After seven years of producing Conversations: A Forum for Authentic Transformation, the editors felt it was past time to devote an issue to, well, transformation.
Even after a couple of decades in the limelight, this topic remains relevant and controversial. Just yesterday I was sitting with a friend at a restaurant talking about everything from our families to the Atlanta Falcons. (Perhaps it was the Falcons that made me think about transformation.) When I mentioned how we change in the context of spiritual growth, my friend surprised me by stating flatly, “I don’t think that it [transformation] is possible.”
Now this was not an unplugged friend. He is well trained as a counseling psychologist and a practical theologian. He has pastored several churches, taught in a conservative seminary, and is a gifted teacher in the area of psychotherapy. So I asked him to repeat what he had said.
“I don’t think it is possible for people to transform, to actually become like Jesus. Sorry, but I don’t.”
Hmmm.
As my friend offered evidence for his point, I began to examine my own life. The lyrics to a song from the early days of Christian rock became the background music as he spoke: “If you were arrested for being a Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict you?” After his evidence, my personal examination, and the melody stopped, my left brain began to recount statistics. These statistics detail how Christians and non-Christians look so much alike in categories like divorce rates, domestic violence, charitable contributions, and pornography downloads.
It hit me that this friend and Dallas Willard may be singing a similar song (with slightly different endings). While Dallas strongly believes that real change does happen, they both have been struck by the fact that non-transformation is the elephant in the sanctuary.
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Dallas Willard needs no introduction to the readers of Conversations. After all, he is responsible for the fact that our five sections correspond to his components of the person—and that we try to hear from a representative of each of the six great traditions of Christian faith in each issue. He is also responsible for the fact that I, for one, have come to believe it is actually possible to become like Jesus. I believe it because I see the way Dallas lives his life.
Dallas is an ordained Southern Baptist pastor who left the traditional version of ministry to study philosophy in the early 1960s after God told him, “If you stay in the churches, the university will be closed to you, but if you stay in the university, the churches will be open to you.” After receiving his Ph.D. in 1965, he had two immediate job offers—one from the University of Southern California and one from the University of Georgia. While some (okay, just me) think he made a mistake in picking USC, he has had an amazing academic and ministry career. Some refer to him as America’s C. S. Lewis.
Dallas Willard needs no introduction to the readers of Conversations. After all, he is responsible for the fact that our five sections correspond to his components of the person—and that we try to hear from a representative of each of the six great traditions of Christian faith in each issue. He is also responsible for the fact that I, for one, have come to believe it is actually possible to become like Jesus. I believe it because I see the way Dallas lives his life.
Dallas is an ordained Southern Baptist pastor who left the traditional version of ministry to study philosophy in the early 1960s after God told him, “If you stay in the churches, the university will be closed to you, but if you stay in the university, the churches will be open to you.” After receiving his Ph.D. in 1965, he had two immediate job offers—one from the University of Southern California and one from the University of Georgia. While some (okay, just me) think he made a mistake in picking USC, he has had an amazing academic and ministry career. Some refer to him as America’s C. S. Lewis.
And holy obedience must walk in this world, not aloof and preoccupied,
but stained with sorrow travail .
Thomas R. Kelly
The Jesus Way conference was over, and I was relaxing with my wife at a riverside café in San Antonio. Being an introvert who had been awash with waves of people for three days, I just wanted a quiet place to dry out for a while before heading off to the airport.
But our tranquility was soon punctured by a mariachi band that began playing at a table nearby. We elevated the volume of our conversation, and I carefully avoided eye contact with the lead minstrel. The last thing I wanted at that moment was to be an audience of two for one of their loud songs.
