I’ve written before on how discouraging it was to watch all the evangelicals of Bloomington assemble in Indiana University’s Alumni Hall to ooh and ahh over Ravi Zacharias. The man’s pride was a festering pustule oozing out there in public for all the world to see. He was at his most shameful when he answered the question of an awkward “atheist.” Surely his condescension made even his sycophants blush and squirm.
If I were to guess where the word “supercilious” was coined and I had to choose between someone who had listened to a campaign speech of John Kerry or someone else who had sat through one of Ravi’s evangelistic lectures, my money would be on Ravi. All the way.
And his credentials?
Growing up in Wheaton during Evangelicalism’s heyday, I knew they were a pack of lies. Now we have an atheist to thank for doing the legwork of exposing them.
Ravi, be quiet. God doesn’t need self-promoting liars. This request (or command) is my work for the protection of Christ and His Bride.
And those of you tempted by the celebrities of Christendom, starting with the Pope and going all the way down to Wheaton and Louisville, there are many good shepherds of the church who are humble and helpful. Listen to them. Support them. Love them.
Love them by refusing to listen to men who think highly of themselves. Who tell you how astute they are, how deep their insights, and how many their degrees.
I know some real intellectuals with real degrees. They tell me men with an earned doctorate from Oxford are the also-rans. The real intellectuals never get one. They’re honored to be called guys. Or is it fellows?
If you don’t want to become an anti-intellectual, steer clear of Ph.Ds. They’ll stupefy you.
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For more on Ravi’s lies.
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In response to the above, a reader writes:
So you linked to an article and a website by this Steve Baugman, also known as the “banjo atheist” (his self ascribed nickname). How do we know he is a credible source? I have disagreements with Ravi, but the source material for this piece seems weird, but I could be missing something. Sorry to to be annoying.
Dear (brother),
The credentials themselves are not worthy of a servant of God. What servant of God uses Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard, or Yale to get Christians to listen to him and give him money? But we’re so used to it that we take it in stride. Ravi should shut down his business for that alone.
Is he ordained by the laying on of hands and prayer? Is he an officer of Christ’s church? Has any church been blessed by his faithful rebuke and instruction? We don’t know because Ravi is busy blowing his own horn about “lecturing” at Oxford and Harvard and Princeton and Yale.
Beyond his superman pride, if we look at the academic credentials he lists, they’re immediately recognizable as junk to those who know academia (although most of them are too polite to say so).
“Visiting Scholar at Cambridge University?” Seriously? If her daddy was a prof, a five-year-old kindergartner going to work with daddy for a day would make her a “visiting scholar at Cambridge.” And “Senior Research Fellow at Oxford?” Change the little girl to a boy and wait sixty years—and there you have a “senior research fellow.”
It’s all bunk and we know it without any atheist to do the legwork. But we ought to thank the atheist for doing the nasty job we should have done thirty years ago. Then again, if we’d done it people would complain that the world’s too evil to waste time opposing a Christian brother who’s doing good work for God. Slammed if you do and slammed if someone else does.
The church must be done with celebrities and their self-adulation and greed. Done!
With love,
