Outside Thought
Every now and then we want to bring some outside voices into this modest forum of thought. Dallas Willard is head of the philosophy department at USC, and his writing and thoughts are insightful, not just in an academic sense but in a practical sense as well.
Stepping Into Community
Dallas Willard with Eric Hurtgen
Courtesy of RelevantMagazine.com
Dallas Willard is not a hurried or haunted man. When he speaks, his words come easy and natural, amended by a bit of southern lilt that traces him back to his rural Missouri roots. His pauses can feel like great gaping holes to an interviewer more accustomed to the dizzying pace of simultaneous high speed internet interaction and cell phone chatter. When Dallas Willard does answer, it seems to come from some deep place inside him, not just skimmed-off something from the surface.
Willard, of course, is an author and a teacher who's been thinking about God longer than most of us have been alive. Though his vocational calling is philosophy professor, if you have heard of him at all, it's probably not because of his provocative insights into phenomenology or his defense of standard formal logic. Most of his renown comes from his insistence on the primacy of Jesus' teaching for Christianity. In a recent interview from his home, Willard addressed the "seduction of technology" and "stepping into the community that already exists."
RelevantMagazine.com: I've been thinking about this year's high school graduates, and their experiences and how they're really the first full generation to never have experienced life without the internet and these tremendous integrated systems of ours. To what degree do you think that this kind of technology and connection helps or hurts Christian discipleship?
Dallas Willard: ...Well, I deal daily with college students and I have seen the seduction of technology. We live in a world where technology lifts mankind into a false sense of power and as a result my students have a feeling that if they can do something they should. They feel that they can go here, go there, shut that out, do what they want to, and that is the most seductive aspect to technology: it creates a false sense of intimacy and a false sense of sense of self.
Now, that need not rule out the use of technology, the bad aspects can be resisted, but you do need to have a place to stand in order to present yourself in a way that allows you to handle all the things that are coming at you. For example: games. For many young people this is just their life; they sit staring into some kind of screen endlessly, they come into class playing games, pretending they're taking notes. They become obsessed. And that's the difficulty: the obsession and the subsequent distraction that they experience.
We have this phenomenon of Attention Deficit that people are experiencing and diagnosing right and left. The problem is not deficit of attention but the distraction and splintering of attention. You almost never see a young person today who's paying attention to one thing. There are various devices that they're carrying and are plugged into and they just want to live in that world. All this amounts to a tremendous problem and we can describe it as the inner gathering of the self.
RM: The inner gathering of the self...?
DW: The inner gathering of the self just means that you have a chosen direction and your life is organized around it. What young people today, both Christian and non-Christian are experiencing is not a chosen direction, though there is the illusion that they are choosing. Rather, young people today are being constantly pulled by things that they submit themselves to. That's the great temptation and the great problem for many people today. Most don't even notice the temptation, but their lives are being pulled apart by it. And when it comes to issues of exercising character and will, it simply isn't there for them. They can only respond to things that are pulling at them.
Continue reading at RelevantMagazine.com
Stepping Into Community
Dallas Willard with Eric Hurtgen
Courtesy of RelevantMagazine.com
Dallas Willard is not a hurried or haunted man. When he speaks, his words come easy and natural, amended by a bit of southern lilt that traces him back to his rural Missouri roots. His pauses can feel like great gaping holes to an interviewer more accustomed to the dizzying pace of simultaneous high speed internet interaction and cell phone chatter. When Dallas Willard does answer, it seems to come from some deep place inside him, not just skimmed-off something from the surface.
Willard, of course, is an author and a teacher who's been thinking about God longer than most of us have been alive. Though his vocational calling is philosophy professor, if you have heard of him at all, it's probably not because of his provocative insights into phenomenology or his defense of standard formal logic. Most of his renown comes from his insistence on the primacy of Jesus' teaching for Christianity. In a recent interview from his home, Willard addressed the "seduction of technology" and "stepping into the community that already exists."
RelevantMagazine.com: I've been thinking about this year's high school graduates, and their experiences and how they're really the first full generation to never have experienced life without the internet and these tremendous integrated systems of ours. To what degree do you think that this kind of technology and connection helps or hurts Christian discipleship?
Dallas Willard: ...Well, I deal daily with college students and I have seen the seduction of technology. We live in a world where technology lifts mankind into a false sense of power and as a result my students have a feeling that if they can do something they should. They feel that they can go here, go there, shut that out, do what they want to, and that is the most seductive aspect to technology: it creates a false sense of intimacy and a false sense of sense of self.
Now, that need not rule out the use of technology, the bad aspects can be resisted, but you do need to have a place to stand in order to present yourself in a way that allows you to handle all the things that are coming at you. For example: games. For many young people this is just their life; they sit staring into some kind of screen endlessly, they come into class playing games, pretending they're taking notes. They become obsessed. And that's the difficulty: the obsession and the subsequent distraction that they experience.
We have this phenomenon of Attention Deficit that people are experiencing and diagnosing right and left. The problem is not deficit of attention but the distraction and splintering of attention. You almost never see a young person today who's paying attention to one thing. There are various devices that they're carrying and are plugged into and they just want to live in that world. All this amounts to a tremendous problem and we can describe it as the inner gathering of the self.
RM: The inner gathering of the self...?
DW: The inner gathering of the self just means that you have a chosen direction and your life is organized around it. What young people today, both Christian and non-Christian are experiencing is not a chosen direction, though there is the illusion that they are choosing. Rather, young people today are being constantly pulled by things that they submit themselves to. That's the great temptation and the great problem for many people today. Most don't even notice the temptation, but their lives are being pulled apart by it. And when it comes to issues of exercising character and will, it simply isn't there for them. They can only respond to things that are pulling at them.
Continue reading at RelevantMagazine.com
posted at 11:56 AM
2 Comments:
This fragmented life idea is definatly a big part of my testimony. I grew up wanting to be the best at everything. This wasn't too big of an issue for the first 12 years of my life because it revolved soley around video games. Things got really sticky around middle school though. I had to be the best at everything: sports, with the ladies, in class, with my clothing styles, at church etc. Needless to say I wasn't the best at any of these. I found myself pulled in a thousand directions not knowing what thing to commit to. So I floated through life half commited to everything. Jesus started to fix that. He seemed worth while enough to persue all out for a life time. I still find it hard though. I still have this desire to be the best. I'm one of those annoying people that are always trying to be Super Christins. Chirst is giving me direction and I still feel the need to figure things out myself. Its way more presure than I think we should be bearing. I liked what Brett said: "I wonder what we miss in our continued pursuit of slavery?" I wonder when I am going to figure out that his grace is enough; figure out that I can just relax. I remember the relaxing feel of when I first trusted Christ. I want that again.
pimple, welcome to the blog! dude, we miss your insight and your always positive, yet honest, outlook on life and ministry. i know God is being honored in your life on the other side of the world.
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