Life in the pandemic XIX: Don’t follow the Christians…..

Most of the world has a lot more sense than to be interested in the going’s on in “Ravi Zacharias International Ministries” (RZIM for short). We are, after all, living through a global pandemic. And before going further it is also worth noting that there are a number of people who have been seriously damaged by what has been going on, including a number of victims of sexual abuse and exploitation; I have no desire to add to their suffering. That all said, the horrible tale of what we might call the RZIM scandal raises questions that are worth asking and contain lessons that are worth learning.

Ravi Zacharias was well known in the evangelical world (whatever that now is) and beyond as a teacher, author and apologist. After he died in 2020, accusations about his lifestyle and conduct led to an independent investigation. The investigation report was made public last week, and has been widely reported in both the secular (eg here or here) and Christian press (here) and in the blogosphere (eg here). To cut a long story short, what emerges is a picture of a clever and powerful man, who controlled a large and relatively wealthy organization, which he used, along with other means, to exploit individuals for his sexual gratification over a long period. He also used his power to make sure that his reputation was protected, even when this meant further vilification of, and damage to, his victims. He’s not the first prominent Christian to fall spectacularly, and sadly he probably won’t be the last. There are already articles discussing what went wrong and how it can be avoided in the future and no doubt there will be more. I confess I never heard the man speak, and have never read any of his books. But there is an aspect of this affair that caught my attention, and so here’s my tuppence worth.

Early out of the blocks was an article which appeared on The Gospel Coalition site, much of which I agree with. However, it referred to ‘the false assumption that the problem is “celebrity Christianity”'. To be fair the article also recognised that with celebrity came dangers even if that was not what it considered to be the main problem in the RZIM affair. Now, I am emphatically not assuming that "celebrity Christianity" is the problem that lies at the heart of this scandal, but I emphatically am stating that it is a problem, and a big one. And I am definitely asserting that it goes much wider and deeper than one man and one ministry. Here’s a starter for why 'celebrity Christianity' has to be a problem. Not all sinners are celebrities, but all celebrities are sinners, even if some of them have been transformed by the Gospel of grace, and are seeking to help out their fellow sinners in some way or another. This means that like every single one of us they are flawed, and prone to temptation and failure. But of course with celebrity comes a whole heap of new temptations and pressures. And the fall, if and when it comes, damages a lot of people (as it has in this case), and undermines the credibility of the Gospel in the minds of some (although mainly in the minds of those who don’t understand the Gospel). It is also worth pointing out that the scale of the celebrity is not a key issue (although big celebrity can mean big damage). Some people have international celebrity, and for others it's on a much more local scale. The height of the pedestal is not the issue. It’s the fact of the pedestal and who is occupying it. When it is a human being who’s hoisted up there, the results are rarely good.

The central reason this is not a good situation is that Christianity is not about any human being, it’s about a single unique person who is both God and man. You’ll find various characters in the Bible who at different times and in different circumstances became objects of celebrity, or in slightly different terms, worship. It happened to Paul and Barnabas in a town called Lystra (you’ll find the story in Acts 14), but they were quick to correct those who had pedestalized them. In a very different context, John records in Revelation 19 directing his worship at an (undoubtedly impressive) angel, only to be instantly corrected. The point being that neither men (even famous men) nor angels are suitable objects of worship. However, even in His humanity Jesus was different. He accepted worship (most famously perhaps as recorded in John 20:28), because it was (and is) appropriate. And this gets to the point. Respect and honour are fine (as is also argued in the TGC article referenced above). But to a large extent celebrity involves crossing a line. And in some cases it would seem that it reaches the level of idolatry, where in the minds of some a human being usurps the position of God. The thinking of those who do this is flat wrong. And any human being in such a position is also in trouble. 

The reason this is so pernicious, is that it taps into the problem right at the heart of the human condition. The big lie is that there are appropriate recipients for our worship other than the God who made us and who sustains us. Paul lays all of this out in Romans 1. By nature we are all wired up to identify and fixate on God replacements. And it is this that celebrity culture plays into, fuelled and amplified these days by social media.. None of this should be particularly controversial among Christians, particularly those who take their Bible seriously. In part the Gospel rescues us from this, and puts our focus back where it should be. This is one reason why occurrences like the RZIM affair, which occur within a Christian context, are so appalling and damaging – we of all people should all know better.

But apparently we don’t. Some years ago, another Christian celebrity created a ruckus. Mark Driscoll, who at the time was the Pastor of a large church in Seattle called “Mars Hill”, was quoted in an interview as saying: “Let’s just say this: right now, name for me the one young, good Bible teacher that is known across Great Britain. You don’t have one – that’s the problem. There are a bunch of cowards who aren’t telling the truth.” To be fair, he later claimed he had been misquoted, or at least misunderstood, and rowed back slightly from what he had said. It was perhaps the “cowards” bit that caused most offence at the time. But underlying this is the claim that on this side of the pond we didn’t have a crop of celebrity (‘known across Great Britain’) Bible teachers, similar to those so beloved (so it seemed) of Evangelicals in the US. In other words, more folk here, like him there. This is not entirely accurate of course. There are well known Bible teachers in the UK, it's just that they're not well known by Mark Driscoll, or the media. But that's not the point I want to make. The quote emerged in 2012. In 2014 Mark Driscoll resigned from Mars Hill, over a slew of allegations (some of which ended up in legal action). Shortly thereafter, Mars Hill Seattle was dissolved. Considerable damage was done to many lives.

Celebrity in the Church is a problem because it turns Jesus’ teaching on its head, essentially doing to Him what He explicitly sought to do to celebrity among His followers (eg see Mark 10:43 and the surrounding context). Although He was (and is) the proper object of worship, He set the pace among those initial followers when it came to humility. And with His impending death very much on His mind, He modelled exactly what He expected of them (and us if we claim to follow Him) by putting a towel round His waist and washing twelve stinking pairs of feet, including the feet of the one who would shortly betray Him (John 13). He was quite explicit that in doing this He was modelling both an attitude and actions that should mark those who follow Him. It was no pedestal he found Himself on within hours of this incident , it was a cross. His example is the antithesis of celebrity culture and all that goes with it.

As someone once said, the best of men are at best men. So don’t follow men, follow Jesus. Pastors and under-shepherds, don't seek celebrity, seek to follow the example and model of the Great Shepherd.

Death of an expert

A few days ago, a remarkable human being left this life. Professor Stephen Hawking, one of Newton’s successors as the Lucasian Professor at the University of Cambridge (from 1979 to 2009), cosmologist, space tourist and author, died at the age of 76. His scientific output was prodigious and ground breaking, from his 1965 PhD thesis, “Properties of Expanding Universes”, to his 2017 paper “A Smooth Exit from Eternal Inflation?”. His popular output has made him a familiar name to many who knew nothing of physics. His 1988 book “A Brief History of Time”, was a best seller, and in the last week has shot back up Amazon’s best seller table (I’ve just looked and it’s currently #2).  Among other places, he popped up in Star Trek and The Simpsons. He was all the more remarkable because much of what he accomplished, he accomplished from wheelchair. At the age of 21 he was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, the most common form of motor neurone disease. Originally told he only had a few years to live, it turned out that he was in the small group of ALS sufferers who survive more than 10 years after diagnosis. But latterly he had lost all power of movement in his limbs and lost the ability to speak, so he communicated by means of a computer interface that allowed him to type via a cursor activated by twitching a cheek muscle. It was slow and laborious, but it allowed him to continue to make an impact on the world beyond his wheelchair, and the sound of his electronic voice was widely and instantly recognisable. He did so much more than grudgingly and grimly survive. His passing will be felt most severely by his family and close friends. Then there will be that wider circle of friends and colleagues in Physics, and science more generally, who will miss and mourn him. And beyond that a much wider circle who will feel poorer for his passing. That’s all as it should be.

He was an expert. His specific expertise was in cosmology, working on how the universe came into existence and developed, carrying out basic and elegant work on those most mysterious objects in the universe, black holes. He used the mathematics of the infinitely small, and applied it to the really big. If you get the impression I’m being a bit vague, that’s because the maths involved, as well as many of the concepts, are well beyond me. But I’m not alone. I suppose this applies to the vast bulk of humanity. This got me thinking about expertise.

Many of us can appreciate and value Stephen Hawking’s expertise. Rather than resenting it, we can accept it, respect it. Some have been inspired by it. In part, maybe this is because of his very human story of achievement in the face of the most difficult of life circumstances. Rather than give up when confronted with essentially a death sentence, he persevered. That is impressive. Maybe it’s because his expertise was of a particular non-threatening sort. After all, as important as his work on black holes is, most of us can live quite happily in ignorance of it, with it making no personal demands on us. It has no influence on how we live, or spend, or vote. It’s the sort of thing most us are very clear we have no understanding of. There’s no question of our opinion on anything to do with black holes having any weight at all compared to Stephen Hawking’s. Most of us would accept that his expertise and knowledge were unquestionable, whereas ours is miniscule or non-existent. Perhaps it gets tricky when expertise is more questionable or its implications closer to home.

Expertise that has implications for how we think or how we live seems to be under attack (see Tom Nichol’s essay “The death of expertise”). In the blogosphere, in the media (social and otherwise), even in the street, we no longer defer to experts even when the issues are relatively technical. And of course some seem happy to keep us away from actual knowledge and to glory in ignorance (something discussed here). We have the spread of fake news (or at least the constant claim that a particular piece of news is fake) and fake facts. It emerged this week that a certain prominent politician made up a “fact” stated as a truth.

But this approach strikes me of having at its heart a strange double standard. In cosmology, medicine and aviation (to mention a few) we are happy to recognise, trust and rely on experts. Black holes may be remote objects with little direct impact on us, but knowing your surgeon can tell your tonsils from your toes, or that your pilot can successfully lower the undercarriage before landing, is clearly important. We accept that true facts matter in these domains, and that fake facts (your tonsils are on the end of your foot) have potentially serious consequences. Why then the unwillingness to accept expertise in other matters? Maybe it’s because a little knowledge is a dangerous thing; it leads to the kind of hubris that claims that we can all be experts. And of course a little knowledge is only mouse click away. All opinions can then become expert opinions that must be taken equally seriously.

The answer to this is not so much a new deference but old fashioned humility; humility to recognise skill and expertise in others, and therefore give their opinions more weight than my own within their areas of expertise. This doesn’t mean experts should be regarded as infallible, even within their areas of expertise. They are human, and therefore always capable of making mistakes. So transparency and dialogue, critical engagement and debate have a role in providing corrections.  But experts are still much more likely to be right that I am. And maybe experts need a degree of humility too. Perhaps it’s tempting in the current climate to be a little too dogmatic and emphatic, even where uncertainties abound.

True expertise will always be valuable and should be valued. I wouldn’t take my views on the fate of particle pairs at the edge of black holes too seriously if I were you. We had Stephen Hawking for that.