Willard on Discipleship and Heaven
Perhaps I'll get back to posting once finals are over, but for now here's a quote from Dallas Willard.
From The Divine Conspiracy (page 301f):
The division of professing Christians into those for whom it is a matter of whole-life devotion to God and those who maintain a consumer, or client, relationship to the church has now been an accepted reality for over fifteen hundred years. . . . It is now understood to be a part of the "good news" that one does not have to be a life student of Jesus in order to be a Christian and receive forgiveness of sins. This gives a precise meaning to the phrase "cheap grace," though it would be better described as "costly faithlessness."
. . . I want it to be very clear that I am not saying only "true disciples" of Jesus make it to heaven after death. Indeed, I believe that that is not t rue, though I would not encourage anyone to stop short of discipleship. Nevertheless I know that as far as forgiveness alone is concerned, the tenderness of god is far greater than we will ever understand on earth or perhaps elsewhere.
That is surely what it means to say that he gave his unique Son to die on our behalf. I am thoroughly convinced that God will let everyone in to heaven who, in his considered opinion, can stand it. But "standing it" may prove to be a more difficult matter than those who take their view of heaven from popular movies or popular preaching may think. The fires in heaven may be hotter than those in the other place.
. . . There is a widespread notion that just passing though death transforms human character. Discipleship is not needed. Just believe enough to "make it." But I have never been able to find any basis in scriptural tradition or psychological reality to think this might be so. What if death only forever fixes us as the kind of person we are at death? What would one do in heaven with a debauched character or a hate-filled heart?
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On a side note I won second place in the Tufts Graduate Student Photo Contest with these two pictures (two which I wouldn't have put at the top of my submissions):
Labels: my photos, religious questions, theology
posted by Taylor W @ 4:03 PM
4 comments
4 Comments:
Yay for your winning entries!
Good job on winning. Clearly finding wacky geometry is more important than finding something pretty. Maybe a trapezoid, or rhombus, is in order for next year.
Thanks for the Dallas Willard quote, I've been meaning to read some of his stuff since preacher Dan references him so often. Cheap Grace, that's a term I remember from Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Now, if you'll excuse me, I plan to watch an embryo transform before my very eyes.
So I finally was able to see the other winning entries in the photo contest. 1st place was a really great photo of two students in a biology research lab with the student in the foreground playing his saxophone. It is a picture far better than any I submitted, so I'm glad it's owner won. (I'd much rather lost to a superior work than be beaten by something I thought was inferior.)
Third place was wholly unremarkable.
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