Comments (1)

By Jeff Gang, October 26, 2010 10:17 pm

Note: I am re-reading Dallas Willard’s book, The Divine Conspiracy. Over the next several weeks I’ll be posting my reflections as I make my way through a book  that changed my life nearly a decade ago.

In the third chapter, What Jesus Knew: Our God-Bathed World, we come to one of Willard’s most important chapters in the Divine Conspiracy. The table is set for what’s to come. The main idea: If we’re really going to trust Jesus, we need to see things the way he does, about God, ourselves, and the world. As Willard says,

Jesus’ good news about the kingdom can be an effective guide for our lives only if we share his view of the world in which we live. To his eyes this is a God-bathed and God-permeated world…. It is a world that is inconceivably beautiful and good because of God and because God is always in it. It is a world in which God is continually at play and over which he constantly rejoices.  Until our thoughts of God have found every visible thing and event glorious with his presence, the word of Jesus has not yet fully seized us. (p. 62)

This may seem obvious to some who know the Scriptures well, but until I encountered this chapter a decade ago, I’d never thought of God this way before. Even though growing up my parents tried to show me a good image of God, I never imagined God as a joyous being. Instead God was a stern, cold, exacting being. Continue reading 'Tuesdays with Willard – Chapter Three [Pt. 1]'»

Comments (1)

By Jeff Gang, October 19, 2010 8:00 am

Note: I am re-reading Dallas Willard’s book, The Divine Conspiracy. Over the next several weeks I’ll be posting my reflections as I make my way through a book  that changed my life nearly a decade ago.

In the second chapter, Gospels of Sin Management, Dallas sees as a crisis in Christianity. Christians aren’t that different than non-Christians. This has resulted in our anemic witness for the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The main reason? We are not disciples of Jesus. Rather we have turned Christianity into a “bar-code” religion where anyone can go to heaven if they have the right beliefs, bypassing the need to follow Jesus. As Willard writes:

Some ritual, some belief, or some association with a group affects God the way the bar code affects the scanner. Perhaps there has occurred a moment of mental assent to a creed, or an association entered into with a church. God “scans” it, and forgiveness floods forth. An appropriate amount of righteousness is shifted from Christ’s account to our account in the bank of heaven, and all our debts are paid. We are accordingly, “saved.” Our guilt is erased. (p. 37)

In contrast to this “gospel”, Jesus comes to each of us as the master teacher, seeking people who will become his “apprentices” and learn his ways and do what he did. In the process they will become like him, transformed from the inside out.  This means we must move from a faith marked by the right beliefs to a faith that takes Jesus seriously, i.e. one that is marked by faith and confidence in him. Willard explains it like this:

What must be emphasized in all of this is the difference between trusting Christ, the real person of Jesus, with all that that naturally involves, versus trusting some arrangement for sin-remission set up through him—trusting only his role as guilt remover. To trust the real person Jesus is to have confidence in him in every dimension of our real life, to believe that his right about and adequate to everything. (p. 48-49)

This is the challenge of following Jesus Christ in this world. Do we trust him and have confidence in him? Do we rely on him for everything? Or is it just an idea? An ideal we hope for someday? How we answer those questions influences how we live out our faith in the world. When we seek to follow Jesus, to become his students, or as Willard says, his apprentices, we learn to trust him completely, even in the face of death. And when that happens, we’ve entered into Jesus’ eternal kind of life now.

Comments (1)

By Jeff Gang, October 13, 2010 12:21 am

Note: I am re-reading Dallas Willard’s book, The Divine Conspiracy. Over the next several weeks’ I’ll be posting my reflections as I make my way through a book  that changed my life nearly a decade ago.

Here are a couple key themes in the last half of chapter one,  Entering the Eternal Kind of Life Now:

1. The Kingdom of God

The Kingdom of God is a key term in the Divine Conspiracy. For Dallas Willard, words such as rule, governance, and kingdom describe the range of a person’s effective will, i.e. each of us has a kingdom or a queendom, the range of our effective will.  When Jesus came he made it possible for our will to become part of his will. Willard writes, “When he [Jesus] announced that the ‘governance’ or rule of God had become available to human beings, he primarily referring to what he could do for people, God acting with him.”

The most revolutionary idea for me was that God’s rule doesn’t wait for the future, but happened with the coming of Jesus, and is now on going. “God’s rule is here now,” as Willard says. God’s rule is present and available to everyone through the life of Jesus Christ. However, this doesn’t mean that everyone sees it, or that everyone has agreed to be a part of it. This present Kingdom is more than just inside of us, it permeates the entire world. It always has been and always will be. Right now other kingdoms are allowed to coexist, but one day, God’s Kingdom will prevail.

2. The Gospel of the Kingdom

The good news about this Kingdom, or the Gospel of the Kingdom, is that anyone can be part of it. In the past people entered through the law and the prophets, but with Jesus any person can walk into the Kingdom, propriety’s aside. That’s what happened in Matthew 4.23-25:

Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and curing every disease and every sickness among the people. So his fame spread throughout all Syria, and they brought to him all the sick, those who were afflicted with various diseases and pains, demoniacs, epileptics, and paralytics, and he cured them. And great crowds followed him from Galilee, the Decapolis, Jerusalem, Judea, and from beyond the Jordan.

As Willard writes, “The reality of God’s rule, and all of the instrumentalities it involves, is present in action and available with and through the person of Jesus. That is Jesus’ gospel.”

Usually the Gospel is presented as accepting Jesus as the Son of God, seeking his forgiveness for your sins, assuring you of eternal life. The problem with this “limited version” is there’s nothing more to do than sit around and wait for Jesus to return. There’s a disconnect between going to heaven and living now.  This bypasses the real meaning of repentance—surrendering to the rule of God, where we experience true freedom.

Comments (1)

By Jeff Gang, October 6, 2010 11:29 am

Note: I am re-reading Dallas Willard’s book, The Divine Conspiracy. Over the next several weeks’ I’ll be posting my reflections as I make my way through a book  that changed my life nearly a decade ago.

I know, it’s Wednesday, but I was traveling yesterday and didn’t have an opportunity to post this until now. Anyways, last week I reflected on key themes in the first half of Entering the Eternal Kind of Life Now. Here are a few more from the second half:

1. The “Ordinariness” of Jesus Christ

For Dallas Willard, part of the Divine Conspiracy is the way Jesus enters our world through the ordinary. It’s the “receptacle of the divine.” That’s how God worked then, it’s how God works now. God does this so we may become part of his life—an “eternal kind of life” (a key phrase in the book). As Willard writes:

… if he [Jesus] were to come today he could very well do what you do. He could very well live in your apartment or your house, hold down your job, have your education and life prospects, and live within your family, surroundings, and time. None of this would be the least hindrance, to the eternal kind of life that was his by nature and becomes available to us through him. Our human life, it seems, is not destroyed by God’s life but is fulfilled in it and in it alone.

No human being wants to be ordinary. We go through life seeking significance, to know we matter. While this may be driven by egotism (many problems in this world are the result of our drive for significance), but for Willard, it’s also the spark of the divine creator. We were made to be extraordinary. He writes:

Our hunger for significance is a signal of who we are and why we are here, and it is also the basis of humanity’s enduring response to Jesus. For he always takes individual human beings as seriously as their shredded dignity demands, and he has the resources to carry through with his high estimate of them. Continue reading 'Tuesdays with Willard – Chapter One [Pt. 2]'»