I mourned when I discovered that Ravi Zacharias had passed away in May of 2020. I mourned again when I learned that a report of Ravi’s sexual misconduct was made public in February of 2021. At the time when Ravi had passed in May of 2020, I was harnessed by Twitter and was dropping my one line sentiments in the tweeting ocean current of phonetics. I amused myself by underlining my name with various self-esteeming phrases, words that would capture my mood. My mood being a roller-coaster, it being an election year, this tag line would change daily, but I eventually settled on the name tag: Josiah Hutchison, ammeter author of smiles, professional fly on the poetical wall. So, what if my name became followed by something more than a gimmicky tag line, something valued like Ravi Zacharias, gospel mogul? Just the mention of his name calls to mind a litany of apologetic podcasts. From 2011 to 2015, I regularly spent hours a week driving from Kalamazoo to Detroit for work, and if I wasn’t listening to Tenth Avenue North’s album The Struggle, it was Ravi’s pro-Christian defenses. His stories were captivating and his logic sound. Spanning his logic and stories were his easy to digest illustrations, and this triumvirate of concepts: arguing with logic, explaining with illustrations, and convincing with stories, was my stimulus to start writing for the foreseen rebellious years of my future teenager. That was back in 2013. Little did I know that Ravi off-stage was struggling with the very substance my stories would be and now are composed to address, the substance that I too had been entrapped in by way of the internet. The leviathan that reared its head in both Ravi’s and my cases was the same, and though he might have encountered the left eye while I encountered the right, both eyes were from the wicked face of prostitution (Proverbs 5-6). Like a mirror of Solomon, when wise men rise to counter evil, the enemy sends in a cavalry charge of easy women. How easily and far men can fall.
Why is Ravi’s name tarnishing conduct any more astonishing than mine? …or yours? I have been through the meat grinder of pejorative arguments, the pinching struggles, and the repeated failures of willpower. I can only assume that Ravi did too, except that Ravi’s image was known and highly held by listening fans, whereas mine is small on the subjective scale of popularity. Yes, there is an ironic dichotomy to life, but in this case, the thought of being discovered is as convicting to the small potato as it is to the large potato. Gossiping about a gospel mogul and much less an ammeter author is hardly worth the sin, but there is a deeper issue lurking behind this specific fall from good standing (Leviticus 19).
The issue with this struggle, the lure of the prostitute, more than its prevalence, is the cause. There is no doubt in my mind that every child, adolescent, and adult will be exposed to pornography and prostitution. Yet when cultural judgement settles, like in Ravi’s post-mortem case, it is the partaker that is shamed and the provider that is left unfettered, when both parties are participants in the evil.
This bitter ending, this bitter outcome of disgrace, actually establishes the case for righteousness. Let me reason like Ravi: To condemn a person for their sexual misconduct requires a standard of righteousness. There are established standards for righteousness within the Christian community, within the wider culture, within the government, and even within the prostitution industry. I admit that using the term righteousness for such a distained market is odd, but then again, an industry that applauds what Christians call misconduct is odd. Who’s to say that one standard is more moral than the rest unless there is a transcendent law issued by a transcendent being that says so. The Torah is such a given law, and it effectively illuminates the hypocrisy found in the laws and standards that govern prostitution. At its root, prostitution encourages sexual misconduct. This road of reason quickens to the Biblical standard of fidelity, so follow me here. The industry standard of it’s okay to look but not to touch begs the question: why is prostitution okay but sexual misconduct not? Ironically, marriage, the Biblical standard, permits and encourages both, looking and touching within the bounds of matrimony, while the end product of prostitution is expressly designed for infidelity. The common argument used on men found to be sexually misbehaving, is that these men groom their victims into voluntary compliance and subsequent abuse. Yet, a prostitute, every prostitute, has been groomed. Which standard lives and which standard gives? The prostitution industry, beginning with pornography, is continually grooming their performers, and the sex-scandal culture has forgotten to add this party as complicit in their professed crimes. Again, which standard is the righteous one? As Ravi would profess, YHWH’s standard of righteousness is the righteous one! Nevertheless, the presence of a divine standard and the prevalence of the government, industry, and personal violations of this standard leaves one giant inky octopus-of-a-question.
What hope is there for our present and next generation of boys and girls to avoid this grooming? My short answer: be quick to cast confession and slow to cast judgement.
Ravi,
Your persistent presentations illuminated my purpose in writing prose. You moved me out from the shadowy corners of private poetry to these fixed words that can be defined and digested by all. I have revered your abilities, and now that they are known, I relate to your struggles. I have collapsed on the floor of Yeshua like you have, receiving his righteousness as my own. And since my collapse and merciful restoration, I have taken a profuse interest in digging, and with my shovel, I have discovered a true foundation of bedrock under the soft hummus that softened my fall. This bedrock of Torah defines righteousness and has become my persistent pursuit. Attack as the parades of prostitutes may, I know my end will be the same as yours. Forgiven.
Keep honest honest,
JH
Photo by Samuel Rios on Unsplash
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