Princeton University Open Forum Q&A

all right first off thank you mrs. a cries for coming it's really a privilege on to have you here this question is just you have the ability to rationalize through what I believed to be a spiritual experience so I'm wondering like if recently if you've had doubts that you were not able to rationalize through and if so how you got through that I let Vince also tackle that because his own journey has been quite winding to that if I really ever had any doubts and how I have worked myself and my reasoning process through them you know when you go back to the history of academics and how they've arrived at certainty you can go back across five centuries and you'll see how it started with rationalism that indubitable certainty and so mathematics became that they were your Descartes said the only reason you even knew he existed was because he doubted therefore he was so they were looking for rational indubitable certainty from rationalism we moved to empiricism where the verification principle and the scientific world view the positivistic theories all took over on the heels of that came those who struggle with emotional issues and their personal subjectivity existentialism took over so he had rationalism empiricism existentialism and you came into the twelve on the verge of the 21st century post-modernism came over and basically that didn't believe in any absolutes that did away the truth meaning and certainty the mistake that was sometimes made along this journey is that in grabbing the finger of one way of truth testing they thought they grabbed the fist of all of reality there are rational tests but so are there empirical tests so are there existential tests and so is the whole search for community which is what post-modernism ultimately led us to so in taking measures of truth verification the confluence and convergence of all of these is a critical point at which you have to come some things are rationally explained some things existentially undeniable others you find empirically verify and you bring all of these to the tests so whenever you after I made my Christian journey after began my Christian journey and made that commitment to Christ my own transformation was so dramatic as was my father's who was very hostile to my initial response and actually almost marginalized me in the process till he came to become a follower of Christ himself that I have had so serious I think an encounter in that relationship I can honestly tell you I have never doubted that relationship with Christ or God himself have I had questions along the way yes some very serious questions and you have to settle a question after debating it you don't settle it before debating it you go through I've read authors I talked to others I checked this out against with other people's thinking and so forth when I bring these points of convergence I find the Christian truth to meet two tests of logic correspondence theory coherence theory individual assertions correspond to reality the whole system teaching put together brings a coherent worldview that's the way I see that then in life itself the twin realities of truth and relevance I find it very relevant in my life every day my decisions are not made ad hoc they are made on the basis of a prior commitment that life at its core is sacred so I do answer your question yes you will always have questions you'll always struggle with questions but ICS Luce would say you don't go all the way back to the beginning you take one or two steps back to see how you deal with that question before you start moving forward so personally the doubt has never been a factor but the question has now I know some people who wrestle with great doubts and are great with great sympathy help them and deal with them because they're trying to struggle mainly with the intellectual component of their faith or sometimes experiencial II they've gone through a lot of suffering a lot of pain and they just cannot put this whole story together in the light of the gospel so you have to deal with with the convergence of these points of reference and at times where the intellectual may be weak the experience show does carry you through till the intellect catches with what you are living with and going through okay thanks to that question that the Bible says to be merciful to those who doubt and I when I came to Princeton I didn't come as a Christian grew up in a sort of culturally Catholic home wasn't sure what I believed about about God and I think if I started to think through Christianity seriously for the first time one of my concerns was that if I became a Christian it would be a sort of intellectual dictatorship and there wouldn't be any room for doubt there wouldn't be any room for questions I'd be told in detail what I need to believe on every fine point of doctrine and I've been really pleased to find that that's not the case that we ought to be merciful to those who doubt that there are lots of rooms for questions and there's much more disagreement on things within the Christian tradition and there is agreement there's agreement on core things about who Jesus claimed to be about the death that he died that he rose from the dead but there's a lot of room for disagreement my own personal story is that I came I played soccer here at Princeton two guys who were a year older than me on the soccer team they were involved in a ministry called athletes in action they invited me along I saw an integrity a strength of character in the community that I began to observe I started to ask difficult questions I started to read the New Testament as I was challenged to do for the first time I'd argue my way through it and I was crossing things out and writing my own versions I'd write BS in the margins when I disagreed with something and Christians would sort of look over my shoulder and say hey why do you have a BS and the margin of your Bible I'd say oh that verse makes for a great Bible study I began to I was studying philosophy at the time they're very important to me for Christianity to be intellectually credible and defensible I began to look into some of the arguments for the Christian faith for the resurrection from science for different things I found myself very compelled by them but there were still doubts and for me not everyone has a specific moment for me I actually did have a sort of moment where I think my heart was just ready to say actually got if you're really there I'm ready to follow you in full and I think when God knew that my heart was in that place the sort of probabilities that I had calculated but which retained the doubts did go to go away to a certain extent and for me this is just an analogy that that is helpful for me I think believing in God and trusting God is something like knowing someone's face you know I could write out for you different things about someone's face the shape of their nose the shape of their eyes I could write that out for you propositional way I could try to make an argument about that with sentences but I would never be able to exhaust what there is to know about a person's face to do that I'd have to just look at you and see your face and know your face and what I find in my life is that when doubts creep in more significantly in terms of my belief in God and my trust in God it's often because I've stepped away from actually being in that personal relationship with God face to face and I'm doing more of the writing down on the paper or doing more of the calculating more of the abstract thinking intellectual argumentation and it's during those times that I find being able to read the Bible to be in community with other believers or just to be able to serve other people just to sort of ask God to come alongside me as I serve others those are the sorts of things I can do that just put me face-to-face to God and then I know him I know his face in a way that I don't if I'm just trying to write it down or intellectualize it I hope that helps a bit thank you I'm very grateful to be here and feel that I was led here today it was very unexpected I was wondering about theism versus theism Bishop Jack's pong of the Episcopal Church has rejected theism says that it's dead and claims in his deistic view which is shared by many in the church today that God is love and the ground of being but perceives personal prayer as alien and I wondered if you could talk about the personal God INRI to me some of deism sounds like atheism with the word deist put on it and i wondered if i could you could share your abuse on that question is about relationship between deism and say christian faith jeezum being the belief that god there's a god of some sort a cause of some sort that started things going but maybe doesn't have the sort of personal interaction that the christian god is claimed to have in the world and this is something where I'd want to say that the Christian faith is very much on the opposite end of the spectrum okay a God who not only created the world instead of the world in the first place but is intimately involved in each person's life and this is a radical idea in the Old Testament you have for the first time the idea of a marriage metaphor to explain the relationship between God and the people that God has created okay other ancient Near Eastern myths knew of the idea of God's having other divine lovers but the idea of a God who loved finite imperfect human persons is radically unique in the Old Testament and then moving into the New Testament and we see that ultimately fulfilled and God actually coming to earth the Christian story being that God actually came to earth and live a human life that he didn't have to live suffered a human death that he didn't have to suffer in order should be intimately involved in our lives so I'd want to say that that deism is on the different side of the spectrum from the Christian faith and that's because the sort of intimacy and the sort of interaction that Christianity is claiming that God has in our lives is very intimate and very personal and if you'd like to add to that you know it's interesting how people in the early part of the century started to move away from the word religion they didn't like village and I hear people saying I don't like religion I'm into spirituality and I've written a book that I hope if you have life you're interested in the whole New Age spiritual movement it was called why Jesus and I traced the roots back of spirituality all the way to its Greek heritage and so on and the pantheistic worldview of India and so forth and if you read elizabeth lesser who's sort of the Guru of this New Age spirituality I read the more I read them I came to this incredible conclusion the difference between atheism and the new spirituality is in the process that they end up with the same conclusion the process is different the conclusion is the same in atheism there is no God in the new spirituality also there is no God out there you're the divine one you're the God so it basically gives you that same privilege that atheism gave you except it dressed it up in all kinds of spiritual talk I think what Vince said is critical that in the judeo-christian worldview that we talk about it is not viewed as an ideational connection it's not viewed for example in the whole New Age order or the movement of meditation where you stare inwards for long enough with the right mantra or the right knowledge or the right devotion you ultimately find you are one with this impersonal absolute and get absorbed into this impersonal Abid a divine entity which is not a personal being that's not what the goal is in the Christian faith in the Christian faith the relationship notion is so rich and so true that truly you have the relationship with the Living God in prayer in the knowledge of love in the whole concept of the fact that you actually are not in union with the divine you're in communion and in communication and that relationship issue is very unique and very distinctive and the gospel lends itself to it so you're right theism and broad terms of pantheism may end up just being ideational relationships to abstract theories but in the Christian faith your relationship is to a personal moral first cause and that's why the accountability is therefore just as real thank you my question is a different perspective on the first subject which of the question which was belief versus doubt you mentioned that you have no problem with doubt now but it struck me that during your entire talk you gave reasons for belief which were instrumental in the sense that this is the good things that would happen if you believe and I did not hear any reasons for believing that this is true and I think there's a big difference between reasons to believe a truth versus reasons to believe that good things might come if you believe this whether or not it's true and along the same lines it also struck me that you passed over what I would consider to be the strongest evidence that there is no God which is evil if I would see a death camp rather than think that that's a reason to believe in God I would think that's a reason not to believe in God and I appreciate your response I appreciate your candor very very much and yes I think that's probably it's oftentimes they save virtue in distress and vice and triumph has made atheists of mankind that you see this kind of evil and this kind of suffering but let me go back to your first comment which was an important one that I didn't present any reasons to believe in God I just presented reasons why I'm not an atheist I was trying to stay with the subject matter that is given to me in fact tomorrow night you're welcome to where I'm going to be I'm going to present my defense of Christianity and maybe they'll tell you where that will be and I will give you the reasons very clearly there but for now let me just give you maybe two or three of them that I think will enable me to at least get past the hurdle the question you've raised is germane to one of my own arguments in the beginning if evil is real if evil is real and not a construct in our own mind and evil is truly something to be shunned and is morally deviant then there is no way to sustain that without a moral being who's the creator of this universe and let me give that in two illustrations for you see when a person says that such a thing is evil they assume that such a thing is good when they assume that such a thing is good they are assuming that such a thing as a moral law on the basis of which to differentiate between good and evil but when they assume that such a thing is a moral law the basis of which to differentiate between good and evil they have to posit a moral lawgiver but that's when they're trying to disprove and not prove because if there's no moral lawgiver there's no moral law if there's no moral law there's no good if there's no good there's no evil what becomes really of the question so here's what I want to say to you out of these four steps from evil to good - the moral law - the moral lawgiver the one that you could really cobble with and say Ravi why do I have to come up with a moral lawgiver in order to sustain a moral law or to go to good and go to evil and the reason is this whenever a question of evil is raised it is either raised by a person or about a person it is either raised by a person or about a person which assumes therefore persons have intrinsic worth and that is not a legitimate offspring ideational e of a non-theistic universe how does one give essential worth to a product of time + matter + chance so when you assume that there is implicit worth in personhood you're actually assuming that the person is the creator created being of amoeba by one of and implicit worth now if you go for example to the pantheistic worldview all is God God is all you are part of the pantheistic worldview in the cycle of birth and rebirth if you come for example to the Islamic world view and you talk about God God is so distant that you cannot really truly make too many propositional statements about him the distance is so great between the sovereign God and the finite human Jesus came to a person came to Jesus and he said to Jesus is it alright to pay taxes to Caesar I've just filed my taxes three days ago and I wish Jesus had answered this question differently because at the same time be wonderful to be bought godly and rebellious you know but Jesus looked at him and said do you have a coin and the man said yes he said show it to me so Jesus took the coin and said whose image do you see on this coin the man said Caesar Jesus is give to Caesar that which belongs to Caesar and give to God that which belongs to God the man ought to have had a follow-up question the follow-up question should have been what belongs to God Jesus would have said to him whose image is on you this intrinsic worth that Jesus gives to you and me sir is an undeniable expression of my starting point that my questions are valuable because at core my essence is valuable and when I see a deviation from it I have a legitimate reason to ask that question the problem of evil is d legitimized and a naturalistic framework that's why Richard Dawkins although Peter Singer here takes issue with Richard Dawkins but Richard Dawkins s comment is fascinating he said I have to come to the conclusion that there is no such thing as evil we are merely dancing to our DNA Dawkins has been more consistent he says that if I assume the reality of evil I have to posit a transcendent basis on which to measure it so I can't afford to accept the reality of evil so I say to you the question of evil and moral reasoning points me to a transcendent moral lawgiver and if I take the offer on the cross for forgiveness and grace which is what we all desperately need without which we won't make it and the theory of javathread Jesus's resurrection from the dead the Christian worldview presents to me a coherence of intrinsic worth and the the resultant way in which we live loving both our loving God and loving our fellow human being 613 laws were given to Moses David reduced it to 15 isaiah 2:11 micah to 3 when Jesus was asked which is the greatest law he'd introduce it to one he said love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your strength and all your mind and to love your neighbor as yourself he said on these two laws hang on these two Commandments hang all of the law and the prophets because of the first the second follows without the first the second doesn't follow at all it sued its feet firmly planted in midair so the existential ramifications of knowing God and the intrinsic worth of my neighbor and my own life gives me the defense of theism much more than atheism can defend these two very issues so I would give you a more lengthy answer on this if you come tomorrow but I think implicit in the knot of atheism is the yes of theism how it gives me meaning gives me hope gives me the recovery and more than anything else describes my intrinsic worth and what it means to be human might just might just add a couple of points because this question of the evidence was so significant for me as I came to take Christianity seriously for the first time and I think my initial assumption was that the burden of proof was much higher for theism or Christianity than it would be say for atheism because Christianity was claiming all of these crazy miracles and atheism was just a sort of more purely scientific rational way of seeing things so began to think about it more I asked a question okay what are the sort of big picture possible explanations for the universe that we live in and there's really only three logical possibilities one God created it and now admittedly that's a weird option possibility number two it just popped into existence from nothing without any explanation at all again that's a weird option possibility number three the universe has existed infinitely back in time but without any explanation for why it's done so then maybe you can explain each portion of the universe by some portion that came before it but you still had absolutely no explanation for why there's a universe at all my point is each one of those possibilities is supernatural in an informal use of the term and they're the exhaust the relevant alternatives and every one of them is remarkable and it made me realize actually no matter what your position we live in a miraculous world and so that opened me up to the possibility of maybe miracles being part of the world you that I would accept and for me the most significant of those miracles with the resurrection I'll just read you a real short passage here this is in first Corinthians and this is Paul writing the Apostle Paul and he says for I handed on to you as of first importance what I also received that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures that he was buried that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures that he appeared to ks then to the twelve after that he appeared to more than 500 brothers at once most of whom are still living almost as if to say go out and ask them if you like those some have fallen asleep after that he appeared to James then to all the Apostles last of all he appeared to me the amazing thing about this passage is that in recent scholarship has become a consensus more or less that that passage dates back to within the first couple of years of Jesus's death you go back a hundred years from now and if you brought out a passage like that most people would have said oh it's a legendary development okay it didn't start out that way the story but you sort of play that game where I tell you something you tell the next guy he tells the next guy and by the time it gifts into the book it's developed as a myth the scholarship now for very reasons having to do with that passage the poetic rhythm of the passage the words that are used to introduce at the times that we know Paul spent with Peter just after the resurrection even the most liberal scholars on the question gird Reutimann Robert Funke people who are involved in the Jesus Seminar who are radically skeptical about claims of Christianity admit that this passage dates back to within a couple of years of the resurrection so here's the situation that we're in Christianity part one the Apostles believe that Jesus is going to be the Messiah he's going to be this earthly king who's going to restore the Davidic throne then Christianity part three there's this eruption of Christianity and in the middle all we have is Jesus's death and what's the explanation for how we get from Christianity part one to the passage that I just read you where we know that shortly after Jesus's death the disciples are utterly convinced that they have seen with their own eyes Jesus raised from the dead there's a huge historical gap they're Christians fill that gap with the resurrection if you don't fill that gap with the resurrection the thing is that the gap still remains and in my reasoning and am I thinking about this the resurrection has been the only plausible alternative for how you fill that huge historical gap in 2003 Richard Swinburne he was the head philosopher of religion at Oxford he wrote a book it's called the resurrection of God incarnate and in that book he argues that based on the available evidence today the probability of Jesus having literally physically risen from the dead is 97% now he says you can't take the number seriously he likes to work with probability theory he plugs in estimates at the different points in the argument but nevertheless the fact that someone of his intellectual caliber can write that make that argument in print have it be published by Oxford University Press and Abele defend it at top-flight academic conferences around the world and I've seen him do that it shows at the electric rate case for Christianity is credible and when I came to realize that it caused me to ask the question okay is it really intellectual doubts that are keeping me from the Christian faith or is it something that has more to do with my heart then with my mind those are a couple points hey so I had a question on the problem of evil from the Christian worldview I like how you mentioned Ravi that you need to transcend in anger before you can pose the problem of evil and it was good to hear dr. Vitale that you did some work on this yourself so so in Christian philosophy I believe that Alvin planning has given a good defense with this free will defense of moral evil but is there a good response to what seems to be natural evil that is apart from the moral decisions free creatures make so if you guys could um talk about that and explain the best way to deal with that because I think that's a it's a it's an issue a lot of Christians wrestle with so that's great thank you for for that question I I think you're right I mean the Christian story says that the world is not the way the world supposed to be in the world is not the way that it's going to be in the end that we're living in a sense in a broken world but especially with respect to natural evil that still raises a question of why would God allow the world to continue the way it is even if it's the case that free will at some point made the world broken in the way that it is let me just give one potential way to think about this just one area to open up I mean I don't think that this is a question that we should expect a full response to if I need to take my dog Buster to the vet to give him a needle so he doesn't get a terrible disease and he doesn't understand why he has to experience the pain of that needle and when I sit Buster down on the couch and I try to explain to him that this is important so he doesn't get a terrible disease I don't get very far and that's that's not because of some lack of ability on my part it's not that I'm not a good enough communicator to get through to him it's just that he's not the sort of being that understand while I do many of the things that I do and I think similarly if it's true as the Christian faith claims that God is far beyond us and intellectual capability and understanding then we shouldn't expect to be able to see all of his reasons for allowing the suffering that he does oftentimes we get to a certain point in our life when we look back and we can understand some of the suffering but then some of the other suffering just seems pointless it seems horrendous you just can't fathom how God would allow it I think that's a natural place to be in and I think that that's okay but here's one just further thing to think further about we sometimes think of the problem of evil or the problem of suffering like this we picture ourselves in this world then we picture ourselves in a different world with far less suffering and we say surely God should have created me in that world rather than in this world in the world of less suffering rather than the world with lots of suffering that's a reasonable thought I think it's a thought that relies on a philosophical mistake okay it relies on the assumption that it would still be you who would exist if the world looked very different and in fact was that world with far less suffering rather than this world and it's suffering and I think that's actually not the case there was a important moment in my parents dating life when they were first dating they're actually here tonight and there was an important moment where on their second date my dad noticed a ring on my mom's finger and so he asked about it and she said oh yeah well that's just a ring that one of my old boyfriends gave to me I just wear it because I think it looks nice and they were standing on a bridge at the time overlooking the sort of picturesque New York City skyline and my dad said oh yeah it is nice let me see it most people don't get it at that point you're quicker than most Princeton so my mom took it off handed to my dad and my dad he threw it off the bridge and he watched it sank to the bottom of the Hudson River now my mom loved it I think that was like the clinching the clinching moment but but my question is this what if my mom didn't love it okay what if she ran back to the old boyfriend instead what would that have meant for me and now I might be I might be tempted to think oh that could have been better off for me maybe I would have been taller maybe I would have been better looking you know maybe my soccer career would have went further I would have been more athletic but that would be a wrong way to think about things if my mom had married the other guy rather than my dad it wouldn't have been me that came to exist maybe some other kid would have come to exist and maybe that other kid would have been more athletic or taller or better-looking but it wouldn't have been me so here's my question what if one of the things that God values about this world is your existence as the individual that you are hey the Bible says that God chose you individually before the creation of the world what if that's true and what if one of the things he values about this world is your existence what would the world have had to look like in order for you as the individual that you are to come to exist and for him to call you into relationship with himself for all eternity and I think the answer is that actually he would have had to allow it to go down a course where it looked quite similar to the way that it actually does that's at least something to think further about yes sir thank you thank you for speaking first of all my question for you is you say that heartless egregious acts like the Holocaust are brought about by people without a moral reference point in God but how do you explain all the death and destruction that has been done in a God's name such as the Crusades the Inquisition suicide bombings or Christianizing the quote-unquote savage right question is and I appreciate you asking that the base of the question doesn't change that whatever was done by a or B were both dastardly things they ought not to have been done that's the assumption we both make here whether it was done in the name of atheism over there was done in the name of religion people often say that religion has been so divisive religion has been so horrible and so much of evil in this world and it has its share to face but let me just say that you go back across history and when Nietzsche bend his madman parable he made this comment he said if God is dead in this 19th century philosophically the 20th century will become the bloodiest century in history and he said a universal madness will break out and in the 20th century we killed more people in warfare than all of the previous 19th centuries put together all right now and Nietzsche ironically took the first step in self the last 13 years of his life he spent insane just in a world of his own and every now and then quoting the scripture when he broke his silence if you take statistically what happened under Mao what happened under Stalin what happened under Pol Pot the 130 to 150 million killed just between these three it pales any other tragedy of any other worldview that has been committed religious or otherwise across the centuries so the first of all the numbers game is not what atheists sometimes make it out to be the numbers is he are huge in I'm going to be in Shanghai within a couple of weeks I'll be there three weeks now and I remember being in Nanjing where I saw the seminary that Mao Zedong had burned and talked to them on the 60 some million that he killed when he burned the seminary he said God is going to be evicted from this land never to be brought back here again the fastest-growing church in the world today is in China absolutely amazing so fastest growing Church in the world today somewhere between 50 to 100 million when Crusades and all took place the religious people calling themselves Christians made the biggest blunder you ever make with your faith in God and that's the politicization of religion that became a state Church a politicized church as some of it still is and that's why in Europe today where you see the state Church you see the resistance towards that kind of teaching it was kind of a setting up a theocracy when it was actually more ethereal a--they onna me where enforcing the laws of God on people supposedly but the hierarchy was in the hands of men when you look at the Christian worldview in quotes that did this you knew they were violating the fundamentals of their very Christian faith so it was a deviation from what they claimed to believe when you see violence in the atheistic worldview it's very much in keeping with the assumptions that we are pragmatically going to be our own God and make our own destiny so destiny so you never ever judge a philosophy by its abuse never have a judge of philosophy by its abuse you take a look at the philosophy in its logical out workings now this is where I sometimes have discussions with my Muslim friends on this issue of suicide bombing and what's happening in parts of the Middle East today in the warfare that's going on that is of course a completely different religious worldview to what the Christian faith is all about we must understand this all religions don't believe the same things you well probably come from the same part of the world as I do that you know how different these assumptions are so I may give you a conversation that I had with shake the land who was one of the founders of Hamas the Archbishop of Canterbury took me and four other men to meet with the leaders on both sides of all the conflict that was going on and we should we shake the ladders of one of the founders of Hamas we met with all of the leaders one after another it was a tough tough week my mind was exhausted by the time I'd finished listening to both sides on this last day we're in Ramallah and sheikh talal as hosted us for big meal and she Yasser Arafat's men and all of them in the room smoke-filled room big meal is over the archbishop was the lead man so he carried on the conversation then he looked at the five of us he said I give you men each a chance to ask one question I won't tell you what question I asked sheikh talal but it is along the vein that you've just raced that's all I'll say to you and I didn't like his answer I didn't like it big guy you could have eaten me without salt and pepper you know and I looked at him and I said Sheikh I don't like your answer I have to say this to you I said what Sheikh I want to say something to you because you and I may never see each other again I said not far from here is a mountain five thousand years ago a man you and I respect Abraham went up that mountain to express his faith in God and do that he was offering his own son he said that's right I said let's not argue which son it was or we get into a different argument I said let's agree it was his son he said okay I said when he went up and that proverbial axe is about to fall God stopped that arm he said that's right I said you know what God said he said no I said God said stop I myself will provide he said yeah that's right I said shake very close to where you and I are sitting is a hill called Calvary 2,000 years ago God kept that promise he took his own son up that hill I said shake this time the arm did not stop I said until you and I received the son that God has provided for us we'll be offering our own sons and daughters on the battlefields of this world for position power land and prestige speed drops silence in the room the archbishop said I guess it's time to go so walking away I walked towards the staircase I thought brother I've blown it big-time the archbishop came and put his arm around me and he said Ravi thank you he said that was of God I said I sure hope so I never thought of that I'm just now so we go down the steps and shared the archbishop being the guest of honor the Sheikh went and but he quickly hurried him into his car and ran towards where I was I thought that's it finished I'm gonna be buried in Ramallah he came over to me and he grabbed me by the shoulders as you know I have some of you may know I have a back problem about two metal rods after two major operations he grabbed me by the shoulder and he looked me eyeball-to-eyeball and he patted me on the face and kissed me on both sides of my face he said mr zaharyas you're a good man I hope I'll see you again someday and I saw him wipe a tear away as he hugged me and help me into my car you know what Jesus looked at his disciples when they tried to protect him with a sword and he said put that away and He healed the man in his ear he said to Pilate My Kingdom is not of this world or my servants would fight to protect my arrest my kingdom is from another place those in religion who have turned to abuse of violence in order to dominate the world have violated what Christ Himself taught us and I say to you take a look at Jesus and not at christened him and ask us of the question what do I find wrong with him okay take care you know what time is gone we'll just take two more if we don't mind and then we boys could hang around for a little while here and if we can help you one on one will do it but we keep going and I've got we've got a lot of travel to do and you may want to bury us here too but you'll take one in one and let's let's go to it hi thank you very much for your lecture and for a number of moving stories if the essence of God is to create and to realize the infinite potential for creation that is his identity and yet in the act of creating the world he desired his children to somehow recapitulate his nature or to continue his work would not the act of creation become an act of vanity an act of what vanity vanity thank you where are you from would not creation itself become an active vanity yeah good question I haven't thought about that in quite those terms very much and that's a that's a good question I think maybe a analogy of human procreation is helpful is it's one that we can sort of each get our heads around a bit I think someone can procreate out of a desire to fulfill their own desires or to meet a certain need that they have I'm going to have a child because that's going to fix my marriage or that's going to give me a certain sort of identity or self-worth that I don't have but I also think that there's a type of procreation where the motivation is actually just out of love for your future child not because of anything that you need not because of anything that that child is going to do or earn or accomplish just the you know the love of a of a parent to standing over a newborn child just delighting in that child not because the child has done anything or earned anything not thinking about you know how productive the child will be for the family business or how many awards they'll win it at Princeton or or anything like that just simply out of love for your child created in your image and Christians call that Grace a type of love that is in no way dependent on what you can give to the lover on what you're able to earn or deserve or merit or accomplish but simply the love of a parent for a child and I would say that that's why I think that God's creation is not an act of vanity because it's not an act that he does because he needs something or because he's creating so that someone can deserve something and make him feel good about it but he's creating simply out of that grace type love of a parent for a child sorry say again yes it's a good question does he want does he want us to be like him and I think I think the answer is yes he doesn't expect us to be able to do that ourselves and the Bible says that when you make a decision a free decision to trust God actually his spirit comes to live inside of you in a in a real way and you experience yourself being transformed from the inside out more into his likeness but here's the thing there's a great story in the Bible where God is pictured as a father and one of his sons he asks for his inheritance early he goes off he squanders the inheritance he spends all of his time with prostitutes and just wasting the money that his father has worked his whole life to provide and he realizes the error of his ways and he comes back to the Father back to his home and the father just takes off running towards the child and in that culture he would have had to hike up a long flowing robe he would have had to expose his legs which were a adult man in that culture would have been shameful but he just took off running and that the son I imagine was just thinking am I going to get hit what why is why is he running towards me and the father runs he embraces him he kisses him he says let's throw a party he kills his best animal and he throws his best party to welcome that son home so yes God does want us to be like him but it's by his power and his spirit that he helps us to be like him and even when we go in the completely opposite direction just like a good parent with their child the love for the child is no different the love for the child is not dependent on whether or not we are more like him or less like him thanks for that question I'll add one footnote to that if I love somebody and that person refuses to love me I hurt because I have lost something right because I've lost something here the issue of language becomes very critical language is used in three ways said Aquinas univocal equivocal analogical your difficult is when you use a word in two different sentences and it means the same thing alright so I say I love you and I love somebody else out there you're not pausing to evaluate the word you assume it's the same thing it's a universal usage if I take it either word weak-looking equivocal II and I use the same word in different sentence to meet something differents different if I say I'm a good tennis player and then Roger Federer says he's a good tennis player we still don't belong in the same court because I wouldn't see the ball that's coming his context for good is completely different to my context for good because of my context I first got to see the ball in his a if he hit it my way I doubt I'll even see it but I use the same word sometimes we use words univocally sometimes we use it equivocal II because it varies in the context there's a third word analogical when I say I love you and you refuse to love me I hurt because I've lost something when God says he loves you and you refuse to love god god hurts - God hurts not because he has lost something but because you have lost something the whole use of language and love and value favor comes to you in an analogy often times and you know I've become a grandfather once last year about to become a grandfather two more times and today my daughter and son-in-law returned from Florence Italy they've just landed I hadn't seen them for a month I'm just longing to get back home so I can take that little guy and give them a big hug and squeeze all over again my dad my daughter said to me what's the difference between parents and grandparents do you have any difference in feeling I said sweetheart I'll tell you what when you're a parent all of your energies make you expended in just taking care and worrying and providing for you've got very little left to really enjoy it now when you're a grand Aaron do you do the whirring in you to the energizing I'll take the enjoyment and I'll enjoy the little one when you look at a young life and all a little one in your arms you have to ask us of the question what do you want for this child do you want it out of vanity or you wanted out of love and the supreme idea of what is life's purpose sometimes through suffering sometimes through pain sometimes with sacrifice my prayer for that little boy is that he will always grow up to fulfill the law they've got the purpose that God has for him and do it with honor and dignity what path that will take I don't know God loves you for your sake and what's best for you because nothing you do this way or that way will make him less than God but what you do can make you less than what it means to be human I'll leave that we take the last one hi Robbie when you say that atheists have no basis for morals it seems that you're ignoring most of the existence of mankind and that we can look at the world and see that in the peace leads to prosperity and Nations so that again that book that that peace leads to prosperity in Nations we can look and see objectively that trust and safety in communities allow art and science and technology to to prosper you attack atheists like Hitler and the the lonely rich but it seems like a bit of a stretch to think that all atheists search for happiness in murder power and cutthroat business so it seems like you're attacking though the weak nihilist who looks at the universe sees that there's no ultimate moral authority and leaves it at that but you're ignoring the the strong nihilists who look at the universe see no ultimate moral authority and say this is an opportunity for us to use our reason to use our experiences to create morals to create the society that can best further us that can create the happiest Society and so two questions one why is it fair to ignore these strong dye lists and and two isn't it more noble to use our own reason and experiences to form morals than put put blind faith in an old outdated text it's a good question and I respect thank you for answering it the thing that I oftentimes say to people who raise these questions to us and do so very legitimately so we think about these things - we don't say there's no such thing as as goodness in an atheistic world that's not what we are saying at all in fact many for an extreme humanist could be a very very good person morally good that is the question is not whether an atheist can be a good person or not question is there is no rationally irreducible extension of reason to do that except pragmatically that you want to live in peace but that is assuming that peace is a good thing that's only a matter of survival if you are my neighbor and I want to be at peace with you but you are not at you are not happy with the way I keep my lawn or what I do with my dog when the dog comes out of there you're going to be a very angry person and want me to come to comport with their ground rules that you want to leave it to leave me with and we are ultimately then forced to ask the question what of the person who believes as some people do believe me I have met them who believe that the West is the greatest curse in the world today who want to eradicate it and then the world will be a better place what is the grounds for us reasoning with that kind of person oh yeah we all need to get along he says yeah but I get along better when you're not around that's exactly what they do I'll give you enough now your question is what a foolish question is a very real question I know many people who don't believe in God were very decent living people very good people sometimes I find they're their way of living is much more attractive oftentimes than some of the most hateful letters I ever get up from people who came to be very devout Christians I mean they could just slice me down at the knees in a moment I read the first paragraph I can say this wasn't going to claim to be very godly person by the time this letter is over and I can get some very kind letters from be like you've raised your question in a very quiet way but here's the question I raised for you how do you adjudicate between two different moral frameworks that sit before you each one of them believing that their goodness is superior to the other person's goodness what happens today in the Middle East you know what's happened in the Middle East for five thousand years one worldview lives with the philosophy and the logic of unforgiveness battle between two brothers two half-brothers the logic of unforgiveness and so for five thousand years now Bloods been let bloods been spilt because they will never be forgiveness and their brother Andrew so great hand was been to many parts of the world a Palestinian young man who by the way in the same week I heard another con Cocker and I actually it was a previous visit a young Palestinian person came up to me while I was in Jerusalem having some Hamas and tabbouleh and all enjoying conversation with him and when I left you know what he said to me he said are none of I'll see you again I hope you do come he's why I want to tell you something what our goal in life is first we will take care of Saturday then we will take care of Sunday am I going to argue with him then if I did someday would be taken care of right then and there so I had to leave brother Andrew was in a conversation and the young Palestinian boy told me this story himself he said brother Andrew was sitting across a sheiks table in Jerusalem and supposedly the story went that the Israelis had killed four Palestinians and the Palestinians in revenge under the sheiks ordered went and orders went and killed eight Israelis so brother Andrew leaned over and said did you give that order he said yes he said can I ask you a question who made you the judge of everything in this world he said I'm not the judge I'm only an instrument of God's justice so this young Palestinian boy said brother Andrew looked at him and said what then is the place for forgiveness and he looked at brother Andrew and said that's only for those who deserve it you know if you deserve it you're really not being forgiven you've earned it but you see the world view coming through the world views so deep-seated if everybody had that natural inclination for peace and Brotherhood and goodwill and so on your question would be very pragmatically acceptable but it's not the reality the reality is the starting point is I in my worldview must be in control for millions of people today for millions of people today today I was in a conversation I was in conversation with a man from a completely different worldview to mine and my colleague Matt was with me in the car when he said this he said how do I respond to another person who's raising up his children with only one goal in life to kill me and I remembered being in Beirut actually not in Beirut in Sidon where I met a man and you know what he did every morning at sunrise he took his ten-year-old boy walked up and he pointed to a distance and he said your goal in life is going to be to kill as many of those on the other side as on this what do you say to him I tell them that's not the answer but the only reason I can tell them is because forgiveness is God's grace the love of God places value on you and if you really think about your questions seriously you'll have to ask us of this how did we come to the conclusion say the elimination of life in the womb if your assumption from atheism is right that we ought to live and live peaceably with each other life is too complex to take a simple principle like that and apply it for survival it just has to assume what it means to be human and what kind of a moral I think do we ultimately want living in this world your question is a good one my answer to you is I've searched and searched and searched for years I find no answer yes can an atheist be a good person but they're only living beyond what their own metaphysical assumptions actually are and that's the way it altom utley boils down do you have to add what add let me just close with this you've been very patient I want to challenge you with this for those of you who don't know Christ I want you to give him some careful thought serious thought you don't have to take our word for it take the Bible take the Gospel of John and ask yourself the question Jesus if you're really who you claim to be reveal yourself to me as Steve you are the son of God if you exhibited was the prayer I pray when I was 17 Francis Thompson was a drug addict he never got into Oxford though he applied three times what he was a genius he lived in two places by the River Thames and a Charing Cross Charing Cross he would go and buy his opium at night he would sleep by the River Thames with his dirty raincoat wrapped around him he would write letters to the editor and the editor would say a greater than a Milton is among us but there's never a return address he was living on the streets Charing Cross and the River Thames he wrote the Hound of heaven I fled him down the nights off let him down the days I fled him down the arches of the years I fled him down the labyrinth my mind and then mist of tears I hid from him he was reading the book of Genesis and he read the story of Jacob's Ladder and God coming near and Thompson penned these words a world invisible review thee a world intangible we touch thee a world unknowable we know they in apprehensible we clutch thee there's a fish sword to find the ocean an eagle plunge to find the air do we ask her the stars in motion if they have rumor of they they're not we're the Wheeling systems darken or Arbonne am conceiving source the drift opinions would be hearken beats on our own flesh utter doors the angels keep their ancient places touch with a stone and start a winged does he does your estranged faces that are missed a many-splendored thing but when so sad thou canst not sadder cry and upon thy soul loss shall shine the traffic of jacob's ladder which to in heaven and Charing Cross en the night my soul my daughter cry clutching heaven by the hems lo Christ walking on the water not of gannett but Thames God is nearer to you than you realize you don't have to take our word for it you ask Christ to be who he claims to be to reveal himself to you and I guarantee you this if your prayer is sincere when you find him and you know him you will find the glue that puts all of life together especially moral reasoning especially meaning hope and the ultimate recovery of life beyond the grave I want to thank you all at Princeton for being here and giving me a warm welcome my compliments to the two fencing teams they just won the national championship so hooray for them we cheer them he was a boxer at Oxford I figured I was safe with fencing champs and a boxer here we'd be alright somebody who's watching out on my back god bless you and thank you organized you

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Keywords: Ravi, princeton, princeton university, Ravi Zacharias, Vince Vitale, open forum, campus, Why I'm Not an Athiest, Jesus, Jesus Christ, Gospel, Christianity, Atheism (Religion), Religion (album), RZIM, University, College, Student

Id: M8XSa79sU0M

Length: 60min 28sec (3628 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 17 2013