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.
When you are reading, someone has done a lot of work on your behalf, someone has had ideas and has then written and corrected and improved them so that they can be shared.
We are tired of aristocratic explanations in Harvard words.
You can never learn anything that you did not already know
For some years now I have read through the Bible twice every year. If you picture the Bible to be a mighty tree and every word a little branch, I have shaken every one of these branches because I wanted to know what it was and what it meant.
The more that everyone has access to the same educational opportunities, the more society will tend to accept some receiving disproportionate rewards. After all, they themselves have a chance to be winners.
More money is put into prisons than into schools. That, in itself, is the description of a nation bent on suicide. I mean, what is more precious to us than our own children? We are going to build a lot more prisons if we do not deal with the schools and their inequalities.
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