RE: [TruthTalk] Re:The 'Beyond Within' and The Way of Jesus

[ShieldsFamily]

Lance, I have fallen into your trap of course. J If taken out of context you can make anyone look like they are saying something they aren’t.  But if you include Willard’s other comments in context you will find that he does not have a sin-blind philosophy, which is why I like him so much. (And actually the part you quoted was one big section that I have absolutely no yellow highlights in because I found it boring and pretty much slept through it. The rest is highlighted heavily.)  In contrasting the two extremes of Christianity, the Left (which has a gospel of only social action to cure the ills of the world, and does not include the effects of personal accountability regarding actually obeying God’s commandments) and the one on the extreme Right “Once saved always saved; what you DO in regards to personal sin has no consequences as long as you just believe the right beliefs you will get into heaven”), he states:   “,,,the resources of God’s kingdom remain detached from human life. There is no gospel for human life and Christian discipleship, just one for death and one for social action. The souls of human beings are left to shrivel and die on the plains of life because they are not introduced into the environment for which they were made, the living kingdom of eternal life.             To counteract this we must develop a straightforward presentation, in word and life, of the reality of life now under God’s rule, through reliance upon the word and person of Jesus. In this way we can naturally become his students or apprentices. We can learn from him how to live our lives as he would live them if he were we. We can enter his eternal kind of life now. .. Does what we have discussed not make it clear that serious difficulties currently bar people of good intent from an effectual understanding of Jesus’ gospel for life and discipleship in his kingdom?   Regarding “integration of life and faith” he writes: “We should not be surprised then that while those to the left claimed to regard Jesus’ ethical teaching highly, the ethic they ascribed to him turns out upon examination to be derived from the reflections of philosophers such as Locke, Rousseau, Kant, and Marx….  The Modernists, no more than the conservatives, were about to accept as actually binding upon themselves the plain teaching of the Gospels as we have them. This remarkable reticence extends even to the Ten Commandments and to all specific moral directives of the Judeao-Christian heritage.”  Must I point out that this is one of the places where I identified the Krugerites among us who distain “morality” and actually obeying God’s commandments as being “bondage”???  Let’s discuss him more, if you like. Izzy                 From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Lance Muir Sent: Friday, November 05, 2004 8:59 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [TruthTalk] Re:The 'Beyond Within' and The Way of Jesus   Izzy says:'This is a good example of what I consider philosophy void of true gospel'   The source for this 'philosophy void of true gospel' is: 'Renovation of the Heart' -Putting on the Character of Christ' by best-selling author of The Divine Conspiracy-Dallas Willard from pg 13-chapter one.       ----- Original Message ----- From: ShieldsFamily To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: November 05, 2004 09:05 Subject: RE: [TruthTalk] Re:The 'Beyond Within' and The Way of Jesus   Lance,   I’m glad you shared this with us.  This is a good example of what I consider philosophy void of the true gospel.  I love philosophy, but not the void part which skews it into error.  The words below contain much truth.  What they lack is the insight one has on human behavior when viewed through the glasses of sin and it’s effect on the “human spirit”.  We are “formed” in sin.  The gospel is the good news that we can be set free from that bent in and through Christ.  Not just free from the eternal penalty of sin, but free from sin—today, here and now! That is the crucial element that I see is missing from Kruger and other sin-blind philosophers.  They mean well, but their “truth” misses the mark like a rock skipped off the surface of a lake; it bounces across the top w/o penetrating the depths.   For example, let me tell you about a private conversation between my son and myself.  He told me about three recent problems that had occurred at his squadron recently, a couple of which caused career problems for the people involved and one involved deaths.  I can’t go into the specifics because of that.  But it had left him sad and disappointed to see what seemed like disastrous consequences for seemingly minor infractions.  I said, “If you look at each one of those incidences you will see that if the people involved had simply obeyed God none of them would have happened.  One involved excessive consumption of alcohol, one involved taking a casual attitude about sexual “joking around” in the office, and one involved disrespect to authority.”  He thought about it and and he agreed that this was very true.  If each person involved had been walking in an attitude of submission to God’s Word, instead of walking casually in the ways of the world, it would have saved a lot of grief for a lot of people.  If we saw God’s commandments against sin as real daily helps to protect us from the immediate and eternal penalties of sin we could never write philosophies about “the human spirit being formed” etc, without including sin’s effect as the most important aspect.   Do you see my point of view? Or are you going to cling doggedly to the opinion that I am hopelessly in bondage to old fashioned ideas?   Izzy   From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Lance Muir Sent: Friday, November 05, 2004 4:40 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [TruthTalk] Re:The 'Beyond Within' and The Way of Jesus   'Watch over your hearts with all diligence for from it flow the springs of life.' Proverbs 4:23   We live from our heart.   The part of us that drives and organizes our life is not the physical. This remains true even if we deny it. You have a spirit within you and it has been formed. This is true of everyone.   The human spirit is an inescapable fundamental aspect of every human being; and it takes on whichever character it has from the experiences and the choices that we have lived through or made in our past. That is what it means for it to be 'formed'.   Our life and how we find the world now and in the future is, almost totally, a simple result of what we have become in the depths of our being--in our spirit, will, or heart. From there we see our world and interpret reality. From there we make our choices, break forth into action, try to change our world. We live from our depths--most of which we do not understand.   "Do you mean," some will say, "that the individual and collective disasters that fill the human scene are not imposed upon us from without? That they do not just happen to us?"   Yes. That is what I mean. In today's world, famine, war, and epidemic are almost totally the outcome of human choices, which are expressions of the human spirit. Though various qualifications and explanations are appropriate, that is in general true.   Individual disasters, too, very largely follow upon human choices, our own or those of others. And whether or not they do in a particular case, the situations in which we find ourselves are never as important as our responses to them, which come from our 'spiritual' side. A carefully cultivated heart will, assisted by the Grace of God, foresse, forestall, or transform most of the painful situations before which others stand like helpless children saying "Why?"   Accordingly, the greatest need you and I have--the greatest need of collective humanity--is renovation of our heart. That spiritual place within us from which outlook, choices, and actions come has been formed by a world away from God. Now it must be transformed.