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CURRENTLY IN BOOKS
Living Christ in the day-to-day details

Gordon Matties

The Divine Conspiracy: Rediscovering Our Hidden Life In God
Dallas Willard. San Francisco, Calif.: HarperSanFrancisco, 1998. 428 pp.

This book is destined to become a classic on Christian discipleship, not because it was last year’s number one book on Christianity Today’s list, but because it offers a comprehensive, thoughtful reflection on the integration of faith and obedience. Like most “best books”, this one responds to several trends in contemporary Christianity.

Our overfamiliarity with Jesus’ call to discipleship can make us immune to His radical call to give everything to our apprenticeship with Him. Willard calls Christians to live in the reign of God “precisely in the details of day-to-day existence”, so that no corner of our lives is outside the sovereign, loving care of God. We’ve heard that before, but few writers probe as deeply into what that all-encompassing apprenticeship implies.

Willard claims that in our evangelical zeal we have accepted Jesus as our Saviour, but He has not shaped our lives. We have failed to acknowledge Jesus as teacher among us. Above all, we have reduced the good news to a “gospel of sin management”.

The title suggests a “conspiracy to undermine the structures of evil, which dominate human history, with the forces of truth, freedom and love”. When we participate with God in that conspiracy, we enter into the reality for which we pray, “Your Kingdom come”. The bulk of the book is a creative dialogue with the Sermon on the Mount in which Jesus calls us to live as His apprentices in our real work and our everyday responsibilities in the world.

Willard insists that “Christian” and “disciple” are not the same thing. He says, “Nondiscipleship is the elephant of the church.” The book offers a profound critique of a “consumer Christianity” that assumes that the way things are is the way things ought to be and that faith in Jesus is simply about “what Jesus does for me”.

If the length of the book intimidates you, try beginning with the chapters “On Being a Disciple, or Student, of Jesus” and “A Curriculum of Christlikeness”. This book makes an ideal small group study resource for those who like to go deep.

Gordon Matties is Associate Professor of Biblical Studies at Concord College, Winnipeg. He is a member of River East MB Church, Winnipeg.

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Last modified May 4, 2000.

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