On Discipline and Becoming a Disciple
This chapter details the many physical tests used to entrain converts. These include practices welcoming pain and of suffering—practices that, according to ministry leaders, left practitioners less vulnerable to addiction. These practices were a way to sanctify the addicted body and embody spiritual power. They were techniques of bodily and emotional discipline used to retool narratives of addiction, from those of descent and isolation to those of ascent and connection. Bearing pain also meant restoring the capacity for delay, to dampen the impulsivity and sense of desperation that many described as core problems of addiction. Ironically, converts use their bodies as a vehicle to spiritually transcend the limits of their corporeal, everyday worlds. The addicted and withdrawing body was, in the ministries, a sensitive instrument for channeling the will of God.