Everyone gets a spiritual formation. It's like education. Everyone gets an education; it's just a matter of which one you get.
Interpretation
Spiritual formation is as universal and diverse as education, influenced by the experiences one encounters.
Dallas Willard's quote highlights the inevitability of spiritual formation in everyone's life, much like education. Just as individuals receive education that varies widely based on their circumstances and choices, so too does everyone undergo a process of spiritual development shaped by their experiences and environment. This underscores the notion that both learning and spirituality are integral parts of the human experience, tailored by the unique paths each person takes.
In practice
In a speech about personal development, one might quote Dallas Willard to emphasize the importance of choosing the right influences.
The greatest issue facing the world today, with all its heartbreaking needs, is whether those who, by profession or culture, are identified as ‘Christians’ will become disciples – students, apprentices, practitioners – of Jesus Christ, steadily learning from him how to live the life of the Kingdom of the Heavens into every corner of human existence.
The first act of love is always the giving of attention.
So many people would like to have guidance from God because obviously, if you have a word from God, it's the best possible thing. But they don't relate that to life as a whole. Often they want guidance as a way of opting out of the responsibility of making decisions.
What is truly profound is thought to be stupid and trivial, or worse, boring, while what is actually stupid and trivial is thought to be profound. That is what it means to fly upside down.
The basic question 'will I obey Christ 's teaching?' is rarely taken as a serious issue. For example, to take one of Jesus' commands, that is relevant to contemporary life, I don't know of any church that actually teaches a church how to bless people who curse them, yet this is a clear command.
When I left home after graduating high school, I left as a migrant agricultural worker with a Modern Library edition of Plato in my duffel bag. It sounds kind of crazy, but I loved it. I loved the stuff. Before I knew there was a subject called philosophy, I loved it.
Let us have "sweet girl graduates" by all means. They will be none the less sweet for a little wisdom; and the "golden hair" will not curl less gracefully outside the head by reason of there being brains within.
That can be the most painstaking aspect of being a teen, figuring out what the world really looks like. If you find someone in a book, you know you're not alone and that's what's so comforting about books.
We know that there will never be a great Newark unless there is a great public school system for our city.
I don't care what town you're born in, what city, what country. If you're a child, you are curious about your environment. You're overturning rocks. You're plucking leaves off of trees and petals off of flowers, looking inside, and you're doing things that create disorder in the lives of the adults around you.
But one of the things I have learned during the time I have spent in the United States is an old African American saying: Each one, teach one. I want to believe that I am here to teach one and, more, that there is one here who is meant to teach me. And if we each one teach one, we will make a difference.
What if you love knowledge for its own sake, not necessarily as a blueprint to action? What if you wish there were more, not fewer reflective types in the world?
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