Skeletons in closets

"For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold under sin. For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate... For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good that I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing... Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?... I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin."

Those are the words of Paul himself, from the seventh chapter of his letter to the Romans, which he wrote while pursuing his divinely-appointed goal of spreading the gospel across the world.

Paul was arguably the most important human being in the history of Christianity. Does anybody doubt that he was a true and faithful believer, or that he currently resides in Heaven? Of course not.

Since every last person on Earth has a sinful nature and Paul was writing about how bad he himself was, perhaps we shouldn't be surprised by the posthumous dam-break of allegations against Ravi Zacharias -- but millions of people are very much surprised and trying to wrap their minds around it.

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Let me begin by stating the obvious: None of us actually know if the sexual abuse allegations against Zacharias are true, and all of us hope they aren't.

Now let me state the equally obvious: The allegations are breathtakingly credible. I have come to believe them with almost 100% certainty. Therefore this post will be worded as if they, or at least their overall gist, are true 

Zacharias's ministry, RZIM, is being transparent and encouraging victims to come forward for restitution via famed victim advocate Rachael Denhollander, while promising to protect their confidentiality.

Finally, let me add this: While it stings that these allegations are coming out after Zacharias died and is no longer here to defend himself, they are not the first to be lodged against him.

In April 2017 a Canadian couple, Brad and Lori Anne Thompson, claimed that he initiated an abusive sexting relationship with Lori Anne. They did not make the claim publicly, but instead wrote to him (via their attorney) and asked that he either inform RZIM's board, insurance carriers, etc. of pending litigation, or pay them $5 million in exchange for their silence.

It should be noted here that RZIM's board is believed to include Zacharias's wife and at least one of their daughters. Board members' names are not pubic, but his wife of 48 years, Margie, is listed as RZIM's vice chairman while their daughter Sarah is listed as its CEO and daughter Naomi as the director of its humanitarian arm. In addition, their son Nathan worked as a video producer/editor at RZIM for years. In other words, the prospect of "informing the board and letting them handle the legalities" would have been even more sensitive for Zacharias than it would normally be for a ministry leader.

The Thompsons are neither poor nor stingy, and it has been reported (by one of their friends) that their purpose was not to get money but to scare Zacharias enough that he would not prey on other women. According to this friend, the reason the Thompsons' letter named a "price" was to ensure that they were taken seriously.

After receiving their letter, Zacharias responded by suing them -- not the other way around -- for extortion. He claimed it was Lori Anne who sent unsolicited sexts.

His suit was filed in August 2017. Three months later it was dropped and a non-disclosure agreement signed after (according to him) the Thompsons requested mediation rather than face the steep costs of a legal defense. Shortly after the suit was dropped, Zacharias released a statement in which he said: "The question is not whether I solicited or sent any illicit photos or messages to another woman -- I did not, and there is no evidence to the contrary -- but rather, whether I should have been a willing participant in any extended communication with a woman not my wife... unfortunately I am legally prevented from answering or even discussing the questions and claims being made by some, other than to say that each side paid for their own legal expenses and no ministry funds were used."

I was more than willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. In fact, I and countless others were eager to give him the benefit of the doubt. His character always seemed impeccable and he had been in the public eye for decades without a whisper of scandal.

It was easy to believe that some friendly texts could be mischaracterized to seem suggestive. It was easy to imagine friendly texts unthinkingly drifting to flirtatious in a way that the famed apologist would find embarrassing, given his standing as a highly respected man of the cloth. It was easy to believe he, being a man, might have have committed some kind of bumbling but non-horrendous slip-up that fell well short of a tryst.

It was much easier to conceive of those things being true than to entertain the thought that Ravi Zacharias, of all people, might be a sexual predator who used his privileged status to exploit women for his personal gratification. So the story quickly faded away and was forgotten by Christmas of that year. It seemed a mere footnote in the biography of a then-71-year-old man who had spent more than 45 years traversing the globe and leading people of all kinds to the Lord.

Zacharias died last May. His passing occasioned a flood of glowing tributes and no mention of the Thompson case or his "I didn't do it statement" from 29 months earlier. Nobody would have imagined that his reputation would be in tatters in less than a year's time.

I am not going to use this post to wade through the sundry details of what Zacharias is claimed to have done, for that is not why I'm here today. A third-party law firm investigated the allegations and presented their findings in a report to RZIM, which -- to its credit -- made the report public. I have read it, and if you want to read it too, it is here. RZIM's web site, which does not hide from the scandal, is here.

I reiterate that I believe the allegations. I've also come to believe the Thompsons were not making things up in 2017. I think Zacharias's subsequent release of his "I didn't do it statement" violates the spirit of any non-disclosure agreement, and therefore I believe the Thompsons should be allowed to speak freely without fear of legal repercussions.

But that barely scratches the surface. At deeper levels, what are we to make of this mess right now?

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Watching clergymen fall from grace, kind of like watching businessmen or artists or athletes fall from grace, is nothing new.

The depravity of human nature -- not this person's nature or that person's nature, but human nature itself -- is bluntly taught throughout all of Scripture.

Contrary to what many non-churchgoers seem to believe, Christianity does not wear rose-colored glasses or put lipstick on pigs. There is a reason why in addition to proclaiming "there is nothing new under the sun," Ecclesiastes also asserts "there is no one on earth who is righteous."

Part of me thinks it is lazy to approach the topic of human depravity by listing bad things done by good guys in the Bible, but another part of me thinks it's important, so let's remember that Lot offered up his daughters to rapists; Moses committed murder; Jonah flat-out disobeyed when God told him to go to Nineveh; David made it easier for himself to commit adultery by orchestrating the death of Bathsheba's husband Uriah; Solomon was a bigamist who had 300 mistresses to boot, and who on top of that turned his back on God by worshiping pagan deities; Peter told Jesus he would never deny knowing him, only to turn around and break his vow that same night; and Paul presided over the slaughter of Stephen, Christianity's first martyr.

When you consider all of that, there is certainly no reason for anybody's faith to be shaken by the Ravi Zacharias scandal, which is in many ways the same old story we've been hearing since time immemorial.

But of course it's not that easy. One does not learn of David without simultaneously learning of Bathsheba, nor does one learn about Solomon without simultaneously learning about his wantonness. When it comes to biblical characters, our knowledge of their ungodly deeds is baked into the cake of our understanding from the very start, and thus we know of their sins but rarely ruminate about them.

Ravi Zacharias is different because he is of our own time and we felt like we knew him personally. We heard him speak on the radio, and watched him speak on TV and YouTube. We read his books and articles. Because we knew his voice and his face and his body language, we thought we knew him.

We heard him counsel to "listen not only to the question, but to the person behind the question," and to address both sides of that complicated coin by responding at the heart level as well as the mind level when talking to a person. We watched Zacharias do that himself countless times, when caringly replying to the toughest queries from the touchiest questioners.

We saw him employ a philosopher's intellect and scientist's analysis and pastor's warmth, seamlessly weaving all three into a rope that felt invincibly strong, capable of pulling any soul out from the deepest of pits.

But now we are hearing things about him that are the diametric opposite of what we always thought to be true, and this is very different than watching the comeuppance of philandering televangelists in the 1980's. Those guys, the Jimmy Swaggarts and Jim Bakkers, always had many detractors among the faithful because they seemed shystery to many. Zacharias, on the other hand, was universally liked.

Further, the comeuppance of the Swaggarts and Bakkers happened while they were alive, so we got to see their reactions and that gave us something tangible to help us judge whether their remorse was real or fake. But with Zacharias we are left wondering what he would say, whether he would be repentant, whether he would deny or divulge -- and the "not knowing" feels like an open wound infected with questions: Did he feel guilty? What would he say to his wife, kids, and grandkids if he were still alive? Did he "just" succumb to sin like so many who came before, or was he an outright fraud? If he was a fraud in his later years, was he ever not a fraud? Did he ever believe any of the things he said about God? Did he ever mean what he said?

With Zacharias, the sense of betrayal sears millions of people who never even met him. We wonder if his actions will harm the effectiveness of Christian apologetics or the reputation of Christian witness, or maybe even the faith of some believers. We struggle to separate the message from the messenger. Some of us wonder if we can ever listen to one of his powerful arguments and still feel the same way about it -- simply because it was from his mouth that the words poured.

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But those questions pale in significance when compared to the gut-wrenching truth that there are genuine, human victims of Zacharias's behavior -- human beings who have not recovered and are unsure if they ever will.

We spend so much time yakking about the perpetrator that we tend to overlook the perpetratees -- and make no mistake, the perpetratees include not only the women Zacharias targeted but also his family, his fellow apologists, and his ministry partners. Everybody who knew him personally (away from the massage parlors at least) must now come to terms with the thought that the man they loved was living a double life they never could have imagined.

Again, however, the direct victims, the young women he manipulated and took advantage of, need to be the ones whose well-being is our central focus. It is they for whom we should pray first, both privately and publicly, and it is they for whom we should express the most concern when we discuss this matter privately and publicly -- especially so when we discuss it publicly, since we are called to model ourselves after a god who is caring and just.

We should commend Lori Anne Thompson for sticking her neck out this month. 

Anyone who previously condemned her and Brad for the way they approached Zacharias in 2017 should now apologize.

If any other victims reveal their identities, we should commend them as well.

We should not criticize victims who seek restitution while choosing to remain anonymous.

If your church has any program or ministry for women who have experienced sexual abuse, it seems that today would be an ideal time to give to it by donating some of your money or time, or both.

As Mike Winger passionately discussed in this almost two-hour-long video, we must denounce Ravi Zacharias's behavior just as vigorously and just as openly as we once praised him.

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The indirect victims, especially Zacharias's family members, are so profoundly affected that I don't like using the word "indirect" to describe them. I just can't think of any other way to succinctly distinguish between the victim categories.

His family is said to be devastated -- and utterly shocked -- and I believe that they are.

He was known for keeping a gruelingly extensive travel schedule to speak in various corners of the earth, especially Asia. It was a travel schedule which had him away from home for long stretches of time over many years. I remember thinking to myself, more than once: "It's a good thing it's Ravi traveling like that and not somebody else, because most men would succumb to temptation." If I am wincing thinking back on that, just imagine what must be going through the minds of his family.

If you watch Naomi's eulogy of her dad, or read Sarah's, you will sense that they believed with all their hearts that he was everything he was cracked up to be.

If you ever saw him talk about his grandson Jude -- like he does near the middle of this six-minute clip, which happens to be one of my all-time favorites of his -- you can't help but feel deeply sad about the cognitive dissonance Jude will be forced to endure.

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Yes, we should grieve and pray for the women Zacharias exploited and for his relatives that he deceived. But we should also grieve and pray for other innocent people whose names have been associated with his.

RZIM bears Zacharias's name and is a high-profile ministry that is international in scope, but as far as I know it never went out and hired newbies to train them up. Instead it hired people who were already proven in the world of ministry and apologetics, people who had honestly earned their reputations as men and women of God, people whose goal in joining RZIM was to use its long reach to faithfully spread the good word of Jesus. 

Off the top of my head, the list of blue chip Christian thinkers and speakers who eventually worked with RZIM includes Os Guinness, Nabeel Qureshi, Abdu Murray, and Vince Vitale. I know there were plenty of others -- the ministry employed 80+ speakers across 15 countries -- but confirming their names is suddenly a challenge because most of its web site has gone into an Internet version of lockdown. Today the web site includes two letters (one explaining why they chose to make the third-party report public, plus another in which the board expresses its dismay and provides a link to the report plus a link by which victims can reach Denhollander) but beyond that there is nothing. No way to access any writings, no way to access any sermons, no way to access the names of any staff, no contact information. Nothing.

RZIM headquarters in Atlanta has stopped accepting donations for the time being. RZIM Canada announced that it will "begin winding down" its operations. RZIM's branch in the UK, officially known as Zacharias Trust, announced that its board reached a "unanimous decision to make a clear separation from the global RZIM organisation" and will "choose a new name" and "must now operate without any link to RZIM US." (emphasis mine)

Given the positive impact that Zacharias's ministry has had for so long, the fallout from the revelations represents a gaping wound whose size should not be understated... but it also should not be overstated, for it's a wound that can be repaired by turning to God.

Or should I say turning back to God? It's safe to say that nobody looked at Zacharias, the India-born immigrant with dual citizenship in the United States and Canada, as if he was God, but it's also safe to say that many people looked at him with more deference than any human being deserves. Granting particularly high esteem to a mere man might be human nature in some instances, but it is unbiblical in all instances -- and relearning that fact might be the most important takeaway from this affair.

When somebody makes profoundly strong arguments that the Bible is true and that Jesus is divine, it is surprisingly easy to overlook the should-be-obvious truth that the speaker's message is zero percent about the speaker and one hundred percent about the Bible and Jesus.

Have you ever met a person, including yourself, who did not disappoint you? Does the Bible teach that people won't disappoint, or does it teach that they inevitably will? Does it tell you to put your trust in men if they happen to be believers, or does it say to put your trust only in God? The questions practically answer themselves.

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Inevitably, however, our brains circle back to wondering what kind of man Ravi Zacharias was at his core. This is partly because he was such an influential figure for so long, and partly because of the fact that, by dying, he managed to get out of Dodge before the bullets really began to fly.

We know that Moses wound up in God's good graces, and that David repented, and that Peter made things spectacularly right after Jesus's resurrection... We know Jim Bakker got humiliated and lost his earthly PTL empire... We know Bernard Law lived his final years not feeling welcome in polite company, and that Theodore McCarrick is now living his final years feeling that way too... But with Ravi Zacharias, all we know is that he never had to face the music while here; and like I said earlier, not knowing how that would have played out feels like an open wound.

My own sense of surprise and disappointment has waned tremendously. On the one hand, over the years I have deliberately told myself never to be caught off-guard by anything that any human being does. On the other hand, some time ago I read an interim report of the third-party firm's then-ongoing investigation of Zacharias, so when its final report came out 17 days ago I was fully expecting it to be a bombshell.

Plus I started writing this post more than a week ago, and writing always helps me organize my thoughts and and put things into perspective.

I am reminded of the great words penned by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in 1973: "If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?"

I'm also reminded of the great words written by Nathaniel Hawthorne in 1850: "No man for any considerable period can wear one face to himself, and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be true."

Both of those quotes are accurate. And I am convinced that, for many people who wear two faces, both faces are true. A great deal of bewilderment flows from our unrealistic desire to view humanity in terms of white hats and black hats, of good guys and bad guys, with everything neatly cut-and-dried -- but here, in this material world where we reside, that just ain't the way things are.

Ravi Zacharias was in his 75th year on Earth when he died. He spent much of his twenties traveling through the war-torn backwaters of South Vietnam and Cambodia, putting himself in danger to bring the good news of the gospel to people who had never heard it. That was before he was officially ordained.

At no moment did Zacharias have what we would call a public microphone until he was in his thirties and got invited, much to his surprise, to speak at the first-ever international conference of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. Though he felt as though he was out of his league in that venue, he knocked the ball out of the park with this address and then came to be seen as a rising star in the world of Christian witness. That same year, he traveled back to his native India to evangelize.

One year later he started RZIM in Toronto. Five years after that, he traveled to the hostile and officially atheist USSR and evangelized there. One year after that, he published his first book.

Zacharias relocated to Atlanta and made it the international headquarters of RZIM, whose eventual reach and influence I already touched on.

He continued to travel to dangerous corners of the globe to spread the gospel. Across the decades he consistently defended the faith in ways that were insightful, robust, complex, and persuasive. Like I said earlier in this post, he did so by employing a philosopher's intellect and scientist's analysis and pastor's warmth and weaving them expertly together.

I do not think he could have done that without meaning what he said. I don't think he could have done it if he did not believe with conviction that what he said was true.

But a man knowing the truth of Scripture and communicating that truth to others does not separate him from his sinful nature, and the more influential and respected a man becomes, the more dramatic and disastrous any backslide becomes -- especially if after the backsliding begins, he fails to heed the warning of James 5:16 to "confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed."

I cannot know what happened in the mind and heart of Ravi Zacharias. I do believe his Christianity was sincere, but that at some point he permitted himself to indulge the sin which laid within his heart... and then he failed to follow the advice he would have given to everyone else... and as a result, his sinning grew worse and crossed the line into deviance, into outright wickedness that inflicted trauma on the lives of countless others whom he was supposed to be helping instead of harming.

The good Zacharias did on Earth was real, but so was the evil. The latter does not erase the former, but the former certainly does not excuse the latter, nor could it even begin to. Zacharias knew what he was doing was wrong, and he chose to do it anyway, and I suspect (and hope) that this knowledge tortured him somewhere inside.

We can still use the arguments and reasoning he used, because their origin was God, not him, and their purpose was to advance the glory of God, not the glory of Ravi Zacharias. It's just that we must keep the "by God and for God" truth at the forefront of our minds; and if we ever cite Zacharias's name when using one of the arguments he presented, we must simultaneously speak of his moral failings and present him as a cautionary tale.

So let us pray for his victims. And let us not think about the fate of his soul, for that is in God's hands, and we know that Proverbs tells us to "trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding."

Note: Like I said earlier in this post, the credibility of the allegations against Zacharias are such that I believe them with almost 100% certainty, and therefore worded this post as if they are true. Nevertheless, I have not forgotten the definition of "almost" and I am aware that only God can really know the truth, so I feel compelled to mention that Zacharias's son Nathan has a blog on which he explains why he is skeptical about the allegations against his dad. That blog is here .