Spirit of the Disciplines Update

A quote:
If one day I assure my Christian friends that I intent to “quit sinning” and arrive at a stage where I can perfectly follow Jesus Christ, they will most likely be scandalized and threatened?or at least very puzzled. “Who do you think you are?” they would probably say. Or they might think, “What is he really up to?”

But if, on the other hand, I state that I do not intend to stop sinning or that I do not plan to ever follow my Lord in actuality, they will be equally upset….My Christian fellowship circle will allow me not to follow him and even not to plan to follow him, but they will not permit me to say it. p12-13.

He points out the tension we live in between wanting to obey Jesus radically, and being seemingly totally unable to do it with any consistent sucess. So he turns to the role of the human body in the spiritual life. Jesus had a body, we have a body, and we cannot hope to change our spiritual existence apart from changing our bodily existence. It’s unrealistic to think that we can be different spiritually without being different physically, because the two dimensions of human existence are not at all separate, but closely interrelated.