The Scandal of the Kingdom is the latest collection of Dallas Willard’s teaching on living as a disciple of Jesus. Dallas served as a professor of philosophy at the University of Southern California from 1965 until his retirement in 2012, and his writings on the spiritual life and discipleship to Jesus have left a profound impact on the church.
After being diagnosed with cancer, Dallas passed away in 2013. But his friends and family have continued to collect and publish his teachings for the ongoing benefit of God’s people today. The Scandal of the Kingdom was published in 2024 and is based on a series of teachings by Dallas on the parables of Jesus. The aim is to “deepen [our] understanding of the message of Christ and provide a compelling vision of life in the kingdom of God” (p. 258, emphasis in the original).
Summary
The book opens with a short introduction that gives the heart and vision behind the book. “Parables turn out to be doorways into a beautiful and loving reality, yet they also disrupt our comfortable notions of God and heaven” (p. 1). So by exploring the parables, Dallas seeks to help us understand God more fully and the life of the kingdom of heaven more clearly to help deepen our faith.
Following that, there are two introductory chapters that set the stage for exploring specific parables. Chapter 1 considers the difference between having faith in Christ and having the faith of Christ. What if we had the very same faith that Jesus had? The faith of Christ is best seen in the message of Christ, which was the present availability of the kingdom of God today. We don’t have to live on our own with our own limited resources. “When we walk in the kingdom of God . . . we have a greater resource, a greater contact with power, than what was available to even John the Baptist, because we are increasingly integrated into the eternal kind of life God intended us to have” (p. 12). This is the faith Christ had and wants us to have.
“The faith of Christ is best seen in the message of Christ, which was the present availability of the kingdom of God today.”
Chapter 2 develops this theme: “You cannot understand what Jesus taught unless you understand how he taught” (p. 19). If we fail to grasp how Jesus taught, we can turn his teachings into legalism. Jesus taught in very concrete ways to subvert prevailing assumptions, and the parables were a key strategy for doing this.
The rest of the chapters take a look at a number of Jesus’ parables, serving up Dallas’s characteristic insight and reflections into human living and life with God.
Why It’s Valuable
If you are looking for a detailed study of the parables in their cultural context, then this is not the book for you. There are other books that provide that. What makes this book valuable is Dallas’s unique gift of incisive understanding of human nature and how the message of Jesus speaks to that. So the strength of this book is in the insights about who God is, who we are, and how to live as a disciple of Jesus.
Dallas had a well-thought-out, comprehensive understanding of discipleship to Jesus and the kingdom of God. And even though this book is based largely on teachings he gave before he published some of his well-known books, that comprehensive grasp was already present.
As I was reading this book, I was struck by a number of insightful and thought-provoking ideas. Here are a few:
“The best advice about how to go to heaven is to go now by living your life with God” (p. 15).
“An essential investment of our life with God is to take care of our minds by cultivating our thoughts. The unkempt mind becomes obsessive, and then the will works from those frenzied thoughts” (p. 43).
“The best advice about how to go to heaven is to go now by living your life with God.”
“Riches aren’t ‘thorns’ in and of themselves, but their danger is in their deceitfulness, which creates an illusion of a power, security, and merit that belong only to God” (p. 47).
“Once we understand who Jesus is and what knowing him means for our lives, we realize that discipleship to Jesus is the greatest opportunity we will ever have in life” (p. 83).
“The way this works out practically is that God expects us to take charge over things around us . . . and use them in reliance on him to create the greatest good we can to the glory of God” (p. 108).
“Your work is not just your job but the total amount of good you will accomplish in your lifetime” (p. 117).
“What do people who lead in this way for Christ do? They bring the life of the kingdom to other people by opening their lives to it themselves” (p. 141).
“Forgiving persons lay down all plans to get even for wrongs done, even in small ways. . . . And it’s a great relief to let it go” (p. 181).
“They bring the life of the kingdom to other people by opening their lives to it themselves.”
I actually recommend creating your own index on the blank page at the back of the book, writing down page numbers and topics to help you find helpful ideas again in the future. I didn’t do this as I read the book, and there are things I’d like to go back and reread but I can’t recall where they are at. One example is the thing I’ve been chewing on most since reading the book: our character is what we could do if given the opportunity.
Conclusion
If you’re looking for guidance in the life of discipleship to Jesus, The Scandal of the Kingdom will be a great encouragement. And the genius of Dallas’ teaching is that statements like those above are put together in a coherent whole of a vision of life with God in his kingdom.
If you are unfamiliar with Dallas Willard, The Scandal of the Kingdom is good primer to what he taught about living as a disciple of Jesus. There will be a lot of insights for living a with-God life.
“Our character is what we could do if given the opportunity.”
And if you’re a Dallas Willard fan, although you’ll probably notice the book feels a little less robust than books like The Divine Conspiracy or Renovation of the Heart, you will be encouraged to once again hear Dallas’s heart and be stirred by fresh reflections and insights concerning the nature of life in the kingdom of God.
