Mirror of Justice

I've been thinking a lot about Dallas Willard, who is one of the most thoughtful evangelical Christian writers today and a philosophy professor at USC.  He was one of the featured speakers at the Bible conference I attended last week.  It turns out that Willard was heavily influenced by my great-grandfather, even dedicating one of his books to hiim, and so he had an interest in coming to Iowa to see the conference that my great-grandfather started 75 years ago.  In a series of talks, Willard spoke powerfully and movingly about the Kingdom of God, and how it invariably requires God's grace in our lives -- not just in terms of our ultimate salvation (which is the traditional evangelical emphasis), but in terms of our eternal living beginning here and now.  The problem with the Pharisees was that their focus was on conduct within their control -- not murdering, not committing adultery, etc. -- but Jesus expanded the focus to matters of the heart, to attitudes and dispositions that could not be changed absent God's grace.  So while my kingdom is what I'm doing, God's Kingdom is what God is doing.  When we enter into the Kingdom of God, we let our kindgdom become part of God's Kingdom, becoming dependent on God and focusing not on what I control, but on what controls me -- i.e., matters of the heart.

Then this week, I received the new Pepperdine Law Review devoted to a symposium on the higher law and featuring a short piece by Dallas Willard about why the higher law matters.  This brought to my mind comments Willard made to a group of Christian academics, which you'll see still centers on God's grace (which he defines as "God acting in your life to accomplish what you cannot accomplish on your own").  Here's an excerpt of his advice:

My strategy was this – do really good work. Do work that you would think God had to help you with to get you there, and then do some more. Just stay at it. That’s the only strategy I’ve had is to work in that way. My view is that, if you are in a good field, you must work on the things that are really central and essential to that field. And you ought to believe that God will enable you to do work in that field that will be a benefit and challenge to everyone. . . . what we as Christians want to do — we want to get to the point where people scattered around the academic world are worried about what we are doing. They sit up at night and think about us. They get on the internet, and they chase our work down. I really challenge you to believe that about yourself, whatever your area of work is. Not because you are so good, but because God is so great.

I don’t know anything more to say in terms of how I work, because that’s all there is to it. I try to teach classes well. I pray for my students. I pray as I set up the course schedule and the outline. I pray for them when they come in to interview. They don’t know I’m praying most of the time, but I pray for them, and I pray for the class. I say, "Lord, let this be a class that will really help these students in their work, in their field, in their self-confidence." Because, you know, many of the students I have, especially in the beginning, don’t know they have a mind. One of the things I will do often in a large introductory course is say, "How many of you would like to be known as thinkers?" Of 150 people, you may get 3-4 hands, and those will be tentative. And then I say, "How many of you would like to be known as feelers?" They all want to be known as feelers. So you know that you have to start working to encourage knowledge of what it’s like to learn, to build their foundation, to help them to come to understand how the mind works.

I’m not there to be a witness. I’m there to do a good job as a teacher and writer. I will be a witness. I can’t help that. The only question is, "What am I going to witness to?" And I take a lot of comfort from Jesus’ statement that you cannot hide a city that is set on a hill. So I don’t have to think about it. I have to try to do real good work; and that’s my business – to do real good work. I wouldn’t say it’s the best in the world or anything like that, others can make judgments, but my intention is to do the best work possible. And by that I don’t mean within my human limitations; I also mean God helping me. I’m going to put my human limitations on the line, but my expectation is not from them. I expect to see something happen that I could not possibly do. And I would do that if I were preaching or witnessing on the streets, or doing whatever wherever. I want to see something happen that I couldn’t possibly do. And that’s what I would encourage anyone in the academic line of work to do: to say "I know what good work is. I’m going to do it, and I expect God to help me. I will give my life to it." Of course, I will be a prisoner of Christ; that’s what I am. Because when I am doing my work as a philosopher or a writer, that’s what I’m doing. Of course, I write a lot more in philosophy than I do in religion, but few people read that. That’s kind of the way it is in the academic world, the writing in philosophy helps me in everything else I do. So I really want to do very good work in my field. I guess that’s the simple thing I would say: I just want to do good work.

I’m afraid to say this, because I’m afraid to burden someone else. But I never ask for a promotion. I never ask for money. Of the books I’ve published, all have been solicited from me by the publishers. And I’ll tell you why I have approached things in this way. When I was at Baylor University as a young man, as a very green young man, I was watching other green young men trying to find a place to preach. And the Lord said something very simple to me: "Never try to find a place to speak, try to have something to say."

Also appropriate for academics (at least for me) is Willard's warning that he gave last week: "What our will is directed toward tells someone everything they need to know about us."