A Spirituality of Quitting
When Dreams, Decisions, and Discipleship Collide
I'm a great quitter. It's one of the few things I do well. I come form a long line of quitters. My father was a quitter, my grandfather was a quitter... I was raised to give up.
— George Costanza | Seinfeld, Season 4, Episode: The Old Man
Eric and I interviewed at the same time for the PhD program at Southern Seminary. Same interviewing team, same concentration, same result—accepted. Eric and I also were both granted the same gift of being supervised by Dr. Donald S. Whitney, author of Spiritual Disciplines of the Christian Life, Praying The Bible, and many more. Eric and I attended the same intro seminars with the great Dr. Jonathan Pennington. We were both pinching ourselves, amazed that we made it into the program.
During the middle of the first semester, I texted Eric about our upcoming seminar covering the first eight centuries of Christian spirituality, and I learned Eric had quit the program. I was surprised. Our texts basically went like this:
Eric: “Hey, Jeff! Man, I forgot to t…
