This is an interesting post. It's an angle I hadn't thought of. In the early years of Christianity there were a fair few guys who moved away from civilization, maybe into the desert, into a cave, under a tree, scrounged for food, and spent nearly all of their time in prayer and meditation undistracted by much in the line of dealing with the material world. Many of them were seen as sources of wisdom and grace and attracted quite a few followers as Kraft seems to have done. And I would agree that what he does and what the early Christian ascetics did is ultimately futile. But then so is everything else.
I would argue that it is better to be a person "of the world" than someone shut away solely focused on one tiny little thing.
One can ask, who is REALLY the most self disciplined person, the guy living alone in cave pondering holy text (or running every single day on a beach at the same time)or the guy that is out in the world facing temptations at every turn?
You can argue that one of those options is better than the other but you can never win such an argument. Nor can you lose it.
Does he have to quit at a certain time because he’s getting old? I think on Sunday in this retirement place I’m living at, listening to old, grown men gathered around a TV hootin and hollering for football players they’ll never meet, that’s what I really think is unfortunate.
Now, to the topic at hand, I don’t believe in this streak like I don’t believe in many streaks. We had a guy in my city 10 years ago, whose been running since 1977 say he’d run 207,000 miles.
BS. Both these guys have done impressive things no doubt that were overshadowed by exaggeration