Christmas Eve does not feel to me like the ideal time to be trashing Ravi Zacharias. But neither should RZIM control the story line over the holiday. I offer these thoughts on their admission yesterday that Ravi “engaged in sexual misconduct over the course of many years.”

First, the worst of Ravi is yet to come. RZIM law firm said in a letter to their client “Some of that misconduct is consistent with and corroborative of that which is reported in the news recently, and some of the conduct we have uncovered is MORE SERIOUS.” (my CAPS). Stay tuned.
Second, I was wrong when I publicly stated that the RZIM investigation would be a whitewash. Clearly the ministry has committed to letting at least *some* of the ugly truth about Ravi Zacharias be known.
This is a dramatic and welcome change from the very recent past.
That said, I do not trust RZIM any more than I did the day before yesterday. $40,000,000 in annual donations is at stake, not to mention the personal reputations of Ravi’s loyal and long-term enablers, who remain in power at RZIM. Their game continues.
Yesterday RZIM said “Unfortunately, Ravi had died several months before we first learned of these allegations, so we were unable to explore them with him directly.” Are we to believe that nobody in RZIM leadership had any idea that Ravi was a serial sex abuser?
He was a fabulously wealthy preacher who went into the spa business. I know of a woman at the spa who confronted Ravi at great personal cost. The Christian press reported a woman confronting him and losing her job. And now the “many years” of sexual misconduct. Nobody knew?
In my five years of investigating Ravi, I have found RZIM leadership to be dishonest, dedicated first and foremost to preserving Ravi’s reputation. Against this backdrop it is difficult to accept their surprise regarding massive sexual misconduct plus something “more serious.”
If RZIM wished to let truth flow they would publicly urge Ravi’s widow, Margie Zacharias, to lift the NDA that prevents Lori Anne and Brad Thompson from sharing evidence that will show that Ravi waged a vicious, perjured and defamatory federal lawsuit against this couple.
RZIM leadership may hope to minimize their losses by admitting Ravi’s bad sexual stuff and moving on. But these are the same people who aggressively supported Ravi in demonizing the Thompsons and who covered for him when he lied about his credentials.
Not one prominent Christian has publicly expressed concern about the massive evidence that Ravi has been a deceiver for his whole career. Imagine how different things might have been if Ravi’s Christian colleagues had given him a loving 1 Tim 5:19 treatment. We will never know.
Finally, on reading the news last night I was overcome with emotion. I realized that the intense release I felt was probably only a thousandth of the release that abuse victims must feel upon finally being believed.
Please let’s keep the burdens of these victims at least as much in mind as we do the rights of the powerful men who abuse them.
If I believed in God I would pray that the Ravi Zacharias story teach us all never to confuse charm with integrity. But I don’t. So tweeting will have to do.

More from Society

1/ A thread of comments & observations about the death of the cackling vampire Rush Limbaugh.

My first observations in the main thread are here, but this offshoot is needed because there's been so many wise & witty things I've


2/ First, re: those who in their wayward moral obtuseness feel we "can't speak ill of the dead." I've said that this is what abuse enablers say, but I hear that some religious traditions preach this. Oy.
So there's this: https://t.co/7Ky4RA3nkZ &


3/ Drucker is another great wit, and this carries the proper mood


4/ There's definitely a Jewish Tradition angle for how to treat evil people who die: the only respect is to justice, right & wrong, and above all compassion's existence necessitates condemning cruelty


5/ We're coming up on #Purim, and that's all about how to remember evil. There may be a reason, then, that I share the attitude of many other people committed to righting
It is simply not correct to point fingers at wind & solar energy as we try to understand the situation in TX. The system (almost) had a plan for weather (almost) like this. 1/x


It relied on very little wind energy - that was the plan. It relied on a lot of natural gas - that was the plan. It relied on all of its nuclear energy - that was the plan. 2/x

There was enough natural gas, coal and nuclear capacity installed to survive this event - it was NOT "forced out" by the wind energy expansion. It was there. 3/x

Wind, natural gas, coal and nuclear plants all failed to deliver on their expectations for long periods of time. The biggest gap was in natural gas! The generators were there, but they were not able to deliver. 4/x

It may be fair to ask why there is so much wind energy in ERCOT if we do NOT expect it to deliver during weather events like this, but that is an entirely different question - and one with a lot of great answers!! 5/x

You May Also Like