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WilRevo 07-04-024
REVOLUTION
OF CHARACTER Discovering
Christ’s Pattern for Spiritual Transformation Adapted
from Renovation of the Heart NavPress, 2005,
210 pp., ISBN 1-57683-957-9 |
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Dallas
Willard is a philosophy professor at the God
desires to transform every aspect of your life. All five elements of the person play a role
as we subject them reflectively to God’s transforming work. “We
are called to live in the awareness of another world….” “We wake each morning breathing the air of
this new world…” But we fail to enjoy
the Christ life because we don’t approach and receive it in the right way.
(9-11) The
work of Christ always begins in our heart and moves outward. The revolution of character changes people
through an ongoing personal relationship with God and one another. It changes people’s ideas, beliefs,
feelings, and habits as well as their bodily tendencies and social
relations. (12,14) “We
usually know very little about the things that move in our own soul, the
deepest level of our life. Our
‘within’ is astonishingly complex and subtle—even devious.” (16) “To
the degree spiritual formation in Christ is successful, the outer life of the
individual becomes a natural expression of the character and teachings of
Jesus.” (16) The
six basic elements of human nature: 1.
Thoughts (images, concepts, judgments, inferences) 2.
Feelings (sensations, emotions) 3.
Heart, also called ‘spirit’ and ‘will’ (choice, decision;
reflected as character) 4.
Body (action; interacts with the physical world) 5.
Social context (personal and structural relations with others) 6.
Soul (the factor that integrates all of the above to form one
life) (25) “To mature in spiritual formation means to
love God with all of the heart,
soul, mind, and strength and to love one’s neighbor as oneself.” (26) Feelings
and thoughts always go together. They
are never independent. (27) “Life must be
organized by the heart if it is to be organized at all. It can be pulled together only from the
inside. That is the function of the
heart, spirit, or will: to organize our life as a whole, and, indeed, to
organize it around God. A great part
of the disaster of contemporary life lies in the fact that it is organized
around our human feelings, not around God.” (29) “The
soul is that dimension of the person that connects all of the other
dimensions so that they form one life.
It is a higher-level dimension because its direct field of play
consists of the other dimensions (thoughts, body, and so on.). “This is the biblical view, understanding
that ‘soul’ refers to the whole person through its most profound dimension.”
(32-3) “Once
our spirit comes alive in God, the lengthy process of subduing all aspects of
the self under God can begin. This is
the process of spiritual formation viewed in its entirety. Spiritual
transformation happens only as each essential dimension of the human being is
transformed to Christlikeness under the direction of a regenerate will
interacting with constant overtures of grace from God.” (37) “Sin
does not make a person worthless—only lost.
And in its lostness, the human soul is still capable of great
strength, creativity, dignity, and heartbreaking beauty.” (40) “‘Sin’
has left our language.” (40) “The real
source of our failures lies in our choices
and the factors at work in them. Choice is where the potential for sin
dwells.” (41) “We
are like farmers who diligently plant crops but can’t admit the existence of
weeds and insects and can only thin to pour on more fertilizer. Similarly, the only solution we know to
human problems today is ‘education.’” (41) “Our
initial move toward Christlikeness cannot be toward self-esteem. Realistically, I’m not okay, and you’re not
okay. We’re all in serious
trouble. That must be our starting
point. Self-esteem in our situation
will only breed self-deception and frustration.” (43) “One
begins to get smart when he or she
fears being crosswise of God—fears not doing what he wants and not being as
he requires. Fear is the anticipation
of harm. God is not mean, but he is dangerous….”
(45) “Trust
in God is precisely what is absent from the ruined heart.” (46) “Denial
of reality accounts for our perpetual blindness to the obvious.” “Denial of reality is inseparable from our
fallen human heart, and its great power comes from not being recognized for
what it is. The fact is, in a world
apart from God, the power of denial is absolutely essential if life is to
proceed. The human heart cannot—psychologically
cannot—sustain itself for any
length of time in the face of reality.
We can’t ponder our own death, we can’t examine the conflicted nature
of our motives and actions, we can’t face our fears about other people—nor
can we live with or own past or face our future—without profound denial. When we eliminate the light of God from our
heart, our mind becomes dysfunctional, trying to devise a ‘truth’ that will
be compatible with the basic falsehood that man I god. Then, our feelings (emotions, affections,
sensations) soon follow along the path to chaos. ‘They became futile in their speculations,’
Paul wrote, ‘and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools’
(Romans 1:21-22).” (48) When
people do not live interactively with God they choose pleasure. God abandons them to their pursuit,
primarily sexual sensation – the greatest “kick” – and then bodily violence –
a close second. “This is the spiritual
root of obsession with ‘sex and violence’ in decadent societies.” (48) “Hell
is not an ‘oops!’ or a slip. One does
not miss heaven by a hair but by
constant effort to avoid and escape God.” (52) “Further,
spiritual formation is not something that may be added to the gift of eternal
life as an option. Rather, it is the path that the eternal
kind of life—the life given over to God’s kingdom—naturally takes.” (52) “For
as the surest source of destruction of men is to obey themselves, so the only
haven of safety is to have no other will, no other wisdom, than to follow the
Lord wherever he leads.” (55, quoting John Calvin) “The
self-denial Jesus speaks of is always the surrender of a lesser, dying self
for a greater, eternal one—the person God intended when he created you.” “Jesus does not deny us personal
fulfillment but shows us the only true way to it.” (61) “Spiritual
formation is God’s grace-filled process by which a person moves from
self-worship to Christ-centered self-denial as an increasingly steady
disposition of the heart.” (70) God
takes the initiative. He already
has. The ball is in our court. What will we do? (70) Spiritual
growth occurs like AA: We envision what we want to be or
do. We actualize the intention to act. We apply a specific means to move in that direction. (72) Use
the acronym “VIM:” Vision, Intention,
Means. (73) “The
vision of the kingdom is the place we must start.” “The “Concretely,
we live in the “You
can no more trust Jesus and not intend to obey him than you can trust your
doctor and not intend to follow his or her advice. If you don’t’ intend to follow the advice,
you simply don’t trust the person.” (76) “Our
goal will be to progressively form our inner, hidden world so that ‘the tree
is good’ to the farthest reaches of root and branch.” (81) “Thoughts
are where we can begin to truly change.” “A battle is raging for our mind.”
(Eph 6:12) We are transformed by “the renewing of our mind.” (Rom 12:2)
(83-5) “And so we must inform our
thinking with the Word of God.” (89) “The
prospering of God’s cause on earth depends upon his people thinking well.”
(90) “To
think of God as he is, we cannot help but lapse into worship; and worship is
the single most powerful force in completing and sustaining restoration in
the whole person.” “‘Astonished
reverence’ is a good paraphrase for worship.”
“To the extent that God is exalted in the minds of people and his very
name is cherished with utmost respect, everything else goes right.” (92) “Spiritual
disciplines are activities that are in our power and that enable us to do
what we cannot do by direct effort.” (93)
“The
most obvious thing we can do is draw certain key portions of Scripture into
our mind and make them a part of the permanent fixtures there. This is the primary discipline for the
thought life.” Ingest passages. (94) Seek
out others who are pursuing spiritual transformation. Study the lives of other practitioners.
(95) “Feelings
move our lives—for good or bad.” (100)
Feelings give us a sense of being alive. To be like Christ we must manage our
feelings. They make up the tone of our
lives. (100, 103) A
life transformed is dominated by feelings of love, joy and peace. (106) Love means “willing the good.” (108)
Joy is different from pleasure: it’s a “pervasive sense of
well-being,” even in suffering and loss.
(109) “Peace is the calm that
results from assurance about how things will turn out.” (110) “The
revolution of character in the dimension of feeling is a matter of carefully
cultivating love, joy, and peace, first by receiving them from God…. We must intend these feelings and decide
they will be present in all we are and do.” (111) “For
many of us, just coming to honest terms with what our feelings really are
will be huge task.” (111) “Character
is that internal, overall structure of our self that reveals our long-running
patterns of behavior.” (115) “Our
character can change.” “Will alone
cannot carry us to change. But will
influenced through changing our thoughts and feelings can…. (116) “Single-minded and joyous devotion to God
and his will—and to service to others because of him—is what the will
transformed into Christlikeness looks like.” (117) “Character develops from our will as
specific choices become habitual and, to some extent, automatic.” (118) Spiritual
disciplines help us surface and deal with the duplicity and malice buried in
our will and character. “Those
feelings are normally clothed in layer upon layer of habitual self-deception
and rationalization. Typically, they
have enslaved the will. And the will,
in turn, will have coerced the mind to conceal or rationalize what is really
going on.” (126) “We
are to know now ‘the power of His resurrection’ (Philippians 3:10). Our body is not just a physical system but
is inhabited by the real presence of Christ.
Spiritual formation requires the transformation of the body.” “As it matures, it increasingly takes on
the quality of our ‘inner’ life.” (132) “For
most people today, our body runs our life.”
“It is this bodily orientation of the self that runs the human
cosmos…. (I John 2:16).” (136) “The
body must be regarded as holy because it is owned and inhabited by God.” “The practical center of proper care for
the body is Sabbath.” (140) “The
body must be weaned away from its
tendency to take control, to run the world, to achieve and produce, to attain
gratification. Progress in the opposite direction can only be made in
solitude and silence.” (141) “True
spiritual formation happens in relation.” (145) “Love is not a special way of feeling. Instead, it is the divine way of relating
to others….” (146) “The
nature of personality is inherently communal….” “Human beings are really together only in
God….” (147) “Every contact with another human being
should be one of goodwill and respect with a readiness to acknowledge, make room for, or assist the other in
suitable ways.” (152) “The
dimension of you that is running your life is your soul.” “The soul is that
aspect of your whole being that correlates, integrates, and enlivens
everything going on in the various dimensions of your self. It is the life center of the human being.” And “it lies almost totally beyond
conscious awareness.” (159) “God’s
great purpose for humanity, as set forth in the Bible, is to bring forth an
immense community of people from ‘every nation and tribe and tongue and
people’ to worship him (Revelation 14:6).” (173) “Spiritual
formation in Christlikeness during our life here on earth is … a process of
character transformation toward complete trustworthiness before God.” (174) |
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