flowingblades:

@balioc​ probably the most directly relevant passage.

Keep reading

OK…if this is the passage you’re inclined to cite as “most directly relevant,” I’ll admit to a certain level of bafflement. 

Christ looks into the camera and says: “you should have an Identity as ‘perfect,’ and here are all the things you need to do to make that happen, they are extremely difficult, they require vast sacrifice and nigh-infinite diligence.”  This is scrupulosity in a bottle.  This is precisely the thing I’m talking about.

“With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”  Admittedly that line does a lot of work, and you can set up your theology so that it blunts or even reverses the impact of everything that came before, but – even for someone faithfully just taking the scriptures at face value, you can see how that’s going to fail a lot of the time.