Dallas Willard
Dallas Willard
Dallas Albert Willardwas an American philosopher also known for his writings on Christian spiritual formation. Much of his work in philosophy was related to phenomenology, particularly the work of Edmund Husserl, many of whose writings he translated into English for the first time. He was longtime Professor of Philosophy at The University of Southern California, teaching at the school from 1965 until his death in 2013 and serving as the department chair from 1982 to 1985...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPhilosopher
Date of Birth4 September 1935
CountryUnited States of America
At the center of care for the heart is the love of God. This must be the joyful aim of our life.
God will meet us and help us.
The aim of God in history is the creation of an all-inclusive community of loving persons with God himself at the very heart of this community as its prime Sustainer and most glorious Inhabitant.
So many people would like to have guidance from God because obviously, if you have a word from God, it's the best possible thing. But they don't relate that to life as a whole. Often they want guidance as a way of opting out of the responsibility of making decisions.
When we talk about loving your enemy here, it means something. And we're not sure that you can do that.
Everyone receives spiritual formation, just as everyone gets an education. The only question is whether it is a good one or a bad one. We need to take a conscious, intentional hand in the developmental process. We need to understand what the formation of the human spirit is, and how it can best be done as Christ would have it done. This is an indispensable aspect of developing a psychology that is adequate to human life.
Your mind will really talk to you when you begin to deny fulfillment to your desires, and you will find how subtle and shameless it is.
The prospering of God's cause on earth depends upon his people thinking well.
In a world apart from God, the power of denial is absolutely essential if life is to proceed. The will or spirit cannot-psychologically cannot-sustain itself for any length of time in the face of what it clearly acknowledges to be the case. Therefore it must deny and evade and delude itself.
To allow lust (or strong desires) to govern our life is to exalt our will over God's.
Clinical depression is an extreme form of a 'bad mood.'
Even professing Christians, by and large, devote to their spiritual growth and well-being a tiny fraction of the time they devote to their body, and it is even tinier fraction if we include what they worry about.
Crooked thinking, unintentional or not, always favors evil.
Feelings too must be renovated: old ones removed in many cases, or at least thoroughly modified, and new ones installed or at least heightened into a new prominence.