It is for Freedom Christ Has Set Us Free

An important challenge for Christians is to be able to distinguish between the freedom celebrated on the 4th of July and that described in the scriptures. They aren’t identical (which I’ll explore below), and I think the efforts of many well-meaning pastors and churches in their worship services around the times of our national holidays actually serves to confuse many happy church goers about what freedom for a Christian really entails.

In Galatians 5 Paul says that it is for freedom that Christ has set us free. This particular verse follows a section in chapter 4 where Paul uses the allegory of Hagar and Sarah to illustrate the difference between being born the child of a slave (the law) and being born the child of a free woman (grace). Through Christ, Paul says, we are “children, not of the slave, but of the free woman.” And it is for this reason we have a share in the inheritance. Not because we do this or that, not because we follow the law, not because we always do what is right, not because we are circumcised, but because in Christ we have become children of freedom. It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. And so, the only thing that counts, according to Paul, “is faith working through love.” 

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Forgiveness Isn't the Marriage

I have a philosopher friend (who sells insurance for a living) who, if given a chance in conversation, has a tendency to say something simple but very meaningful. One day we were talking about how we both grew up within the same streams of Christianity (for which we are both very grateful), and one of the things we picked up along the way was the version of Christianity that goes something like this: you’re a really bad sinner, and Jesus died on the cross so that you could be forgiven. Therefore, you need to ask him to forgive your sins so that you’ll get into heaven when you die.

Then my philosopher/insurance salesman friend made the following observation:

Something that seems to make more sense is to think of it like a marriage. Forgiveness in a marriage is kind of like the foundation poured for a house––there’s no chance for the marriage to exist without forgiveness in place. A marriage has to has forgiveness to begin, and it has to have forgiveness to keep going, but forgiveness isn’t the marriage.

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“If there is to be a next stage to the so-called spiritual formation movement, this must be it.”

I first read an article by Dallas Willard when a college professor handed out copies of Willard's "Discipleship: For Super-Christians Only?" during my final semester of school. After that article, I was hooked and had to find out more about what Dallas taught. He had just released a new book that same year, The Divine Conspiracy. I got it and...didn't make it through on my first attempt. Anyone who's ever tried to read Dallas who hasn't done so before finds it a bit of a challenge at first.

But the challenge is ever worth the effort. I returned later to the book–and then again, and again...and read all of his others reading or listening to everything I could find by him. It is not an overstatement for me to say that his teaching, particularly in The Divine Conspiracy, revolutionized my understanding of what it means to be a Christian and to seek to follow Christ. Since my introduction to Dallas came at the point of my life that it did, his teaching has also shaped everything I've tried to do in ministry since.

So following Dallas' death last year, when I learned that there was another book he had in the works which would still be published, I couldn't wait. When I found out that it was The Divine Conspiracy Continued, I was like a kid who knows that Christmas is coming. 

While the title for this book is appropriate, it is not only a continuation of Willard’s work in The Divine Conspiracy, but it is an extension of all of his works. As one who has read and re-read Willard’s previous books for years, I always found myself fascinated with the summary implications he tended to sketch toward the end of his books. Particularly in the final chapter of The Spirit of the Disciplines, titled “The Disciplines and the Power Structures of This World,” Willard intriguingly used broadly descriptive language to portray how disciples of Jesus in all walks of life would affect the entire world for good. Whereas that chapter was the brief, general description of how that would happen, this book is the detail that I and many readers of Willard’s previous work have been longing for.

Some readers who expect another “spiritual formation” book similar to Willard’s previous work may find themselves initially disappointed. Even though it is thoroughly consistent with Dallas’ previous writings, it is also very different. However, the book should be very appropriately be found on the shelves of readers of spiritual formation classics, because it is the most thorough, inspiring, and thought-provoking explanation yet available on how true Christian spiritual formation is always, inevitably for the sake of others. “If there is to be a next stage to the so-called spiritual formation movement, this must be it.” (Kindle loc. 711)

When I first heard that this book was to be released after Dallas' death and had been co-authored with Gary Black, Jr., I was initially skeptical. I’m not alone in saying that The Divine Conspiracy transformed my understanding and practice of Christianity, so to have a follow-up to such a masterful book to be co-authored by someone I didn’t know of and released after Dallas’ death made me expect a letdown. However, Black proves himself to be up to the task of coauthoring a book whose title will invite such high expectations. Having been a close friend of Willard, as well as having focused on Willard’s theology for the subject of his PhD studies and first book, The Theology of Dallas Willard, there is no one better qualified.

As anyone familiar with Willard would hope and expect, this book will make the reader think and requires willingness to do mental work and be challenged. It is well worth the effort, though, for it is a gift for all of us who long and hope for the day when the kingdoms of this world will conform to the kingdom of our God and Christ.

Why Theology?

While scanning over some recent posts on Facebook I came across one that has got me thinking (again). It really was just a simple little post, only nine words. This person just plopped it down on the Wesleyan-Anglican Society’s page seemingly from out of nowhere. Perhaps I was reading too much into it, or maybe I was looking too hard for some deep antecedent cause for the post, but it just seemed so out of character with the sort of things people posted on this page. I wondered if perhaps it was a dig, a sort of tacit rebuke—I, at least, took it that way. Maybe I’m just too sensitive, too defensive, but my anti-intellectual radar started going off. 

The words were true enough, powerful words I’ve often preached on. They are indeed words I try to live by, even if it is only haltingly and with great struggle. But here they held a tone, and tenor, that was off-putting to me. The post simply said, “Jesus said: Take up thy cross and follow me.” It was the “Jesus said” that put me off. It seemed to have a sort of literalist, the-bible-said-it-so-that-settles-it-so-stop-all-your-theologizing air about it. 

My first thought was, “Yea, Jesus said it. But what does it mean?” What does it mean to take up my cross? What does it mean to follow Jesus? These are not easy questions with easy answers. Simply saying “Jesus said it” doesn’t help; it doesn’t answer anything. Really, when you think about it (and I don’t mean to be irreverent here), the words in and of themselves are empty, without meaning. So, if the words themselves are empty, void of meaning, where does meaning come from? If meaning is in some sense external to the words themselves, where do we look to find meaning?

The simple answer is: that is what theology is for.

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Coming Soon: Rock God

Rock God Cover Shot.jpg

[The following is an excerpt from Rock God: How God Shakes, Rattles and Rolls Our Easy-Listening Lives, coming from SalvationLife Books in June 2014.]

The Newport Folk Festival had hosted Bob Dylan in 1963 and 1964, where he was an up-and-coming golden boy lifting high the folk torch for the new generation. But when he took the stage in 1965, it was no longer just Bob and an acoustic guitar and harmonica. The unthinkable happened: Bob Dylan went electric. Playing a Fender Stratocaster and backed by an electric band, Bob launched into “Maggie’s Farm” and then “Like a Rolling Stone” to a mixture of cheers and boos. This new sound characterized Dylan’s new album and subsequent tour, which was met with the mixed reaction throughout, including the concert in Manchester, England, during which a fan yelled, “Judas!” (In response, Dylan called the man a liar and then told his band to play it loud!) 

So what was the big deal? Why did an electrified Bob Dylan so bother not only the fans, but many of Bob’s own heroes in the folk music community? The accusation was basically that Dylan had turned his back on his roots to become a rock star. Folk music is music of the people. It’s music for singing along, for rallying others, for giving voice to the worker and the young and the oppressed and the voiceless. It isn’t about volume and spectacle and rock star trappings. Bob Dylan couldn’t be both a folkie and a rocker. Or could he?

What if, by going electric, Dylan was actually enlarging the music of the people? Perhaps he didn’t like being pigeonholed, nor did he like “the people” being pigeonholed with one style of music. With hindsight it’s clear that Bob Dylan had many stories to tell – stories of the people. And he found rock to be a suitable voice. Rock and roll is also roots music, the music of the people. Rock and roll was not born onstage. It was born in the fields and in the church. It’s music for garages and front porches and street corners. Yes it blows the walls off of coliseums. But it always comes back to the street…to the people. 

God is a God of the people. He’s not a product of the people, but a God who does not restrict his revelations or residency to an elite class or halls of power. Instead, he is Immanuel, literally “God with us.” This is how he is revealed at the beginning of Matthew’s Gospel with the fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy, “‘The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel’ (which means ‘God with us’)” (Matt. 1:23; Is. 7:14). And Jesus reminds his followers of the same thing at the end of Matthew’s Gospel, “And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age” (28:20). And these declarations bookend story after story of the good news that God has come in flesh to live and die and rise and make all things new, right in our midst. 

God is here, with us, rooted inside us. He is the Rock God, the God of fields and churches, of garages and front porches and street corners. The God of the people. We don’t save rock and roll for times when we jump on a Harley, light up a smoke, and leave our hometown behind. Rock and roll is all about our hometown. We move into the music. It’s part of us, and we’re part of it. 

And this is the way of the Rock God, in whom “we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28). He isn’t some distant deity we only encounter in a church building or in a “religious experience” or in death. We find him rooted in us, and we find ourselves rooted in him. He comes to us, and we leave ourselves behind to go to him. We leave the flash and bombast and rock star trappings and sold-out soullessness to return to the raw, the real, the Rock God…

The Moment the Doors are Opened

I work part-time on a church staff and one of my responsibilities is to serve as the coordinator for all of the weddings that take place at our church. This is a job that I absolutely love! I enjoy walking with a couple throughout the process: their planning and many months of preparations; the wedding rehearsal as they prepare for the following day and as they are reunited with friends and family members who have often traveled great distances to celebrate with them; and then to witness their wedding day when everyone is full of smiles and love abounds.  

There was a wedding at our church on Saturday and even though I had just met the grandmother the day before, when I went to get her before the ceremony began to tell her that it was time to line up for the processional, she was beaming and grabbed my arm and said, “I love you!” Joy and love just abound at weddings! It is fun to be in the mix.  

My absolute favorite part of the wedding ceremony comes when all of the bridal party has already entered the Sanctuary, the flower girl starts down the aisle and we close the large, wooden double-doors at the back of the Sanctuary to prepare for the bride’s entrance. The bride has a last minute alone with her father and this is a very precious time. Then the music begins, the congregation stands and expectancy builds as they wait for the doors to be opened. Both doors are opened simultaneously, revealing the bride to her groom waiting for her at the end of the aisle.  

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