Book Review: Divine Conspiracy, by Dallas Willard

What if you were a pastor who saw hundreds of people become Christians… and then nothing about them changed?  If you were Dallas Willard, you would write this book.

Summary:

Willard has embarked on a fierce mission to make the Kingdom of God be NOW.  He points out the weakness of rejecting Jesus as a brilliant leader and teacher.  He takes us with precision through the Sermon on the Mount, and shows us how at every step, Jesus is telling is we can live like this now. He talks about how to grow spiritually into a worker for the kingdom.  He talks about how to help others do the same.  And at the end, he gives us a sense of the even fuller joy that comes when we mesh kingdom living now with hope for the full kingdom of the next age.

Main thoughts:

• “Blessed are the poor (or poor in spirit)” does not mean that God blesses people because they are poor.  It means that the kingdom of God is available for even the poor.  Or the poor in spirit.  Regardless of your external impressiveness, God welcomes you.

• Your spiritual life is perfectly designed to give you the result you are getting.  If I am not living like a disciple of Jesus, it’s because I don’t actually believe that doing so is the best plan for me.

• God wants me to be an influence of his power in my life.  But this influence is through humility and request, rather than through manipulation (even for Jesus’ sake).

• My development as a disciple of Jesus is through my pursuit of two major goals.  First, do everything I can to love God. I need to bring the loveliness, power and wisdom of God and his incarnate presence, Jesus, into my mind as often as I can.  Second, overcome the habits of a fallen world by physically replacing them with habits that follow from a life bathed in solitude and silence, study and worship.

And finally… what is the divine conspiracy?  It is God’s plan to replace the rule of sin with his full rule.  And while he is capable of flooding the world with his rule now, he is chosing not to.  He instead invites us to be a part of the “conspiracy” by seeking to do his will alongside him.  And by doing this, we learn how to live a kingdom life now.

Recommendation:

I enjoyed this book very much, though the first three chapters were stiff going.  Willard’s goal was to point out how necessary the rest of the book would be… but it wasn’t until Chapter 4 that I felt he hit his rhythm.  I wonder how many readers gave up before then.

It took me over two months to read this book. I don’t have much free time during the school year, and this isn’t the sort of book to read while others in the family are watching TV on the same sofa. But I found that the benefit to reading this book for so long was the time it gave me to ponder each section, write about them.  I found several times I brought up ideas in the book in conversations with others.

I think what I enjoyed most of all was Willard’s complete dedication to his topic.  Even though the book was first written in 1997, I see he is still preaching the same message.  God gives us a full, complete life now, bathed in the purity and strength of His Spirit. Heaven isn’t just after death.  The kingdom is to be lived in part now, and in glorious fullness in the future.