Life has a way of throwing things into the light at the most inappropriate of times. On your wedding day, that is the time a long-lost fling wants to inform you, along with everyone else, that the tryst you had when you didn’t know any better spawned a mini-you. Or that your dad has had a family or families aside from yours and that those work trips and weekend getaways were actually spent with the other families.
I stumbled upon the revelation on 12th February 2021 that Ravi Zacharias, a man who I held in very high esteem as the foremost Christian apologist of this 21st Century, was a sexual miscreant of multi-continental proportions. I guess that is why they say you should never meet your heroes in person because that is when you discover how human they are.
The light has, over the aeons of man’s existence, been something that amuses and frightens in equal measure. The sight of light signified the end of the dangers that lurked in the dark for our caveman ancestors and in the same vein marking the beginning of the race for survival – hunt or be hunted.
Luke 8:17 (NLT) “… For all that is secret will eventually be brought into the open, and everything that is concealed will be brought to light and made known to all..”
After a “great” life in the service of Jesus as Christianity’s foremost apologist, the revelations, as a result of the report has impacted the organization that bears his name negatively leading to many quitting and others disassociating themselves, I am left to wonder what effect that will have on Christendom?
God hasn’t deputized me to carry out Judgement on His behalf and so I will cease because I know he, like myself, will give an account for my actions before He who sees and knows all things.
I can’t stop but wonder though, what drives Men to this?
Accountability
Fathers, do we live with this awareness that our decisions and subsequent actions might have far-reaching consequences than we anticipated? do we do a double-take before acting on our impulses? I know I don’t always do so but I think I really should.
When such “great” men fall the question of accountability comes to the fore. For Ravi to fail in the manner that he did, that shows that he did not have people to hold him accountable or they did not do their job well. We all need people who hold us accountable to the straight and narrow.
Now his legacy has gone to the dogs and in the typical fashion that we humans look at things, all the good he did for the advancement of Christian thought in the arena of ideas will be tarnished as well.
Fathers let us guard our legacies by seeking to make batter decisions.