Months ago I wrote a piece called, “I saw Goody Zacharias with the Devil”. In that piece I used pretty strong language to say that I thought that for Ravi to be guilty of the things he was accused of was highly unlikely. Well, he was guilty – at least every scrap of evidence points that way, and his family and his ministry have said they’re coming to terms with him being guilty. I thought it was extremely unlikely that he was guilty – he was. I was wrong. Because I didn’t think he did it. Yes, I gave myself the semantic wiggle-room…I hedged my bets linguistically, but I really didn’t think he’d done it. I was wrong. He done did it. I still maintain my main point in that article: which was that accusations alone cannot be a basis for guilt; people who wished to throw Ravi under the bus because of the existence of an accusation were right for the wrong reasons; I was wrong for the right reasons. I’d love to be right for the right reasons, but if I have to be wrong, I’d rather my motivations and methods to be right and draw a wrong conclusion than the other way round! But I digress…
This is tremendously sad. This is especially hard for his family and friends and those who work in the ministry he built. And it’s especially sad because now everybody wants their pound of flesh. People with the mysterious power of hindsight are claiming that they had foresight – don’t ask for actual evidence of that foresight. Some claim that this is proof that Apologetics is too intellectual and really can’t save people. Everybody wants to use his fall to make hay. And perhaps I could be accused of the same thing. But I really don’t want to – be accused of trying to ghoulishly profit off of his moral failing and or to, in fact, ghoulishly profit off of his moral failing.
Instead, I just feel very sad. Over the past few weeks and months as it has been seeming clearer and clearer that Ravi was probably guilty I, oddly enough, have found myself not hating him, or wanting to mock him, or deride him, or try to distance myself from him. Instead, life has gone on as it had before – I would read the Bible, I would discuss theology and ministry with other pastors, I would read, write, and preach, and almost every single day, I would be reminded of something Ravi said. He has messages I’ve listened to dozens of times. I’ve been greatly shaped in my thinking by Ravi’s thinking and rhetoric and writing.
And all this just makes me very sad – not even sad that I was wrong: I’m wrong all the time! I never put my faith in Ravi, so his fall doesn’t shipwreck my faith; I’m not like those who depend on the winter streams and think they’re rivers and turn my caravan towards them only to be ashamed to find a dry gully. The term for these kinds of waterways is Wadis. They’re bone-dry gulches ‘cept for when the rain is aflowin’.
Ravi is a wadi – he only was a source of life-giving water when water from elsewhere flowed through him. Ravi as a man was frail and fallen and, frankly, a bit creepy. Show me a man who isn’t. Now, not all men DO the things he did; and that IS a distinction WITH a difference. But all men, even the best, are just wadis. The most godly man has his faults and flaws, and frankly, even the best of men, apart from the preserving grace of God will all end up caught up in some seedy and grubby little shame-spiral, if only all the truth were known. Some day all will be known…on that great and terrible day.
Please don’t mistake me. I’m not defending Ravi or excusing him.
But here’s what I am saying.
I haven’t always been a pastor. I’ve spent a lot of years in the trades. And I’ve known drunks – and been one – and I’ve known wife-beaters. And I’ve known drug addicts. And I’ve known cheaters. And I’ve known child molesters.
And the shocking thing is is that I’ve spent time with a convicted and confessed child molester – a person who molested his own daughter. And I remember, and still feel, that strange and disturbing combination of emotions where I find myself joking and laughing with a child molester. I’ve found that some people who have done deeply awful things are actually pretty likeable. And that I like them.
Are people more than their worst action? I know our culture doesn’t want to think so, but does any of us really want to be judged by our worst and deepest and most shameful impulses? Would any of us be able to stand the scrutiny of absolute truth? We’ve all done and thought horrible things. Is it so terrible to think that people who have done worse things can find redemption? Is it impossible to believe that a person can be godly and even good (by human standards) but can have an enormous glaring flaw – a disintegration of personality that is capable of undoing everything? Is it possible that a person can be righteous and holy – except not entirely possessing integrity because there is one (or a few) things that are nightmarish?
Is Luther more than his antisemitism?
Is Calvin more than an executed heretic?
Is Edwards more than a slaveholder?
Is Ravi more than a pervert?
Be careful how you answer. Be careful how you judge, for by the measure you judge you too will be judged. Now, again, I’m not saying we oughtn’t to condemn Luther’s antisemitism – or his antianabaptism either! I don’t’ defend Calvin sin. Or Edwards’. Or Ravi’s.
But condemning their sin doesn’t necessitate condemning them, wholesale either. History doesn’t present us with people who are perfect packages. Politicians come as package deals. Valuations of moral triumph and turpitude are always mixed affairs. Martin Luther King Jr. was a cheater, a plagiarist, and a heretic. I still respect his view of measuring a man not by the color of his skin but by the content of his character. I still believe he was a man of tremendous bravery. I still believe that he was a man with many great qualities that are worth emulating.
When we name bridges and buildings and cast brass bodies and busts of MLK, we don’t do it to memorialize the wickedness of his hidden life. We do it to honor what was worth honoring. And there was much to honor – and much we should honor.
Should all Lutherans disavow the name of Luther because of his extremely evil views about the Jews?
No.
But I think that all Lutherans should know about them and wrestle with them and through them.
What about people like me whose entire mode of thinking and reasoning is colored by Ravi – should I deprogram myself and hate him? No…I have no intention of doing that. I don’t hate him. And I can’t see myself hating him. I’m indebted to him. And I’m heartbroken for what he did to himself and to his family and to his ministry. But I’m not doing to forget everything he taught me. I’ll keep his books and refer to them from time to time. I’ll listen to his sermons again from time to time. Not because I’m honoring his most wicked tendencies and deeds, but because sometimes, God sent living water flowing through the wadi that was his life. And if I’m willing to plunder the Egyptians; I’m certainly willing to slake my thirst and water my camels at the stream Zacharias.
I could write for days on this topic because the way we respond to Ravi says a lot more about us than him. I wish Ravi hadn’t done the evil he did. But he did. And no amount of wishing is going to change that. But he also did some wonderfully good things. And as Christians we have the challenge of following people who are never more that wadis. Men who, left to their own devices (and women too, by the way, I’m using men as the neutral 3rd person plural) fail. We follow people like Hezekiah, from whom God removed His Spirit to test him and he was found wanting. We follow people who in themselves – that is their flesh – dwells no good thing. We follow people like, God preserve us…………me. All of us are just wadis in the desert.
So now that Ravi’s dirtiest (God preserve us! let this be the dirtiest laundry) laundry has been made public we need to revaluate him. Not reEvaluate but revaluate. We need not to try to reEvalute his whole personality and character. That’s always a pretty foolish move, anyways. Now we need to revaluate his work. Can we use it? Should we? To quote the great Rubius Hagrid, “I’m not sure I’m exactly the right person to tell you that”. I will. And I think people should. But time will tell. If his work proves to be truly enduringly meaningful for the Christian Church it won’t matter what he did. If God has no more water to pour through him his work will fade off and lose all influence by the time people like me have died off.
When we assess people like Ravi – men who like all men are deeply flawed and also very influential – we have a choice. We can live in a world where we look past the evil they did to hold to the good. Or we can wholesale reject them and everything they did. And sometimes the babies that get tossed out and the babies who stay in the tub don’t seem to have a lot of logic, but certain sins are more sinful and more unforgiveable in every generation. So, hoping that the masses will help you sort out this question seems…unhelpful.
For myself, I think of Elphaba and Glinda. Was I changed for the better? Was I changed for good? Who can say, if Ravi’s ministry changed me for the better – but I believe that I was changed for good. And despite being a cursed Mennonite, Luther changed me for the better and for the good. And despite my wife’s Jewish blood and the Jewish blood of my children, they will live in a better world because of Martin Luther. Despite the evil things Martin Luther King Junior did, I live in a better world because of him. Despite what I do, I pray God that the souls God has burdened me with shepherding will be changed for the better. I pray that I won’t fall and do damage to the cause of Christ.
But until I die, I pray that Ravi’s life, the good, the bad, and the ugly will allow me to be sadder and wiser so that some day I’ll have a fuller joy in the presence of my Master.