Top 10 (+2) Excerpts from Dallas Willard's "The Divine Conspiracy"
As I mentioned in yesterday's post, Dallas Willard's "The Divine Conspiracy" is one of my all-time favorite reads, and that's despite the fact that I fundamentally disagree with Willard about his treatment of the Beatitudes. I agree with Richard Foster in that, when we consider its comprehensiveness, its accessibility, its depth, and its warmth, it is one of the greatest books of this generation. My copy is scattered with highlights and underscores of various sections. Here, then, are my Top 10 (+2) favorite excerpts from the book:
12. Unlike egotism, the drive to significance is a simple extension of the creative impulse of God that gave us being...We are placed in a specific context to count in ways no one else does. That is our destiny.
11. Some years of reflection and further experience with Jesus and the kingdom enabled his people to describe him in lofty language as "the icon of the unseeable God"...But that was not yet. It was to still uncomprehending ears that Jesus said, "Those who have seen me have seen the Father."
10. So when Jesus directs us to pray, "Thy kingdom come," he does not mean that we should pray for it to come into existence. Rather, we pray for it to take over at all points in the personal, social, and political order where it is now excluded.
9. Suppose our failures occur, not in spite of what we are doing, but precisely because of it...A saying among management experts today is, "Your system is perfectly designed to yield the results you are getting."
8. God declared Abraham to be righteous.Does that mean He declared he would go to heaven when he died? Not precisely that...But would he go to heaven when he died? Of course! What else would God do with such a person? They were friends!
7. The "mind of the flesh"...restricts us to the visible, physical world where...we find we constantly must violate our conscience in order to "survive." Jesus, by contrast, brings us into a world without fear. In his world, astonishingly, there is nothing evil we must do in order to thrive. Thus, our posture of confident reliance upon him in all we do allows us to make our life undying, of eternal worth, integrated into the eternal vistas and movements of the Spirit...Jesus said, "God is not the God of the dead but of the living." His meaning was that those who love and are loved by God are not allowed to cease to exist, because they are God's treasures.
6. Jesus shows his apprentices how to live in the light of the fact that they will never stop living...According to the wisdom of Jesus, then, every event takes on a different reality and meaning, depending on whether it is seen only in the context of the visible or also in the context of God's full world, where we all as a matter of fact live.
5. To become a disciple of Jesus is to accept now that inversion of human distinctions that will sooner or later be forced upon everyone by the irresistible reality of his kingdom...We must, simply, accept that he is the best and smartest man who ever lived in this world, that he is even now "the prince of the kings of the earth." Then we heartily join his cosmic conspiracy to overcome evil with good.
4. When we see Jesus as he is, we must turn away or else shamelessly adore him.
3. Anger indulged, instead of simply waived off, always has in it an element of self-righteousness and vanity. Find a person who has embraced anger, and you find a person with a wounded ego.
And, finally, the two little quotes that changed my own, personal view on life forever. These two finally got me to understand the simple but beautiful rule about righteous living, about doing that which is good and not doing that which is evil, and how one goes about trying to achieve it:
2. Jesus knew that we cannot keep the law by trying to keep the law. To succeed in keeping the law one must aim at something other and something more. One must aim to become the kind of person from whom the deeds of the law naturally flow. The apple tree naturally and easily produces apples because of its inner nature.
1. When I go to New York City, I do not have to think about not going to London or Atlanta. People do not meet me at the airport or station and exclaim over what a great thing I did in not going somewhere else. I took the steps to go to New York City, and that took care of everything. Likewise, when I treasure those around me and see them as God's creatures designed for His eternal purposes, I do not make an additional point of not hating them or calling them twerps or fools. Not doing those things is simply a part of the package. "He that loves has fulfilled the law," Paul said. Really. On the other hand, not going to London or Atlanta is a poor plan for going to New York. And not being wrongly angry and so on is a poor plan for treating people with love. It will not work.
Grace and Peace,
Raffi
I discovered Willard about five months ago, and since then have read nearly every spiritual book that he has written. At age 70+, my conviction is that I wish that I had seen these works when I was a teenager, if so, I probably would have entered the ministry full-time. Everyone must read the Conspiracy, of course, but past that my favorite is the Great Omission. Beyond his insights, is stimulations to read other Pietistic literature, such as the Imitation of Christ (a daily must), and other books that he constantly recommends to supplement his choice books of the Bible. I consider myself a pentecostal Baptist, and also a Disciple, and beyond that, have given away about a half dozen of Willard's books to people that I feel have the readiness for this Season in their lives. I would like to hear the point of view of someone else about WHAT TO DO TO BRING THIS LEVEL OF UNDERSTANDING ABOUT MATTHEW 5 6 7, AND THE KINGDOM CONCEPT AS TAUGHT BY WILLARD to friends and fellow church attenders. I have had some great moments in my life spiritually, and welcome this new Season in my spiritual growth atop the foundations created by Willard. He is a divine gift to me.
Dr. Gene