Subversive Interview - Dallas Willard

Dallas Willard has spent the best part of his life getting down to business. That has meant stepping down from a pastorate involved in trying to attract people to his church, and immersing himself into the culture around him armed only with a Bible and a desire to make his faith more real.

Having spent over 30 years as a professor of Philosophy at USC, Willard has become known as something of a controversial figure in Christian circles. Not for any overtly radical teachings or practices, but simply because of his call for the Church to return to more Christ-centered living and practice.

In short, Willard’s ideas confront the modern-day theological practice of atonement-centered Christianity rather than disciple-making Christianity. In this first installment of a three-part interview, RELEVANT’s Keith Giles speaks candidly with Willard about these two opposing theologies and the state of modern Christianity today.

[RELEVANT MAGAZINE]: “What are the most critical challenges facing the modern church?”

[DALLAS WILLARD]: “In a way it’s very simple. The greatest challenge the church faces today is to be authentic disciples of Jesus. And by that I mean they’re learning from Him how to live their life, as He would live their life if He were they. So that means, whatever I am, whoever I am, I take Him into my whole life as my Lord. Lord means that He’s my teacher. Another way of putting this is to say that our greatest challenge is to recover Jesus the Teacher. You know, if you don’t have a teacher you can’t have a disciple. Disciples are just students. Unfortunately, it’s a long and convoluted story, but roughly over the last two hundred years, Jesus as Teacher has simply disappeared. Whether Liberal or Conservative, it doesn’t make any difference. This is the unfortunate fact, and it lies at the foundation of the efforts of many people today to find a different form for the Church.

“What has happened is Church ritual has replaced Discipleship. That’s the really big issue. How to recover Jesus the Teacher? That would mean, of course, that we’ve decided now that we’re actually going to do what He said. So then we would need to know how. The Church then would have, as their big project, to make this the center of what they do as churches. I’ve remarked on this in the last chapter of my book, The Renovation Of The Heart, about the local congregation and the spiritual formation of the Believer.”

[RM]: “So, are you saying we have a crisis of follower-ship rather than a crisis of leadership?”

[DW]: “Now you’re going to get me in trouble. (Laughs) The fact of the matter is this leadership thing has just gone crazy. It is actually not from the Church, it’s a carry-over from the Culture and it’s one of the many ways that the modern church has bit and swallowed the contemporary culture whole. It is just shameless the way we go on about leaders and various kinds of figures. You’re absolutely right, it’s a crisis of ‘follower-ship’ and of leaders themselves living as disciples and inducting others into discipleship, not to them, but to Christ. It’s just heartbreaking to see this thing on leadership and how this has progressed.

“You remember Jesus saying, ‘Call no man Master, you have one Master.’ Don’t call anyone Teacher, don’t call anyone Leader or Doctor or whatever. We’ve got a leader, let’s follow Him!”

[RM]: “The idea of Discipleship; acknowledging Jesus as Lord and Teacher of our lives; is daunting for most. Jesus seemed to suggest that one cannot be His disciple without laying it all down for Him and taking up one’s own cross. That’s not a very popular idea in today’s culture. Have we misunderstood what it means to follow Christ?”

[DW]: “Well, I don’t think we’ve misunderstood Him. The real problem is not misunderstanding Him, but it’s setting it aside as a requirement for salvation. Now, a few decades ago you had leading speakers for Christianity across the nation who would say things like, ‘We’re not supposed to follow Christ, we’re supposed to trust Him’, and that meant not to trust His leadership and teaching, but to trust His death on the cross for the forgiveness of sins.

“What has basically happened is that the meaning of ‘Trust Christ’ has changed. It has come to no longer mean trusting Him; it meant trust something He did. In that way, one theory of the atonement was substituted for the Christian Gospel. The results of this are that (now) discipleship is not essential, and people are not invited to become disciples. So then now you have crazy hermeneutics like, ‘The Gospels are for the Millennium, but Paul’s gospel is for us today’. This is just taking possession of the whole country on the conservative side. On the liberal side something different is happening. It’s amazing to see how every system within Christianity took a route that said, ‘You know, you don’t have to do that. That is not for you to follow. You just have faith in the death of Christ on the cross or have faith in Jesus as a great social prophet or whatever.’ But it’s amazing to see how universal it was. You have to suspect that there was some spiritual force in back of this. The 1800’s and the 1900’s were devoted to putting Christ away and saying, ‘All those things He said that sound so tough isn’t for you. That looks like ‘Works Righteousness’, that’s not Grace.’”

[RM]: “Are we in a state of “Grace Overload” today? It seems it’s all about easy forgiveness and a mental agreement of the death of Christ on the cross for our sins is where it all stops.”

[DW]: “That’s it right there. I’ve heard leading speakers in the last few years say on their television broadcasts that ‘Grace is only for guilt’. Now, there’s nothing more clear in the New Testament than that this is not true. But, this whole picture was developing in a way so that Grace was firewalled off from ordinary life and couldn’t get through. This misunderstanding of Grace as a mere transfer of credit just totally destroys the teaching of Grace in the New Testament. Grace, as it’s taught in the New Testament, is God acting in your life and that’s why, for example the great passages like 2 Peter 3:18, ‘Grow in Grace and in the knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ’ … you can’t do that if Grace is just for guilt. The only way you can do that is to get more guilty.’”

[DW]: “If you just do inductive Bible study on Grace you’ll see that Grace is for life. We would’ve required Grace even if we had never sinned. So Grace is God acting in our lives.”

[RM]: “I’ve noticed that in Ephesians, the famous verse that says we’re ‘Saved by Grace, and not of yourself lest any man should boast’ is immediately followed by the statement that we’re saved by Grace in order “to do good works”. Most of us stop at the first part and never move on to the second part. We still have this idea that God doesn’t actually expect us to do any works.”

[DW]: “Actually He might get kind of worried if you did. That’s Ephesians chapter 2, verse 8 and what people don’t understand is that’s not even the end of the sentence. But, it’s the end of their doctrine. So now, this heavy hand of this misunderstanding of Grace simply shuts off God’s activity through His kingdom presence in the lives of individuals. That’s one reason why the statistics on Christians generally don’t differ from the statistics on non-Christians. We’re not living a different life.”

[RM]: “I had a conversation with Jim Wallis in a previous column and his point on this subject was that Christians in the early church were living lives counter to the culture of the day. This is why Peter exhorts the Christians of his day to “Be ready to give an answer, a reason for the hope that lies within”, because he was aware that the lives of those believers would prompt such a curiosity. The problem with modern church is that we’re busy throwing answers at people who have never thought to ask the question. Our lives look just like theirs so there’s never a reason for them to wonder about why we’re different.”

[DW]: “Jim is right on in that statement and I would just add that the context of this text is one where Christians were suffering joyfully. That’s the context where people will say, ‘Where do you get this joy? How do you do this?’ and then you can explain it to them. But now we have sort of the ‘Bully-Boy Apologists’ who use that verse and it might be paraphrased, ‘Be ready to give an answer to questions no one’s asking’.”

In our second installment of a three-part conversation with author and professor Dallas Willard, we discuss the taking up our cross, the irrelevant church and why doctrine and tradition have crippled believers on both sides of the issue.

[RELEVANT MAGAZINE]: “Let me ask you this. I have been reading through the works of A.W. Tozer and Charles Finney and I am amazed at the drastic contrast between these men and their teaching as compared to the ‘seeker-friendly’ sort we hear today. It’s a shock to my system. Christianity seems to have lost that power to communicate that Jesus was right on in what he was teaching. The proof should be in the lives that we live day-to-day. Lives that are different from those in the world around us. Since we’re not living a life that’s different, the Gospel has lost its power.”

[DALLAS WILLARD]: “Well, it’s lost its power because it’s no longer intelligent. I recognize that the Spirit has to work. And none was better than Finney in understanding the relationship between the Spirit and the Word. But when you read his directions you sense the incredible intelligence in this fellow. By the way, that’s true of Tozer and Wesley and Jonathan Edwards, and all of these people. As intelligent men they were capable of addressing issues clearly and that is what you do not hear today. The level of intelligence in our sermons, the abysmal story telling that you hear constantly is just hopeless. The power that comes through the Bible itself, which is the most intelligent book ever written, is lost. If we didn’t just go, like you’re mentioning in the passage in Peter, to go and get a verse to endorse what we think we want to do, and if we read it with our intelligence and dependence on the Spirit of God then we would come out with what you’re hearing when you read Tozer. The same thing is true with C.S. Lewis. What comes through with all of these people is that they speak with such force because what they know what they’re talking about. That is not something that is opposed to the power of the Spirit, that’s what the Spirit would lead you into if you would ever open yourself to God and become His disciple.”

[RM]: “It’s not a very popular thing to say, ‘We’re passing out crosses today, come and die to yourself!’”

[DW]: “It’s unheard of today. The meaning of the Cross, the meaning of death to self, all the things Tozer and, in his own way, Finney, and certainly Wesley, all understood this. That isn’t heard today.”

[RM]: “It’s very sad and a lot of young Christians today are saying that church is irrelevant and they don’t get anything out of it. Some are leaving the church, but others are asking the question, ‘What does it really mean to be a follower of Christ?’”

[DW]: “That’s right, and their points about irrelevance are, generally speaking, absolutely right on. My way of putting this, as I mentioned earlier in my last chapter of Renovation Of The Heart, is simply that the churches don’t do what Jesus asked them to do. They’ve got all these other things and their main problem is distraction. They’re distracted from the main thing and they’re thinking about their tradition or about being really Baptist or Catholic or what have you, and the truth of the matter is, ‘Who cares’? That’s what the young people are sensing. In many respects they’re turning to the more ‘High Church’ models where you have a non-leader emphasis, where you have a person who is basically does rituals and there are wonderful, rich words there and so on. Many others see through that too because that is just as empty as the other, except for those wonderful words, which if you listen to, they will do a lot for you. But of course you don’t have to go long before you discover most people are not listening to those words, they’re just going through the ritual.

“I think the hope, the great hope, on these young people, and it’s extremely important that they not be lead into over-reaction and simply become negative and loose the whole thing under phrases like ‘post-modernism’ because there is no Gospel of post-modernism. Post-modernism is basically of liberation which might set you free to go into something right, but it is not itself the Gospel, or a form of life even. It’s amusing for me to see, as I travel around, for people to try to do something that would be called post-modernism, but there isn’t anything like that. You just do kind of funny things and maybe it helps a little bit, but the important thing is that instead of going in that direction that they do what you have done and turn to Finney and Tozer and these other folks.”

[RM]: “My feeling is that what is lacking for these young people who sense this unrest and unease about their faith is that there is no one for them to look to who is actually living this sort of discipleship out, or even teaching about it. The most fascinating thing to me is that, for a modern Christian, the most radical thing one could possibly do would be to simply read the words of Jesus and then go and do exactly what he says to do.”

[RM]: “And if people did do that they’d be looked at by people in the Church as if they had two heads.”

[DW]: “And God would come down on them, they would be blessed and prosper, just like people who have done this at every period in the history of the church have been blessed and prospered and the Kingdom of God has come. But that’s the one thing that the whole culture and system around them is designed to keep them from doing. Most of this is theology. It’s the bad theology that is the main block because the people who will resist them and not think that they have anything to say are the ones who have a theology that reinforces their rejection. That’s the same thing that was true in the day of Jesus. He said, ‘If you can believe Moses you would believe me’ and it’s a recurring thing that happens when people get absorbed in their self-righteous traditions and their own rituals and they close their mind and they say, ‘Oh, we believe the Bible’. They don’t believe the Bible. If they did they would do what you’re talking about.”

In this final installment of our three-part conversation with author and theologian Dallas Willard, we explore the finer points of the Gospel of Jesus, what Grace is really all about, and the rise of “Vampire Christianity” in modern times.

[RELEVANT MAGAZINE]: “I think we’re in a place now where a lot of the modern Church is in rebellion against the old traditions and doctrine and theology, in favor of experience and signs and wonders. A lot of young Christians don’t want to talk about things like doctrine and theology because that sounds stale and boring to them.”

[DALLAS WILLARD]: “This is very unfortunate because, in fact, they are operating on a theology. When you take that move you take your theology and you’re unwilling to think about it. A theology is what enforces the attitude that they have towards theology. They mis-identified what theology is and don’t recognize its role in their own lives. It’s really tragic. It’s part of the problem of looking at the traditional church and seeing that it identifies theology with something you do in seminary, and then you come out of seminary and you lead irrelevant churches. So, if that’s theology, then we don’t need it. Problem is, that is not theology. Theology is just what you really think about God, and if you’re going to do that, you’d better use your mind and not just let it be a receptacle— a catch-all for whatever beliefs happen to be passing by. If you don’t do that then you become the victim of your feelings and you identify the old version of Christianity and you walk off with a big ‘Yuck’. But you walk off with a set of beliefs about God that are actually going to guide your life and sometimes that’s disastrous! Even if you do reject something that is wrong, that doesn’t mean that you accepted what was right.”

[RM]: “Exactly. You haven’t gone to the Word yourself to base your belief upon.”

[DW]: “What you need to do is to become a Word worm. You study and you think and you find people who are profitable to read, but the most important thing is to come to terms with the words of the Scripture and to learn to live by them, and you can’t do that without theology.”

[RM]: “There appears to be two camps of thought. One is the idea that just knowing the Word is all that’s necessary. You read and study and regurgitate it, but you never actually do anything it tells you to do. The other camp says you should just jump out and do all the stuff that the Word tells you to do, but without actually consulting the Word to make sure you’re doing it the right way.”

[DW]: “Yes, and often, unfortunately, they’re not. The most common thing for that latter group of people you’re talking about is that they don’t have a Gospel. They should have the Gospel that Jesus had, which is the presence and the availability of the Kingdom right here and now, through faith in Him. But they don’t have that and I’ve watched group after group and individual after individual just run out of steam. When they’re gone, the people who pick up after them in their place have just lost everything and they are all wandering in a version of a very benign and pleasing Humanism.”

[RM]: “And there’s not much difference between that kind of Christianity and anything else the World has to offer.”

[DW]: “Actually, there isn’t. All you can say for it is that its idealism is high, usually. But so far as being actually able to pull it off, since they’re not operating in the power of the Kingdom, it’s much less.”

[RM]: “Todd Hunter had a great quote that I think he might have borrowed from you, where he said that the problem with the modern church is that they’ve misunderstood the Gospel of Jesus. He said that the Gospel is not that Jesus died on the cross for your sins so you can go to heaven when you die, but that the Gospel that Jesus preached was the Gospel of the Kingdom. When you say this to people they look at you like you’re insane. ‘Of course the Gospel is that you can go to heaven when you die’, they say. But the Gospel isn’t a one-time event, it’s a daily participation with Christ in the Kingdom life.”

[DW]: “That’s right. The Grace of God empowers you to do what you can’t do on your own. Grace is unmerited favor, but to say that doesn’t tell you what form it takes. The assumption today is that it takes the form of a credit transfer in the books of heaven. I’ve heard preachers say that there’s absolutely nothing else that happens. So, in other words, your life on Earth is totally untouched by Grace.”

[RM]: “Well, they are correct in the sense that, if you live life the way they’re living then this is all that happens with Grace.”

[RM]: “That’s as much Grace as they’ve availed themselves of because their obedience to Christ has ended at the point of saying that prayer for salvation.”

[RM]: “I think you quoted Tozer a while back in another interview where he suggested that a new heretical thought had entered the modern Christian thought. The idea that people come to Jesus and say, ‘I want some of your blood for the forgiveness of my sins, but I don’t have any intention of following you or obeying you, and now if you’ll excuse me I’d like to get on with my life’.”

[DW]: “Those are what I call ‘Vampire Christians’. Tozer actually does say that this is outright heresy. He was very clear about this and the dear man was such a Christ-like man that he could do this and get away with it. But, on the other hand, you’ll have people who will hear this and say, ‘Isn’t that pretty?’ and they’ll do absolutely nothing about it.”

[RM]: “Unfortunately that seems to be a possibility with those who call themselves Christians.”

[DW]: “It has to come through deep work, I think, the kind of work that you’re doing, is perhaps among the most important things to be doing now because you will reach people who are ready to see it. Perhaps they’ve already seen it but didn’t know what it was and they’re ready to change. What has to happen here is a kind of tidal wave has to develop, and when it does, then people will pay attention and they’ll realize that this really is something different. Some will be mad and they’ll fight, but others will jump up and down for joy and join you. See, that’s what happens if you look at Finney or Wesley with them. Tozer is different, and it’s an interesting thing to study, he didn’t start a tidal wave, but he laid out some books that have nourished the souls of multitudes. It didn’t have an effect of making the churches say, ‘We must change’. You did see that in Finney and Wesley and there was a great battle and a great effect.”

[DW]: “Yes, it’s very interesting that now churches and para-church organizations are beginning to say, ‘We must change’. This could be the beginning of the wave. I think probably it would be better if it wasn’t focused on just one or two individuals, but it may be that one or two people will arise. But, in the last five years I’ve seen large churches, some of whom had been very prosperous as mega-churches, say, ‘This is all wrong. We must do discipleship.’ That kind of repentance is what is needed to start the tidal wave.”

I love Dallas Willard's writing. He challenges us, rightly I think, to 'walk the walk.' Some of his more "subversive" comments from the interview:

"The greatest challenge the church faces today is to be authentic disciples of Jesus. And by that I mean they’re learning from Him how to live their life, as He would live their life if He were they."

"What has basically happened is that the meaning of ‘Trust Christ’ has changed. It has come to no longer mean trusting Him; it meant trust something He did. In that way, one theory of the atonement was substituted for the Christian Gospel. The results of this are that (now) discipleship is not essential, and people are not invited to become disciples."

"the churches don’t do what Jesus asked them to do. They’ve got all these other things and their main problem is distraction. They’re distracted from the main thing and they’re thinking about their tradition or about being really Baptist or Catholic or what have you, and the truth of the matter is, ‘Who cares’?"

"The Grace of God empowers you to do what you can’t do on your own. Grace is unmerited favor, but to say that doesn’t tell you what form it takes. The assumption today is that it takes the form of a credit transfer in the books of heaven. I’ve heard preachers say that there’s absolutely nothing else that happens. So, in other words, your life on Earth is totally untouched by Grace."

"Hearing God", "The Spirit of the Disciplines" and "Divine Conspiracy" are his best books. I just finished "Divine Conspiracy" and am using it as a supplement to "Purpose Driven Life" in our church's 40 Days of Purpose campaign. His emphasis on overt commitment and discipleship vs the "consumer" Christianity is outstanding.

Thanks. I enjoyed "Purpose Driven Life". I am hooked on John Eldredge right now and have to finish "Journey of Desire" and "Waking the Dead" first, but then I will get myself a copy of "Divine Conspiracy". I've heard of Dallas Willard, of course, I just never realized he was such a prolific author.

Please forgive the unsolicited PING. I wanted to point this article out to all of you. Dallas Willard is a Christian author/thinker that 'gets it.' He repeatedly says that the main thing wrong with Christianity today is that people don't walk the walk. They're not even taught that they should try to be like Christ--in thought, word, and deed.

Most of the Religion Forum took a pass at this article because, I guess, they don't like discussing how to improve their relationship with God--they prefer bashing other denominations. I've noticed in the past that y'all like discussing what it takes to be a good Christian.

Would any of you care to comment on Dallas Willard's words?

Thanks for the ping. I gave it a good scan and it does seem like he is making some valid points. Too many churches are WAY too focused on being popular instead of being faithful and they've watered down their teachings and have resorted to 'the soft bigotry of low expectation' when it comes to their members actually living the gospel and keeping the commandments.

The flip side is that churches that DO stress conforming your life with the gospel are derided as 'authoritarian' by the other churches.

It can't go on like this for much longer though. Society has become hostile towards religion in general and within a generation I expect only those with a burning testemony of their own will maintain their faith, and you can't have a burning testemony of a gospel you are not living. I think whole denominations will disappear, probably by merging with other diminishing denominations.

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