The Failure to Make Disciples

Thoughts from The Divine Conspiracy by Dallas Willard                                   October 30, 2018

While the title refers to a ‘conspiracy’ by God to subtly overcome evil with good, the message that came through most to me had to do with addressing the question of why the church has been so ineffective in making disciples. The book opens stating the basic problem and his conclusion that both the theological left and right in the church preach a partial gospel that is disconnected from personal integrity and personal character, which are foundational for personal holiness and discipleship. They are fundamentally disconnected from leading people to Christ-likeness. He proposes that the theological left promotes a gospel of commitment to fixing societal/structural sin without really dealing with personal guilt and sin, while the theological right promotes a gospel that is primarily forensic and deals with personal guilt without addressing society. Both of them focus on a salvation that lies somewhere in the future (at death for the forensic gospel, when social justice is achieved for the social gospel) and are what Willard calls ‘gospels of sin management’ rather than of new life.  Neither one really requires a personal, daily walk with Christ; while things like prayer may ‘work’ for some, it isn’t really necessary if you are saved from your guilt on the one hand or aligned with the current politically correct social causes on the other. He comments on this matter that “prayer is not needed either to go to heaven when you die or to be committed to the cause of liberation.”  The result in our time is a Christianity that has little to do with the kind of person you are.  He issues a challenge: would the gospel that I preach cause people to want to become full time students of Jesus? I think he makes good points about this and I have also been concerned about the failure of disciple making in the institutional church. If discipleship happens it is not a result of the programs and culture of the institutional church.

One of my life-long disappointments in the local church has been the near total absence of anything that looks like a serious effort to make disciples. Having been very involved in CRU while in college with their small groups approach to building disciples, I was hoping to find some sort of discipleship in the church that is more aimed at families rather than students. Students have very flexible time schedules so I knew it would be much different after marriage and entering the workforce, but it was very disappointing to find that no such thing exists in local churches. I have lived in Wisconsin, Chicago, Dayton, Memphis, Atlanta, and western Massachusetts and have never found any organized plan to make disciples anywhere.

The CRU approach can be summarized in the 3 words Win, Build, and Send. The CRU approach to evangelism incorporates it as part of discipleship as small groups train their members to do ongoing witnessing. It seems to me that local churches focus on Win (evangelism) but more as events with preaching than by personal witness. Churches tend to have a patchwork of various programs on the other 2 matters. Willard’s book doesn’t really say very much about the Win part or the Send (multiplication of disciplers) part, focusing the Build disciples part. His focus is on being an apprentice to Jesus such that we actually live the new life in Christ and develop habits that overcome our natural, fleshly reactions to life. In that regard he focuses less on what we do and more on the kind of person we are. Most other discipleship definitions seem to be mostly aimed at what we do. 

He also goes on to outline some obstacles to making disciples that are inherent in our current ‘gospels’ in addition to the incompleteness of these 2 that confine the impact of the kingdom of God to some undetermined time in the future. One of these obstacles is our view of God as either far away from us as a result of our view of the cosmos being vast with God out there somewhere beyond space and time, or else an opposite view of God being inside us but not really active in the world around us. Both of these cause us to think of God and His kingdom as being in a location that is not very important in our physical life here and now. He spends time addressing the nature of the cosmos as being within God’s kingdom and God being available everywhere, along with how our limited view of the reality of both matter and spirit limits our openness and willingness to living in the kingdom now.

Another obstacle is our view of Jesus; we often view Him as holy but not actually smart or having great ability; we think of Him as wise but never think of Him as having humor or laughing; we think of Him as having eliminated obedience as important by providing the solution to our sin and guilt but do not see Him as demonstrating what it looks like for obedience to the Law to be our natural and automatic response when we have life in the kingdom. The result is we don’t seek to grow in obedience and holiness; as Willard points out, though, “Trust in Christ is inseparable from the fulfilling the Law” and “Law is not the source of righteousness but it is the course of righteousness”. In misunderstanding Jesus we also misunderstand His teaching, and he uses the Sermon on the Mount to walk through that.

The partial gospels do not require prayer and our misunderstandings inhibit prayer. He encourages praying for what we are concerned about since “prayer simply dies from efforts to pray for ‘good things’ that honestly do not matter to us.” This actual connection with God then leads to a discussion of what building disciples might look like.

Like Piper, he points out that delighting in God is the real goal of discipleship. He finds that getting to that requires some discipline, however, with ‘disciple’ and ‘discipline’ sharing the same root. Delighting in God, desiring God, loving that which is lovely and virtuous; these are all part of the goal and should involve both body and spirit since we are made as unified body/spirit creations. The gospel taught to disciples must be the gospel that reveals the God who can be loved with all our heart, soul, mind and strength, which is to say with both our spirit and our body.  This includes delighting in God’s creation, both of the cosmos and of ourselves. Loving father and mother as in the 10 Commandments requires being thankful that God created us as part of His creation, for example. He sees discipleship as a course of apprenticeship to Jesus that is intended to create habits of body and spirit that break our bondage to natural, fleshly responses to life.  This disciplines us so that our body becomes a spiritual asset.  He recommends 4 basic disciplines in this course: 2 of Abstinence (Solitude and Silence) and 2 of Activity (Study and Worship/Service).

I agree with much of what he has to say, and I think his concern about the need for discipleship is exactly on target. I think it would be good to expand the core disciplines to a few more that go back to the Torah: Sabbath, giving/tithe, and the Levitical constraints on sex. All of these involve key areas where body and spirit connect in important ways.  He mentions Sabbath briefly, and it may be that Sabbath and giving can be included in the Worship aspect, but our current age and the sexual revolution cries out for a specific response to the sexual dysfunction that has also become an obstacle to discipleship in our time. The regular practice of abstinence called for in Leviticus 15 is a stark contrast to the current culture and teaches very directly that regular abstinence and self-control are required disciplines for the body if the body is to be a power for good. Sexuality has become a defining issue of our time and it will need to be better addressed in the church as a result; I think the church has failed in regard to adequate teaching on marriage and sexuality just as we have failed in discipleship (of which marriage and family is an important part).  But you can’t cover everything in one book so overall I appreciated this book a great deal!

Corporations and a Sense of Place

This week Kimberly-Clark announced the impending closure of 2 manufacturing plants in Neenah, Wisconsin. While this sort of thing happens all the time in the business world, it marks the end of an era for this town. K-C was founded there in 1872 and has had manufacturing plants there ever since. Over time the corporate office presence became larger and larger compared to the manufacturing presence, but as recently as the 1990’s K-C still had 2 tissue mills, a diaper plant, 2 nonwovens sites, and a feminine care plant there for manufacturing. These closures will bring an end to production sites there though the corporate locations will still be a very large employer there.

Corporations have historically had a connection to a place, both for manufacturing and offices. For K-C that place was Neenah, WI, but many others come to mind. Ford was connected to Detroit, Dow to Midland, MI; P&G to Cincinnati; Anheuser-Busch to St. Louis. The founders started the company in a place, and as human beings they had ties to that place. It made sense for the factories to be in that place as well. Both the people and the corporation that were extensions of those people had a sense of place. People have a natural love for home, and work has a natural connection to home. Chesterton wrote that “men did not love Rome because she was great; she was great because they had loved her.” Benedictine monks make a vow to stay in one place, one monastery, for life. This blog from First Things is good commentary on that: https://www.firstthings.com/blogs/firstthoughts/2014/05/on-the-importance-of-place . Perhaps Israel is the best example of this: God’s promises to Abraham and his descendants are not only spiritual promises but also promise of a place, The Land.

That seemed to hold for corporations until after World War II. The economic expansion that followed the war and which had been pent up during the Great Depression resulted in many corporations opening new places of production first all over America, then later all over the world as the global corporation came to be common.  The sense of place began to be diffused and corporate leaders became vagabonds as they moved from place to place to build a career. Those who would reach the top of the corporate ladder often had a much less definite connection to the historic community where the corporation began. Over time as corporate leaders began to come from outside the company, the sense of place also seemed to fade even more.

There are economic reasons of course. It may be better for logistics or energy cost or raw materials to be in a different place. And often the reason for the starting place of a company was the resources available in that place. I am sure there were various economic challenges in the past, but the sense of place seemed to be the impetus to innovation in approaching those problems. Today the focus seems to be more about wanting a target market to be the impetus rather than a desire to stay in a place. The love of a place seems less vital now.

Some think this is a good thing,  promoting the idea that we should be ‘global citizens’ and not so locally oriented.  I am not convinced that is altogether a good thing. I agree with C. S. Lewis , G. K. Chesterton, and Wendell Berry  that connection to a place is one important way we learn to respect and care for creation. As a Christian my ultimate loyalty cannot be simply to a place, but a sense of place contributes to my role as a steward of the land and of life.

So I am saddened by these recent events. Perhaps these were economically necessary moves, but I cannot help thinking that they are nonetheless additional signs of the loss of our sense of place.

Prayer

I recently read Timothy Keller's book Prayer and I found it helpful in the ongoing quest to understand what prayer is all about. I still find myself returning to C. S. Lewis' thoughts on prayer more than to anyone else's writing about prayer but there were some helpful insights in Keller's book as well.

I blogged some years ago about my lack of interest in most of the writing that has been done about prayer as conversation with God. Much of my discomfort with that commentary is that it seems to bring prayer down to the level of  'chit-chat'. Keller in his book maintains the idea of discussion/conversation but makes it clear that this is not mere chit-chat.  In particular I liked his emphasis that this is a conversation that God Himself initiated, both through His Word and through Christ, and our prayer is a response to the conversation that He has initiated. We respond to His Word, to the life and work of Christ, and to the Spirit; it is a conversation that cannot happen without His initiation. I find this a much more clear and also more reverent approach to this idea of conversation with God than what is presented in most things I have read or heard on prayer. Keller's comments taken from Eugene Peterson about how we learn to talk, where 'all speech is answering speech, we are spoken to before we speak' was very timely input for me as I have been watching my young grandchildren learn to respond and to talk. Applying that to us in prayer, where God speaks to us in Scripture and our prayers can and should arise from Scripture was an appreciated insight.

Keller also continues with some of Lewis' thought about how prayer recognizes God as God, the One to whom we must bring our concerns since He alone is sovereign. Lewis adds to this that in prayer God grants to us the high position of  'person'. These two concepts belong side by side in my opinion. Keller goes on with this line of thought by noting that this kind of communication can only happen between persons. He points out that if God were impersonal then prayer would be an illusion. This would help explain some Eastern religions where a meditation without thoughts, words, or concerns seems to be the goal rather than the Christian concept of prayer. Keller goes on to point out that if God were unipersonal then love could only appear after he began to create, which would mean that power is more fundamental than love; love (and its results like communion between persons) would be less important than power. But if God is triune then words and communication take on a power and importance that would not fit those other alternatives. There was communication and love in the Trinity from all eternity; this makes the concept of The Incarnate Word all the richer!

These were the elements that struck me most in this book, and they all come in the first 100 pages. The remainder was more about how to practice prayer more fully, which is practical and certainly needed in our time when it seems that prayer is less abundant than the decadence of our culture calls out for. It is certainly the case that I need to cultivate the practice of prayer more than I do. I especially appreciated from the book those first 100 pages that strengthened my understanding of why prayer is fundamental in the Christian life.

Singleness and the Image of God

In my last post I discussed how marriage bears the image of God in a particular way that neither male nor female alone can do. This begs the question of how are we to think about singleness then?


I think that the matter of sin and the Fall are crucial to this topic. When we look at Genesis 1-2 and the design for the male/female union to bear God's image we immediately realize that this is implemented in the Garden of Eden before the Fall. Genesis 5 and Genesis 9 both reiterate that mankind still bears God's image after the Fall, and that marriage as a bearer of His image and His blessing on marriage also remain after the Fall. Yet it is clear that the image of God in man has been marred by sin. When we look at all of this it seems clear that marriage and the male/female union are designed before the Fall and that in the Garden of Eden there is no design for singleness. It can be assumed that children would have been single for some amount of time even in Eden, but the design is for marriage. It seems that long term singleness is one outcome of the Fall. This will be a 'hard saying' for some folks but that seems to me a clear implication of Genesis 1-3.


This by no means equates singleness to sin; it simply means that the design for men and women has been marred by sin and there are a great many consequences of that. It also does not mean that singles as people are somehow less in God's image as individuals. The fact that marriage bears God's image in a way individuals cannot is a matter of the vocation or calling of marriage, not of the individuals involved.


Widowhood results from the death of a spouse, and death is a result of the Fall. This type of singleness is clearly connected to the Fall. For young adults, the world system is fallen and very often impacts marriage. In China now, as a result of the Communist one-child policy, there is a shortfall of at least 20 million women compared to the male population below 30. Many of these men will be single as a result of the sin of the Chinese leaders who forced so many abortions and the sin of parents in selectively aborting baby girls. Abortion of baby girls has been practiced in India as well, where there will be a similar impact on singleness. In the U.S. how have the 50 million abortions since Roe v. Wade impacted the marriage opportunities for some young adults? Many young adults will be single as a result of the world system through no fault of their own, and  that includes the U.S. as well as the examples in Asia.  They still bear the image of God as individuals. Genesis 9 in the passage that institutes capital punishment makes it clear that individuals also bear God's image, though it in no way cancels the fact that the male/female union bears that image in a way that individuals cannot.


Some believers will remain single for lack of a suitable believer to marry. In this fallen world there are consistently more women than men in church, consistently more women than men who self-identify as believers. This means some will have difficulty finding a suitable marriage partner. The Bible is clear that we are not to be unequally yoked with unbelievers, so it is a Biblical and responsible choice to remain single in this circumstance. This too is a result of the Fall.


There will be some who remain single as a result of chosen sin as well: sins of homosexuality, sins of placing career above all else, sins of promiscuity that end up destroying the chance for marriage all come to mind.  Both the world system and chosen sin have an impact on singleness. They also impact marriages, and destroy many marriages.


This can be compared with disease, which is also an outcome of the Fall. Some disease seems to be a result of our choices (lifelong smoking that leads to cancer comes to mind) while others are simply part of the way things are in this fallen world (infants with cancer come to mind). Some will remain single due to their choices, others due to things beyond their control.


Some are also called to singleness for the sake of the Kingdom of God. Jesus in Matthew 19 speaks of those who are 'eunuchs for the kingdom'; Paul speaks of those who remain single for the work of the gospel in his letters to the church at Corinth. Genesis says that in this world the male/female union in marriage carries God's image in a special way, but Jesus points out that in the resurrection 'they neither marry nor are given in marriage' (Matt. 22:30). The image of communion in a love relationship is carried by Christ and the church in the resurrection. Christ himself was single. Believers may be called to be the picture of what is to come by their singleness in devotion to the kingdom of God.


It is sometimes useful to consider pushing ideas to their extreme limit. What if everyone were single? Would that bear God's image on this earth in a full manner? Would the image of God on earth be diminished by the lack of male/female unity, children, and families? I think this would clearly diminish the fullness of God's image on earth.  What if everyone were married? Would that diminish the fullness of God's image on earth? I think not. There would still be singles before they marry and  there would still be widows. I think this reinforces the notion of marriage as the basic design.


Yet the Fall has resulted in singleness as a reality, and those singles are no less in God's image. Their station in life is different from those who are married, however, and so in Christ they are called to bear God's image in a different way, a way that looks forward to the resurrection.

The Image of God in Marriage

What does it mean to be made in God's image, as Genesis 1 and 2 maintain, and how do we live out that image on this earth? There have been many attempts to try to locate God's image in some single attribute like rationality or language or decision making. The Bible never tries to do that sort of thing and I think it is a mistake to attempt it. However, I do think we can identify some of the elements of being in His image directly from the Bible.


Genesis 1:26-28 is a key text on this topic, saying " Let Us make man in our image, according to Our likeness....And God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. And He blessed them and said, 'Be fruitful and multiply...'


In our culture much of the emphasis in teaching about marriage has been about companionship, but this is talking about much more than companionship. It is talking about the male/female union in marriage as an important part of bearing God's image on earth.


In his book The Mission of God (chapter 13, p. 427), Christopher J. H. Wright makes these observations about this passage: "Genesis 1 sets human male/female complementarity closely alongside the image of God.

• So God created man in His own image
• In the image of God he created him
• Male and female he created them

The implication from the tight parallelism seems clearly to be that there is something about the wholeness of human gender complementarity and the mutual relationship it enables that reflects something true about the very nature of God."  Pope John Paul II in his Theology of the Body indicates that the love relationship of the Trinity is pictured in marriage and in the bodily union of male/female; he goes on to say, 'the definitive creation of man consists in the creation of the unity of 2 beings'. He goes on to talk about the meaning of the body itself, what he calls 'the spousal meaning of the body' as an important component of this complementarity. This is to say that the very maleness and femaleness of the body has meaning, and is part of what it means to bear God's image on earth. The body itself enables us to bear God's image in the union of male and female in unity.



In talking about this in chapter 2 of  his book Genesis in Space and Time, Francis Schaeffer points out, "male and female constitute one whole,  become one flesh. Man, with a capital M, equals male and female..." This is to say that to fully bear God's image requires both male and female in union.


All of these agree that marriage bears God's image in a special way. This image requires complementarity and fruitfulness, as shown in the verses immediately following where the man and woman are blessed and the blessing specifically involves fruitfulness to multiply. This is clearly about much more than companionship; it is about being God's image on this earth, living out His image here and now. The fundamental purpose of marriage is to bear God's image on this earth in a way that male or female alone cannot do.


Same-sex marriage cannot do this. It cannot because it denies the basic meaning of the body by joining 2 bodies not designed to be joined; it cannot because of its inherent sterility rather than an inherent design to be fruitful; it cannot because it lacks the differences between male and female natures that must join to more completely bear God's image.


Most evangelical churches totally fail to teach the importance of marriage in bearing God's image on earth. That is a huge failure. Is it any wonder that there are so many divorces in the church now, since we don't seem to know the fundamental purpose of marriage?

The Triumph of Romanticism in the Supreme Court

The ruling in the Supreme Court last week to legalize homosexual marriage in the U.S. culminates the long history of romance becoming the sole cultural basis for marriage. Unfortunately it extends that mindset to unions that are also contrary to nature and contrary to the Biblical concept of marriage.


C. S. Lewis in his book The Four Loves spends a lot of time talking about how the falling-in-love experience is never adequate as a foundation for true love, love as described in the Bible such as in I Corinthians 13. He points out that following romantic love as the great authority in life is nothing new but has been especially ascendant in Western culture since the rise of the  romantic poets and romantic composers about 200 years ago. He makes clear that following the lead of romance often results in nothing more exalted than adultery, injustice, destruction of families and breaking of vows regardless of how soaring and exalted that in-love experience may be. Lasting love  ('caritas' in Latin, 'agape' in Greek), he goes on to explain, is more often controlled by such things as justice, fidelity, self-sacrifice, and self-denial.


Both the Bible and Lewis point out that there are a great many times when falling in love is not an acceptable reason for marriage. The Bible is especially emphatic about not marrying those outside the faith, regardless of whether you are in love. It is also clear that falling in love when you are already married or falling in love with a near relative (incest) are not acceptable reasons for marriage. The Biblical injunctions against homosexuality make it clear that falling in love with someone of the same sex is not an acceptable reason for marriage. There are many other cases, such as falling in love with someone vastly different in age, in which it is not a good idea even if it may not be immoral. There are a great many cases where falling in love is not an acceptable reason for marriage.




And while falling in love often provides the motivation to get married, it is never enough to sustain a marriage. Again the The Four Loves makes a very strong case that the love of I Corinthians 13 requires that things like justice, fidelity, self-sacrifice and the keeping of vows be the basis of a marriage, not falling in love.




In our culture the rise of romance as the only basis for marriage began to take its heavy toll with the rise of no fault divorce. This kind of divorce is based on the idea that no longer having the 'in love' experience is justification for divorce, and requires acceptance of the idea that falling in love is the basis of marriage. If marriage were based on more solid ground, then falling out of love would not be a basis for divorce. Having accepted the idea that falling in love is the foundation of marriage, it only made sense to see falling out of love as the basis for divorce.


If falling in love is the foundation of marriage, then falling in love is also the basis for sexual intimacy. From there, it is a very short step to accepting falling in love as justification for sex as soon as you fall in love, without waiting for marriage. So the rise in the cult of romance has resulted in easy divorce and also the rise in living together without marriage.


The church has been all too complicit in this. The church exalts the idea of falling in love as the basis of marriage just as the secular world does. The teaching of the Song of Solomon as a guidebook for marriage does exactly that, proclaiming romantic love as the foundation of marital bliss; yet, the Bible itself looks at the phase of Solomon's life in which the Song was written and proclaims it vanity (Ecclesiastes 2:8) and sin (I Kings 11:1-8). Some say the Song is a picture of Christ and the church but the extreme sensuality of the Song contrasted against the totally non-sensual nature of Christ's love make that view untenable in my mind. The teaching of the church about the Song is typical of the victory of romanticism in the church as well as in the broader culture, and this romanticism has paved the way for viewing homosexuality with this same romantic mindset. If falling in love is the main issue, then gender should not matter.


The fruit of the triumph of romanticism is clear: rampant divorce, rampant out of wedlock births and cohabitation, rampant adultery and fornication, and rampant homosexuality. In every case children are damaged even more than their romance-obsessed parents.
It will not be enough for the church to continue to speak out about the sin of homosexuality; the church will have to abandon its obsession with romance as well.


There are other issues with the decision of the court, issues about constitutional law and the court's disregard of the legislative process, but it seems to me that the acceptance of the ruling by much of the public has nothing to do with their concept of constitutional law: it is all about their complete acceptance of the cult of romance.

Let the Earth Rejoice!

I recently finished reading John Muir's book My First Summer in the Sierra which is his journal from a summer spent helping herd a flock of sheep in and around the area that is now Yosemite National Park in 1869. My first visit to Yosemite was about 6 years ago, and I had been interested in reading some of Muir's writing since then because of his important role in getting Congress and President Theodore Roosevelt to expand the park.


When I first visited the park I was very nearly overwhelmed with the extravagant beauty of the place. The enormous water falls like Yosemite Fall and Bridal Veil Fall, the imposing granite formations like Half Dome and El Capitan, and the grandeur of the sequoia groves all in close proximity give meaning to the word 'breathtaking'. For me, though, they also move me to thanksgiving to the Creator who made such places possible, and the place itself moves me to worship. That seems to have been the case with John Muir as well.


In our time when most environmentalists seem to worship nature as god, Muir praised God for creating nature. I was impressed by how very often he brings up God in this book. The book is not a long book at 159 pages in my edition, but I counted over 40 times when he brings up God in his journal. He speaks of how the beauty of the wilderness seeks to 'draw us up into God's light'; one beautiful morning he comments about 'the morning stars "still singing together and all the sons of God shouting for joy"'. He comments how the pitch on certain conifer cones are 'bringing to mind the old ceremonies of anointing with oil' and how the seeds from these cones 'fly to their predestined places'.  He speaks of how the great granite formation remind him of the Scripture "He hath builded the mountains." He makes reference to Samson's riddle, to incense offerings, and to psalms. Muir clearly was well acquainted with the Scriptures and they were also top of mind and readily recalled, not something he had written off and forgotten.


I appreciated his book because it captured much of what I also felt when at Yosemite, a feeling that this is the beauty that God both created and intended. It made me wonder what the garden of Eden may have been like in beauty and wonder as it is hard for me to even imagine a more beautiful place. The place itself seems to offer praise to God, and draws it forth from me.


Tomorrow is Easter Sunday. Finishing this book just before Easter reminded me of words from a Sandy Patty song about Easter: 'did the grass sing? did the earth rejoice to feel You again?' she sings in the song "Was it a Morning Like This?" about Christ's resurrection. Psalm 98 says 'let the rivers clap their hands, let the mountains sing together for joy before the Lord'. I have to think that the universe itself praises God for the resurrection we celebrate at Easter. It was good to be reminded of that by Muir's little book.