Look Inside: b'Christianity Explored'

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Jesus – His Aim In 1991, when I went to theological college, I joined the local rugby club. Now the club was very competitive, so during the summer I received a long and rigorous training schedule in preparation for what was called ‘Club PreSeason Testing and Training’ in September. I dutifully circled the date on my calendar, before throwing the schedule away and thinking, ‘I’ll go on some runs and do some sit-ups – I’ll be fine.’ September rolled around eventually, after a fairly casual summer in which I nevertheless did more exercise than I had ever done before. In fact, I felt pretty confident as I turned up at the training ground. As I walked into the changing room, I noticed that all the blokes were very quiet. You spot this very quickly if it occurs in rugby players. Then the coach came in and said, ‘Right, we’ll start with the bleep test.’ For the bleep test, we ran back and forth over a 20-yard stretch in time to a bleep that got faster and faster. We literally ran until we dropped. In my case, the ‘drop’ part was not long in coming.