Discipleship = compassion

What is discipleship? How do we make disciples? What does a disciple look like? These are all questions the church has been wrestling with for eons.

In chapter 6 of Trevor Hudson's fine book Seeking God, he offers some great insight.

On p. 130 he says, "Life through death describes the pattern of authentic Christ following." The crux of the chapter is on 'dying to self.' And he does something very interesting with that.

On 138 he notes this:

Bible scholars point out that the Hebrew words translated 'compassion' and 'womb' are the same word except for having different vowels. God's compassion is the same kind of other-centered, self-giving, and sacrificial love that a mother has for her child.

He continues this thought into p. 140...

Now we can see that the acid test of discipleship is not how much we pray, or how much we know about the Bible, or whether we exercise the gifts of the Spirit, or even how involved we are in the struggle for justice. All these things are vitally important and have a crucial place in our following Jesus. When it comes to gauging the genuineness of our discipleship, however, these factors are not the most important. The acid test of whether we are becoming mature as a Christ follower is learning to deny ourselves and to die to selfishness so that the fruit of divine compassion grows within us...

Whoa..... I like that.

Certainly compassion isn't the only mark of a disciple of Jesus, but as Hudson says, "Any spirituality that does not make us more compassionate can hardly be called Christian." Yeah, tell that to a trump-ster! ;)

One other point of note in this chapter is on 147 where Trevor recalls a time he was to introduce Dallas Willard at a speaking engagement. Dallas told him to keep it brief, and suggested half-jokingly that speakers at Christian conferences should be introduced in terms of their current weaknesses instead of their "accomplishments." I think that's a grand idea!