After weeks of being tempted away from The Divine Conspiracy community by the NCAA Tournament and ridiculous amounts of much cherished free time with Spring Break, I'm sufficinetly convicted to post the next reading!
Todd and Brandon and I have decided, however, to skip chapter 3 and move onto the more practical chapter 4 that starts laying the ground work on the Sermon on the Mount and what Jesus actually meant when he calls us to be his disciples. Perhpas we'll come back to chapter 3 later. Basically, its a look at the 20th century split in western Christianity between conservative evangelicals focus on believing right theology and liberal social gospelers focus on right action in the realm of the world's problems. Willard's main thesis is that neither of these camps come remotely close to addressing the truly great need of the individual soul to be reformed and re-made by intimate interaction with Jesus while we live out our days on earth.
The first part of chapter 4 focuses on the basic question of who God is and how we often fail to think accurately about His existence.
My favorite quote from this section is on pg. 64 where Willard writes "It is deeply illuminating of kingdom living to understand that his (Jesus) steady happiness was not ruled out by his experience of sorrow and even grief." I was struck with the thought "if this is true, Jesus is the one that I want to learn how to live from." With all the suffering, pain and injustice in the world (think of the worst situation you have ever seen; mine would likely be the Kibera slums in Nairobi, Kenya) Jesus lived a life meaningful life that was able to engage the world's neediest, and yet live a life permeated by joy. This is what I want, too, so I need to learn from Him. What or who else can truly offer this life option with integrity?
Questions:
How has your view of God matched up with the reality of God that Willard describes? How has it fallen short? Does it matter in terms of how we live day to day?
Final Thoughts
Its my intention, even after dropping the ball for a few weeks, to try to do my part to keep this little community together. I think it is worth fighting for and I'm excited to keep moving through this book with you guys. Maybe its just selfish because I benefit so much from reading your guys words. In an effort to make reading and commenting easier, I put your emails on the settings of this page so that you'll receive an email everytime someone posts or comments. I'm hoping this will take away the step of having to check the blog to see if anyone is writing. If this is annoying, feel free to take your name off or ask me to do it (it's in the "settings" part of the blog under "email")
alohas, fatty
