It didn't register with me until I thought of it on cupcake's recent thread. The very name "doctrine" and "practice" sends chills up my spine. It speaks of distilling the rules down, and then self-applying these rules as guide-lines to righteousness. In other words, we take our best shot at establishing the rules, and of course, the rules are hard objects, and then we self-apply these hard objects to frail human hearts who have found themselves caught in all kinds of failure modes, and in all kinds of perpetual unendurable crap. No wonder people get hurt. The hard objects win every time.

Scott, I see you have made a personal breakthrough. Much like when I separated church from kingdom. For me it started with the "serving two masters" I chose to lose the deacon and the master of the people that could never be satisfied to follow the King. When it becomes looking after his blessings he has given you instead of giving out of ownership, life changes.

Just in case someone still has questions of what Scott has just said; hard objects indeed do win when the battle is in human terms. What is written in doctrinal form is powerful but not all powerful. The Spirit rises above it all.