By Dallas Willard
Fount (Harper Collins). 468 pages. £8.99
ISBN 000 6281141
This is a book about discipleship. It is not a book to read after supper, sitting before a warm fire.
It requires a lot of thinking and study, for several reasons. First, because as Willard says in the introduction: 'Very few people today find Jesus interesting as a person or of vital relevance to the course of their actual lives.' (p.1). This, he says, includes Christians as well, which is revealed in 'the practical irrelevance of actual obedience to Christ' (p.3) in our churches. Second, this book seeks objective ways to remedy this, using for the most part the Sermon on the Mount (preachers will find his exposition generally helpful, mixed with occasional strange interpretations - see his 'Of pearls and pigs' on p.251-252). Chapter 5, 'The Rightness of the Kingdom Heart', contains some excellent thoughts on the subjects of anger, condemnation and lust.
The third reason that makes this a thinking book is Willard's two chapters on discipleship. Chapter 8 is 'On being a disciple, or a student of Jesus', where he says: 'The division of professing Christians into those for whom it is a matter of whole-life devotion to God and those who maintain a consumer, or client, relationship to the church, has now been an accepted reality for over 1,500 years' (p.330). Willard comes up with good solutions in chapters 8 and 9 ('A curriculum for Christlikeness'). The weakness of these chapters are his views of regeneration and the atonement. What is 'The Divine Conspiracy'? It is through Christ, 'to undermine the structures of evil, which continue to dominate human history, with the forces of truth, freedom and love'. (p.208).
