I'm doing my usual annoying thing at the moment - reading about 5 books at once. I wish I didn't do that but I do. Anyway, just to add to the confusion this morning I picked up another book I've got lying around the house at the moment - 'The Spirit of the Disciplines' by Dallas Willard - and read the first chapter. It was one of those 'wow' moments you sometimes get when you're reading. Here's a little taster - it's a long quote but it's worth persevering with...
Our mistake is to think that following Jesus consists of loving our enemies. going the second mile, turning the other cheek, suffering patiently and hopefully - while living the rest of our lives just as everyone around us does....it's a strategy that's bound to fail and to make the way of Christ 'difficult and left untried'. In truth it is not the way of Christ any more than striving to act in a certain manner in the heat of a game is the way of a champion athlete....
..It is part of the misguided and whimsical condition of humankind that we so devoutly believe in the power of effort-at-the-moment-of-action alone to accomplish what we want and completely ignore the need for character change in our lives as a whole. The general human failing is to want what is right and important, but at the same time not to commit ourselves to the kind of life that will produce the action we know to be right and the condition we want to enjoy. This is the feature of human character that explains why the road to hell is paved with good intentions. We intend what is right, but we avoid the life that would make it reality.
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