"Alice......................................"

Ravi Zacharias, in “Can Man Live Without God”, after asserting that the Church deserves much of the criticism it has had to face, goes on to also state that much of what is offered on religious television programming nowadays leaves not only the skeptics bemused, but many Christians embarrassed as well. Such accusations are made in a chapter devoted to “truth”, beginning with the idea that a man’s childhood years are bathed in wonder as he dabbles in the world of fantasy, an education that gradually erodes in the face of reality, a day by day lesson given him merely by breathing and another word for what he holds to be “so”. If we are but willing to admit that none of us possess knowledge in its entirety, though, we are left, for the length of our existence, with a never-ending search for the answer to that interrogative Pilate put to Christ long ago. It matters not how often we gather together within the hollowed sanctuary of whatever temple we’ve built, at peace with each other in the unity of what we claim to believe and denominationally divided from that bunch down the road in our dogma. Truth remains much more than that which we have determined for ourselves from the Book and the bottom line of our salvation is whether or not we can, in some way, “reach through the veil and touch the hem of His garment”! One can speak of “faith”, but if it is not invested into something greater than a doctrine we have agreed upon, all we really own is a creed. Before we preach to our youth, then, the value of praise, the necessity of prayer and fasting, they need to know the object of such practice is an attainable commodity. It’s like a mother telling her children to eat their vegetables when they have no real concept of what being “healthy” means. If God is but “someone out there” and not “a divinity who lives within me”, if actual contact is not possible, need we look any farther for why the numbers show our ranks steadily decreasing?......