse culture so here's the question if we are on autonomous culture do we respect the autonomy of each individual if I respect the person who disagrees with me and once still have a totally materialistic life or not that compliment to be returned and give me the privilege of having my autonomy and my choice to follow God and my choice to follow where I believe the truth has led or torn immerse cultures pride themselves in being self german individually driven but I'll tell you what there are some questions that bait the hook will turn the questions towards people like me or others force us to answer it under the guise of an autonomous culture but the moment my view is not in keeping with the view that wants to be heard it switched into a heteronomous culture and I'm dictated to until this is exactly what I need to believe and not what I actually believe this bait and switch that has taken place is striking absolutely striking so we don't go with the fiona mass culture here we don't go with the heteronomous culture we claim to go with an autonomous culture but autonomous cultures need to be mutually respectful and I think what the Duke of Edinburgh once said he said freedom can be destroyed not only by its retraction but also by its abuse and so I'll leave you with two thoughts in the first one I'll do a little bit of a voice play here not in any way to be unkind but because it was so beautiful and so sweet so sweetly done in the 1980s when the Cold War was still owned my wife couple colleagues and I were invited to go to Russia sir in Moscow quite a cold a foggy day and we went in my host said would you like to have lunch I said sure so we had lunch and things were pretty sparse then everything was a different consistency of mayonnaise spenny's bond this man is abandoned man it may just make you feel full but you know people are struggling you looked at the empty shells and you said what are we to mock that so he the waitress was a lovely Russian gal bilingual and she spoke in a sweet voice and we finished our lunch and then she leaned over very nicely and said would you like to have some dessert so my host of all things have changed we can also have dessert I said well that'll be lovely what do you have she said ice cream we said what else ice cream said oh okay yeah we'd like to have some ice cream what flavor would you like we said what flavor do you have vanilla we said any other flavor no vanilla so the man on the Left said would you like to have a nil ice cream for dessert said yes we would he said you know the genius she actually walked away from here thinking she gave you a choice of desserts that's what this game of Tolerance can become we're actually given the idea that we have a choice is it true it ought to be true and that's why I was guinnesses right he thinks civility is a better word than tolerance where you may learn to accept what another person believes but you don't have to celebrate it and in civil manner you disagree a cartoon I saw years ago would Dennis the Menace sitting in front of his lemonade stand sign all you can drink for 10 cents so little guy stops and puts up his ten cents in Dennis the Menace takes the glass and pours a wee little bit into his glass and gives it to him next time of the cartoon is looking bewildered saying what you know in the third frame of the cartoon Dennis is saying I says it's all you can drink for ten cents that's who says it's all you can drink for ten cents is that what tolerance is becoming we tell you what it all means that's who tells you what it all really means I hope not Daniel Yankelovich his article ended by the survey of many of our American couples and he ended by saying the stakes are high if you feel it is imperative to fill all your needs and if these needs are contradictory or in conflict with those of others are simply unfillable then frustration inevitably follows to Abby and to mark as well self fulfillment means having a career a married having a career and marriage and children and sexual freedom and autonomy and being liberal and having money and choosing nonconformity and insisting on social justice and enjoying city life and Country Living and simplicity and graciousness and reading and good friends and on and on but the individual is not truly fulfilled by becoming ever more autonomous indeed to move too far in this direction as to risk psychosis the ultimate form of autonomy the injunction that defined oneself one must lose oneself contains the truth any seeker of self-fulfillment needs to grasp the injunction that defined one's self one must lose oneself contains the truth any seeker of self-fulfillment needs to grasp I could have saved in millions of dollars of research if he'd read the Gospel of John that if any man come unto me and deny himself take up his cross and follow me there was a man in Pakistan a medical doctor who became a devout follower of Jesus Christ we were telling our stories to each other I said to me what happened he told me the long story from whence he had come what happened and the transformation that happened in his life when he began to follow Christ he said Ravi ji a respectful term within our language this young once in Pakistan so he spoke in the Urdu and all of that he said Ravi ji I was a hostile skeptic I hated anything about anyone that claimed truth he said in the closing sentence of this message that I had to listen to because my wife took me there the man speaking said in surrendering you win in dying you live in surrendering you win in dying you live Christ invites us to ultimately die to ourselves to find out the beauty of the real self he has made in you and me and made that beautiful person who learns to live even in a contrary society shining a light in a dark world if you told me at the age of 17 that that would be my calling in life I would never have believed it but what God did in transforming my heart in changing my hungers in making me the person he wanted me to be I am NOT look back over these decades and found the fulfillment and joy and meaning and considered a great privilege to be living in America now and having the opportunity to raise my family here to make a living and to be able to share the love of Christ wherever we go and I thank you at UCLA for giving me this opportunity god bless you at this time dr. Zacharias would you like to introduce dr. Amsden so real honor for me to have Michel Ramsden come all the way from Oxford he just landed about 1:30 this afternoon Michel is a professor there and my colleague at work he heads up work all across Europe and I met first met him he was in his early 20s he remained in his early 20s for many years after that because we never quite knew when the years were changing Michel is one of the most gifted communicators in the world today I mean that he's a man with immense intellect an extraordinary sense of humor merit to his wife and with four beautiful children and Michael has his family in Oxford and that travels the globe with me hither and yon and as he as he travels his various many times to the European Parliament many times to the House of Lords members and so on he did his PhD work at the University of Sheffield in international monetary law and actually lectured in philosophy at Sheffield for some time - our friendship goes back over many many years now and he's been working we've been working together for about 15 to 16 years and I just wanted Michael to come and join us that gives me a break in the Q&A time we will alternate these you will enjoy listening to him actually he should have been doing the speaking and I should have come afterwards he's better looking than I am not for long but he will be back for some time come on in Michael yeah at this time those who wish to ask questions may make their way to the microphones here at the front as they do so I will start off the QA by reading our first text in question this question is for dr. Zacharias why did you try to end your life at 17 what about Christ made you want to live on can I do it from here the microphone is on right here right okay I told the story in my book walking from east to west it was one of the most difficult books I have a road because I wrote it is really my own personal journey my dad highly-placed individual in the government of India and the whole ministry very successful it was a tough man tough tempered tough in every sense of the term extremely disciplined to have gotten to where he did he done his work in industrial relations at the University of Nottingham came back quite highly placed and influential and out of us five brothers and sisters I was the most underperforming individual I never made it through anything I lived for two things I lived for the cricket field I lived for the tennis court I want to play cricket I dreamed about cricket i drooled about cricket I imagined cricket and now here are my Indies all these years I having left India four decades ago I still dream about cricket I enjoy the game so much it's a beautiful game it's really a beautiful game with the result I concentrated very little on my studies my life could be described as punctuated failure that's what it was punctuated failure and in my book I tell the story one day of taking the most severe thrashing from my dad it's the way they knew how to do it it was a time and culture in which they felt this is how they change you I'm not blaming him I'm just telling you this the way it was if my mother hadn't intervened I think some bones would have been broken the results would have been very costly I was very slender kid small kid and my dad really took it out on me that day and the more I pondered this I thought to myself why what's all this about anyway you know if you don't like the way you feel why do you want to keep on feeling and if I could describe it in one sentence I really didn't want to feel any more because what I felt I didn't like and I took from the science lab some poisons and tried to end it all very very nearly succeeded I mentioned the fact that in India this happens quite often my closest friend had downstem self with kerosene and burned himself did that because he had not succeeded in the exam we live with that tension things are slightly changed but the most suicide which your time of the year is when the results are out at universities when I came to know Christ I wanted to put life together there are four questions in life for all of us origin meaning morality and destiny where do I come from what gives life meaning how do I differentiate between good and bad what happens to human being when he or she dies origin meaning morality and destiny you have to find answers that are correspondingly true to each of these questions and all put together it has to cohere it has to be coherence illness has to be a skin that pulls it all together in reading John's Gospel I couldn't read it actually the gentleman who brought the Bible to me Liz about ten miles from here but he himself is pretty close to the end of his life wanted so much to bring him here I spoke to him on the phone about two months away said please let me come please let me come by the situation so weak right now and he often said to him on the phone he said to me that he just after Christmas he said sometimes I think I came into this world just to be able to give you a Bible just to be able to give you a Bible and that transformed my life as I walked out of there John chapter 14 was read to me and Jesus said because I live you shall live also if I can take a tale ender to this jesus said because I live you shall live also I knew it wasn't biological life I trusted in him with the little prayer that I prayed and walked out of there and followed up with it with men and women who could teach me the scriptures and life changed one by one the rest of the family including my father mother all became followers of Christ even though it come from a priestly background we lost the message of Christ somewhere along the way when my mother died in her 50s my dad asked me if I would preach at her funeral in Toronto I struggled with it then he said that the graveside he said son what would you want to put on her gravestone I said add the verse that she first read to me without even knowing what it meant so put John 14:19 Jesus said because I live you shall live also that was in 1974 in the 1990s my wife and I my wife some Canada went into Delhi she said can I see your grandmother's grave you talked so much about remembering as a little boy going to that funeral I said honey I don't know if we can find it I tracked it down went to the only Christian Cemetery in Delhi went to the Registrar found the register attracted down tracked it down tracked it down find out found out I was only nine years old in the mid-50s when she'd passed away walked over to the plot was nothing visible I hired a gardener with a shovel I said I'll be happy to pay you please dig this soil and find the stone so he's digging and digging and digging and all of a sudden he strikes a stone so he's gently moving it away pouring water moving in a way pouring water and all of a sudden the words begin to emerge the name of my grandmother the date of a birth date of a death and then these words jesus said because I live you shall live also John 14:19 the verse that brought me to him that saw my mother's grave was originally put on my grandmother's grave about something about it none of us as a family actually knew the threads all came together when Jesus came into my life he didn't change what I did merely he changed what I want to do and I must tell you because my father if he were here we tell me he passed away he said tell him this truth - I left from the bottom of the class to the top of the class after I came to know Christ and never left the top prior to that my father used to say my father used to say center-forward in football in fullback in studies he never said that afterward so that's part of the story here at the far microphone yeah go ahead is this thing on oh alright thank you very much for being here I'm a longtime listener a big fan of both of your work rather your ministry thank you very much back to the the topic of intolerance wonder if you care to kind of discuss intolerance on the personal level versus intolerance unlike the institutional level because it seems that intolerance on the personal level it's like okay you know I can walk away and I won't see that person again and that's that's that but when it gets into the the institution's whatever that may be whether it's you know the local Rotary Club or the government or anything like that quite a hierarchy it just wonder if you care to discuss that a little bit I was going to ask Michael to say something on that but I'll say something tougher for him yes and I think when Michael please feel free to pitch in here my response would be fairly brief on that I have found no better way than to sit down with the people institutions evil does not run through the heart of institutions it runs through the heart of people men and women it doesn't go through States or governments or organizations runs through the heart of every man and every woman if I find somehow that there is something dishonorable here I'll sit down and talk to the individual go and see the powers that be the best you can do his voice and say look this is what's happening I don't think this is right I don't think this is fair if the reverse were done I don't think you would tolerate it very much either so I ask you sir or ma'am would you please consider looking into this subject and changing the reality for us who feel victimized by an institutional pattern here and I'll be most grateful to you thank you for just giving me these few minutes of talking to you you build that relationship gradually but you never do it by lawlessness or Anarchy or rudeness or disrespect you do it by drawing the best instincts out of people and I have found some of the toughest to them change just by a period of relationship whenever I go into and stay in any hotel where I go to erase I'll always go and ask me the manager I'll going to be the front desk person of one meeting the maitre d introduce myself as I'm here for the week I look forward to enjoying this hotel and so on and you know what so the middle of the week they'll come to you and ask if there's anything they can do and then you can serve you and it works that way even in institutions befriend the powers-that-be and you'll be surprised how some of them will open up say even though this is not what I would like to do a respect for you I will do it this gets more serious in academic subjects theses dissertations you can find yourself being marked out because you're not sharing the ideas that one wants to share you just have to be wise how you move in this and endure the tedious journey and you do it an honorable way in the end you will find truth will win out dr. dr. Amsden is would you have anything to add I mean I may have been interpreting your question slightly differently but when it comes to tolerance at an institutional level I think I know certainly in Europe we've got ourselves in a little bit of a confusion here I got a letter from the British Home Office which is the while it used to be called the Home Office which deals with justice as a part of its things in British law political system it looks up to the police forces up to the law courts and they used to have a little motto that said breathing building a free just and tolerant society and I can remember the first time seeing that logo thinking I have a feeling that only two out of these three are possible and let me just explain to you what I mean by that the way tolerance the word tolerance has come to be defined today we were not quite sure exactly what it means either it means well we just accept and agree with everybody but historically that wouldn't be right and in the past when we talked about tolerating someone the first thing you're assuming is you disagree with them because you don't tolerate what you agree with right I mean if you agree with someone you're not tolerating them you're agreeing with them but if you disagree with them then you're actually passing judgment no I think what you're saying is wrong and that could be morally or intellectually whatever way but you feel that it's important for you to to allow that other position even though you personally disagree with it but when you talk about justice and just to spin upheld and enforced in society you're not normally asking for tolerance to be exercised so in a rape case that's argued before a judge for a judge to rule at the end of the read case while we caught the guy and is definitely guilty but you know we just have to tolerate these kinds of things they just happen and we've had laws against rape for hundreds of years we've never eradicated it so we just have to learn to deal with it at that point we we have a would seem to me a contradiction potentially there which I think most people would instantly react against the other problem we also have of Tolerance yes most of us think of it positively today tolerance is a good thing even though most of us actually define it negatively so I mean I'm only in LA this for a very short time you know so I arrived this afternoon I leave tomorrow morning and then and then I'm going to to Cairo which will probably be my last speaking engagement this year and I so so just imagine you hear that I'm just briefly in town you come to me say Michael you're only in LA just for a few hours and would like to extend some hospitality to you then we take you to the very best restaurant here in LA and obviously for that kind of invitation I'd extend my my sleepy now is beyond it's now 5:00 a.m. in England I mean I'll be happy to be stabbed actually we can have breakfast together and and I accept your kind invitation and the next morning you hear me talking to a friend of yours you're standing behind me I can't see you and your friend says to me I hear someone took you out to LA's nicest restaurant last night did you enjoy meeting them and I say yeah they were tolerable if you heard that would you be would you be happy they say I did you enjoy the food and I say I could tolerate it it's very interesting we we talk about tolerance but I know very few people in this world who want to be tolerated but I know a lot of people who want to be respected but here's the key thing because I said the idea of tolerance freedom and justice maybe only two of those are possible I'm not sure in that sense our common acceptance of the definition of Tolerance today is even compatible with freedom in the sense that if that is the way we're now going to take tolerance we just simply accept what anyone says we need to understand therefore that's also the end of all free society and all free discussion because you cannot tolerate someone and disagree with them because of the point of disagreement if it just does mean acceptance you're no longer tolerating them but you can respect someone and disagree with them and since the means by which we find be able to disagree with one another over certain issues becomes foundational to all civilized society I'm wondering whether at times rather than having huge debates about what tolerance is or isn't we should begin to ask what actually does it mean to treat other people with respect because I definitely want to live in a society where we learn to respect one another's individuals even though we may disagree at certain level of ideas they are going to speak now we'll take another live question over at the other microphone this question is for both speakers um if the transformative power of Jesus Christ is so great and it's the only way to live an abundant life and to never thirst again how can we do not see more Christians living this transform abundant spirit filled life that's a very good question if you would like to give me a name a list of names and addresses of all the hypocrites you know I will be happy to go and pay some visits I I think your question is a very fair one I think as a matter of fact I think it's more than fair I want to be careful how I how I phrase this because I am part of I'm part of the church that's part of my identity ever since I myself became a Christian but it does seem that the Bible has some very challenging voice for the church and as a matter of fact just before coming up here I was just reading through a speech that Martin Martin Martin King not dr. Martin Luther King gave that right right and sorry I'm in America right oh I'm in the right Christmas just checking and when he was put in prison he very famously wrote a letter from prison which is a very impressive letter to read his letter from Birmingham jail all the more impressive when you remember he he wrote that letter from memory and I always knew he was a political activist and I knew various things about him I had no idea how well read he was and you can always tell something about someone when when they're writing a letter and they're making reference but the philosophy into law into theology and he does it so well but part of his letter and I think it's something that needs to be heard today is he says we're living in America where the church is espousing one thing with its lips but it's not living it with its life he says and therefore he says we are breeding a generation of people who have absolutely lost faith in the church many of them losing faith in America as a country and he showed us to think of the violence it may hold and the division in may cause in the United States of America as it went forward from that point and he ends his letter with the words along the lines of and now God's judgment rests on the church as never before and I pray it may raise up in this divisive our decisive hour and it's voice may be heard and what's more importantly that it may actually live the moral values which it espouses and so I think there has to be a challenge I think the scripture is very challenging to Christians about the way in which we live and the means by which we live and the values by which we live and I'm going to have to confess that I think in the Western Church we've excused ourselves from a lot of that and we've claimed comfort and convenience has been a highest ethic rather than the principle of laying down your life and service for others we're expecting everyone to lay down their lives and service to us and that can't possibly be right I think ravaghi would probably agree with us and say I know my experiences when I'm visiting when I'm with the church in very poor parts of the world when I'm visiting the church in parts of the world where you can be killed for simply becoming a Christian the church I meet there is often very beautiful very attractive very humble and very clear both in its message and in its lifestyle but our affluence seems to have choked the purity of that message and so I think we need if you like a challenge to to the church and if you are a Christian here today I think maybe one of the challenges since we're talking about tolerance would be that we are called to live a thoroughly uncompromised life now as may be sad that when most people in this room if you were to close your eyes and imagine a thoroughly uncompromised Christian someone who was totally uncompromising in their Christian faith we would immediately think of someone who's very harsh very difficult and very unpleasant to spend time with but the Bible invites us to pass judgment on everyone who claims to be a Christian and part of that judgment we're told as a look at the fruit of their life and their fruit of their life were told for everyone who claims to follow Christ should be loved peace patience kindness gentleness self-control and so on so let's be thoroughly uncompromising about that let's just make sure that in no area of our life are we compromised and such that our lives are sending a message that will be inconsistent with the fruit that we're told to bear to bear as Christians so I think we may need to fall in love all over again with what it actually means to be a Christian if you indeed are and if you're not a Christian if you've been put off by Christians please don't reject the possibility of of genuine life change and what it genuinely means to follow him because you've encountered a few fakes and it seems especially in America there's a lot of money to be made by faking it indeed one friend I know who was training for the ministry said here people will give a lot of money to authenticity and if you can fake that you've got it made and maybe we just need to be maybe a little bit more I think we do need to be more challenging with ourselves and also as members of the church with the church to say do does this look like Jesus said it should look like we have a lot of people lined up at the microphone so I think we'll just try to keep things moving and answer as many questions as we can over at the other microphone great well I'd first like to thank both of you I came here today on a whim and I'm certainly glad I did so this question is focusing on dr. Zacharias is talk today but you're both certainly welcome to answer as I understand it and I hope that this hasn't been too reductionist of me you've noticed three main trends those for those focusing on secularism clurel ISM and privatization and the one that I find particularly interesting is the role between secularism and a loss of shame society and the implications that could have where where I guess I see the most tenuous link is the possibility of totally secular societies or a faithful Society still having a shame culture still having a moral basis from a some other foundation of moral understanding I just like to hear from both of you what role you think faith has what role the church has in maintaining morality and if there is the possibility for that's still like moral reasoning in the absence of faith again it's great that's a great question the most important word I think that we need to bear in mind is that the word sacred what to define what morality means because Jesus Christ really did not come into this world to make bad people good he came in this world to make dead people live moral rectitude and moral uprightness can be held by many but if a person in themselves saying I'm morally so good that I really don't need God is the most seductive form of morality which ultimately leads you into some kind of arrogance or self aggrandizement and I remember yesterday professor Lowenstein and I when we were in conversation he made the comment that humility is the characteristic is he's so lacking in our society right now and when you're humble before God you recognize the need to be transformed you recognize the need that you cannot pull your cell phone you're up by your own moral bootstraps every major religion of the world I want you to hear me clearly now every major religion of the world is a works religion Hinduism Buddhism Islam Sikhism by ISM Jainism all of them you can take every one of them it has to do with works in the in Islam your your entrance into paradise is dictated by your good deeds out when your bad deeds in Hinduism every birth is a rebirth and it's on the basis of karma all that went on before and your karmic cycle keeps going till you can break off this cycle and attained Nirvana moksha or whatever they want to call it in the Christian faith you first of all come not by virtue of moral capacity you come by the gift and the grace of God who offers you forgiveness and you come just as you are in all of your failings when the prodigal son comes home in that tremendous parable it is so counterintuitive with in Eastern culture this boy took the father's money spent it at a whim plundered his life did everything wrong and he's gone and now he decides going to come home in Eastern culture the father would never go out he's been wronged he would have to wait till the Sun came and literally threw himself at his feet and begged for mercy but in the way Jesus tells the story the eastern father would have immediately sort of booked up his ears the father leaves the porch leaves the home runs towards the Sun and embraces him and receives him this my son was lost as found was dead is alive so morality is good living is the fruit of your conversion and your commitment to Christ it is not the means of your attaining salvation and attaining rightness in the sight of God so what are the Ten Commandments all about they were all about the fact that life is sacred your word is sacred your marriage is sacred your time is sacred you're giving a sacred and in the sanctity of life these expressions come but then the Ten Commandments came after the Exodus Redemption precedes righteousness it is never the other way around so God takes a life puts that life back together and gives you the fruit of what Michael was talking about what does the church have to do here I think the church has to teach us but that inner transformation is desperately needed let me say this very carefully listen to me carefully now Malcolm Muggeridge said the depravity of man is at once the most empirically verifiable fact at the same time that it is the most intellectually resisted the depravity of man is the most in empirically verifiable fact at the same time it's most intellectually resisted if a man is stealing nuts and bolts from a railway tracks as Dale Moody and you send him to university and the end of his education he will steal the whole railway track some of the biggest crimes that have been committed against humanity sometimes have been committed by high officers and high success stories depravity is here transformation redemption righteousness and worship that's the morality alone will never get any one of us anywhere it may make for some kind of existence but it doesn't deal with the root of the problem which is the rebellious heart that needs to be corrected and the heart that needs to humble itself for God that's my word to you dr. Amsden a word or well no I mean I agree with everything that's being said and I think when morality is used especially in a legislative manner to enforce conformity we've often missed the point the question has to come is it actually possible to see transformation from within and a new hunger and a new desire if that is true at that point what the morality is doing is governing the nature of your relationships as a post is simply being something which you feel compelled to do because all relationships are morally governed you can't be in friendship with someone you don't trust and the friends of those who you feel are committed to you and you understand that commitment to you in moral terms in terms of their faithfulness and their goodness to you and all those kinds of things and so we maybe we need to bring some of that back I think into the vocabulary as dr. Zacharias has been saying we'll take another text in question at this time this question is for both dr. Zacharias and dr. Amsden what do you say to those who cannot believe in God because suffering exists and cannot believe that a good God would allow suffering I'll say that's a very good question - well maybe just a couple of things because that's the kind of question actually demands a very long answer it might be the case for some people that when suffering comes it's not simply the case that it may drive them away from God per se it may simply be a catalyst that reveals to them what they actually thought about God in the first place so if you find yourself caught up in suffering you may for some people they'll find themselves driven into the arms of God because they believe he's there and he cares and to others to walk away from the idea of God because they believe either he isn't there or he doesn't care and so sometimes suffering simply access that catalyst let me suggest three possible things to turn to if you're interested one of my colleagues Vince Vitale who is that Oxford who's a philosopher who teaches with us it's done his whole doctorate on suffering and he gave a very brilliant talk on the nature of suffering at Oxford University we've quite a hostile setting and handle Q&A it's available online and I'm sure if you got in contact with our Minister adazi im2 org we could give you the link another one of my colleagues also Oxford who's a professor of mathematics was speaking down in New Zealand shortly after the earthquake there which devastated the city he stood in a ruined building addressing members who took people who'd all lost family members in that great tragedy and tried to address the the problem there on ground zero and I also know that dr. Zacharias is also the all the way back to the time he was when you were in Columbine High School I know there was a whole series of talks recorded there one of which was simply why so I think I'll try to say two things I'd like to try to say that there's some hope not just simply existentially in terms of finding comfort with God but maybe even coming to know that there is God through it and you know if you're interested that question itself or deserves a much longer run so that could simply be stated here and if that is your question you happen to be here I'm sure we'll be happy to put you in contact with the resources I think we can make you a promise and say if you're not a Christian and you are wrestling with this issue then we like to give you those resources for free if you are a Christian and you want those resources you may be tempted to have a small crisis of faith right now and claim those resources for free and two you would just like to remind you there will be a day of judgment and accountability so those aren't for you Michael take two quick stabs of that Michael was an answer to prayer for long suffering for many many years here we traveled together and he keeps us all entertained his wife has only two words all the time while we travel it's Oh Michael Oh Michael and then he comes one after another there's two sides to that question let me just define it philosophically and then move quickly to the application Vince and I on the process of writing a book together on this he's just sent me an outline so that's what I was doing actually last week Bangkok take doing my three chapters share of that philosophically it's often of course put in tandem with evil suffering evil suffering even why does God even allow evil and I've often responded that's very critical to understand the nature of the question because when we say this evil we assume this good when we say this good we assume there's a moral law on the basis of which to differentiate between good and evil when we assume a moral law we assume a moral lawgiver because without the moral lawgiver there's no moral law without the moral mouth is no good without good there's no evil the question actually ends up hoisting itself on its own petard as it were there doesn't know how to defend itself but here's the killer point of that argument somebody may say why do you need a moral lawgiver to have a moral law and the answer is very clear in this every question raised about evil and suffering is either raised by a person or about a person which means personal worth is essential to the question intrinsic worth is essential to the question and in the naturalistic framework you cannot have intrinsic intrinsic worth you've got extrinsic worth gets conveyed to you you're just a radar blip on the radar screen of time you just happen to be here but if you're a person created in the image of God with intrinsic worth then the question indeed is reflective of the value that you give to personhood so two things the reality of good and the intrinsic worth of a person are essential to the question if the question is to beyond taken seriously those two assumptions need to be made which the Christian makes the two points of application I want to make is this you know I've lived with serious back problems that's why it's easier for me to stand also not just keep seated with two metal rods in my back and eight screws bolting me down from l3 to his s1 from a back injury that I suffered I've had perfect health in every other way forty years of travel I've never had an upset stomach in 40 years in 70 different countries no issues of any kind those things don't bother me yeah I was raised on the streets of Delhi my mother said he ate everything and nothing ever ever bothered him there was a kind of place where if you went to eat and you spit in the sink afterwards somebody would tell you you went to a distinguished restaurant and did that what would they tell you you would tell them I did go then they told me if I wanted to do that to come here so this other kind of food we ended up eating in those kind of settings now what I want to say is this through pain through enduring pain for 27 years constant pain for 27 years with three honey ated discs and stenosis going pain going down your leg you can easily say Lord you've called me to travel you've called me to do this what did give me a body such as this I have learned what any Johnston Flint said who lived with cancer blindness arthritis the rheumatoid kind and she was orphaned he giveth more grace when the burdens grow greater he sendeth the most strength with the labors increase to added affliction he had with his mercy two multiplied trials is multiplied peace when we have exhausted our store of endurance when our strength has failed out of the days half done when we reach the end of a hoarded resources our father's full giving has only begun his love has no limit his Grace has no measure his power has no boundaries known unto men for out of His infinite riches in Jesus he giveth and giveth giveth again God sustains you God empowers you God enables you and you draw closer through many of those times of agony and the one thought I leave with you is this there's a young gal in Georgia by the name of Ashlyn blocker she was featured in a Google picture of this last week and I think Katie Couric is interviewing the parents again when the baby was born the mother realized something was wrong because the baby didn't cry the doctors never diagnosed anything everything was fine till they found out she had SEPA congenital insensitivity to pain with anhidrosis she doesn't feel any pain no pain whatsoever she could step on a nail she could put a hand on a burner and not know that her hand is being burned the mother ended her last interview the last time I saw when the little girl was only about 10 or 12 she said every night I go to bed saying God please give my little girl the ability to feel pain in our finite world if pain is an indicator of something that is wrong and gets us to seek the reality of finding help is good is it impossible in the infinite mind of God to use the agency of pain through which to draw us and to bring us to the ultimate corrective the greatest pain is ultimately that of the soul and the separation from God so he is able to sustain you both in the physical and emotional struggles and in the deepest pain of all that spiritual alienation I leave that with you at this time I think we'll be taking our last question unfortunately and we'll do it over here at the at the microphone angle hello again Ravi ji super job two thumbs up um this question is not for Ravi ji the scholar or for the lecturer or the academia on this question is for Ravi ji the man of God and I'm a firm believer in prayer I just want to know if you would pray for my two brothers Darren and gray that they would come to know Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior I will do that you catch me immediately afterwards give me the name we'll have a couple of minutes and we'll do that thank you god bless me hope you do uh well I will do will do one more go ahead don't worry I'll keep this brief um well I really respect what you're doing but I just coming here out of out of a whim I was just curious um you speak of tolerance and you know respectful discourse and I really want to believe in that but I was just curious as to your opinion on you know having a what we could say as a respectful discourse as far as like LGBT rights and stuff like that where it seems like a certain ideology would be very have a strong conviction on that and I want to know what would be a good weight for to get a good respectful conversation going for more progress in that regard I mean this has become obviously a very big issue partly because anything for a whole variety of reasons and it certainly isn't helped by the shrill voices on both sides of the debate to actually make having any kind of discourse or conversation even harder I think I mean I'm aware a little bit when I was speaking last in the US and my Texas A&M in December these questions came up and has some quite extended conversations four to three hours after the meeting with a certain group of people awesome they'll discuss talk about it with me and this is this issue they wanted to discuss with me and I think the question which American Society has before it right now is twofold one who informs the moral convictions of a society and where do they come from now historically in the States you've been very heavily influenced by the Christian faith and by the judeo-christian ethic and what seems to be happening now is a question of whether that's actually the ethic that American society wants to embrace them and to have so that is going to that's that's going to be a conversation which is going to have to happen here I guess both politically as well as within academia with every level of society and I think that level that conversation should be encouraged I think the next question will then be what does it mean to to have disagreements and within a civil society how do you allow that kind of diversity now what I do find interesting about the debate is this both in ancient Greece and in Rome in those societies homosexual relationships were seen as being pure and higher than heterosexual ones so the culture as a large had the conviction that homosexual love was of a pure and Noble a form and heterosexual relationship and even if you were married having a homosexual relationship on the side was seen as being well and and openly was being seen perfectly acceptable and in some cases some of the leaders in those societies would have been openly gay and I would have been applauded for it what I do find interesting however is both in ancient Greece and in Rome there was never any debate about changing the meaning of marriage for example so marriage was still classically understood but even though you know homosexual use homosexual relationships reviewed as I say has been on a on a more noble plane so where I find the debate more more concerning is using legislative force to start changing the meaning of words in the dictionary that that that is something I find more concerning and history doesn't seem to tell a very happy story of any society their resource to legislative force to start rewriting the meaning of words so I'm wondering if there are ways for for this conversation to happen in a way that will take place in a way that will allow that you know I say people to be able to sell both sides what they actually believe and where they think they may be wrong and then and then to find a way to for them as a society to live that together in Europe we're having similar types of debates and this getting it's getting complicated in France and in Germany there have been debates about what what how much surgery should be allowed within a gay couple to allow them to have babies and to actually to conceive if they're both men because the technology is there now but obviously it's very expensive to to do that should that be permitted or not and should the taxpayer have to pay for it and you can imagine these kinds of debates the kinds of debates that raise a very high temperature in the room so I think if there's anything that can be done that will both defuse the temperature but also allow an actual discussion of the fundamental issues which are involved I think they become very I think that become very important another one of our colleagues oz Guinness I know in the book that dr. ravi referred to earlier which talks about what we mean by civil society and freedom i think has some very pertinent things to say into that particular issue debate and i I feel comfortable everything that he says there and I would recommend it to be read I meant if there's much more that you would want to say I'd like to answer that and Mytyl if I may make a closing statement at that time and then turn it back to you I want to thank you for that question and I know in an audience like this there'll be many many diverse views suddenly polarizing views on it and so if you're here tonight of a different view and you hold that firmly I want to thank you for coming I want to thank you for giving us a hearing because it must take a lot of every ounce of your own strength to be seated there listening to maybe a worldview that you're not comfortable with because it may challenge some of your own worldview or however you want to live your life out I make a plea in a couple of directions along with what Michael you know our team is based in about ten countries and we cover a lot of territory here with politicians with businesspeople with academics and politicians are beside themselves they really have no answers one of the political leaders in Africa put his arm and mine after I'd finished addressing the presidents there he said our cumulative wisdom is unable to meet the daunting challenges of our time our cumulative wisdom is unable to meet the daunting challenges of our time but I want to say this what we saw in the fiscal cliff is minor compared to what we would see in an amoral cliff if we ever get to the top there it'll be the devastation of so much we go in many hostile settings many inimical settings I go in places where I've literally had to have armed guards who are there in case anything happens I've always made a plea in the following way the Christian view of marriage that Michael and I would hold is very different to the Islamic view of marriage in the Quran polygamy is provided for and allowed for and it is mandated by their rules but you can have polygamous polygamous marriage my own view of that is going back 5,000 years with Abraham that became one of the factors in which it has created 5000 years of turmoil in what happened in that household by virtue of what happened in that polygamous relationship and the offspring and the blood that has been spilled for 5000 years started as a war between two half-brothers over who had the right to thee to the father's inheritance and spiritual inheritance and so on but that has not kept was ylim people from inviting me to speak their vital is heading out to Cairo next week this year I was in so many Islamic countries and I've been I was in I've been in Islamic universities the Islamic University of Malaysia on the oldest Islamic universities with the Shaikh sitting in front of me for one and a half our open forum I have a differing view on the sanctity of marriage to this they allow us to come and speak same with Buddhist but this monks have a different view of marriage than the Christian does so also with the Catholic teaching on celibacy in the ministry we don't hold to that as a Protestant evangelical Christians and so on but that does not keep them from inviting us we go and speak and cordially we discuss we disagree and if we disagree we do so not compromising our convictions will speak in any many settings I spoke in the Mormon Tabernacle the first non Mormon to be invited there in 104 years after Dale moody to speak at that I don't hold to their view of marriage and so on we we well know that but we respectfully deal with that so my plea with the skeptic in these matters yes can we not still talk can we not still hear one another can you not give the Christian the chance to defend what it is about the sanctity of marriage that we actually see and why it is we hold that view and wherever society ultimately goes in an open arena of question truth will ultimately triumph truth will win out and the lie will be shown for what it really is we are committed to be followers of Christ and we will preach his word and I thank you for giving us that opportunity let me just close with this simple illustration last year after 40 years of travel I experienced something that I hadn't experienced in a long time I was invited to preach at the Angola prison in Louisiana which has 5,300 hard-core prisoners 85% of them are on life without parole 45 of them are on death row and you walk in and say 20 to 23 year old men who will never leave the prison never walk out of there and they jammed the auditorium when I was there to speak and address the issue of grace and forgiveness and redemption when you walk past death row you just go by there and they'll reach their hand out and they will grab your hand and ask you to pray for them the chaplain the the warden who was there a man by the name of burl Kane the girth of a southern sheriff he walks like that you know he told the prison that he would come if they would let him do it his way it was the bloodiest prison in the country blood marks on the walls blood marks on the carpets when you were checked in you were given a knife to defend yourself today it's the safest prison in the United States after a few years of burl Kane being there Bible verses all over the wall all over the wall and in there just before these guys go into the ante room for the last meal before they go to the exigent I'll never be the same after seeing that execution chamber I could not handle it but they tell you the stories of what happens they just walk away from it but I'll never forget sitting at that table thinking what must go through the mind of a man as he's about to go to the execution table but I looked up at the wall and there was a painting painted by a prisoner of Daniel in the lion's den I said who painted that warden said a prisoner I said why he said he painted it telling the man about to be executed you could still be rescued don't give up and then I said what if it doesn't happen he said look at that wall Elijah with his chariots of fire taking the person to be with his Creator so the artist was in prison said if you're not rescued this way you will be rescued that way in every cell is a Bible and the chaplain and somebody said if we had more of these in our schools and our colleges we'd need less of these in our prisons the transformation of these my minds and the men when I left there I got into the plane and we were silent the five of us silent we just saw how tragic life can be but what Redemption can actually do the transformation of a life and that only God is big enough to do that and I pray if you'll never come that way to him you'll give him a chance in your life and if you're an honest skeptic keep hungering for the Bible says you shall search for me and find me when you show such for me with all your heart I hope we have the privilege of coming back here again bye thanks to everybody in the Veritas forum for organizing and putting this together for more information about the veritas forum including additional recordings and a calendar of upcoming events please visit our website at Veritas organ

Channel: The Veritas Forum

Views: 897,785

Rating: 4.6983323 out of 5

Keywords: veritas forum, ravi zacharias, rzim, tolerance, pluralism

Id: uyTa5r4GG4M

Length: 106min 44sec (6404 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 17 2013