NOTES FROM THE DIVINE CONSPIRACY ON GOOD VS. EVIL

Someone e-mailed me and asked "What is the 'conspiracy,' anyway?" A good question, to which the answer is somewhat buried in Dallas Willard's The Divine Conspiracy.

The "conspiracy" is God's plan to overcome evil with good.

The conflict between good and evil is, of course, the dominant storytelling theme across cultures, across generations. It can range from epic scale (e.g., most WWII stories) to the constant inner battle for each our souls. We all understand it, we all relate to it, we all know how we want the story to end.

Dallas Willard speaks directly to this (pg.129, hardcover):

When Jesus deals with moral evil and goodness, he does not begin by theorizing. He plunges immediately... into the guts of human existence: raging anger, contempt, hatred, obsessive lust, divorce, verbal manipulation, revenge, slapping, suing, cursing, coercing and begging. It is the stuff of soap operas and the daily news -- and real life.

He takes this concrete approach because his aim is to enable people to be good, not just talk about it. He actually knows how to enable people to be good, and he brings his knowledge to bear upon life as it really is, not some intellectualized and sanctified version thereof.

He knows that people deeply hunger to be good but cannot find their way. No one wishes to do evil for its own sake, we just find it unfortunately "necessary." We want to be good but are ready to do evil, and we come prepared with lengthy justifications.

Accordingly, John Milton correctly put the words "Evil be though my good" in the mouth of Satan. Satan might be able to take what is evil as his direct and ultimate goal just to oppose God. Those words truly are demonic, not human. By contrast, a little girl in Sunday school expressed the human ambiguity well. When asked what a lie is, she replied, "A lie is an abomination to God and a very present help in time of trouble."

Virtually everything I write has some good vs. evil aspect to it. I want to ponder these words as I move into new writing projects. (Because of course, that's much easier than pondering them as they relate to my own life!)

WHAT EASTER CANDY ARE YOU?

In America, it seems all holidays gradually devolve toward becoming all about candy. Halloween was probably the first to succumb. Valentine's Day is now, at least for kids, all about candy. Mothers Day has a strong candy component, and I can't tell you how much candy we receive at Christmas every year.

And Easter... well, following up on my post from a few days ago, today's school kids probably think Easter is only about candy.

So I'm proud to say that on this quiz, I came out as not candy at all!

You Are an Easter Egg

You're so sweet, you don't need candy. You much prefer the taste of artificial coloring instead.

What Easter Candy Are You?

BRITNEY COMES TO CHURCH

Someone posted a comment asking if it was disruptive having Britney Spears coming to our church on Sunday.

Well, obviously it was for some people. But I would say the vast majority of the congregation didn't know what was happening.

We knew something was up from the time we drove up. Our church is perched on a hill a couple of hundred feet above the road (we're on a mountaintop made of solid granite -- when they built the campus originally, they tried to blast the granite away down to street level, and it just wouldn't budge).

Often, when we're running a tad late (okay, usually), Lee will drop me and the kids in front of Sunday school so I can race in with them. But this Sunday, when we tried to turn up the driveway, there were all sorts of security types, with the earpieces and all, waving people away. If they'd been in black suits, I would have thought they were Secret Service (we had a lot of Secret Service around when Reagan came to church here).

I came in the back door of the church (because I had to drop Sabrina off below the sanctuary for Sunday school), so never saw the waves of paparazzi supposedly trying to set up on a little lawn across the handicapped parking lot in front of the church.

I asked a few people sitting around me if they knew why there was so much security. No one knew. Someone pointed out that our senior pastor regularly gets death threats, so security isn't a bad thing. And I shrugged it off. I did see a guy standing near us with a really huge camera, but thought nothing of it. And when I looked again, he was gone.

After church, we had to go to a parent meeting for all the kids singing at the Hollywood Bowl on Easter. And that's where I began to hear, "Did you see Britney Spears?" But no one said a word about the altercation that apparently happened, with a security guard pulling a gun on a paparazzo.

Browsing the web to find out what happened was actually quite scary. I feel very sad for Britney and all those like her. The number of web sites devoted to following her every move is quite creepy. No wonder the poor girl felt she needed to drink or do drugs.

The whole thing reminded me of a quote from Tom Hanks. Someone asked him if he thought he was worth $20 million a picture. His response was (paraphrase) "The $20 million isn't for the work. That we would do for free. The $20 million pays for the fact that I can't go out with my kids in public, I can't go to the grocery store, I can't go to the beach, I can't go to the mall."

...Well, Britney can't go to church.

It was funny reading the things all the gossip sites got wrong. The altercation did not happen while Britney was "at prayers," as they quaintly put it. It happened after she had left -- a paparazzo drove the wrong way down Mulholland Drive (I saw a photo of that) and our traffic cops tried to stop him. And if Bel Air is a "celebrity church," someone had better start pointing out all these famous people to me, 'cause I'm sure not seeing them week to week. And no, Arnold Schwarzenegger doesn't go to church here; he's Catholic, and goes to St. Monica's in (not surprisingly) Santa Monica.

All this to say... When you go to a fairly large church, sometimes you don't know everything that happens. Or maybe, if you're focused on the worship and preaching, maybe you just don't notice.

But if Britney wants to go to church, doesn't that seem like a good idea, given her recent public wackiness?

So could everyone please just leave her alone and let her work things out with God?

EASTER? WHAT'S THAT?

I have a few friends I instant-message pretty much every day. So every now and then, I get around to changing my IM "expression" -- basically the little logo that appears next to my name in the IM box.

This morning I thought, hey, I wonder if I still have a Christmas logo up, better change it (I didn't -- I had a stormy weather logo up for some reason). And I clicked over to "Easter" to change my logo.

Now, I wasn't expecting to find a logo showing Jesus bursting out of the tomb or anything like that. I'm not that naive. But an Easter lily might have been nice. An empty cross maybe.

No such luck. Easter on AOL, it seems, has no religious significance whatsoever.

They offer Easter baskets of several sorts, bunnies being dipped in chocolate, a bunny throwing an egg at the viewer, jellybeans... Even marshmallow Peeps being exploded in a microwave. But not one religious expression. Not one.

I ended up choosing a daffodil. It's pretty. But it's about spring, not about Easter. And amazingly enough, the two are not the same.

I have to wonder: If someone went and asked a bunch of random kids what Easter is about, could they answer? (If someone asked the folks at AOL what Easter is about, could they answer?)

Somehow I feel the answer wouldn't be pretty.

NOTES FROM THE DIVINE CONSPIRACY ON THE BEATITUDES

The bulk of Dallas Willard's The Divine Conspiracy is devoted to a powerful, moving discussion of the Sermon on the Mount. And of course he starts with a fresh look at the Beatitudes.

Here's one of my favorites. Not that I myself particularly hunger and thirst for righteousness, I must say. Perhaps it touches me because we have gone through so many losses over the past few years.

I've blogged before about the yearning to have one's soul "restored," about how I imagine it being like someone painstakingly and lovingly restoring a great piece of art that has been damaged. That image comes to mind again in what Dallas writes here...

Next are those who burn with desire for things to be made right. ("Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness; for they shall be filled.") It may be that the wrong is in themselves. Perhaps they have failed so badly that night and day they cringe before their own sin and inwardly scream to be made pure. Or it may be that they have been severely wronged, suffered some terrible injustice, and they are consumed with longing to see the injury set right -- like parents who learn that the murderer of their child has been quickly released from prison and is laughing at them. Yet the kingdom of the heavens has a chemistry that can transform even the past and make the terrible, irretrievable losses that human beings experience seem insignificant in the greatness of God. He restores our soul and fills us with the goodness of rightness.

I'm almost through reading The Divine Conspiracy, but have marked some passages and will keep thinking through them here. Let me know what you think...

QUESTION OF THE WEEK

Okay, it's not a particularly weighty question, but it sure was on the mind of just about every kid in the lunch line when I was serving hot lunch last week:

Why is Sanjaya still on American Idol?

His singing is indisputedly weak. He's cute, but awfully effeminate at times in appearance. My daughter says, "It's the hair. People are voting for him because he has great hair." (To which my son replies, "Then they should be voting against his eyebrows.")

Sundance was a better singer. Brandon was a better singer. Why is Sanjaya still there?

I think it's a deeper question than it would appear. It's rooted in issues of group identity, of "us vs. them." We may be seeing a resurrection of the ugly "vote-for-the-worst" trend that AI dealt with a few seasons ago. What does it say about America as a whole that they would vote for someone with markedly less talent in what is, ultimately, only a singing competition?

And the corollary question: Will he finally be voted off this week?

But don't worry. I'm not going to get fixated on American Idol. Because Dancing with the Stars starts tonight!

HAVE YOU READ...?

The March 19th edition of Newsweek has an interesting article about the books that define the baby boomer generation. Now, I am at the tale end of the generation, so a lot of them I didn't read; they were just too old for me, or their time had been and gone before I came around. But a lot of the titles -- including most of the ones shown in the stack of books pictured at the beginning of the article -- were definitely ones I read in my "formative" years and ones that deeply colored my perceptions of the world.

I have always felt (and blogged) that what we read shapes the people we become, much more than what movies we see, what music we listen to. Reading opens our imaginations in a way that viewing simply does not, and I think that's why books have such power to reach deep into our soul.

So it was fun to read through the Newsweek lists (because I am a list freak, after all) and check off what "boomer" books influenced me... I'd be interested in knowing which of these books are touching later generations as well -- Do people still read The Catcher in the Rye? Surely people must still read To Kill a Mockingbird?!

I've listed them below, with the ones I've read in bold face. Let me know which ones you've read, too.

Anywhere But Here
Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret
The Autobiography of Malcolm X
Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up To Me
Breakfast at Tiffany's -- Does seeing the movie count?
Bright Lights, Big City -- I think I read this, though there was another similar book around the same time, I don't remember the name, and I may be confusing them.
Catch-22 -- I think this was the first "adult" book I read.
The Catcher in the Rye -- Rereading it a few years ago in my book club, it felt awfully self-indulgent. But maybe it's just that I've forgotten how it feels to be a teenager.
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Confederate General from Big Sur -- I think this is the only one on the list I've never even heard of.
Dispatches
The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test -- I vaguely remember this being a really rough read for me; I was clearly too young for it.
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Fear of Flying -- started it, never finished it.
The Feminine Mystique
The Godfather -- Page 29 (or whatever it was) was very big at my high school. Oh, you know the one I mean.
Green Eggs and Ham -- The only book I actually owned as a child (my parents were big library fans, and refused to spend money on what they could get for free).
The Greening of America
The Group
A Handmaid's Tale
I'm With the Band
Jonathan Livingstone Seagull
The Joy Luck Club
The Joy of Sex
Lolita
Lord of the Flies -- The image of poor Piggy being killed stayed with me a looooong time.
The Lord of the Rings -- The book that changed my life. I still have my high school copies, though they have little of what one could call a binding anymore.
Love Story
The Martian Chronicles -- Here's one I know is still being read... because my son has just discovered Ray Bradbury. Ha!
The Medium is the Message
On the Road
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Our Bodies, Ourselves
Portnoy's Complaint
The Pump House Gang
A Separate Peace -- Somehow I think this wouldn't hold up now.
Sexual Politics
Slaughterhouse Five
Slouching Toward Bethlehem
Soul on Ice
Steal This Book
Stranger in a Strange Land -- I remain a huge Heinlein fan, but this was one I had to get rid of when I became a Christian because its pull was so great on me.
To Kill a Mockingbird -- I think I realized this was a classic the first time I read it, and was positively shocked to find it had been written within a stone's throw of my own lifetime.
Understanding Media
Valley of the Dolls
Waiting to Exhale
The Whole Earth Catalog -- but I glanced at it at friends' houses.
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

NOTES FROM THE DIVINE CONSPIRACY: WHO IS OUR NEIGHBOR?

"Who is my neighbor?" is, of course, the question to which Jesus responded with the story of the good Samaritan.

It's easy to think of our "neighbor" as the person who lives next door -- a literal interpretation of the word. But in our "neighborhood" (using the word loosely), I'm not sure that's true.

We don't really have what one would think of as "neighbors." The house we live in is situated (on a corner, by a school) so that we really only have one person we could think of as a neighbor. And that person lives behind locked gates and a high fence, as do most other "neighbors" further down the street.

So it would be easy for me to shrug off the concept of "neighbor" and just say to myself, "Well, I just don't happen to have any neighbors."

But Dallas Willard in The Divine Conspiracy makes it clear that I don't get to get away with that.

...We define who our neighbor is by our love. We make a neighbor of someone by caring for him or her.

So we don't first devine a class of people who will be our neighbors and then select only them as the objects of our love -- leaving the rest to lie where they fall. Jesus deftly rejects the question "Who is my neighbor?" and substitutes the only question really relevant here: "To whom will I be a neighbor?" And he knows that we can only answer this question case by case as we go through our days. In the morning we cannot yet know who our neighbor will be that day..."

If Jesus were here today, the story would be told differently. The words good Samaritan now identify a person of an especially good sort in our society.... To make his point now, Jesus might have to put the "good Samaritan" in the place of the priest of Levite as he originally told the story. Or if he were in Israel now, he would probably tell a story about the "good Palestinian." The Palestinians, on the other hand, would hear about the "good Israeli."

Very shortly after 9/11, our pastor spoke on this parable, talking about the "good al-Qaeda." There was an audible gasp in the sanctuary.

Who is my neighbor, indeed?

WHAT IF BOX OFFICE SUCCESS WAS PREDICTABLE?

What if there was an algorithm you could run your screenplay through to determine whether it would be a hit? What if the algorithm worked? What if it could tell you to deepen the love story, change the location, sweeten the ending.... and presto! You'd have a hit on your hands.

There are a couple of guys who claim to be able to do just that. They've worked (in secret) with the studios. Their predictions are uncanny at times.

But is it a good thing? Read this fascinating article by Malcolm Gladwell (of The Tipping Point fame). Then you decide. Would you want to know (and use) "the formula"?

NEW MONTH'S RESOLUTION FOR MARCH

Okay, we're 1/3 of the way in to the new month, I realize, but it's for lack of posting, not for lack of resolving, that I'm just getting to this now.

My February mini-resolution, part of my overall "cultivate friendship" resolution for 2007, was to be more cheerful. This resolve was sorely tested in February, as I encountered everything from extreme grouchiness and vulgarity (one person swearing and belittling me because something I put in the mail to her a month previously never arrived) to what some might call outright betrayal on the personal and business fronts. So it was hard to keep smiling at times. Maybe I'll come back to this one again in a future month, because I feel I failed more than succeeded. But at least I was aware of the failures.

For March: I have always been aware of how hard it is for me to register names and faces mentally. Name tags (on other people!) were made for someone like me! I have had long chats with celebrities at various parties without knowing who I was speaking to. When my kids were babies, I even had to remember what they were wearing when I dropped them off at the church nursery, because it took a while for me to recognize them out of the other masses of baby charm in the place. I just have a little hole in my brain where "facial recognition" is supposed to go.

So in March, I am focusing on the name-face connection. I need to work on this. I have been in meetings even this year where I look at the junior exec in the meeting and wonder just what that person's name is! Embarrassing. We do our obligatory introduce-yourself-to-people-around-you moment at church, and I can't remember the person's name by the time we've all sat back down. And let's not even talk about the dozens of Act One students (all of whose names I can't possibly know anyway!) who come up to me and expect me to know them.

I've had one minor success so far. My daughter made a new friend at Sunday school, asked for a sleepover, introduced me to the parents. A family that's new to town. Randy and Kate. And I even remember two of their three kids' names. For me, this is pretty awesome. (Now I have to actually recognize them on the church patio. That could be another story.)

So if you walk up to me and I don't recognize you, please don't take it personally. Just know I'm really working on it. All month long.

BARRIERS TO CREATIVITY FROM THE FAIRFAX

Alice Bass, on her blog The Fairfax has a lovely post about endurance and barriers to creativity. If you've ever questioned your own creativity (or your own creative productivity), I urge you to click over.

Alice actually links to a couple of other posts that explore the barriers to creativity more fully, but she summarizes them thusly:

1. Believing you have to be an artist.
2. Not learning the fundamentals.
3. Not collecting samples of favorite creative projects.
4. Waiting for your muse.
5. Failing to take a systematic approach.
6. Not learning about your target public.
7. Not understanding your purpose.
8. Not knowing your key message.
9. Letting your conscious do all the work.
10. Settling for your first attempts.

Isn't that a great list?

I have to admit I'm not sure about no. 3. It seems to me that some people are collectors and some aren't. But if we expanded to something along the lines of "Not being aware of what has gone before you in your art/craft," then I could buy into it wholeheartedly.

It's easy for me, left-brained as I am, to pick out my #1 barrier. It's no. 9: Letting my conscious do all the work.

How about you? What's the greatest barrier you face to your creativity?

PRICE REDUCTION ON WHAT WILL HARRY DO? -- BUY IT NOW!!

Due to a restructuring of the financial relationship between the publisher and the various online book retailers (such as Amazon), I'm happy to say that the retail price for What Will Harry Do? The Unofficial Guide to Payoffs and Possibilities in Book 7 has been significantly reduced.

There's only 4 months and 2 weeks till Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is released. So what are you waiting for?!!

(P.S. Spread the word!)

MOVIE THOUGHTS: AMAZING GRACE

When I slipped out of the screening of Amazing Grace I went to, I found a friend in the lobby, calling her babysitter. She looked up from her cell phone, almost rapturous. "Isn't it wonderful?!" she exclaimed. "A Christian movie that doesn't suck!"

Ah. High praise.

But of course, she's right. Other than The Passion of the Christ, we have to go a long way back in history to find a movie with avowedly Christian themes, made by Christians (at least some of the filmmakers were Christians on Amazing Grace) to find one that, indeed, doesn't suck.

Full disclosure here: The original writer of the script that morphed its way into Amazing Grace is in my writers group, and her William Wilberforce script told, for my money, a more compelling story: The story of three friends who vowed to change the world, but found that the pressures of the world pulled them apart in sad ways. We had a real sense of what Wilberforce sacrificed in order to fight for the end of the slave trade in Britain.

That script, which was jettisoned early in the development process (with no credit to the writer), affects how I see the film to a certain degree, but of course it doesn't affect really anyone else, so my thoughts are skewed in a way that no one else's will be.

That being said, I thought they did a decent job on Amazing Grace. Ioan Gruffud (surely he gets tired of spelling his name for people!) does a stalwart job as William Wilberforce -- if he weren't so solid, the movie would fall apart at its core. He keeps the whole thing from veering into melodrama, and we believe his earnestness and passion.

Other performances are solid, too. Michael Gambon (for whom I have no love as Dumbledore) is actually economical and sharp as Charles Fox. Benedict Cumberbatch is not quite up to the role of William Pitt -- we don't really believe this mild guy is capable of the political maneuvering that must be happening offscreen. Romola Garai does a lovely job pulling exposition out of Wilberforce as Barbara Spooner. And Albert Finney is quite incredible as John Newton -- incredible because he makes us feel something for a character whose speeches are as overwritten and melodramatic as I've seen in a long, long time.

The writing is serviceable, as is the directing. The first 15 to 20 minutes are sort of a mess, with flash forwards, flash backwards, all just to shovel exposition at us that we don't really need. These are filmmakers who simply don't trust their audience to figure things out, unfortunately. Once the film gets going, though, the pacing improves and we do become caught up in Wilberforce's quest.

Production design is quite good, though the lack of budget shows from time to time (there are scenes where the background is clearly painted). I was quite impressed with the costuming -- The actors look natural in the period clothes, sitting and walking as if born in the period, and I love the way the gentlemen treat their wigs as disposable pieces of their outfits.

Ultimately, the movie succeeds because it is about something, and about something that matters: The abolition of the slave trade, on the larger scale, and the level of passion and commitment it takes for one person to change the world, on the personal scale. I think we all have a deep need to hear "one person changes the world" stories, ranging from the Gospel story all the way to "Save the cheerleader, save the world," and Amazing Grace hits these buttons admirably.

If there is anything squirm-worthy about Amazing Grace, it's the way it hits us over the head with the song "Amazing Grace." Wilberforce sings it near the beginning of the movie (I think in a pub or a gentleman's club, I don't remember -- but he stops some rowdiness by singing -- and gets respectful listeners, which I simply didn't believe). Then Barbara insists that it be sung at their wedding; it feels quite out of place and we start to squirm. (And should we even mention at this point that the tune that we know as "Amazing Grace" did not exist at the time of the events of this movie?)

But the squirms come into full play in what has to be one of the worst codas to a movie ever. After the story is over, we see a bagpiper in full regalia. He starts to play Amazing Grace. A pullback reveals that it's a whole pipe and drum corps, all wailing out the song as slowly as possible. This goes on for what feels like 3 or 4 minutes, but is probably less. Eventually we realize they're in front of Westminster Abbey (or a backdrop thereof) -- which of course has to be identified for our American viewers -- and we learn that's where Wilberforce is buried.

Of course we only learn this if we haven't fled screaming into the lobby because of the pain of listening to all those bagpipes and the sheer boredom of watching one long shot of guys marching in place. If they're smart, the filmmakers will excise this ridiculous coda as soon as possible. What were they thinking?!

The bottom line: Yes, Amazing Grace definitely doesn't suck. It is an old-fashioned, earnest movie that helps us remember that old-fashioned, earnest movies are actually pretty cool. It tells an important story without (for the most part) beating us over the head saying "I'm Telling An Important Story!" It has strong performances across the board, and it feels real, as if we've really entered that world and time.

It may not be playing near you -- it had a relatively narrow release. But if it is, it's definitely worth seeing. (Just leave the second you see a bagpipe!)

GO TO THE MOVIES AND GIVE TO CHARITY

I've heard people who should know say that it takes an average of 8 years to be an "overnight success" in Hollywood. Where those numbers come from, I'm not sure, but our experience sure bears it out.

So it shouldn't be surprising that, after 8 years in existence, Act One is starting to see its first commercial successes.

One of those movies, The Ultimate Gift, opens next week. I haven't seen it (though I did read the book it's based on in galleys a loooong time ago), but it's written by Act One alum Cheryl McKay.

Here's a message from Cheryl on a way to support Act One (or I suppose you could choose another favorite charity -- but why would you?!) on opening weekend:

Before you go to the theater on opening weekend (March 9-11), you can check to see if a theater in your area is participating in giving $1 per ticket to charity. (This charity program is only for the opening weekend.) I set up a charity code for Act One, Inc., the non-profit screenwriting organization that has invested a lot in me as a writer. They have a full faculty of Christian writers, directors and producers who teach people like me how to write and produce films like this one. (Family-friendly, or faith-based types of stories, movies that reach a mainstream audience yet still contain good messages, etc.)

Go to: Fox Film Fund.
Choose The Ultimate Gift and enter your zip code.
If you find a theater in your area, proceed to GET TICKETS NOW.
It will direct you to Fox Faith's section of Fandango.
Upon checkout, you can enter the church/organization code: 500231

There you go! Two ways to support Act One in one fell swoop -- donate directly and lend a box office boost. How easy is that?

We now return you to your regularly scheduled blogging.

NOTES FROM THE DIVINE CONSPIRACY ON THE SMARTEST MAN WHO EVER LIVED

As I continue through Dallas Willard's The Divine Conspiracy, I am constantly struck by the way Willard makes clear to us that which should be obvious. He looks at subjects from just enough of a different angle that we can see them afresh.

And one of those subjects is Jesus. It's so easy to think of Jesus as "nice," but maybe, you know, just a bit, well, gullible. The easy, Sunday School version of Jesus, as it were.

Buthere are some of Willard's thoughts (pg 94, hardcover):

...It is not possible to trust Jesus, or anyone else, in matters where we do not believe him to be competent....

...Can we seriously imagine that Jesus could be Lord if he were not smart? If he were divine, would he be dumb? Or uninformed? Once you stop to think about it, how could he be what we take him to be in all other respects and not be the best-informed and most intelligent person of all, the smartest person who ever lived?....

At the literally mundane level, Jesus knew how to transform the molecular structure of water to make it wine. That knowledge also allowed him to take a few pieces of bread and some little fish and feed thousands of people. He could create matter from the energy he knew how to access from "the heavens," right where he was.

It cannot be surprising that the feeding of the thousands led the crowds to try to force him to be their king. Surely one who could play on the energy/matter equation like that could do anything. Turn gravel into gold and pay off the national debt! Do you think he could get elected president or prime minister today?

He knew how to transform the tissues of the human body from sickness to health and from death to life. He knew how to suspend gravity, interrupt weather patterns, and eliminate unfruitful trees without saw or ax.... And one of the greatest testimonies to his intelligence is surely that he knew how to enter physical death, actually to die, and then live on beyond death....

All these things show Jesus' cognitive and practical mastery of every phase of reality: physical, moral, and spiritual.... "Jesus is Lord" can mean little in practice for anyone who has to hesitate before saying, "Jesus is smart."

He is not just nice, he is brilliant. He is the smartest man who ever lived...

All this to set up the concept that perhaps it might be worth listening to what he says. And from here Willard will move into his discussion of, as he puts it, the Discourse on the Hill.

I've heard from a few of you saying you're thinking of picking up this book. Go ahead. Do it. You won't regret it.