rethink discipleship (1)

GUEST-POST: Bill Hull - "Discipleship Is Dangerous"

 

Widespread character transformation through wisely disciplined discipleship to Christ can transform our world. It can disarm the structural evils that have always dominated humankind and now threatens to destroy the world.” [1] Dallas Willard

Normally, I don’t start my day pondering what Willard calls “structural evils.” Unless, of course, my first appointment is with an IRS agent. And not just your ordinary structural evils, but the ones “that have always dominated humankind and now threatens to destroy the world.” I think of being chased by a ship full of Pirates hanging off the sides, ready to jump on my little dingy and destroy me.

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Several structural evils are ready to chop us into tiny little pieces. Child abuse, chattel slavery, oppression of women, abortion, and political tyranny are all horrendous. But they are symptoms, really outcomes of deeper pathologies that fight for dominance in the human soul. The interesting part is that when it comes to the soul, the inner workings of one’s personality, no one can command it to change. Only God can disarm the structural evils and transform the soul of a person and, eventually, of a society.

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