Dallas Willard wrote and impacted many lives, mine own included. He died May 8, 2013.
In the latest issue of Christianity Today, July/August 2013, John Ortberg gives his own sense of Willard’s impact.
Perhaps it is the way that Dallas would just turn a phrase or use a short sentence to pull meaning out of the “air”, so to speak. Or the way he simply made Christianity make sense, more than any of the alternatives that you might run across.
His first book that seemed to strike the church community, The Divine Conspiracy (he also wrote many other books!), was on the Sermon on the Mount. Simple and profound words, but both Jesus and Willard!!
And so, I loved reading some of the definitions that Ortberg attributes to Dallas Willard. Here are a few of those:
- Beauty: Goodness made manifest to the senses.
- Disciple: Anyone whose ultimate goal is to live as Jesus would live if he were in their place.
- Reality: What you can count on
- Pain: What you experience when you bump into reality.