Renovated: God, Dallas Willard, and the Church That Transforms

by E. James Wilder

Few could say “yes” when they applied Dallas’s main test for Christlike character: whether one spontaneously responds to one’s enemies with love.

“Psychology,” Dallas said quietly, “is the care of souls. The care of souls was once the province of the church, but the church no longer provides that care.” He paused. “The most important thing about the care of souls is that you must love them.”

As I searched for what it meant to believe in Jesus, three elements of the Christian life came into sharp focus: (1) dialogue with God about everything, (2) do nothing out of fear, and (3) love people deeply.

Providentially, Dallas wrote the book In Search of Guidance (later retitled Hearing God), arguing that we can be guided by God’s active presence in our daily lives.[2]

The only kind of love that helps the brain learn better character is attachment love. The brain functions that determine our character are most profoundly shaped by who we love. Changing character, as far as the brain is concerned, means attaching in new and better ways.

Salvation through a new, loving attachment to God that changes our identities would be a very relational way to understand our salvation: We would be both saved and transformed through attachment love from, to, and with God.

Western Christianity has long taught that we are changed by what we believe and what we choose—that is, by the human will responding to God. Attachment to God would functionally replace the will as the mechanism of salvation and transformation.

We know that loving God and loving others are the two greatest characteristics of a godly life. Yet, I had never considered that where Scripture spoke of love, it might mean “attachment.” I had never thought about how I could learn to love in attachment ways.

I concluded that my relationship to God needed more attachment love. My relationships with people needed more of God’s character. How would this happen?

Reconciling the church’s practices of transformation to how the brain works will be our topic for this book.

You must be aware of the tendency to just hold to something—the Bible or The Secret or something else—without testing whether it works. As our time together unfolds, I am going to use teachings from the Bible, and I want to encourage you to not just think, Well this is authoritative because Paul said it, or Jesus said it, or Moses said it. I want you to say, “Let’s put that to the test.” For example, the Bible addresses the problem of how to live in the real human situation. To do so is to bring on all comers—psychology, brain science, evolution, whatever it is. You put each down beside what the Bible teaches. And you test it as an alternative. What does transformation in the manner that Jesus and the Scriptures teach about—a manner that has been observed repeatedly through the ages—look like in real life?

It is not at all uncommon that a church is caught up in tiptoeing around leaders who are babies emotionally. I don’t think this is intentional, but the fact is that our churches don’t focus on formation as the central issue; consequently,

we deal with emotional and spiritual immaturity as a cultural norm far too often.

That’s the structure we have to learn. We don’t try to do those things—we become the kind of person who does those things. If you try to do those things, it will just kill you. But if you receive

love as the principle of your life in all dimensions of your being, then you will see love: Love is kind, love does not envy, and so on all the way down the line. And having received love, you will be transformed into a person who loves.

Feelings determine much of human behavior. We find it difficult to stand apart from them so that we can deal with them authentically.

Feelings are blind. Very often, when you feel something, you don’t even know why you feel it. Now, I believe that God has given us feelings—I don’t think feelings are bad. It’s just that if you try to live by your feelings, you’re dead. You can’t do it. They’re not enough.

also true of desires. Desires are focused on determinate objects. When you have a desire, you desire some particular thing.

they don’t pay attention to each other. Desires are essentially conflictual. That’s why James says in chapter 4 of his little letter, “Where does war come from?”[15] He says it comes from your desires. Desire does not address the issue of what is good. It simply says, “I want that.” And it neglects everything else.

we are most apt to miss is the difference between desire and will. The

will is meant to be the arbitrato...

It’s in the Kingdom of God that the spiritually mature person has learned to live. To choose to live in the Kingdom of God is to live from resources that enable us to not do what we want to do.

It’s essential for us to have our understanding of ourselves redeemed. How do you think about yourself? If

you are unable to see yourself living in the Kingdom of God, you will constantly be troubled by the things you wanted and the things you didn’t get.

It is the Kingdom of God that is the source of integrated life—a life that is able to find in the provisions of God what is adequate to their souls. So if you’re going to be a spiritually mature person, you have to think of yourself in a different way.

That contrast between the lusts and the freedom that comes from surrender to and redemption with God is set out in 2 Peter 1:2: “Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord.” Knowledge is true representation of how things are. I

Living a life of emotional maturity is how we come to have solid knowledge of the goodness of emotional maturity.

So let me just say once again: The emotionally mature person is one in whom all of the tensions of desire and feeling and emotion are resolved in the sense of goodness that guides their life. All of their feelings, desires, and emotions are under the guidance of what is good. They don’t find themselves overwhelmed by their desires; they do what is good.

In her counseling “lab,” Jane and I soon discovered that when people were traumatized, they stopped maturing in the area of their identity altered by trauma. Traumas come from two sources: bad things that should not happen and necessary, good things that did not happen. Both sources left people alone with critical needs at critical times.

It was much harder to correct trauma caused when crucial good things did

not happen. For example, seeing a murder was resolved more easily than never having been loved.

without the character of Christ. There is a large difference between thinking about God being with us and thinking with God about our reality. Mutual-mind states with God could produce a with-God life. We would think with God rather than simply about God. When we think back about what God wanted in a past moment, we can feel remorse, but thinking with God changes our

initial reactions—it changes our character.

Character is not only displayed and communicated by the fast track; it is also learned and changed for the better or worse by the fast track. Character is housed and remembered in the fast-track structures. Character and maturity are not separate for the brain. Both are aspects of identity.

The mechanism for building and changing character in the fast track is mutual mind. We need to think with God, not simply about God. Learning to think with God carries major implications for spiritual-formation practices if we want to create a Christlike character that spontaneously responds with love for our enemies.

Maturity requires attachment and mutual-mind practice time with greater minds.

Maturity is the measure of how well the fast-track system can maintain relational synchronicity (shalom) both internally and externally

(with others) as pressure and suffering increase. Maturity is the ability to maintain a relational state under pressure: We stay loving even when others turn against us.

begin to feel like our enemies. Our brain loses synchronicity in the fast track. ...

The impact of “my people” could hardly be more different and separate from “not my people.” To change human character, we need to experience mutual-mind states with our

attachment figures and our people.

Dallas told us that both spiritual and human maturity are demonstrated by having feelings, desire, and emotion under the guidance and control of what

is good. Persons who are not spiritually mature

are under the guidance and control of feelings, desires, and e...

Spiritual maturity, like emotional maturity,

must modify this fast-track system.

Spiritual maturity is indicated by the ability to love our enemies spontaneously from the heart.

A mutual-mind state might provide guidance with someone we don’t love,[16] but it will only change our identity and character if we have significant hesed (attachment love). When we have enough attachment to think with God rather than about God, the access rights to our identity go much deeper.

Maturity refers to a process of growth. Immaturity stands at one end of that process, maturity at the other. And the growth process that results in maturity involves the essential components of the human being and some of the dynamics of their interaction.

You don’t become spiritually or emotionally mature by willpower.