Anonymous Asks (340)

“I have a couple of books on my shelf written by Ravi Zacharias. What would you do with them?”

If you have been living under a rock and don’t know the name, Ravi Zacharias was a highly influential apologist, writer and evangelist, the head of a $35-40 million international empire ... er, Christian ministry. His books sold two million copies and his YouTube videos received hundreds of thousands of views.

He died in May 2020, shortly following which allegations surfaced of repeated sexual misconduct over many years.

Was He Guilty?

Technically, they resurfaced; certain employees of his organization had allegedly been deflecting, covering up and wishing away credible accusations against Zacharias for years. A lengthy investigation confirmed Zacharias was “guilty beyond anything that we could have imagined”, as his own daughter put it. The resulting scandal resulted in an abrupt drop-off in donations (you think?), an organizational name change, the removal of all Zacharias-related material from the ministry’s website, layoffs of 60% of staff worldwide, and the closure of RZIM Canada, one of the organization’s 12 international offices.

Certain generous-spirited believers have questioned the due diligence done to prove the allegations, hoping to be able to give Zacharias the benefit of the doubt in an age when false accusations are lobbed around all the time. Sadly, the investigation seems to have been extensive, methodical and not lacking in eyewitness testimony. Wikipedia has a couple of sections in Zacharias’ profile documenting it, if you can stomach them. I know folks who know folks who were involved, and their grief stricken consensus was that the scandal was not overblown and the allegations were not without substance. If Zacharias was framed after his death, his framers did a spectacular job of it.

This question was asked in my youth about books written by C.S. Lewis. He married a divorced woman. Folks, this ain’t that!

Useful and Useless

So, yeah, what do you do with your books? I don’t have any myself, but if I recall, the guy was a decent expositor of scripture at the popular level. His books sold because they helped people. He understood how the everyman needed to have scripture presented in order to grasp it. Depending on the books you have, they may be quite useful. Too bad somebody untainted by scandal didn’t write them.

From a testimony perspective, I wouldn’t give them away, even if they contain truths that would be beneficial to your friends. Other books do that too without being an albatross around your neck. You know what I mean: to pass them on, you’d have to give a big disclaimer first or risk really stumbling somebody who read them, was helped by them, found out later about the scandal and then questioned everything he had read and believed, not to mention your judgment. Once you give that disclaimer, who on earth would want the books? “Blessed is the one who has no reason to pass judgment on himself for what he approves.” Enough people have been stumbled by the Zacharias brand already.

Might I Feel Differently If …

Now, might I feel differently if Zacharias had come clean voluntarily while still alive? Absolutely. But to go to one’s grave with ongoing issues of many years covered up? I don’t see evidence of repentance there. Forgiveness is freely available to anyone who asks for it, but that never happened in this case. And of course forgiveness is not the same as a getting back one’s platform, the trust of God’s people and one’s public reputation either.

Might I feel differently if the evidence showed Zacharias had transgressed once or twice over a period of decades serving the Lord under tremendous temptation? Quite possibly. A slip is not the same as an established pattern of misbehavior. The apostle John is clear that we all sin and may be forgiven upon confession, and equally clear that the ongoing practice of sin marks one as a child of the devil. The question is what characterizes a man, and in this case, I’m not sure we are equipped to answer that with certainty.

Might I feel differently if the sins of which Zacharias is accused didn’t involve so much apparent calculation? Again, quite likely. But hundreds of massage therapists and trips to Bangkok? That doesn’t seem like it could “just happen”.

But none of these potentially mitigating factors appear to be the case, and the accused can no longer speak for himself. We have to make future judgments about using his name and product based on what appears to be credibly established, and leave the rest with the Lord.

Other Options

For the same reason, I would be unlikely to donate your books to the church library, drop them in a neighborhood book exchange anonymously, or take them to the used bookstore. They may be useful so long as they don’t trip others up spiritually, but how can you control that once they are out of your hand?

If his books are useful to you, by all means keep them if you want to. Truth is truth. It doesn’t become untrue just because the person who communicated it to you failed to live it out. I might not frame them and hang them on the wall, but we have holy scripture written by people who did wicked things more than once in their lives, including half the Psalms. The value of a man’s life and work is judged in its entirety, not simply by cherry picking his worst moments. You obviously know enough about the man’s dark side to realize his testimony is compromised in a major way. If you feel you have the scriptural chops to read his works without being tripped up by anything from his personal life that may have made its way into his work, have at it.

I have a standard that when a secular writer I like suddenly espouses social justice and starts positively portraying gay characters and so on, I bin not just his current books but everything he’s ever written. I’ve thrown out more than a few entire series of books, hundreds of dollars of product, out of disgust for what the author wrote later in life. If I apply that standard to secular writers, why would I treat Christian writers with kid gloves? I would have no fellowship with that.

By Their Fruit

I’m just glad I don’t have the problem in this instance. I simply never buy anything written by a guy who fronts an empire, or contribute to his ministry in any way, shape or form. Making that a policy will save you all kinds of grief. If itinerant preaching, working with their hands and regular bouts of near-poverty were good enough for the Lord Jesus and the apostle Paul, they’re good enough to serve as a great way to evaluate the character of today’s truth-tellers. Christians in the limelight have no need to co-own a chain of spas. The risk that they might trip you up on the way to claim the prize is not worth it.

By their fruit you will know them. But it takes past the end of a man’s lifetime for the last of the fruit to fall from the tree. However helpful he may have been to many, there are better dead Christian writers than Ravi Zacharias, and the best thing about them is that they still have their reputations intact.