Willard's World 9 - School Of Jesus

Teach them to do everything I have told you.
-Jesus (Matthew 28:20)

It must be possible to hear and do what Jesus taught as well as train others to do likewise. In this chapter Willard lays out a detailed "curriculum" for how one might go about this. He warns though that, "consumer Christianity has become the accepted norm, and all out engagement with and in Jesus' kingdom among us is regarded as just one option people may take if it suits them but probably as somewhat 'overdoing it.'" Willard encourages us to sign up for this course because the biblical pattern is, from beginning to end, 'be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only.'" The objectives of this course are practical in that Willard wants to bring people, "to the point where they actually do [what Jesus taught] on appropriate occasions." To often we are only taught what we "ought" to do or that "it is good" to do such and such.

In this curriculum what are the objectives? Willard first describes four things that are not primary objectives but are often mistaken as such: 1)"External conformity to the wording of Jesus' teaching." 2)"Profession of perfectly correct doctrine." 3)"Encouraging faithfulness to the activities of a church." 4)"Seeking out special states of mind or ecstatic experiences." All of these objectives are not bad themselves but need to remain secondary to the primary objectives. All four can cause problems if pursued for their own sake.

The two primary objectives by contrast are: 1)"To bring apprentices to the point where they dearly love and constantly delight in that "heavenly Father" made real to earth in Jesus and are quite certain that there is no 'catch,' no limit, to the goodness of his intentions or to his power to carry them out." 2)"To remove our automatic responses against the kingdom of God, to free the apprentices of domination, of enslavement, to their old habitual patterns of thought, feeling, and action." Willard describes each objective in considerable detail so I'll try to outline only the highlights.

Objective 1 - Know A Big God
Willard describes God revealing himself to us in three primary ways. The first way is, "God's invisible nature... clearly presented to their understanding through what has been made (Romans 1:19-20)." Willard quotes Wordsworth who says:

And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply inter fused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man;
A motion and a spirit that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things.

-William Wordsworth - Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey

As part of this "curriculum of Christ likeness Willard prescribes that we open up all aspects of God the father and not shy away from difficult questions rather address them so that our view of God will both grow grander and be better founded.

The second way God reveals himself is through his love reaching out personally. "From the very beginning of the biblical revelation human beings are blessed by God personally and engaged by God in a face to face relationship revealed by periodic visits." This of course is most evident in the person of Jesus. When we teach Jesus in this curriculum Willard states that we must focus on: 1)His, "beauty, truth and power while he lived among us as one human being among others," 2) "The way he went to execution as a common criminal among other criminals on our behalf," 3)"The reality of Jesus risen, his actual existence now as a person who is present among his people," 4)"The Jesus who is master of the created universe and of human history." Willard says that these four things together describe the fullness of the Jesus found in scripture.

The third way God is revealed is through his interaction with the real events of our lives. "in order for disciples to be brought into a full and joyous love of God, they must see their very own life within the framework of unqualified goodness." We must come to the realization, like Joseph in the Old Testament, that God has meant the events of our lives to achieve good.

Objective 2 - Acquire Habits Of Goodness
Since we have lived in the kingdom of the world for so long w have acquired its habits. These must be broken and replaced with kingdom habits. Willard says, "Our training and experience must bring us to peace with the fact that if we do not follow our habitual desires, do not do what "normal" people would do, it is no major thing.

The changing of these habits cannot be done for us although God most certainly will help us. Just as a coach cannot make me shoot a basketball better, so Jesus cannot cause me to wive with better habits. Its a matter of practice. Willard describes a threefold way of developing habits of the kingdom. The first bit is the work of the Holy Spirit in us, the second is the role of tests that allow us real, practical situations in which to practice, and the third is the role of disciplines to, "enable us to do what we cannot do by direct effort."

In the interest of brevity I'll focus on the third. Willard expands on four specific disciplines but emphasizes that these ideas can by extended to all the others. He first talks about the, "Disciplines of abstinence: solitude and silence." "Solitude and silence," he contends, "allow us to escape the patterns of epidermal responses, with their consequences. They provide space to come to terms with these responses and replace them, with God's help, by different immediate responses that are more suitable to the kingdom environment--and, indeed, to the kind of life everyone in saner moments recognizes to be good."

Willard then addresses the, "Disciplines of engagement: study and worship." We study to take the order and nature of a subject into us so that it is automatic to use it in our practical dealing with the world. Willard uses the example of studying the fact that 2+2=4. Once we have studied it we automatically use this fact in our everyday life. The same should be true of the life of Jesus. When we study it we should incorporate it in our daily interactions. This will inevitably lead to worship. Willard describes this beautifully:

In worship we are ascribing to greatness, goodness, and glory to God. It is typical of worship that we put every possible aspect of out being into it; all our sensuous, conceptual, active, and creative capacities.
We embellish, elaborate, and magnify. poetry and songs, color and texture, food and incense, dace and procession are all used to exalt God. and sometimes it is the quiet absorption of thought, the electric passion of encounter, or total surrender of the will. In worship we strive for adequate expression of God's greatness. But only for a moment, if ever, do we achieve what seems like adequacy. We cannot do justice to God or his Son or his kingdom or his goodness to us.

-Dallas Willard - The Divine Conspiracy

So these are the highlights of the curriculum for becoming Christlike. When we apply it to our lives Willard recognizes that it will affect our churches. He says, "We may not soon have bigger crowds around us--and in fact they may for a while even get smaller--but we will soon have bigger Christians for sure. This is what I call 'church growth for those who hate it.' And bigger crowds are sure to follow, for the simple reason that human beings desperately need what we bring to them, the word and the reality of The Kingdom Among Us."