Life's Inescapable Questions, Part 1

Examining national ministry of finance comes from your generous donation. I know more about running the horizon having a party and questions are tough and apologetic people themselves which are in general and easy to answer hard, pointed to the particular one you're defending about.

We have a profound series of questions trained to doubt the question might be thinking that everyone has to deal with. Hazel had a fast shower of my students to welcome to let my people think he is Bobby's uncle Rice's travel to Glade life question questions on trade and the study needs to be able to send some questions on that topic less than begin. I don't think there's a place in the world I go to one of two things is not mentioned by somebody in the book or the radio program they read it somewhere or heard the message somewhere may be a total stranger to them. But the power of the printed page, or just hearing the voice of the year. Phenomenal times knowledge is YouTube and the Steuben that you know I think my computer would rebel.

I the only button I really was there repeatedly use the undo button. As soon as done something wrong. That's one of the greatest blessings my colleague from England Michael Ramsden says he has come up with a suggestion to twitter and Facebook to come together and they could be called a you twit Facebook, send that the hazard apologists life. I'm sure you know what apologetic cities. Or at least have heard the concept somewhere apologetics comes from the Greek word Colegio which is literally the meaning that we carry into apologetics is France little rated into the English as apologetics. It is this same word that Peter used in his arm and Pentecost. When the people was thoroughly confused. He said let Blaine to you what it is that is just given up volunteer and then in one Peter 315 and 16. He comes out pointed use of the word he said.

Always be prepared to give unapologetic for the whole that is within you, and how to do that with gentleness and risk that Saul apologetics has a broad suite of tools central concepts announcer and giving an explanation clarifies claims it doesn't muddy the waters doesn't make your on the service confusing and difficult. You come to the level of the question because more than answering a question you're always on string of question or somebody is behind that question and if you want.

So the question without answering the questionnaire, you may come through as being very erudite, very knowledgeable, but you really not been persuasive to the one is looking for the uncertain are members I was. I just landed in New York I come from Bangkok, nothing which is about a 14 hour flight coming back your worldview changes a few times along the way you feel like you should celebrate your birthday is a few time few times along the way and when you're getting off that most disheartening thing is that you look exactly like a possible picture. Never ever wondered if you did look like that is no problem nice so I left the international terminal was going to the domestic and I walked over to the gate and I showed a different city and the Marquis. We live in Atlanta shown the city so I just want to talk to the lady sitting at the end and I said skews me is this plane going to Atlanta or what it says in the Marquis.

Jason is going to Atlanta so that's good thanks and I just will often go and get myself a coffee or something goes to 40 minutes to boarding and I heard the patter of feet behind me and all of a sudden I turned around and she is coming right behind me. She says excuse me, are you Ravi Zacharias I said, I'm afraid so.

She said that's amazing.

I do know you also had questions I could not have made it up as I just mild in her. I said, you know, ma'am, that is one of the simplest questions I have ever us, place, time, the family have a law question that even if you don't raise a family. These two fellows were having a better once and one guy says to the other make you a bit. I'm little asked myself the question of ions to read by me a Coke somebody say that I lost myself the question of ions through divine vehicle that does make sense. Ask yourself the question by you.

Keep going this way till one of us also.

So the question becomes uncertain. This is this a string fund's fund. So the following sources you proposed it so he asked as I write my question to me is this how does a rabbit burrow, hold deep into the ground without throwing mud onto the outside of the ground. He said that's my question to me.

He said my answer is start digging from the inside looked at him and he said how can it do that.

He said I don't know that's your question. Tough apologetics which are in general and easy to answer hard, pointed to the particular one you're defending in the book of Habakkuk we have a profound series of questions I will just read for you a couple of verses that points to three questions you don't even need to turn to it. It's hard to find. Let me just give you a couple of verses. Habakkuk's complaint. How long will the Lord must not call for help, but you do not listen I'll try out.

Do you violence but you do not say why do you make me look at injustice. Why do you tolerate wrong destruction and violence before me. There is strife and conflict abounds in the Lord's paralyze injustice never prevails that we could have been the righteous so that justice is perverted. You would think he wrote this in our time, violence, injustice, evil, how can you allow oldest to go on recompense and you watch it all happening, destruction and confusion abound before us. How long must I cry out to you and you are going to list. I know many of us probably felt like that. When we watched on the screen what happened that calm beautiful celebratory day of men and women who discipline themselves to run the 26 miles plus and bring their families and enjoy it and all of a sudden this round of explosion and amongst the others.

One little boy's life is just pulverized and then all of the talking begins. All of this section begins and then all of the legal experts. Women and we watch the same mental gymnastics going on once more, and whatever's I can gone in this we begin to ask the same question violence, injustice and evil the answers are not as easy but at least I think I want to listen to me very carefully now. When you come at the same question from different bouncers.

You're invariably coming from different assumptions and what the Judeo-Christian worldview does almost every time when it sponsors a pertinent, relevant, and right in keeping with this worldview you give me now. He thinks Tori, how are all the reality is much more in keeping with life's inescapable questions, a six story power the power to explain, not just very soon, but within the context of broader spectrum of issues more often than not you find its explanatory power formal real far more relevant than the naturalistic materialistic worldview can ever give to you in times like this.

In fact do this here naturalist to this here materialist. We are nothing more than the product of the random collocation of atoms, just a blip on the radar screen of time almost 1. The existentialist said an empty bubble floating on the sea of nothingness, but it is that very emptiness that a droll man like start in his years as he's dying to say I find it difficult to cling to my atheistic existentialism position anymore because it has no explanatory power may be pragmatic help for certain situations in life but in the broad picture. Is there that's fly in the 1980s. The best known atheist was a man by the name of Anthony flew a law to my postgraduate work when I was in my studies in philosophy and all.

If you really want to get the powerful of atheists.

It was a handful of them and Anthony flew was one of them right at the point of the error and what happens a few years ago, flew says he no longer can hold onto his atheism. Why again the explanatory power is just not there for some of the in us capable questions that life brings to you so on. Says can still be meaningful without being comprehensive child to a doctor giving a jab. The child screams and once lost a mom why you doing this, the mother cannot give a comprehensive on so that she can give a meaning for monster enough to come from the child deal in the broader context child grows up and understands what it was that was really going on and I think the same is going to be with us. God gives us three questions for the month of Habakkuk violence. If you think Habakkuk had reason to ask about violence. Think of our day just a little lost for centuries. The statistics in the microcosm of Europe alone.

On the whole world just your the 17th century in warfare 3.3 million were killed in your 18th century in warfare in the continent of Europe. 5.2 million 19 century 5.5 million, 3.35.25.5 17th 1819 century the continent of Europe alone in the 20th century, which became the bloodiest century in his 1970 28 million were killed in Europe alone. You take the full toll of the 20th century and go to China with 60 some million rush over the scores of millions Cambodia with us about 3 million. And who knows all the slaughter that goes on behind the scenes, which never even make the statistical study and it was in the year 900 at the top end of the 20th century that the philosopher the German philosopher Frederick Nietzsche made the comment, as he's the one who popularized the phrase God is dead. He's a oneness of God is died in the 19th century meant philosophically indefensible anymore. The existence of God, but he went on to say this God indeed is now dead. Then he said the 20th century will become the bloodiest century in history and universal madness will break the first step and spend the last 13 years of his life in the same. Ironically, his father was a pastor both of us grandfathers were ministers. It's amazing our modern day vociferous atheists can talk a lot about anti-theism, and so on there, nowhere near as honest as a Nietzsche for the treatment of Darwin who said it is physics on his biology was right. The metaphysics of it all was going to breed untold violence because nature was red in tooth and claw graphic metaphor and description.

I don't know how many of you have ever visited a death camp. If you visited the death camps in Poland, you know exactly what I'm talking about the poor death camp of Auschwitz where I don't think Lou is eliminating them at the rate of 12,000 every day. In that one camp, one camp alone. Don't thousand every day. So you got a little over a thousand people in this meeting here tonight 12 times as many as a member present here tonight will be eliminated in one death camp alone was it Eichman said one death is a tragedy.

Million deaths is a statistic we just cannot fathom something like this but you see violence. We sometimes think is just restricted to warfare and out on the battlefield in front of the barrel of a gun. Who knows all the violence that goes on behind the scenes every day. So the Lord, how long must I cry to you if you don't seem to listen. Then he goes on, he doesn't normally cry out for violence. He says injustice. Look at all the justice that goes on, you know, the Greeks did not have a personal God among drum of the big tree somebody's Plato and Aristotle did talk more about the ideational sumo on them the maximum they may have pontificated an idea, but the blood was left of the Hebrews to really talk so clearly about personal moral entity, the divine, but the Greeks suddenly talked a lot about truth, beauty, and goodness, liberty, equality and justice. Those six ideas.

Truth, beauty, goodness, liberty, equality, justice, ideas by which we judge ideas by which we live and principal left for the big three, mainly Aristotle, for example, he says this about justice. He says injustice alone of all of the virtues is really for another's good because it is related to my neighbor, for it does what is advantageous to another.

So the worst man is he who exercises his wickedness towards himself and towards his friends and the best man is not he who exercises virtue towards himself, but he who exercises it doors another for this a difficult thing to do justice. In this sense, then, is not part of virtue but foothill in its entirety. Nor is the contrary injustice about advice, but vice in its entirety but vice in its entirety.

What what actually Aristotle is saying is about all teachers in all of the ethics that you put side-by-side. Please thought that justice was at the peak of it all and I think it was Plato who said that justice is the firmest builder of good government. What's happened to the justice in our land. Think about it when I was at Princeton University couple weeks ago during an open forum young man came up to the microphone and he said what you think is the difference between what the garden of Eden was like and what it is like now why he was trying to scare me into explaining some kind of reality that is so unreal and the way we think and I said you know what I can give you very simple illustration of this. I said forget all of that weighs you want to distorted his voluntary in the in the garden of Eden. There were two things very clear fellowship with God. God was near.

Number two was this laws were so simple. There was only one prohibition on one prohibition not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and I said why because in the day that you do it you shall be as God, knowing good and evil. What it really means is this you shall play God defining good and evil, the philosopher of ethics of this ours is an Asian ethics is become obsolete is superseded by science deleted by psychology dismissed as a motive. My philosophy it is drowned in compassion evaporates into aesthetics and retreats before relativism the usual moral distinctions between good and bad are simply drowned in the Markman motion in which we feel more sympathy for the mother than for the murdered for the adulterer and for the betrayed and in which we have actually begun to believe that the real guilty party somehow is the one who caused it all and not the perpetrator of the crime is now the one who caused it all, not the perpetrator of the crime.

It's amazing. It's amazing. This is exactly what happens when what is cool takes the place of what is lawful justice firmest pillar of good government.

Why is it that America experimented with the most difficult thing any nation has ever attempted to wrestle with reconciling liberty with law to reconcile liberty with law.

This is been the noble pursuit of the founder of this you know when you hear it in the song's use in its writings but it all began with one fundamental assumption that are rights are not self given the are endowed by our Creator, which means the pointer of that which is right is the creator himself and the more we talked today about human rights.

The Leslie seemed to know what it means to be human or the right to be human. So you've got the beginning, the whole specter of violence.

The second, you've got injustice and currently he says evil on mitigated evil.

We see evil all around us surrounded by evil, and the reason we are not able to define it anymore is for a very simple reason I want to listen.

Try defining evil without first assuming what life's purpose is try defining evil without purpose because purpose is the foundation from which deviation can be establish if I take the car and use it as a weapon to run over somebody I'm violating the purpose of what an automobile is all about.

If I take this body and use it only for my own pleasure.

I'm violating its purpose. The quintessential hedonist Oscar Wilde who lived without any moral boundaries for himself.

The term to describe why was dandyism. I wrote a book on an imaginary conversation between Oscar Wilde and Jesus call sense and sensuality, and Wilde while he is dying in his 40s in Paris looks to his lover Robbie Ross and he looks at him and asks him the most shocking question that a hedonist could have asked pieces.

Robbie, did you ever love anyone of those young boys for their own sake. All this love is being define by a hedonist. Did you ever love anyone of them for their Robbie Ross is no I didn't. Oscar here two men and their relationship is Robbie neither did I bring me a priest and in his poem the ballad of Reading jail. He compares the life of him in prison. There two women with the alabaster ointment comes with arraignment and pours it in the feet and he said only Christ is big enough to cleanse his heart, blood can wipe away. Blood of Christ wash away my ladies and gentlemen harks without understanding begins with a denial of patents powerful stopping point for today's methods you can listen to this episode again by visiting our website@ozziediane.lyg and clicking on the listen tab. If you listening planet at that web address is is that Diane.ca equals a patches this entire series by calling us at 1-800-448-6766 and the IM. We strive to reach students on college campuses encourage chat says I provide thoughtful on Thursday difficult questions. If you would like to support our ministry financially even cooler… How website to donate online. Guilt is a universal fact and feeling that compels all of us either to deal with it or to find a convincing means to just explain it away first response that one may have to guilt is to expel personal and public guilt with a brazen irreverence. This is a posture that implies that nothing in life is essentially sacred that guilt is a condition response orchestrated by religion what they argues that religion is something manufactured to control others with guilt and fear. Even legal terrorists are now calling for the appearance of wrong rather than calling something wrong and yet guilt haunts does is not absolute irreverence destroys the very individual who tests it out.

We see this replayed again and again, we laud somebody for being a great speaker or athlete or actor, but disregard an irreverent lifestyle behind it. Can this really be a coherent box for civilization friends. The answer that is no why because markers do not play by their own rules when the tables are turned in something they regard as sacred is vilified far too much damage is done when we deal, irreverent, initially with matters that too many are sacred.

Those who mock the sacred and denied the reality of guilt will find themselves decentralized and nobody guilty for treating them as such. In a world of horrors at some point guilt must be acknowledged or else the irreverent will end up victimizing everyone including themselves. In short, expelling guilt by irreverence makes life unlivable thing to let my people think maybe a ministry by Diane