Category Archives: Thinking About Big Questions

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How do we live a successful life?

(from mojo blog) It’s high graduation season—the time when Valedictorians and VIPs rifle their mental files for Something Significant to say about new beginnings and the quest for the good life. This week on The Things That Matter Most Lael’s radio interview with Faith and Culture contributor Dallas Willard explored how we can have reliable knowledge about success. The interview began with questions about an essay in Atlantic Monthly. Journalist Joshua Wolf Shenk was allowed access to the archives of The Grant study, a long range Harvard research project that asked, What Makes us Happy? What should one do to live a successful life?

A team of doctors, sociologists, anthropologists, psychologists and psychiatrists followed 268 of the brightest and best and most well adjusted Harvard sophomores (including JFK) to document the scientific answer. But the baffling variety of outcomes of these lives shows just how elusive the scientists found the answer to be. David Brooks summarized the findings in the New York Times: “A third of the men would suffer at least one bout of mental illness. Alcoholism would be a running plague. The most mundane personalities often produced the most solid success…There is a complexity to human affairs before which science and analysis simply stand mute.”

The study offered one major scientifically quantifiable conclusion (more…)

For more on Dallas Willard’s book, click here

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Knowing Christ Today: Why We Can Trust Spiritual Knowledge by Dallas Willard

Dallas Willard is one of my favorite authors / speakers. Having taught on the spiritual life for decades and having taught philosophy at the University of Southern California give him the conceptual skills and heart to talk about spiritual knowledge in a robust, yet deeply human way. I highly recommend his latest book.

Review
“A spiritual defense of the proposition that faith and reason are not contradictory.” (Peter L. Berger, Director, Institute on Culture, Religion and World Affairs, Boston University )

“This is clear, lucid thinking about what matters most, as is desperately needed today. Only Dallas Willard could have written this, but I don’t know anyone who doesn’t need to read it.” (John Ortberg, Pastor, Menlo Park Presbyterian Church and author of Faith & Doubt )

“Dallas Willard focuses like a laser beam on the issue of moral knowledge as a legitimate source for understanding reality and applying it to daily life. It is a must read.” (Richard Foster )

This book deals with the disastrous effects of divorcing the teachings of Jesus Christ and his people from the domain of human knowledge. Its aim is to reposition the substantial teachings of Christianity (“Mere” Christianity) as a body of knowledge in the contemporary world. In the process it explains what knowledge is, as compared to belief, commitment and profession, and clarifies the difference it makes whether or not an area of thought and practice is regarded as an area of knowledge. Then it proceeds to deal with some of the most basic points of Christian teaching from the viewpoint of knowledge.

It is Dr. Willard’s hope that this book will put those who practice Christian discipleship in a different and much stronger position, and that it will be helpful for all areas of education, but especially for Christian schools, colleges and universities.

From the Preface:
“I should alert the reader to the fact that this is not a devotional book, and that it will require considerable mental effort to understand. This lies in the nature of the problems to be dealt with. I have tried to ease the pain as much as possible. One effect of the displacement of faith from knowledge, which we are dealing with in this book, is that many people now believe you do not need to think deeply and carefully to follow Christ. C. S. Lewis has a very penetrating comment to make about this matter: “God has room for people with very little sense, but He wants every one to use what sense they have. The proper motto is not ‘Be good, sweet maid, and let who can be clever,’ but ‘Be good, sweet maid, and don’t forget that this involves being as clever as you can.’ God is no fonder of intellectual slackers than of any other slackers. If you are thinking of becoming a Christian, I warn you you are embarking on something which is going to take the whole of you, brains and all…. One reason why it needs no special education to be a Christian is that Christianity is an education itself.” (From Mere Christianity)

About the Author

Theologian and scholar Dallas Willard has long been an eloquent voice for the relevance of God in our daily lives. His groundbreaking books Hearing God, Renovation of the Heart, and The Spirit of the Disciplines forever changed the way thousands of Christians experience their faith. He is a professor at the University of Southern California’s School of Philosophy and has held visiting appointments at UCLA and the University of Colorado. He lives in southern California.

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The God Question: An Invitation to a Life of Meaning by JP Moreland


The God Question has something for everyone. It is well-written, warm, clearly argued without being overly technical, and engaging. Even if you are a skeptic and disagree with his conclusions at the end of the day, I think you will concede that Moreland has been fair, honest, thoughtful, and authentic about life’s biggest question…God.

Dr. Moreland is a prolific author who has written on a wide variety of topics like: happiness, the existence of God, the nature of the soul, spiritual formation, and doubt, just to name a few.

In this book, you get a little bit of all of that (and more) sprinkled in and shaped into a compelling narrative journey of faith. Moreland does not shy away from hard topics like Hell and how can Jesus be the only way. He also spends time exploring who Jesus was and how we can know about Him in history. Moreover, he talks about the powerful evidence for God from the origin and design of the universe in an accessible manner. But this is not merely a book defending the faith (i.e., apologetics).

Moreland places these fascinating and important discussions within the narrative of the Biblical story and his own faith journey in walking with Jesus for 40 years. For example he lets the reader into his own relationship-struggles and joys-with Jesus. And then he places this discussion within a wonderful explanation of the central message of Jesus: proclaiming the good news of the Kingdom of God.

Moreland paints a compelling (and jargon free) picture of what eternal life with God could and should be like according to the New Testament while also spending subsequent chapters talking about how to get good at life according to Jesus. Finally, he wraps up with an enlightening chapter on the afterlife.

Today, there is a lot of confusion about religion in general and Christianity in particular. If you are looking for a thoughtful book, written from the perspective of a follower of Jesus, and that gets past the heat and stereotypes, then The God Question is for you.

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Christianity and Non-Empirical Knowledge (i.e., beyond the five senses)

“We tend to think that we can’t know something unless it’s able to be tested by the five senses. But is this the only way to figure out if we know something? Dr. Moreland says “no.” In fact, he shows us that we know a lot of things that we are unable to empirically test.”

This is a very helpful and important short article for Christians.

(Excerpt from the article)

Various Kinds of Knowledge



In my last article, we looked at the nature of knowledge and we defined it in this way:



To represent (i.e., experience or think about) reality the way it really is on the basis of adequate grounds, on a solid basis of evidence, experience, intuition, testimony and so forth.

We also saw that there are three different

kinds of knowledge:

Knowledge by acquaintance: This happens when we are directly aware of something, (e.g., when I see an apple directly before me or pay attention to my inner feelings, I know these things by acquaintance).

Propositional knowledge: This is knowledge that an entire proposition is true. Propositional knowledge is justified true belief; it is believing something that is true on the basis of adequate grounds.

Know-how: This is the ability or skill, usually based on the other two sorts of knowledge, to do certain things (e.g., to use apples for certain purposes). (MORE…)

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God’s Thought’s in You

Last night I taught a class at our church on Thinking Christianly and I talked about how important it is to replace harmful ideas and images we absorb daily with biblical ones. Dallas Willard and Jan Johnson offer some very helpful insight here that I hope we all take to heart:

“Nourishing our mind with good and godly ideas, images, information, and the ability to think creates our vision…From these, we intend to be formed so that God is a constant presence in our mind crowding out false ideas, destructive images, misinformation about God, and crooked beliefs.”