Divine Conspiracy? Or Societal Confusion?

Chapter 1 of Divine Conspiracy takes an interesting look at how society has lost sight of its moral reference point. In fact, the insist that there is no reference point. This has in turn lead America to a state of confusion, where the “trivial are thought to be profound” and “what is truly profound is thought to be stupid.” (p. 10) And yet, in the midst of this confusion, Jesus has set himself in the very middle of our society, whether society wants to admit it or not.

Chapter 2 talks about how some of this confusion has spilled into Christian thought. But instead of losing sight of our moral reference point, we have lost sight of what Christ originally meant for us: discipleship. We don’t get “scanned” when we get to heaven because we said that prayer once. We are to be constantly, and actively working to grow closer to Christ through disciplines.

What Willard is doing in these two chapters is illustrating where we are right now, and how that is not where we are to be. He is also pointing out how we got to this position. We became comfortable where we were and allowed society to pass us up. Once that happened, society then was able to influence us more than we could influence them. Now, we know we aren’t doing what we need to do, but we are confused as to why things are going like they are. And society is doing the same thing.

In the next chapters, I am expecting Willard to start to discuss how to make changes to out current predicament.