Who Is Dallas Willard's Critique Of 'The Great Omission'

This is a book critique on a great book, by Dallas Willard called, The Great Omission. The author wrote this book in order to both show and show how to fix the disparity between people that call themselves Christians and people that actually live out their lives as Christians under the Great Commission. The author essentially explains the point of the book in the intro and then fleshes out the idea of how one would fix their mindsets about subjects such as spiritual formation, discipleship, and Christian living in general. Largely I agree with the author as and I don’t have very much to stand on against Willard except possibly for a few points. I will start though with areas I agree with. In the beginning of the book Willard explains, “Most

Specifically, I learned that God’s grace is opposed to earning, but not effort. Earning is an attitude one takes, but effort is an action. God wants us to use effort in our faith, this is important as long as we know we are not earning salvation from this effort. Another thing I learned is that, as an organization gets bigger and more successful, that organization often changes its original mission without realizing it. Rather than reaching people or teaching the Gospel, it’s very easy to become concerned about success. Just because something is doing financially well does not mean that it is succeeding. If the mission and goal is missed this is not success but a slow failure. These are things that happen over years, but visions and ideals change for the worse sometimes rather than for the

“Spiritual formation is the process whereby the inmost being of the individual takes on the quality or character of Jesus himself”2. Willard talks in depth about what spiritual formation is and isn’t. No only this but why spiritual formation is important and some ways to put oneself in this process. The author writes that spiritual formation is not aimed at controlling action. This would put one into a deadly legalism. Sometimes in my mind all I need to do to be a better Christian or closer to God is more and longer spiritual disciplines. However, God cares not just about what actions people take on the outside but who they are on the inside driving these actions. Truly, we can do nothing good without God and we need God in our lives much more than we often realize. Behind the veil of twenty first century prosperity and distractions are a people that are spiritually dead on this inside but white and clean on the outside; and this is a sad, terrible