Willard's Divine Conspirarcy: Reflections on Discipleship

When I was a teenager, people who talked about discipleship focused on memorizing Scripture and understanding church doctrines. I did that, and honestly, I knew something was wrong. I was committed to serving in church, attending services, and following the rules, but I didn't love God, and I certainly wasn't interested in reading the Bible. I did it when I had to, but the idea of daily devotions or Bible reading times put me to sleep, literally.

I almost quit attending church. Life was busy, and I just didn't see why it mattered all that much, and that's when I got scared. I believed Scripture cognitively, and I was afraid to walk away from that belief system.

I talked Duane into attending a small non-traditional church near our home, one that met on Saturday night, one that didn't sing hymns, one where the pastor talked like a regular person, acknowledging his humanity and his need for God. Something inside me shifted, and my faith became less cognitive and more personal. I began to learn a new way of living based on knowing God, of knowing Jesus.

That is what discipleship is: Learning how to live from somebody else, the way they live, the way they interact with others, the way they think.

In this chapter, "On Being a Disciple, or Student, of Jesus," Willard says we all learn from somebody else, even if we aren't aware of it. We may think we are making our choices, but parents, teachers, friends, and media shape the way we think, the way we view the world, the way we respond to what we see. 

Willard asserts, "It is one of the major transitions of life to recognize who has taught us, mastered us, and then to evaluate the results in us of their teaching. This is a harrowing task, and sometimes we just can't face it. But it can also open the door to choose other masters, possibly better masters, and one Master above all" (272). 

Almost walking away from God forced me to reconsider what I had been taught about God and living for God. It was difficult to rethink concepts like sin and grace and forgiveness, to recognize that I needed God more than I realized, that I needed grace, that I wasn't good enough, no matter my valiant efforts. It was painful to recognize my judgmental attitudes, my sinful tendencies. I struggled to re-see God, not as a whack-a-mole God , but as a loving God who loved me, accepted me just as I was.

I remember taking voice lessons, and the voice teacher wanted me to learn greater voice control. I focused on singing, Jesus, lover of my soul by Kare Jobe. My voice cracked and I sobbed every time I got to the line about how much the great God of the universe loved me. I couldn't sing it because I didn't really believe it, not at my core. I could repeat Scripture about how God loved the world, but I was still trying to earn his love.

Even today I often struggle with that.

Recognizing this truth opened me to new ways of thinking and without that openness, I couldn't become a Jesus' disciple, I couldn't change and be open to his love. I was trying to do what I thought would please him, but my heart was so far from his heart that my attempts were my own and not powered by the Holy Spirit.

Willard points to Matthew 7 when Jesus warns his disciples against people who look good on the outside but were "governed merely by their own desires" (274). They are doing the right things, mostly, but they aren't motivated by love for God. That was me. I looked good, on the outside, singing in the choir, never missing church, homeschooling my kids, avoiding all the major sins, homeschooling my kids, but I wasn't a disciple. I avoided getting close to people. They would see through me. I lived on the surface. I knew a lot of things about Jesus, but I didn't know him intimately.

Jesus pointed to the fig tree and its fruit--or lack of it--and Willard notes, "The fruit of the good tree is obedience, which comes only from the kind of person we have come to be" (275). It is possible to fake discipleship, he says, by outward deeds, but then inward realities will overwhelm people because they have "hearts full of hatred and unforgiveness" (275). That was me. I knew it, and I was afraid others would know see the real person.

Willard emphasizes,

if I am to be someone's apprentice, there is one absolutely essential condition. I must be with that person. That is true of the student-teacher relationship in all generality. And it is precisely what it meant to follow Jesus when he was here in human form. To follow him meant, in the first place, to be with him. If I am Jesus' disciple that means I am with him to learn from him how to be like him. (276)

The fruit of my life wasn't obedience. The most important command is to love God and love others, and I didn't love God and my attempts to love others were flawed by my inability to receive God's love. The only way I could learn to love God--and to love others--was to spend time with Jesus, watch how he loved, emulate him. 

That's what I needed, and when I realized that, I was hungry for God's presence and transformation. Willard notes that the writers of the Gospels assumed that was what people would want, that they would find Jesus "so admirable in every respect--wise, beautiful, powerful, and good--that they would constantly seek to be in his presence, and be guided, instructed, and helped by him in every aspect of their lives" (273). That's what I wanted, and I opened my life to transformation, my mind to reshaping.

That was about 24 years ago.
The discipleship journey has not been a straight path.
I still wrestle with these things.

I get so caught up with work, with busyness, with trying to be everything my students need, that I often forget to be "with him." And my resemblance to Jesus fades as I become less and less loving, and more and more anxious and closed off from others.

The process of writing these things, of reflecting on the book in terms of my own life, is causing me to live in some of the spaces of the past, to remember the journey's twists and turns. I've allowed some distance to grow between Jesus and me, and I want to close that distance.  I miss his presence, and I'm grateful for his voice in my heart. He is not disappointed in me; he loves me even when I am flawed.

That is not to say that this doesn't matter. Willard reviews Jesus' promise that he would be with his people every moment, the promises he made about caring for them. He asserts, "the provisions [Jesus] made for his people during this period in which we now live are provisions made for those who are, precisely, apprentices to him in kingdom living. Anyone who is not a continual student of Jesus, and who nevertheless reads the great promises of the Bible as if they were for him or her, is like someone trying to cash a check on another person's account. At best, it succeeds only sporadically" (273).

And with that, I close out today's reflection.