Growing Edge
July 1, 1998
Downsizing Sin
Dallas Willard believes discipleship is not as hard we make it.
Obeying Jesus requires, it sometimes seems, Aristotelian wisdom and Herculean strength. Other times, it's pretty simple. I was thoughtlessly helping myself to a second portion of a casserole filled with three of the essential food groups (fat, salt, and cholesterol) when my son spoke up. He'd heard me say how much I wanted to shed 40 pounds and how, again, I was going to start a diet. "Dad," Luke said, "I don't think you want to do that." "You're right," I said and put down the spoon. A skirmish with gluttony was simply and quietly defeated—without drama or heroic will power. In The Divine Conspiracy: Rediscovering our Hidden Life in God (HarperSanFrancisco, 1998), Dallas Willard argues that the life of discipleship can be as simple as that: understanding what Jesus wants and then simply deciding to do it. If pastors come to grips with this simple truth, they will not only be better disciples themselves, he argues, their discipleship ministries will bear more fruit. Following the Maestro
Willard is not as naive as he sounds. He is, after all, a professor at the University of Southern California school of philosophy, and he has been a pastor. He knows the ex-alted life of the mind and the debased state of the church—namely our penchant for "sin management" (learning to live with sin rather than conquering it) and consumer Christianity (ask not what you can do for God but what God can do for you). The root problem is that Christians no longer do what Jesus says they should do. Willard hopes "to provide an understanding of the gospel that will open the way for the people of Christ actually to do … what their acknowledged Maestro said ... NEW SOFTWARE
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