On the Spiritual Disciplines

When the disciplines degenerate into law, they are used to manipulate and control people. We take explicit commands and use them to imprison others. Such a deterioration of the Spiritual Disciplines results in pride and fear. Pride takes over because we come to believe that we are the right kind of people. Fear takes over because we dread losing control.

If we are to progress in the spiritual walk so that the Disciplines are a blessing and not a curse, we must come to the place in our lives where we can lay down the everlasting burden of always needing to manage others. This drive, more than any single thing, will lead us to turn the Spiritual Disciplines into laws. Once we have made a law, we have an "externalism" by which we judge who is measuring up and who is not. Without laws, the Disciplines are primarily an internal work, and it is impossible to control an internal work. When we genuinely believe that inner transformation is God's work and not ours, we can put to rest our passion to set others straight.

...Our world is genuinely hungry for changed people. Leo Tolstoy observes, "Everybody thinks of changing humanity and nobody thinks of changing himself."
- Richard Foster, Celebration of Discipline, pgs 10-11