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The Man Who Broke The Ravi Zacharias Scandals || Interview with Steve Baughman || SLP 352 · The Speak Life Podcast

• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: Hello and welcome to the Speak Life Podcast.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: My name is Glenn Scribner.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: It's a thrill to have Steve Boffman on the podcast.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: He authored the 2017 book, Cover Up in the Kingdom, an expose of Rabbi Zacharias.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: And for years, he has been saying uncomfortable truths about Rabbi Zacharias and about the attempted cover-ups of his deceit and his spiritual and sexual abuse.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: We did not listen to Steve Boffman back in the day.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: And I plead with you, please listen to Steve Boffman today.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: He has been proved absolutely right to have shone that light into dark places in the Christian community.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: And we must recognize a prophet from wherever he arises.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: Steve Boffman is himself the friendly banjo atheist.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: He is not himself a Christian.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: But he has challenged us to be true to Christ.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: He has challenged us about whether we will be loyal to the truth or whether we will be loyal to the tribe.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: We have been found wanting in that test.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: But Steve Boffman's test is a test that calls us to be more faithful to Christ, not less.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we we say we believe in a transcendent truth that transcends all tribalism.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: But how do we react when Steve Boffman tells the truth?
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: Well, so often we cling to the tribe and not the truth.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: We say we believe in the victim.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: Our entire lives are oriented around the victim, the sacrificial victim who voluntarily gave himself and has become the safe place for all victims and for all the least and the last and the lost.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: Christ has established a kingdom of righteousness and peace that is to be judged by how it treats the weakest among us.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: Christ is the answer to these things, and yet do we really believe that?
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: We we certainly haven't lived like we've believed that.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: And if Steve Boffman can shine that uncomfortable light, we need to tear off the lid and let that light shine.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: Steve Boffman is doing us a great favor, and I loved uh talking to him today.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: Next week, we're gonna have Dr.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: Diane Langberg uh on the program.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: She is a psychologist and has been working for the better part of half a century on the issue of spiritual abuse and sexual abuse and abuse abuse that comes up in the context of the church.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: And as a Christian, she'll have so much wisdom for us in how we can foster true community, safe community, secure community that is truly Christ-like, that truly welcomes the light and truly builds a community of healing and hope.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: So next week we've got uh Dr.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: Diane Langberg.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: So why don't you uh give uh a subscribe to this podcast on your favorite podcatcher?
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um and do give us a a rating and a review that really helps us to get uh seen by many more people, and then you'll get uh our future episodes because we are not done with this issue of abuse in the church, and we won't be done until we listen to people like Steve Boffman.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: So without further ado, I give you my interview with Steve Boffman.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: So, Steve Boffman, thank you very much for joining us from California.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks for having me, Glenn.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: Brilliant.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: Where are you right now?
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_01: I'm in uh a town called Fremont, about an hour south of San Francisco.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_01: That's where my office is.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, okay.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: And this is the the work that you've been doing for for decades now.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: You've you've been an attorney for quite some time.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I've been an attorney for slightly over 30 years now.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um I've been part-time for about the last 15 years.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_01: I'm trying to be a part-time musician and trying to study philosophy of religion, and I've become sort of a full-time dilettante, but still a part-time attorney.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: How's the pay for being a dilettante?
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_01: It's much worse than being a full-time lawyer.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, yeah, sure.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_01: At least the dilettante stuff I'm doing, yeah.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_01: Studying philosophy doesn't pay, and and music pays a little, but not very much.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: So these these three things kind of come together a little bit.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: So you are you are the uh friendly atheist banjo player?
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_00: No, you're the banjo player.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: Friendly banjo atheist.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: Fantastic.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: So you you've had an interest in philosophy of religion and that sort of thing for quite some time.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I grew up in Southeast Asia around um missionaries and uh and around Christians, uh church people, and I was very drawn to them.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_01: And I uh from my earliest childhood I remember being passionate about about Christianity, wanting to know that it was true, um, always suffering from a little bit of doubt.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I must have been seven years old in the um St.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_01: Andrew's Presbyterian Church in Kuala Lumpur, where I heard the song He Lives, He Lives, Christ Jesus Lives Today.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_01: You ask me how I know he lives, he lives within my heart, and thinking, that's a really dumb answer.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um and so I had that with me, and and I but I was very fond of the the Christians I lived with and or I I spent lots of time with and went on retreats with.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um so I grew up with a very pro-Christian um uh um sentiment, but I just could never quite get myself to believe it.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_01: I I I had any number of born-again experiences, and when I first moved to the U.S., I um went head-on into the Southern Baptist scene and was a very devout um born-again with with inner varsity, and the still small voice eventually got to me, and at around age 20 I had to say I can't stop I I can't keep pretending.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_01: So I stopped pretending, and I've been sort of an atheist-leaning agnostic ever since.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: Aaron Powell What drew you to it in the first place?
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_00: Because I mean your your home wasn't very religious.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: It was so there was a sort of a cultural Christianity there, I understand.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: So what what was it that was kind of drawing you to Christianity?
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_01: Aaron Ross Powell I think it was these people who were sacrificing what could have been luxurious lives back in England or the US.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um they had something that was important enough for them to sacrifice and go live in third world countries in much more modest conditions.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_01: That really um that really had an effect on me.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_01: And I figured, well, there must be something very real about that for them to be doing that.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_01: And they were also the the missionary kids were the cool kids, they were the best basketball players and the best singers in the choir and and the nicest kids, so there was that as well.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well, yeah, Christian community, interesting.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: Um but then you you say the still small voice, and and by that I guess you mean the the sense of the absence of God just just seemed insurmountable to you.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_01: It it was insurmountable.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I prayed fervently for God to reveal Himself to me many times, and I was just plagued with doubts, even at the most intense times of my born-again experiences after I moved to the US.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_01: I just I knew that uh I had these doubts, and every time I prayed, I had this little voice saying, No one hears you, and I finally acknowledged that.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um I I I did the intellectual seeking, I'm still doing the intellectual seeking, and uh I couldn't really feel comfortable saying, Yeah, I really I believe this.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's very important for you not to fake it, isn't it?
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's like authenticity is a is a high value for you, would you say?
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_01: It is, yeah, yeah.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: Where does that come from?
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_01: You'll have to ask my long series of therapists about that.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_01: So but I mean, you hit the nail on the head.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_01: That that's a that's a long-term issue for me.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um I remember when when I was just getting out of Christianity and just about to sort of make it official that I'm not in this, my very, very Christian German grandfather, I was visiting him in Germany, and he looked at me and he said, You are a happy person.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_01: And it just cut me to the core because I'd fooled him.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um I wasn't a happy person.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_01: I was deeply tormented by my religious doubts, and to know that it was an intense feeling of loneliness to be keeping this secret.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_01: I I guess that's sort of what gay people feel like in anti-gay societies, like I I gotta pretend to be straight and they know they're living a lie.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_01: And I had that with my with my Christianity.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_01: I was living a lie and doing a good job at it.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_01: I must pat myself on the back.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I could lead a great gospel singing session, you know.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um I fooled a bunch of nuns in Rome once with my guitar into believing that I was you know that kind of stuff.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_01: But it it didn't feel good.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, because the guitar thing, that that that's been a a long-term feature of of yours.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_00: You've been, you know, into music from the beginning, really.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_01: And and I still love, I mean, I still consider myself a cultural Christian.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_01: Um I love I published a book of my gospel guitar arrangements about a year or so ago.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_01: Um I l I I listen to the music, I love the music, I love Christmas.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I I don't when I drive by a cute little country church when I'm on tour in the South, it gives me a warm, fuzzy feeling.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_01: I will say that some of that has changed in the last five years because of what I've learned about Ravi.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_01: Not my feeling about the truth of Christianity, but my feeling about Christian culture in the West, especially Christian leadership.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_01: I'm much more cynical.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I see a pastor now and I think high chance of narcissist personality disorder.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um I'm sorry if I'm wrong about that, but I'm a little less trusting about the Christians in leadership that I see now.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_01: And frankly, I'm also less trusting of Christians in general about their willing to accept unpleasant truths.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, the Ravi Zacharias thing was right there in their faces for years.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um, he was lying about his credentials for a long time, and not a Oxford was worried about this.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_01: The RZIM team was worried about this.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_01: In 2015, before I even did any, before I even knew who Ravi Zacharias was, the Church of England issued a paper on Wycliffe Hall and were concerned about Wycliffe's relationship with Ravi's Oxford Center for the Christian for the Oxford Center for Christian Apologetics.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_01: So it was known that there was something dishonest about Ravi Zacharias.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_01: But guess who the first and the first person to talk about this was?
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_01: Me.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_01: And that I don't like to think unflattering things about people, but that says something really bad about your community, that nobody said anything.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_01: At least nobody said anything publicly.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know what exactly to make of it.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I know there's nuances, people don't want to confront power because there's quiet New Testament ways to do it, to admonish a brother behind the scenes and all that.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_01: All I know is nobody said anything, and this was obvious to anybody who was at at Oxford and Cambridge, as a lot of Ravi's colleagues were.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_01: So that has jarred me a little bit.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_00: Were there other atheists or non-Christians who kind of took up the cause with you?
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_00: Or uh how how are others um feeling about this as well?
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_01: Well, one of the nice things about the so it's been five and a half years since I discovered who Ravi Zacharias was.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_01: One of the lovely things is been meeting some fantastic Christians along the way.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um I haven't really sought out atheists.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_01: Of course, I haven't sought out allies at all, but there were some wonderful Christians, um, including some brilliant scholars who I am now reading and learning from.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um so that's been a really nice part of it, people who I assume I will be friends with for the rest of my life.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um so there was a handful of people, and at one point it got up to maybe two handfuls of people who were Christians who were actually upset about what Ravi was doing and willing to make a public comment on it.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_01: But I don't think until the spa allegations hit, there were more than two handfuls of Christians willing to say, this is not good, and we're gonna speak out about it.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_01: And that's really significant, Glenn.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I don't mean to keep beating you guys up about it, but I really hope that the Ravi Zacharias story turns into much more than just another nasty preacher who we took down.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_01: I hope it generates some serious um introspection and some systemic changes.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_01: And uh it might.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_01: We'll we'll we'll see.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_00: Well, this is the reason I've invited you on.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_00: I I I want, you know, I've I've said in emails I want you to give us a kicking.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um you probably don't that's that's a kind of a UKism, but uh yeah, give it give us a beating.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um no, well we we do that in the US too, yeah.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_01: And thank you.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you for the it's very encouraging um to have you invite me on.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um it was pretty uh hard to have anybody invite me on until very recently.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_01: I mean like it was zero.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you know there there were people, Randall Rauser, a very fine scholar from Canada, had me on in one of his interviews a couple times on his blog.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_01: But actually going on, there was a prominent Christian station in Toronto that invited me on, and then when they found out that Ravi was a sponsor at the station, they killed the they killed that interview.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_01: So it was um there weren't a lot of people like you uh a year ago or five years ago who were saying we need to give this guy a hearing.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_01: It was quite the opposite.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_00: Well, he I I went back through my tweets and I and I thought to myself, I wonder has you because your ha your your um your handle is at Ravi Scam on Twitter, and I thought, has at RaviScam ever tweeted me?
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_00: And I found in 207, in May 2017, apropos of nothing, there was a there was a tweet from Ravi Scam saying breaking news.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, where where is it?
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_00: Let me let me see what it said.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_01: It says I hope I was nice to you.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not remembering this.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_01: I'm getting a little worried.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_00: I d I didn't remember it at all at the time.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um it's you know it it's it's it's kind of one of those things in in in ministry you you do get you do get emails from from random people and you've got to weigh, you know, what what to do with them.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_00: But I I I had this email I said breaking Ravi Zacharias never was chair of contemporary thought at Alliance Seminary.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_00: This is item four at raviwatch.com.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_00: And um and you know, I I I actually I I checked my Twitter to see, you know, have I ever actually mentioned Ravi Zacharias?
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_00: And I I'd never mentioned Ravi Zacharias until February of this year, actually.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um because yeah, there's there's a different sort of ecosystem over over here in in the UK.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_00: But um But that was that was it's it's interesting for me now to look back and think, oh, what should I have done with a with a tweet in in May 2017?
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_01: Well I don't know.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_01: This is this is very embarrassing that that's the one thing I tweeted you because I'm I'm quite proud that I have a really high record of accuracy regarding Ravi Zacharias.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_01: But there were two things that I got wrong in the five and a half years I've been doing this, and one of them was that thing that I tweeted you.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_01: So um and and it wasn't really my fault, you know.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um I'll I'll I'll I'll give you my defense in a minute, but um, Ravi was chair of contemporary thought.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_01: He just wasn't chair of the department of contemporary thought.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_01: There were no departments.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_01: So if I e if I worded that chair of contemporary thought, there was a student club that would get together and they'd hang out with Ravi and talk.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_01: And I talked to three people who were there at the time at the seminary, and uh this was some informal student thing, and Ravi turned it into I'm chair of the Department of Contemporary Thought.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_00: This is 1980, is that right?
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yes, early 80s.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_01: So so but but I got that wrong, and I I I'd actually put up a video about it and had to quickly withdraw it and send apologies to Ravi.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_01: But that was the only time that I'm aware of that I got one of my facts wrong.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um there was one other time where it wasn't really that I got it wrong, it's that it was some other evidence came up, so I quickly corrected that.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_01: But it's funny that that's the thing you mentioned.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_01: I'm glad you didn't I'm glad you didn't check it out.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I yeah, I I don't I I certainly don't recall clicking on that link.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_00: But um I mean take it take us through a timeline because I think was it in 2015 that you first came across Ravas Akarias?
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I remember very well.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_01: I I I was just looking for a part-time, long-term um graduate student at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, right across the bay.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um I study almost exclusively with the Dominicans because they're very good on philosophy.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_01: And so I was going about my business and trying to keep in touch with who the best Christian apologists were, and I found this guy on YouTube named Ravi Zacharias, and I was just quite smitten with him.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um I was back then still a still a confirmed atheist as I am now, um, but there was a very brief period of time after hearing Ravi make an argument about the book of Daniel, um 6th century BC, predicting Alexander the Great 200 years later, and it was powerfully done, and I thought this guy has Oxford and Cambridge credentials, he has multiple doctorates, he knows what he's talking about.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_01: I have to give him prima facia credit for this argument, which means my atheist worldview can't accommodate fulfilled prophecy, so I have to get back to the drawing board.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so I was very um very invigorated by what I saw, my first encounter with Ravi.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_01: And then I looked into it and it was all hogwash.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, he he had misled the audience about the dating of Daniel, not so much that I know when Daniel was dated, because nobody knows when Daniel was dated.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_01: It's an extraordinarily complex and and controversial issue, but Ravi didn't disclose to his student audience that the major, that the main premise upon which his argument was based, that this is fulfilled prophecy, therefore it is evidence for God, that that premise was extremely controversial, and that's putting it charitably.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_01: And I just thought, well, why would a guy who comes from an academic culture and find places like Oxford and Cambridge mislead an audience like that?
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_01: And I began looking into it and found that, well, he doesn't have Oxford and Cambridge credentials, and he doesn't have any uh academic doctorates.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_01: And that was very, very um concerning to me.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_01: That was really eye-opening that this guy's gotten away with this.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_01: He's claiming to be an Oxford professor while he's going to Oxford and has employees who have doctorates from Oxford.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_01: How's he getting away with this?
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_01: So, and that set the search that kept me going, and pretty soon there was sex, and then six months ago there was the spa, and now his ministry is gasping for air.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, and and that progression from the the the the sins and crimes that that uh came to light is interesting, at least psychologically, isn't it, in terms of when when you have the facade and you invest in the facade and the reality is something very different, um you create a breach in which all manner of darkness can can kind of go on.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_00: But did did you suspect, you know, let's say in 2015, 2016, um that the credentials inflation would lead anywhere sexual, let's say.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_01: No, it I I didn't at all.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_01: I really was extraordinarily naive in in May of 2015.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_01: I honestly thought when when I began emailing and found that he would never been a visiting scholar at Cambridge, and I had an email from Cambridge saying as much, and I shared it with his ministry, I honestly expected them to say, we are so sorry, we must stop making these claims on behalf of Mr.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_01: Zacharias, and they would clean up their act, and that would be the end of it for me.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_01: And I looked back on, oh my God, was I naive, right?
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, but I thought this.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_01: I'd grown up with missionaries who were people of integrity, and I thought, okay, you call a Christian evangelical organization on its public deceptions, and at least someone within the organization is gonna say, Ravi, you can't keep doing this.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_01: And they didn't do that.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_01: They lied to cover up the lies, and there was a whole um uh strategy that RZIM employed.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_01: I won't bore you with all the details, but it was clear that the PR people had put Ravi's reputation well above truth.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and that response really shocked me, and that was when I began thinking there's more dirt here.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_01: And pretty soon I found that, well, he never had had a professorship at Oxford.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, he claims to be an official lecturer at Oxford in his in his autobiography.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_01: He told fans and donors, I'm now a professor at Oxford.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_01: Not true.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_01: Um and it was almost like every rabbit hole I went down on Ravi turned up dirt.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um he was just out of control with his deceptions, and I just to this day I'm flabbergasted that people, Christian people who proclaim the uh a Lord of truth, let him.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: Get away with it.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_00: Right, right.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_00: And then w was was the first sign for you that things um w were not just about deceit, but also about spiritual abuse and sexual abuse.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_00: Was that the Lorianne Thompson case for you?
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_00: And then how did you come across that?
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_01: You know, and I should I should point out at this stage in our discussion, I'm not I wasn't looking for a project to go pick on some Christian.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I I tend to take projects that fall into my lap where I see some injustice and then I realize, well, nobody's gonna do anything about that, so I'm gonna do it.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and none of my projects in that regard throughout my career have been religious.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_01: It just happened that Ravi came along.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, most of my projects have had to do with immigration fraud and and abuse of immigrants and that sort of thing.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but so I wasn't out looking for a religious fight, but uh but um Ravi kind of turned into one.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_01: I was just shocked that he had um that he was getting away with these lies and deceiving people, and I felt personally deceived.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um so uh anyway, I'm sorry, what was your question again?
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_00: So I I I I guess the the first you were realizing that the the the seats also included sexual and spiritual abuse was with Lorianne Thompson, is that right?
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_01: I did not think Ravi did that.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_01: I I I I I remember it was my birthday in 2017.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_01: I was teaching a music camp in North Carolina, and an email came in um from a an anonymous source saying Ravi just filed a lawsuit.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_01: And I read that lawsuit, and that was when and Exhibit A in that lawsuit referred to Ravi threatening suicide in writing to cover up a sexting kind of thing, and it just floored me.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_01: I had never thought that that would be something Ravi would do.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_01: I thought he was just a dishonest blowhard who cared more about his ego than anything else.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't think he was um a sexual predator or anything.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_01: So that was the first day that that I ever had that uh inkling.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_00: Right, right.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_00: And in sort of pulling at that thread, um um where where did that kind of trail lead?
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um were you aware of more than just the Lauriane case between then and the September 2020 uh revelations?
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I was I had sources telling me about Ravi in Southeast Asia and I wasn't allowed to talk about it.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but nothing was specific enough that that even if I had been allowed to talk about it, I probably wouldn't have because uh, you know, I have had I've made so many enemies telling the truth about Ravi Zacharias amongst the Christian community.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_01: The last thing I want to do is share something that's basically um not that is basically still in the rumor stage.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_01: So so I wasn't surprised when the Miller report came out with all sorts of stuff about Ravi in Southeast Asia because I had known about this or I had been told about this and believed it.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_01: I found it credible, but I couldn't have anyone document it.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_01: So um so but the but the Thomson thing was the first time that I had sex on the Ravi radar.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_00: Aaron Powell Tell me about some of the reactions that you're getting from um not only R I M, but but other other Christians as you're trying to shine some light on this.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_00: Uh it got pretty ugly, didn't it?
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_01: Aaron Ross Powell You mean then, right?
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_01: Not now?
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_00: Then yeah, let's let's let's keep it to then and then Yeah.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_01: It was extremely ugly, and I I I hope that some Christian psychology student or some some Christian um sociologist of religion will go through my YouTube channel and review this archive of RZIM Aravi fan responses to me.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_01: It's they're all there at my friendly banjo atheist channel, and these people were vitriolic, hateful, and stupid.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I don't like to say that about people because I'm not the smartest guy in the world and I have my huge intellectual deficiencies.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_01: But in I don't know how many Ravi Zacharias defenders confronted me on YouTube, but um uh I don't think there was one person who could actually articulate a defense for Ravi.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_01: The main thing was I'm an atheist, therefore I'm lying.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_01: Or I'm an atheist, therefore I have no metaphysical grounding for my moral views, right?
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_01: They dismissed the messenger without paying any attention to the um to the message.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_01: And that is really interesting to me.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that's what religious cults do.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um and I just hope someone goes and trolls through that.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_01: It's a it's a treasure trove of stuff about what do what do Rabbi Zacharias defenders look like in the trenches of social media when they're when they sense danger to their faith.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_01: It is ugly.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_00: It's loyalty to the tribe, not the truth.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_00: And I mean, there's a long pedigree.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_00: You you look back in the in the scriptures and you get all sorts of occasions when, you know, in the Old Testament, God's people were clinging on to the you know the temple, and that they were saying that there's no way God's gonna throw us out of the land because we've got we've got our little you know, tribal, you know, totem poles, our our talismans that are gonna keep us safe.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_00: And actually God through the through the real prophets who were always outside of the official structures, the real prophets outside the structures, were saying, No, no, no, Nebuchadnezzar, he's doing God's work.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, all these all these people who want to tear the t the temple, you know, stone stone from stone, they're doing God's work while you're you know clinging on to your id you know your tribal identities.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_00: And then of course you get you get Jesus who is par excellence, the the prophet who comes up outside the the the structures and just sets a blowtorch to the the whitewash that he sees in the in the religious authorities.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_00: And Christians Christians ought to, above all people, sort of you know, think that there is a truth that is above the tribe.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um but in practice.
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_00: What have you seen?
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_01: Well, um it's it's ironic because I think Philippians, right?
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_01: First chapter of Philippians, is that the book with four chapters?
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_01: I keep forgetting.
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, okay, yeah.
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_01: The first chapter specifically says if don't worry about the messenger, listen to the message, right?
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, they're talking specifically about the message.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_00: Whatever their motives are, just listen to the message.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_01: And this was lost on Ravi Defenders, and it was ironic because Ravi made he taught his radio show, which was broadcast weekly on over 2,000 outlets across the globe, was Let My People Think.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and clearly, at least the people who engaged me, hundreds of them, not a single one of them knew how to think.
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_01: So it's it's disturbing, and uh again, I hope someone studies this.
• 29:16
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• 29:20
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• 29:23
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• 29:32
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• 29:38
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• 29:43
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• 29:46
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• 29:52
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• 29:55
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• 29:57
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• 30:02
  SPEAKER_00: I wonder if there's a sense of outsourced thinking.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_00: There's a there's there's a kind of um there's a sense of I don't need to think because I've got, you know, my my guy, Ravi, he's up there on stage and he tells stories of how he defeated someone in an intellectual debate.
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_00: You know, that was you know, the the shtick of Ravi was always, you know, he'd he would he would tell some story about how he how he bested somebody else who obviously was not there to give their side of their side of things.
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_00: And I wonder if if so many of the followers kind of they outsourced their their thinking to Ravi and said, okay, we'll we'll we'll trust in him and and not in our ability to discern things.
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, and and we all do that.
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_01: We all have to do that.
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I don't know if Singapore is an island, right?
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_01: But I believe it's an island because certain experts who I trust tell me that.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if you're not going to be able to do that.
• 30:51
  SPEAKER_01: I've been there, it is.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_01: It is okay.
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_01: I've been there two times.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I'm a Christian clergyman, so who knows?
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_01: Um But but we I mean we all rely on experts.
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_01: Uh but there's a certain so we're all outsourcing.
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know, is global warming happening?
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_01: I think it is because I trust the experts who don't get their salaries from petroleum companies, you know.
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_01: But um we all have to rely on expert testimony.
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_01: But there's certain kind of outsourcing that just gets irresponsible.
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, when you're letting Ravi Zakariz do your thinking for you on whether Christianity is true and atheism is stupid, you've crossed some boundaries.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_01: You've crossed some intellectual lines, you're now becoming epistemically irresponsible.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_01: You're abdicating your own duties to the guru.
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_01: But I will say, if you had to abdicate your thinking to anybody, why not pick a guy who's Cambridge educated and a professor at Oxford and has multiple doctorate degrees?
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_01: And this is a big part of Ravi's success, I think.
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I get emails from people saying all the time, or social media comments saying he was so smart he didn't need any of those credentials.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_01: And I have to say, no, he got away with silly arguments, you know, about the law of second law of thermodynamics being incompatible with evolution because he studied quantum physics under John Polkinghorn at Cambridge, right?
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_01: You immediately give someone like that a little bit of credibility, like I don't know what I don't know about thermodynamics, I'm just the banjo-playing lawyer, right?
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_01: So I will trust, I'm more likely to trust an expert on that.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_01: And Ravi was an expert.
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_01: He studied this stuff, and he's a professor at Oxford.
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_01: So Christians can be forgiven for having outsourced to him uh to some degree.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_01: But this whole trusting gurus thing, I mean, you've written about celebrity, I mean, you've reported on celebrity uh worship within within the Christian world, it's really out of control.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_01: And pop apologetics is the flip side to that.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_01: It's not just how charismatic you can be on stage, it's how well can you dumb down the really complex issues in Christian philosophy and feed them to the masses so they feel like you've filled their bellies when you actually haven't given them anything nutritional.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, my new metaphor for Ravi is he's like a Cinnabon.
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if you have those in Britain, but a big sugar cinnamon donut that's probably the worst thing for you, but boy do they feel nice.
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's Ravi Zacharias.
• 33:29
  SPEAKER_01: The worst thing for your intellect, but you feel great after hearing sugar and fat, straight to the gut.
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_00: And I mean, I I wonder whether I mean in it it's interesting, like looking at this from a UK context.
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_00: I'm I'm from Australia originally, I live in the UK.
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_00: Um and there's an ecosystem in the States such that you can be an apologist in the States and never d deal with actual non-Christians.
• 33:55
  SPEAKER_00: But but there's an in there's an entire sort of ecosystem that rewards you shadow boxing against the bad guy atheist over there, um, and telling some stories about a victory that you know you weren't there for.
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um and actually the ecosystem rewards apologists kind of having a go at one another for saying, you know, I wouldn't have attacked that argument that way, but I would have done this, and and the the tribalism and it there's just a very interesting um there's a very interesting rewards structure within the military-industrial complex of American evangelicalism, I think.
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um and and Ravi was sort of top of that pyramid, really.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_01: Um It's interesting, it's a it's a bubble, and uh, and you know, people say to me, but Ravi did so much good for people.
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_01: He helped so many people, and I have to say, well, how did he help people?
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, if I have a six-year-old kid who's comes back from his first day of school saying, I don't want to go back to school, I'm afraid of the bullies, and I give the kid a magic penny and say, put this in your pocket and it will keep the bullies away.
• 35:00
  SPEAKER_01: The next day my six-year-old kid goes off to school feeling so happy and reassured, have I helped that kid?
• 35:07
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I don't think I've helped that kid at all.
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't know that Ravi, by instilling this dumbed-down version of Christianity, which he did with great flourish, was actually doing anybody any favors, Christians.
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_01: And we're seeing this now where people on social media are now saying, my faith has been devastated by Ravi.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you shouldn't have put your faith in Ravi's arguments in the first place.
• 35:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um it's a real problem.
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_01: And by the way, this is ubiquitous in the atheist world.
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_01: I can't even handle being around atheists online or conventions or anything because they have the same sort of let's shadow box those ridiculous, stupid theists, and we always win the shadow boxing match, and boy, does it feel good.
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_01: And by all means, let's not engage any smart Dominicans or let's not have um NT Wright come by and talk to us.
• 36:03
  SPEAKER_01: You know, no, we're happy in our bubble, and please let us stay there.
• 36:07
  SPEAKER_01: And that's a real that's just uh not a good thing for for the world.
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_00: But it is a human universal, isn't it?
• 36:13
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, what one question I've been dying to ask you is is kind of what what is your doctrine of humanity?
• 36:20
  SPEAKER_00: And and has the last five years kind of confirmed or denied it or sharpened it?
• 36:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um what what what are people like deep down, do you think?
• 36:28
  SPEAKER_01: Aaron Powell I'll tell you, um, getting back to the point you made, well, that's the way humans are.
• 36:32
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I'm not that way, and I don't know that you're that way.
• 36:35
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you're engaging me right now.
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_01: You're willing to face unpleasant truths.
• 36:39
  SPEAKER_01: I've been facing unpleasant truths my whole life, and at some point we all need to admit that getting through life uh honestly requires a little bit of intellectual courage.
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_01: You gotta face stuff that isn't quite so pleasant.
• 36:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and it can be done, but you're right that it's a lot easier not to do that.
• 36:59
  SPEAKER_01: So, I mean, my doctrine of humanity, but I I would I don't even know where to start where to start answering that.
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_01: Can you make it a bit more specific?
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_00: I get uh as as it relates to truth seeking, um, and and perhaps if we if we bring into the community as well, but um yeah, what what what is what is our relationship to to truth?
• 37:24
  SPEAKER_00: Let me let me let me I I um I really enjoy the work of Jonathan Height.
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um you come across the sort of the righteous mind, and um he's a he's a secular Jew, he's a he's a moral psychologist um who teaches at NYU.
• 37:40
  SPEAKER_00: And he wrote a seminal book back in 2015 called The Righteous Mind.
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um and he said he he said basically um the the way the way we rationalize is our gut, our intuitions is like like a a five-ton African elephant.
• 37:58
  SPEAKER_00: And our mind, our rationality, is like a little rider on top of this five-ton African elephant.
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_00: And the rider thinks it's in charge, but but if the elephant wants to go off down, you know, down into the swamp, you're pretty much going down into the swamp, no matter how much you yabber on on top.
• 38:14
  SPEAKER_00: And um he's got a it's i it's a it's a very gut-driven, heart-driven anthropology.
• 38:20
  SPEAKER_00: And um and it's interesting, it it lines up a lot with um what uh an Anglican theologian um said.
• 38:27
  SPEAKER_00: So Thomas Cranmer sort of wrote the Anglican prayer book, and his his anthropology has been summarized as what the heart loves, the will chooses, and the mind justifies.
• 38:40
  SPEAKER_00: Which which i it's it's quite a it's quite a negative view of of uh of humanity that we're we're rationalizing creatures ra w rather than rational creatures.
• 38:49
  SPEAKER_00: I wonder if any of that resonates with you.
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_01: The the the the the person you just quoted, I'm gonna I'm gonna write that down and and remember that because that's that's very much what I think.
• 38:58
  SPEAKER_01: And and I and I see it.
• 38:59
  SPEAKER_01: Christian apologetics is a wonderful uh example of this where you decide that, or let's say I want to be a Christian and I want to go study apologetics.
• 39:08
  SPEAKER_01: I decide that I really want to believe this religion more strongly than I do.
• 39:13
  SPEAKER_01: So I go to a program that is specifically designed to inculcate those views in me more strongly.
• 39:20
  SPEAKER_01: And then I come out and I believe those views even more strongly.
• 39:23
  SPEAKER_01: And have I really learned?
• 39:25
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, have I really challenged myself?
• 39:27
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's like I would never go to a graduate program that is designed to help me become a stronger atheist, that's gonna give me all the atheist arguments and teach me how to persuade.
• 39:41
  SPEAKER_01: Why?
• 39:42
  SPEAKER_01: You know, but that's our instincts.
• 39:45
  SPEAKER_01: We want to go sit at the feet of gurus who are going to make us feel a certain warm fuzzy.
• 39:51
  SPEAKER_01: And we crave we have a warm fuzzy addiction as human beings.
• 39:55
  SPEAKER_01: There's my view of humanity.
• 39:57
  SPEAKER_01: Warm fuzzies are are the most important thing.
• 40:00
  SPEAKER_01: You know, right, right.
• 40:02
  SPEAKER_00: But you're you're therefore in quite a minority, therefore.
• 40:04
  SPEAKER_00: You you can't you kick against that.
• 40:05
  SPEAKER_00: You you you try your best to kick against that.
• 40:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean I I I I do, yeah.
• 40:12
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's it's uh at if you're gonna do that, fine.
• 40:17
  SPEAKER_01: It's like I'm doing that with the the banjo, right?
• 40:20
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I think the banjo is the greatest instrument in the world, and uh but I don't care to persuade other people of that.
• 40:27
  SPEAKER_01: And if other people say no, it sucks, clarinet's better, great, go play your clarinet, right?
• 40:33
  SPEAKER_01: So the problem is when we let our guts determine our will, which then determines our reason, and then we assume that we've got something special that others need also, that's when you get the problem, right?
• 40:47
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 40:48
  SPEAKER_01: If we all went around playing bands and clarinets or watching the Flintstones on TV instead of um uh something else, fine.
• 40:57
  SPEAKER_01: It's when we when we when we need to be evangelical about it and we start using political tools to force other people to uh to think certain ways, um, then it becomes a real problem.
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_00: Right, right.
• 41:11
  SPEAKER_00: Um tell me what what kind of communities do you think we need?
• 41:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um obviously you've you've been shining a light on this issue and and and you've said look, it it's not just one bad apple, and it's not like oh he's dead now, and so that problem is over.
• 41:26
  SPEAKER_00: You've you've said, look, it takes it takes not just a village um to to to raise uh an RZ, it it it takes uh an entire you know military industrial complex to to do that.
• 41:38
  SPEAKER_00: So there is a deep sickness um to that military industrial complex, Christendom, if you if you want to give it that that that kind of phrase.
• 41:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um but we do need community, don't we?
• 41:51
  SPEAKER_00: We we we do need a thick sense of community and belonging and trust relationships.
• 41:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um so what what kind of community does Steve Boffman think we need and how do we get it?
• 42:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um I I don't claim to have any expertise in this, but uh but I would like us emphasizing the a fundamental feature of our valleys being that we care about each other.
• 42:15
  SPEAKER_01: Um and if that were hammered into us instead of a set of rules from religion, um see, if there's if there's rules, it's our human instinct to try to find ways to carve out exceptions for them that we can act in accordance with our own selfish interests.
• 42:34
  SPEAKER_01: So rules just, I mean, a Christian can say, I mean, okay, the United States killed three million people, innocent, mainly civilians in the Indochina Wars.
• 42:45
  SPEAKER_01: Is that a good thing or a bad thing?
• 42:46
  SPEAKER_01: If you're a Christian, you can say, heck yeah, look, Augustine has his essay on just war, and here's an exception that we can use.
• 42:54
  SPEAKER_01: So killing three million Indochinese was fine.
• 42:57
  SPEAKER_01: God was okay with that.
• 42:58
  SPEAKER_01: A Christian can also say, no, it doesn't work quite that way, we shouldn't have killed so many, we could have done it differently.
• 43:03
  SPEAKER_01: There's there's ways to find exceptions to the rules that come from up there.
• 43:08
  SPEAKER_01: And if we start making the rules or making the emphasis be on we care about each other, then we're not going to be quite so comfortable finding exceptions.
• 43:19
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, creative lawyers can find exceptions to damn near anything, and we do.
• 43:24
  SPEAKER_01: But if the basis of it is we care about each other, the fact that I can carve out an exception doesn't really matter because I'm doing it because I care.
• 43:34
  SPEAKER_01: That's what I would like to see instead of I know you and I probably have our disagreements about the positive role religion plays in in in human behavior, but I'd like to see r religion, I'd like to see that taught boar, the the caring, as opposed to certain however benevolent things that have been bestowed on us from above.
• 43:55
  SPEAKER_01: Um I think that would make the world a much better place.
• 43:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 43:58
  SPEAKER_01: Did that does that make sense?
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no, that's it's well, you know, it I I mean given who I am, y you won't be surprised to to to know I I hear that as a profoundly Christian kind of a thing.
• 44:11
  SPEAKER_00: Um you know, G Jesus was asked, how do you summarize the law?
• 44:15
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, Moses had six hundred and thirteen commandments.
• 44:18
  SPEAKER_00: There's there's a lot there's a lot of law there to sift through, and he kind of says, Love God and love neighbor.
• 44:23
  SPEAKER_00: And interestingly, after after the gospels, what the Apostle Paul teaches is is love is fulfill uh the law is fulfilled by love your neighbor.
• 44:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um there there isn't necessarily I'm sorry, go ahead.
• 44:37
  SPEAKER_01: Sorry.
• 44:39
  SPEAKER_01: I was gonna say I I I I I wouldn't call that necessarily a Christian thing.
• 44:43
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, Aristotle was uh had an ethical code that wasn't Christian at all, that was had a lot to do with being good to other people, and An Aquinas, of course, he was a Christian, but he found that in the natural law that's sort of some universal thing that wasn't necessarily Christian at all.
• 45:01
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, Buddha.
• 45:03
  SPEAKER_01: So I mean we can have that example of um uh we can have that debate about well, what's Christian and what's just good human instincts, and uh, you know, pretty soon we'll be inevitably fighting about whether Hitler was a Christian or not.
• 45:16
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it usually Yeah, I I raise that not to say that it's uh unique to the Christian to be able to live that way or or or anything of the sort.
• 45:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um but what one thing I was interested in is is if we love each other, um another thing that lawyers can fight over is who is we and who is the other.
• 45:37
  SPEAKER_00: And we just we just have that tendency, don't we?
• 45:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um to sort of to shrink the circle to the tribe.
• 45:44
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 45:44
  SPEAKER_01: And this is one of the things that I find so ironic about conservative evangelicals in the United States now.
• 45:51
  SPEAKER_01: They are God, guns, and America, right?
• 45:56
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, they are a tribe that believes America God shed his grace on America, and it's so unchristian because it creates a hierarchy of God's preferences.
• 46:11
  SPEAKER_01: We are God is shining his shedding his grace on America.
• 46:14
  SPEAKER_01: Well, what about on Zimbabwe, right?
• 46:18
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, are are Zimbabwe people less important in God's eyes?
• 46:23
  SPEAKER_01: Well, no.
• 46:24
  SPEAKER_01: Well, then why do you talk about God blessing America?
• 46:27
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it just becomes this whole you you peel away the layers and you see that this is just plain, raw tribalism masquerading as Christianity.
• 46:36
  SPEAKER_01: And it's I I think it's very very scary, very damaging to the world.
• 46:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 46:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I I said on Twitter the other day that uh um I I think there should be a compulsory um kind of years mission trip um for for American Christians to go to the just the global church, anywhere anywhere else outside of America, and don't teach anything.
• 46:58
  SPEAKER_00: Listen.
• 47:00
  SPEAKER_00: And go back and and and get that sense because I I there is something about uh a cultural hegemony that um really twists um yeah your theology and and twists your psychology and and and how you think about power interactions, really.
• 47:16
  SPEAKER_01: That's very interesting.
• 47:17
  SPEAKER_01: We could have a long discussion about that.
• 47:19
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe we'll sit down and have a pint someday and or two and and talk about that because I I worry that travel actually, you know, Mark Twain says travel is fatal to prejudice and closed-mindedness.
• 47:31
  SPEAKER_01: I think that travel can re uh can can can bolster and strengthen prejudice because you can go to a country and without really understanding what's going on, which can take years, all you see is that, oh, they let their babies pee on the train.
• 47:49
  SPEAKER_01: Um and you just think, oh, savages.
• 47:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um when you know, you and you really have to be sort of a courageous, intelligent person who's maybe studied some anthropology to see the richness of the culture.
• 48:03
  SPEAKER_01: So I think that that the if if they were gonna have that program to go overseas and and and just listen, you'd have to do it for 20 years.
• 48:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 48:13
  SPEAKER_00: It depends it depends in what spirit you you undertake that.
• 48:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, completely, completely.
• 48:17
  SPEAKER_00: How does it feel now to to go from being a voice in the wilderness to being um vindicated?
• 48:24
  SPEAKER_00: This this is this is a really uh uh extravagant sort of flip-flop, isn't it?
• 48:31
  SPEAKER_01: It it's been like a major tide turn in just the past couple months.
• 48:36
  SPEAKER_01: Um yeah, it feels really good.
• 48:37
  SPEAKER_01: I I I feel it feels nice to have been right.
• 48:41
  SPEAKER_01: Um it feels especially nice that the truth is coming out about Ravi Zacharias, and it especially feels nice that victims, I don't know how many, but I've had three people tell me how much it has benefited them that this truth has come out and that they are finally believed.
• 48:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um I mean I've been brought to tears a few times.
• 49:02
  SPEAKER_01: Uh when I first read that statement from RZIM saying, we believe Lori Ann, I just choked up, you know, sobbing.
• 49:10
  SPEAKER_01: Um because that's that must be very unpleasant to go through your life feeling like everybody thinks you're lying about something so painful that happened to you, and to have it suddenly, you're suddenly believed.
• 49:26
  SPEAKER_01: What a rush.
• 49:27
  SPEAKER_01: What a what a what a release.
• 49:30
  SPEAKER_01: So that's really the big thing.
• 49:31
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm also really happy that I think, I mean, I know there are forces at work hoping to spin this into just Ravi was a bad boy and uh let's take care of the victims and move get back to business.
• 49:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um and I really hope it turns into a much more of some systemic reflection because um it wasn't just Ravi, his ministry, all indications are that they knew for years.
• 49:58
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, Christianity Today came out yesterday with an article where someone from RZIM India had complained to senior people that he saw Ravi in a hotel in Singapore holding hands and acting intimate with a woman.
• 50:16
  SPEAKER_01: This is in 2008.
• 50:18
  SPEAKER_01: What is that?
• 50:19
  SPEAKER_01: 13 years ago.
• 50:20
  SPEAKER_01: And now we've got all these people saying, oh my god, we just didn't know anything about this.
• 50:26
  SPEAKER_01: We were so blind.
• 50:28
  SPEAKER_01: People weren't blind.
• 50:30
  SPEAKER_01: People were um putting, they were making career choices.
• 50:35
  SPEAKER_01: It's like this whole was blind, but now I see comes from John Newton, who wrote Amazing Grace.
• 50:41
  SPEAKER_01: You know the story.
• 50:42
  SPEAKER_01: He's a slave trader, had a terrible storm at sea and became a Christian, kept slave trading, didn't give up slaving after he got saved, kept slave trading till his body gave out, then he kept investing in the slave trade, and eventually he became an abolitionist and said, was blind, but now I see in Amazing Grace.
• 51:01
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you have to ask, what part of kidnapping people from their villages, locking them in chains in the hull of your ships, taking them on a transatlantic voyage where many will die in pain in physical and emotional agony in the hull of your ships.
• 51:18
  SPEAKER_01: What part of that were you blind to, Mr.
• 51:20
  SPEAKER_01: Newton?
• 51:21
  SPEAKER_01: He wasn't blind, he just preferred the money, right?
• 51:24
  SPEAKER_01: And I have to think that it's the same thing with this.
• 51:28
  SPEAKER_01: If you're gonna confess, confess that you made a willful choice that your career was more important than the truth.
• 51:37
  SPEAKER_01: Give us that.
• 51:38
  SPEAKER_01: Don't insult us and manipulate us with these ridiculous things about how you just didn't know.
• 51:43
  SPEAKER_00: Have you done um any sort of reading into sort of betrayal blindness and things like that?
• 51:48
  SPEAKER_00: The the this kind of you know, like my my my very low resolution sort of view of it is is okay, the the 1950s housewife, she sees the the lipstick on her husband's collar, she instantly sees it, and she instantly suppresses it because she doesn't want to go down that hole because that's that's the end of a whole bunch of stuff, and chooses to be blind to uh but on a very subconscious level, chooses to be blind to to stuff that would absolutely rock her world.
• 52:19
  SPEAKER_00: Does she know?
• 52:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 52:20
  SPEAKER_00: Does she not know?
• 52:21
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 52:22
  SPEAKER_00: It's there's there's some complications there.
• 52:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and and and betrayal blindness, I I don't know who coined that term, but whether it was it was a Jennifer Fry at at the University of of W Oregon, right?
• 52:35
  SPEAKER_01: I read a little bit of her stuff, and um uh there's a great deal of nuance to the whole grooming thing and and and being blind, turning a blind eye, or suppressing certain things.
• 52:47
  SPEAKER_01: There's a psychological aspect, but I don't think it covers a multitude of sins, right?
• 52:53
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, the Auschwitz guard who uh smells the smoke every day and sees people going in and not coming out.
• 53:03
  SPEAKER_01: Betrayal blindness, I mean, at some point we have to acknowledge um that there was enough evidence for people to be able to see.
• 53:13
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, so I worry that betrayal blindness is becoming sort of the, oh my God, um I was blind, but now I see kind of excuse.
• 53:21
  SPEAKER_01: Um and yes, there's a role for it.
• 53:23
  SPEAKER_01: It it is something when you're a solitary individual, you're alone, you're afraid, uh, you have so much invested in this marriage, you can't stand the thought that that lipstick comes from your husband's secretary.
• 53:36
  SPEAKER_01: The internal mechanisms can play a role in blinding you.
• 53:41
  SPEAKER_01: In January of 2018, right after Ravi settled his Thompson lawsuit, they had a ministry-wide Zoom meeting where, according to the reports that are coming out of that, it was clear to many of Ravi's employees that his version of the whole sexting thing was nonsensical, right?
• 54:03
  SPEAKER_01: So they knew in January 2018 that what he was saying was highly questionable.
• 54:10
  SPEAKER_01: How many of them spoke out publicly?
• 54:13
  SPEAKER_01: Zero.
• 54:14
  SPEAKER_01: How many of them quit?
• 54:16
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 54:17
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe I know of one person who quit for some reason, but I I don't know exactly why.
• 54:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um now all of a sudden people are quitting, but what about what they knew in January of 2018?
• 54:29
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 54:30
  SPEAKER_01: That his version of these facts were nonsensical.
• 54:33
  SPEAKER_01: Senior leaders confronted Ravi and were rebuffed.
• 54:37
  SPEAKER_01: Um so, like, how many how much evidence do you need before you can no longer plead betrayal blindness?
• 54:44
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 54:47
  SPEAKER_01: I'm just not buying it, right?
• 54:49
  SPEAKER_01: It's too easy to say I was blind, but now I see it's much easier to say that than to say I made an evil choice.
• 54:55
  SPEAKER_00: What what is the place of forgiveness?
• 54:58
  SPEAKER_00: How uh yeah, where where does it come and how?
• 55:02
  SPEAKER_01: I want to say to people if you if you if you stole my car, tell me you feel bad and apologize for stealing my car.
• 55:14
  SPEAKER_01: Don't tell me that you were blind and you thought it was your car.
• 55:18
  SPEAKER_01: You know, that's not an apology, that's not a confession, that's manipulation.
• 55:22
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's manipulative, and I think they should be ashamed of themselves for not coming out and saying our career was more important than victims and then truth.
• 55:33
  SPEAKER_01: That would be a good confession.
• 55:34
  SPEAKER_01: And then fine, then we forgive.
• 55:36
  SPEAKER_01: It's hard, it's harder for me to forgive people when I think they're manipulating me with their stuff.
• 55:41
  SPEAKER_00: I'll have to I'll have to read that again.
• 55:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um You've given us lots to think about, uh Steve, and uh I know that you're an attorney and you you bill by the hour.
• 55:50
  SPEAKER_00: So uh we've we can't afford any more of you, Steve.
• 55:55
  SPEAKER_00: Well, thank you, Glenn.
• 55:57
  SPEAKER_00: I've uh really appreciated uh your candor, really appreciated you shining that light, and um yeah, I I do pray that uh the Christian community learns uh the lessons that that uh we need to learn and and perhaps we can be a a community of truth and grace um that can put people back together again and uh not one that uh preys on the weak.
• 56:19
  SPEAKER_00: But uh Steve Boffman, thank you so much.
• 56:21
  SPEAKER_01: And I hope the same for my tribe.
• 56:23
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you, Glenn.
• 56:25
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that'll do us on the Speak Life Podcast for this week.
• 56:28
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• 56:30
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• 56:36
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• 56:40
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• 56:48
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• 57:23
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• 57:32
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• 57:34
  SPEAKER_00: See you next time on the Speak Life Podcast.