Of Monsters and Men

Dear Kate,

I still miss Ravi a lot.

You probably wish I am talking about a different Ravi, but no, I mean the monster himself, Ravi Zacharias.

I know you don't really know him before I told you about him.  Even then after you probably watched a couple of his YouTube sermons, and, yes, to that extent you know him.  I do claim to know him more.

I do claim to know him behind those eyes when I first met them.

Francis Chan touched him and was touched by him, but Francis didn't know what I knew.  Francis called him a "scholar," and Ravi didn't correct him.  Ravi has never been a scholar, and Ravi, a man beyond brilliance and indeed needed no certification for it, would have known the simple, objective definition of "scholarship."  But he was not decent enough to point that out about himself.  Poor Francis.

So Ravi was a fabulist, a prevaricator.  And if he was to say the same thing I've just said, he would have simply called himself a liar, to make sure that you did understand, that you were involved in the tale he was spinning.  Though the words, the vision, the vocabulary he intended were deeper and wider and higher.  The world is big, made small by Man, and Ravi made himself small for the world.

I am a fabulist.  Seriously, what do I know about Ravi?  I've never even met the guy in person.  I would have been a better judge of him if I did meet him, right?  (So Francis was an idiot?)

Malcolm Gladwell argues in his book "Talking To Strangers" that meeting a person, even again and again over long conversations, not only might not dispel our ignorance about him/her, but might in fact deepen and perpetuate it.  I am thankful for Gladwell's many examples and case studies, but students of literature know the conclusions already.  We read between the lines.

Shame was what Ravi feared the most, I read in his autobiography, enough for him to attempt suicide at 17.  Shame was what he has died with.  Almost too proverbially.  As if God wanted to make a biggest example of him, for him being great enough for it, tall enough to be chopped down to size for the world to see, aimed high enough, flew close enough to the sun to burn up most spectacularly.  "I promise I will leave no stone unturned in my pursuit of truth," so aspired Ravi.  There he prophesied his own demise.

I knew him behind those eyes when I first met them.

Otherwise life is often one big distraction, people around me.  People who have never heard about Ravi before his downfall now for some perverse reason are glad to have not been on the bandwagon to look up to a mere mortal.  They say they trust only God, and have no need for heroes, no need to look up to any man or woman.  A man who looks down on Man looks up to no God but the idols of his heart.  She is too ashamed and fearful to even attempt to trust, to know another human being deep and wide and high, expecting depth and width and height.  He would rather make no decision than to make a wrong one, self preservation his first and last calculation.  She would rather talk about food, the weather, life's many nuisances, stuffs to justify her indifference, fortify her prejudice, anything to look good in the eyes of Man.  "I promise I will leave no stone unturned in my pursuit of nothing."

What can you expect in a relationship with someone who longs for nothing, has no ambition to explore her human possibilities, runs away from the sun and complains it's getting cold?  Oh, how the mighty have fallen is the cynicism mixed in every dinner cocktail, and the game is to see who will drop dead next.  Made in the image of God we claim Man to be, but the graven image of our low self-esteem is where no one should rise above.  It's good to see you being vulnerable (so that I don't need to feel like shit).  We might care less about what Bill Gates has done for so many who would not even have a chance to crawl out of their mother's womb, but sure as hell are happy to see him fucked up his marriage.

Every good Man is a monster, we will find out sooner or later.  And I thought Jesus was nailed on the cross because we are angels.

Yours, Alex