The Shepherd and the Wolf: Jesus talks to Ravi Zacharias

There was a time in my life when my belief in God and Jesus was not matched with any particular interest in learning, or in gaining knowledge. Then I started to read Ravi Zacharias, and that all changed. I started to love reading non-fiction, and especially books which were heavily dependent on the classics. I eventually figured out what my teachers had always hoped I’d discover – that learning is not only healthy and necessary, but it can also be enjoyable. I started purchasing his books and filling my shelves with them, even after I returned to school and earned my degree.
But then the author who had acted as my distant mentor through that phase in my life was revealed to be something more than what he seemed, or rather, something much less. As the details of his twisted double-life emerged during the first quarter of 2021, I realized that, because of his impact on my life, I was going to have to process what I was learning about his life.
On my desk are two small items: One is a newsletter from RZIM, describing the exposed details of its founder, Ravi Zacharias, who had been discovered to have lived with deep, secret sins of a sexual nature as he was ministering around the world as an apologist and preacher; the other is a little book written by him. It’s a book about a conversation. This tiny book imagines what it might have been like for Oscar Wilde, a few moments after his death, to have finally found himself in the presence of Jesus Christ, and to have tried to account for his life and his beliefs to the one who created all life.
How can I process the revelations about this man in a way that makes sense of the things he was able to accomplish? How can I retain and honor the improvements in my own life which came about as the result of his outward, false ministry? Perhaps I can use this very model; maybe I can at least make a start by hoisting my memory of him on his own literary petard. So I wonder – what would it have been like for Ravi Zacharias, in the very first moments after his death, as he was being asked to account for his entire life in the presence of Jesus Christ? I wonder, and as I wonder, my mind conjures the scene slowly – as slowly as a dark cloud creeping across the sky obscures the sunlight...
 
On a small, mechanized bed of off-white sheets, his body is slowly shutting down after a long fight. He has gone from pleasantly healthy, to weak, to frail, and now the last moments of his life are ticking away, ever slower, a second hand winding down, a watch coming to a standstill. There is no more energy to give it another turn. The sorrowing family members around him strain to hear any further sound of his breathing. The room is dark. At last it becomes clear that he is gone.
Only he is not gone. With a rush of awareness that he hasn’t been able to summon for days now, he feels light – impossibly light – and he sits up, then stands. The oppressive weight of his body no longer pulls downward on his soul. He realizes he is free from that diseased, withered vehicle. Somehow he is aware of it behind him, and of the gloom of his surroundings, and of the sound of weeping. But none of these things cause him any distress. From in front of him there is a suggestion of light, and as he walks toward the wall he realizes he has passed through it. On the other side, bright sunlight, and an empty lawn which has no smell. It is merely green. It feels as though he is floating above the blades of grass; he can’t feel them on the bottoms of his feet, and he can’t feel any heat from the strong light overhead. None of his senses seem to be working fully, even though he can see well enough, though the brightness of the light is making it difficult for him to make out any of the details around him.
Suddenly, a sound. He tries to turn himself around and is surprised to see that the building in which he had recently been interred is gone. There is nothing anywhere except flat, unremarkable green, stretching out toward a hazy horizon. But as he continues to turn, he senses someone close by, and finally he sees a figure walking toward him. A man, probably in his thirties, olive complexion, strong eyes which may be stern, or compassionate, or both at once. The expression on the man’s face encompasses all feelings, and all things. Immediately, he knows who this man is.
RZ: “You, are you... is that you, Jesus?”
Jesus: “Hello Ravi.”
RZ: “I’m seeing you at last. I’ve imagined this moment many times, but only about other people.”
Jesus: “It would have done you good to imagine this moment as it would relate to yourself.”
RZ: “Are we going to talk about me and my life now?”
Jesus: “We are. You and I are going to finally speak.”
RZ: “What do you mean, ‘finally’? I’ve spoken to you many times.”
Jesus: “You have, in one sense. There have been times you’ve talked at me. But what about letting me speak back to you?”
RZ: “I don’t understand.”
Jesus: “Every conversation requires listening as well as speaking, and you haven’t heard my voice speaking to you for a long time now.”
RZ: “I know that I didn’t want to hear the truth about my secrets, but I still studied, I still contemplated your word, and I tried to find ways to communicate your truth to many people. Isn’t that listening?”
Jesus: “Ravi, what you are describing is the kind of listening that anyone can do. Anyone can pick up a bible and think about what it says, then try to creatively communicate those ideas to others. That kind of activity requires literacy, not intimacy.”
RZ: “Are you saying that the things I said were useless?”
Jesus: “If they didn’t penetrate your heart, why would you expect them to penetrate the hearts of other people?”
RZ: “But I truly believed the things I taught!”
Jesus: “Perhaps. Perhaps you did ‘believe’ them. But by raising that issue you have taken us, very neatly, away from the point I was trying to make. How long since you heard my voice, my Spirit, speaking directly to you about your own heart?”
RZ: “I’ve never heard an audible voice. I don’t know anyone who does.”
Jesus: “You know what I’m speaking about. I’m speaking about the kind of personal knowledge where deep calls to deep; where my Spirit brings to your mind things that matter to you and me, things that become unavoidable and crucial. I’m speaking about the act of listening. How long since you experienced that?”
RZ: “It has been a long time, it’s true.”
Jesus: “Ravi, the last time I knew for a fact you were really hearing my voice, you purposely tried to ignore me. But you knew you couldn’t ignore me, so instead you postponed thinking about your secrets, and you side-stepped them in your own mind, and you ended up virtually relegating my insistence to the level of an annoying unpleasantry.”
RZ: “I know what you’re talking about, but it wasn’t intentional! I never felt like I could really face the guilt I was living with, so I learned not to pay attention to it.”
Jesus: “Why did you do that?”
RZ: “Who wants to feel shame? Nobody! I couldn’t preach to others about the freedom of forgiveness if I was mired in a sensation of guilt.”
Jesus: “True. It would have been much better for you to have preached about the freedom of forgiveness having received it, instead of having imagined what it must feel like. But sometimes shame is appropriate – don’t you agree?”
RZ: “We teach people that shame is never appropriate.”
Jesus: “Who teaches that?”
RZ: “Christians... preachers... writers...”
Jesus: “I’ve never said that.”
RZ: “But surely you don’t want people wallowing in shame?”
Jesus: “Are you ashamed now? You look away in silence. Do you not have an answer for me?”
RZ: “Yes. I am ashamed.”
Jesus: “Of course you are. Shame is a reflex, and like any reflex it can be a response to a healthy situation or to an unhealthy situation. Also, it can be conditioned out of all usefulness. When people are told that shame is always bad, they are attempting to remove feelings of guilt and unworthiness in an artificial way. In some ways it would be like dealing with a sore finger by cutting off your hand.”
RZ: “But you said it’s better to cut off your hand than to be thrown into hell.”
Jesus: “Always a response; always a clever answer. You got used to relying on your prodigious gifts – gifts which I freely gave you – to side-step your own culpability. And by ignoring the incessant prompting of my voice, you went from not listening to not being able to hear. You became deaf by virtue of your own choices, and so doing you eventually couldn’t even hear the truth of your own sermons. The ultimate irony, and the ultimate tragedy.”
RZ: “But I believed everything I ever said! You offer forgiveness; won’t you forgive someone who dedicated his life to serving you?”
Jesus: “Serving me? Is that what you were doing?”
RZ: “I admit I enjoyed the popularity; I admit that I enjoyed the success I experienced. Why is that wrong? Shouldn’t people enjoy the work you’ve given them to do?”
Jesus: “I came to earth to live for the human race in order that your joy may be full. But having joy isn’t the same as getting joy out of life. One is a condition of giving; it overflows into the world, becoming a source of goodness. The other one takes; it plucks and consumes the pleasures of life in order to feed itself. You got joy from the adulation of crowds, from the success of your books, from the way argumentative critics often shut their mouths and succumbed to your use of rhetoric. You derived joy from all of those things, and you fed on them.”
RZ: “That makes me sound predacious.”
Jesus: “You drew personal satisfaction from your successes, and you drew selfish pleasure from the women whom you harassed and violated by virtue of your presumed spiritual authority. Wouldn’t you say that made you predacious?”
RZ: “I always started out with a desire to help them!”
Jesus: “I agree that is certainly what you told yourself. But I know the truth, and here, between the two of us, you cannot insist on something which is untrue. For once, speak truth.”
RZ: “I’ve spoken truth my whole life.”
Jesus: “No, Ravi – you’ve spoken facts. A fact is something which can be observed and reported. A fact is a horrid, neutral thing, a lifeless puzzle-piece in the mystery of the universe. Truth is something else. Truth is the natural, spiritual fabric of the universe. Truth is the movement and action of my design in the lives of billions of people living simultaneously, either within or without my will. Truth is the way I designed the universe to be. A fact is an observation about the universe; truth is recognizing and living within the force and purpose of it all. Facts can be spouted by anyone; truth is limited to relationship. You spoke earlier of freedom, but what many people don’t understand is that freedom isn’t a byproduct of the existence of truth. Freedom is living within truth. It’s not that ‘the truth will make you free,’ it’s that ‘If you live in my words, then you are my disciples. And you shall know the truth, and the truth will make you free.’ Truth is objective reality, but freedom is conditional.”
RZ: “Are you saying that everything I’ve done, all that I’ve written and preached, all of it is worthless?”
Jesus: “Do not seek to limit me. If I have acted through of your words, that is my prerogative. If I have used your message to change lives in spite of your secret sins, that is also my prerogative. But none of that has anything to do with us, just we two, here and now. This isn’t about the effect you had on others, but the effect I have had on you.”
RZ: “You gave me a mind, and I used it. You gave me the power to speak, and I used that.”
Jesus: “You did; but I also gave you a conscience. I gave you the gift of being hurt and sickened by your own weaknesses. I gave you the privilege of feeling sorrow and pain over your own sins. What have you done with that gift?”
RZ: “Is that a gift?”
Jesus: “How can it not be? When your doctor diagnosed your illness and suggested a treatment, did you blame him for the distress you felt? Were you angry at him for drawing attention to your disease? Did you seek to ignore him because he wanted to talk to you about the thing that was killing you? Yet my voice was stifled in your heart. My hand was heavy upon you, when you kept silent.”
RZ: “That’s the second time you’ve alluded to the Psalms. Why do you keep bringing up the Psalms?”
Jesus: “You know why, if you think about it.”
He turns away, contemplating this specific idea, a new element in the conversation. As he does, he realizes the connection with a sudden burst of insight, and he feels a quick rush of something like excitement, or the memory of adrenaline, the way he always felt when his mind formed connections between distant ideas and lofty concepts. Suddenly wary, he continues turning, expecting a new face to appear. Eventually he spies another man – just as he expected. This one is also about 30, just a shade shorter but with the same dusky skin tone. He has marvelously lustrous, curly hair and an intimidating beard. His eyes are sparkling like vivid starlight. He seems to be bursting with energy and enthusiasm. His cheeks are glowing in a wide, healthy grin as he approaches. Ravi calls out...
RZ: “You! Are you him? Are you the one who wrote these words?”
David: “I am the one.”
RZ: “I have always wanted to meet you.”
David: “Have you? Why, I wonder?”
RZ: “You are one of the most famous of all the biblical characters. You killed Goliath. You were the great king of Israel. You were described as a man after God’s own heart.”
David: “You realized I would be here for this conversation, and I think you knew exactly why.”
RZ: “Of course! You also hid a secret! You lived through a lie just like I did, believing that you would be able to take your secret to your grave forever! We are alike, and yet you stand here forgiven!”
David: “In so many ways we are alike, you and I; in so many ways we are different. Completely different.”
RZ: “I don’t understand.”
David: “Is that true? Do you truly not understand?”
For a long moment the three of them stand in silence. The first is waiting, waiting for his voice to finally penetrate the long years of deception so that truth can have its day. The second has just appeared, ready once again to live out loud the details of his great fall. The third is lost in thought and in trepidation. Nothing about this conversation is going the way he imagined it, and he is suddenly beginning to realize what it means that there is nothing hidden that will not be brought into the light. After a time, he speaks again.
RZ: “I can see the similarities of our stories; can you tell me though, how are we so different?”
David: “I’ll start by confessing how we are alike. Both of us know what it’s like to wither underneath the weight of the shame of our own actions. Both of us know the pain of living a secret lie.”
RZ: “Yes, but of course I never went so far as to commit a murder.”
David: “Of course you never committed a murder. You had other ways to conceal your sins. But both of us sought to put a heavy stone over our crimes. Me, by murdering the husband of my victim, you by killing the reputation of your victim.”
RZ: “I had to protect my family, and the ministry I had built.”
David: “If your ministry was doomed to fail because of accusations levied against you, then your ministry was built on yourself alone.”
RZ: “There were dozens of employees, and they were all of them trying to do God’s work. At least I protected their individual contributions as they served around the world.”
David: “Anyone who knows they’ve been called to minister by God will do so whether or not they have an official position. I never abandoned my anointing even when I was living among the Philistines.”
RZ: “But you used deception then, didn’t you?”
David: “You are obfuscating things in a way that you never would have let someone else get away with during one of your famous ‘Question and Answer’ times. I hid my vocation as king, which was a gift from God. You hid your sinful acts toward a helpless woman.”
RZ: “But what about your sin with Bathsheeba? What about hiding that sin?”
David: “That was when I truly learned the pain and misery of trying to hide from God. I’ve come to understand that my suffering through guilt and shame was itself a mercy. That’s what allowed me to repent.”
RZ: “Ah. I knew that we would bring the question of repentance into this discussion.”
Jesus: “Yes Ravi, that is the crucial distinction between you and David. When David was confronted by Nathan the prophet, he broke. His shame forced him to confess his sins and seek forgiveness. He remained pliable beneath the pressure of conviction. When you were confronted publicly, instead of admitting your wrong-doing you called your victim a liar, and you attacked her with a lawsuit. You dug your own hole deeper and duplicated her victimization all over again. First, you used your reputation and the force of your personality to prey upon her; then you blamed her for it. You were intransigent. By covering your sins more and more, you chose precisely the opposite path of my servant David. You both sinned; you both lied about it; you both made it worse; but when his sins came into the light so that everyone could know the truth, he saw it as an opportunity and confessed. You saw it as a threat, and did not confess but continued in a lie. Therefore, in spite of his sins, David is still known as a man after my own heart.”
David: “You also said something else that was misguided. Not only were you trying to protect your ministry, but you also said that you wanted to protect your family. How could you possibly think that lying would protect them? You must have known the truth would come out, and when it did, you’d be powerless to ask forgiveness or seek healing. Now they are stranded, and they will have to process all of this on their own. How do you think they will come to regard you now that you’re gone? What will go through your wife’s mind and heart every time she looks at a photograph of you? The time to protect your family was long before any accusations started to be made. You should have protected them right where you failed them: in your heart.”
RZ: “This is my greatest agony.”
Jesus: “That is the agony which you will carry with you forever.”
RZ: “Forever? Do you mean that I’ve been cut off from forgiveness, in spite of the fact that I believed?”
Jesus: “How can any sin be dealt with in eternity if it was never dealt with in life? How can repentance be genuine if it’s postponed until it’s no longer voluntary? If you don’t take responsibility for your sins while you still have a choice, do you expect them to magically disappear once you come face to face with your destiny?”
RZ: “What about grace for those who believe?”
Jesus: “Once again, I ask you this: Did you believe? Did you believe all the things you said of me? Did you embrace faith, or did you embrace me? Did you believe in Christianity, or did you believe in me? And how do you define ‘belief’ anyway? You are such a fan of defining terms and using logic, but you must remember what I said to Nicodemus on the earth. It’s not about believing certain things to be factual, it’s about being born again. That means, becoming a new person.”
RZ: “But I was. I gave you my life on a bed of suicide as a young man – practically a child. I asked you into my life. I have been looking forward to the resurrection since I was a boy.”
Jesus: “You asked me into your life, but then you excluded me from your heart. You didn’t merely keep your sins secret; you cherished them. You protected your sin the way you should have protected your devotion to holiness – passionately and aggressively. You were as protective and sensitive toward your sins as any mother is toward her newborn child. That’s not what I died for.”
RZ: “David, you claim that I wasn’t protecting my family when I lied about my accuser, but look what happened to your family! When your sins came to light your entire household was split apart. Your daughter was raped by your son, who was then murdered by another of your sons. He went on to rebel against you and defile your wives. He nearly cost you your life and your throne, and even though you survived you had to experience his death, on top of the death of the son he murdered, on top of the death of the infant born to Bathsheeba. Can you blame me for wanting to protect my family from those kinds of disastrous consequences?”
David: “Anyone can escape judgment; but nobody can escape sin’s consequences. Every choice we make to defy God produces negative effects. I’m not merely talking about God’s judgment – that may be avoided through repentance and forgiveness. I’m talking about the very natural consequences of sin. The problem with trying to avoid sin’s consequences by adding more sin is that eventually all of those effects are compounded. Choosing sin is like climbing into a dead tree. There is every chance you will lose your balance, or that the limb might break. But if you choose to drop from the tree back to the ground you will almost always be able to deal with the results. When you add more sins to try to cover or avoid your earlier choices, it’s as if you are climbing higher into the tree. With every lie and denial it’s more likely that you will fall, and the higher you climb the more disastrous your fall will eventually be. I climbed very high indeed – but you clung to the topmost branches until your dying breath. You never even tried to come back down to earth.”
RZ: “Are you saying it’s too late for me, even after all the good I did?”
Jesus: “Many people do good things in life in spite of their sins, but even the holiest saints are not granted my forgiveness in exchange for what they have done. You can’t earn my acceptance. Surely you know that. Surely you remember that.”
RZ: “But I believed! I took the powers of deductive reasoning – which you created – and I brought those into the daily conversations and evangelistic efforts of millions of people. You used me for greatness!”
Jesus: “I used an anonymous servant girl to reach a Syrian general. I used crows to keep a prophet alive. I used a donkey to preserve the life of Balaam. No one is worthy merely because they are capable of being used. Not even you.”
RZ: “So all of the things I accomplished, everything I managed to achieve; they are all nothing, all worthless?”
Jesus: “Every human accomplishment is nothing compared to what I accomplished by dying and rising again. Every human achievement is worthless unless it is done in my power.”
RZ: “All I ever wanted was to make a difference for God.”
David: “Is it? Is that all you ever wanted? Did you never once, not even for a moment, feel the wine-sweet dizziness of seeing yourself glorified and feted and celebrated by the masses?”
RZ: “You know exactly what that’s like, don’t you?”
David: “Of course I do. It’s a profound danger for everyone who lives a public life. Anyone who is granted fame and power on earth is subject to the horrible temptation to embrace those things for their own sake. It is, quite literally, the oldest temptation in the universe.”
RZ: “Do you mean that my failing is comparable to Satan’s?”
David: “In the long run, every human sin is comparable to his. But his specific sin was hubris. He wanted to take God’s glory for his own. Isn’t that what you struggled with?”
RZ: “Of course I did. I always tried to remind myself of the need to be humble. I spoke of it often.”
David: “That puts you in a ludicrous dilemma; talking about how important it is not to become proud to millions of people who love you and buy your books.”
RZ: “It was a dilemma. I did worry about it.”
Jesus: “And you took the absolute worst approach to your danger. You tried to handle all of the temptations which came your way all by yourself.”
RZ: “I tried to rely on your strength!”
Jesus: “I never lend my strength to someone who lies about their need. It cannot be done. It is an impossibility.”
David: “Was it just hubris though? We already talked about the shame you felt which caused you to hide your sins. I wonder, how much of it was pride, and how much of it was shame of being discovered? Or was it fear too? Fear of losing everything you’d built?”
RZ: “It was all of those things together, I’m sure of it.”
Jesus: “That’s why my word says that perfect love casts out fear. You cannot be more afraid of being exposed before you die than you are of being exposed after you die. The idea that you would successfully hide your crimes should have filled you with dread, because it would mean that you would carry them in your heart all the way through your life – all the way here, to this point, with me.”
RZ: “I have nothing to say. I’m never at a loss for words, but now I see there’s nothing I can say.”
Jesus: “Ravi, your sin was great, but at no point during your life was it too great for forgiveness. Do you remember when I forgave my servant Peter for denying me? Do you recall that I told him over and over that, if he loved me, he should take care of my sheep? That was my calling upon his life. That’s my desire for every man and woman who is ever given any kind of leadership over my children. I want my people to be nurtured and ministered to by leaders who will keep them safe from the attacks of the enemy. You remember my warning about false shepherds, who don’t care about the sheep and so they run away when the wolves come? I poured out my Spirit on my disciples so that they could begin a long tradition of faithful, sacrificial shepherding. That was what I offered you as well. I gave you the gifts to lead and care for many. I gave you opportunities to use your gifts for the benefit of others. I gave you the determination and skills required to build an international ministry with a reputation for defending truth. Yet in your zeal to defend the truth you failed to defend my flock. You were trying to defend me – but I can defend myself. You should have been watching out for my little ones.”
RZ: “I thought you would approve my words...”
Jesus: “Another one of my servants once said that the only thing worse than a wolf in sheep’s clothing is a wolf in shepherd’s clothing. Now, knowing that you preyed upon the vulnerable who trusted you as a spiritual shepherd, and knowing that your zeal was misplaced, and knowing that you purposely put a protective hedge around your willful sins, and knowing that you accused the innocent, betrayed your vows, violated the helpless, broke faith with your ministry partners, sullied the church’s testimony, misled the public, and in place of a heritage of faithfulness you left everyone with the carnage of your spiritual debacle; what do you think should happen here now, at the end of your time on earth?”
RZ: “I only know what I wish for.”
Jesus: “Wishing is nothing. Wishing is for people who don’t have sufficient desire to lay hold of the truth. What you want – what you truly want – is lived out in the span of your lifetime, just as it is for all people everywhere. Wouldn’t you say that you got what you wanted in life?”
For the first time since he found himself on that lawn, Ravi dares to raise his eyes and look up into Jesus’ face. And he knows the answer even though he can’t speak. So it happens that a man who was never at a loss for words is silent as the brilliant light begins to dim, and the vivid colors diminish, and darkness finally descended on the vision. The three men and the green lawn slowly vanish. I’m sitting at my desk, the book on one side, the newsletter on the other, my laptop open and silent.
I have to stop. My imagination cannot quite reach the end of the conversation; but of course, that’s just as well. You and I weren’t meant to decide how it ends.