Perhaps it's just me, but this year in particular Lent has has made me uneasy. I participated in Lent mostly because it is what you do when you have an Anglo-Catholic background such as mine. But this year, especially since I was given the opportunity to post on this blog, I have found myself preoccupied with questions about Lent, its origins and intent. Unfortunately, many of these questions are still out looking for their answers.
I have done some preliminary (and perhaps incredulous) research concerning my queries with the aid of the wonder that is Wikipedia and I have learned a few things about this ancient tradition. For instance the name 'lent' comes from "...the Germanic root for spring (specifically Old English lencten; also the Anglo-Saxon name for March—lenct..."
However this hardly gets to the root of the matter. I guess what I'm wrestling with is why we do Lent at all. Why do we insist on living in the wilderness when Christ has delivered us into the promised land? Shouldn't we see ourselves as God himself sees us in light of His Son? Haven't we been crucified with Christ and died to our own sin? Are we not citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven, having been given a royal inheritance?
Did anybody not sin today? I wouldn't count on it. Do we need to recognize and own our sin before the Lord? Absolutely. Is one of the main jobs of the Holy Spirit to convict our hearts? Most assuredly. I'm just having trouble not reducing this whole lent business to a dramatic remembrance of a really big problem that we used to have. Does sin really have the power to trip us up anymore, or do we give it that power by focusing so much of our attention on it?
These are honest questions and I'm honestly trying to answer them. I look forward to reading everyone's comments and getting all of this straightened out!
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
Some Questions
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Good questions, Chris. Let my try to tease out how I would put my own answer. I think one of the reasons I find Lent helpful is its reminder of the both–and nature of the Christian life—the "already" and "not yet" of living in between the coming of the Kingdom of God and the second coming of Jesus.
The emphasis keeps me/us from getting too obnoxious about God's promises. And from being too discouraged at my/our failures. The promises are real, but if we aren't careful we get the prosperity gospel and appear to be disconnected from Jesus' other promise—that there will be suffering.
We have "it," but not all of it (or not fully). We have to live into it—not just to cross the Jordan into the promised land, as it were, but (metaphorically) to defeat the enemy, live in the land, grow crops, build cities, have children. . . .
Knowing how hard it is to keep just a short fast from a few good things reminds me, too, of how much I need help in all of this. Dust needs spirit to enliven and empower it. And it makes me long afresh for the final unveiling of God's new creation, for the resurrection, when Jesus will at long last bring us beyond dust.
Personally, I've found that Lent really helps me take a step back from "the world" and realize that what I am searching for is not to be found there. It's easy to get immersed in comfort and pleasures and ever so gradually push God aside in favor of worldly distractions, so I've found that Lent is a powerful time for me to take a big step back from the world and remember that it is only Him that I need.
Just my $0.02. :)
I think this gets to what I said in my first post: it all depends on the heart.
If what we "give up" is something that is a distraction to us in our everyday lives, the lack of it forces us to face the void.
For instance: if, when I am bored, I reach for something sticky and sweet (not ever a carrot, or a piece of broiled chicken...) not because I am actually hungry but because I need...something; then (and this is the longest sentence ever) when I give up sweets, and my fingers reach for something that isn't there, I feel empty. And that emptiness forces me to acknowledge it. And ask God for help. IT might not be spiritual "growth" per se, but if I call out for God's grace in the little things (which in the immediate need are not so little), then I am growing in my acceptance of my deep need for Him every minute of every day.
Ditto for other distracting things, like television, or something. Currently I am replaceing that distraction with the equally non-spiritual murder mystery, but still....
As Peter said, good questions…
So let me do the “listening thing” –you’re feeling what? That lent is confusing, annoying, pointless, bothersome, a “downer”, an obstacle, --how about offensive? Anyone else out there feel like lent is a little bit offensive –at least now and then. (I do) Okay, you did not use the word offensive, and maybe that’s not what you’re feeling… what are you feeling??
What’s the point of wilderness? I like wilderness okay (when I’m not there). Sometimes it is awesome–in a photograph, or driving by –in my Humvee… maybe even, under the right conditions, a short hike --but I do not want to hang out there…
Sometimes, however, for reasons Peter and Kimberly describe I might choose to hang out there –generally because it provides an environment for focus, I see or feel things there that I didn't see or feel in the city. (And sometimes I get “forced” there by circumstances)
–why do we fast? I think it is the same question… maybe you do not like to fast either; I generally do not think of it as a holiday, yet…
So maybe lent is, in some way offensive… why? Because I like being comfortable, & celebrating, --look the bridegroom has come, let’s party!!
Why do we have to do Passover, over and over. My kids have asked that…. Or Why do we keep looking at the cross,
I’m not trying to ridicule…
Wow, “a dramatic remembrance” --are there ways in which our blog comes across as a sort of pretense?
“A really big problem that we used to have” –well, that is, for many of us, truer than we grasp…
Who are we really? What if we saw what Jesus sees, as He sees us? How do we do see that, and stay there? What does he see? What does He want us to see? What is true of us? How do we know? (I’ve got some ideas but I’d rather hold the questions open…)
“Does sin really have the power to trip us up anymore, or do we give it that power…?”
Hmmm, do we give it that power?… I think we do…
do you think that maybe if we didn’t pay attention to sin --it would go away?
I’d like to hear more about what you’re thinking…
Good stuff you guys. I take no offense to anything that has been said and I hope I didn't come across as disrespectful. I hope I'm still aloud to post after this one. :)
I guess I'm feeling puzzled and a perhaps a little distressed. After giving it some time and thought, I think that I can see the value in it from the vantage point of holding out for the realization of His promises. The promises of God have been fulfilled in Christ, it is only that some of them are in the process of being realized.
I suppose that is the nature of the Kingdom of God. Like Peter said, It is both here (the present reality) and coming (in process). You are absolutely correct, Tyler, when you point out that the whole thing boils down to the real condition of our souls. I believe that I am as God sees me and that I cannot afford to have a thought about myself that God does not also share.
Perhaps the crux of my concern was that in our longing for a Kingdom that was coming, we could lose regard for the Kingdom at hand. I guess we must find the balance and live with regard for both. We must learn to recognize where we are in the process and live from that place, yearning to see more and more of His Kingdom come.
Asking good questions isn't disrespectful, Chris. This is great-- exactly the kind of conversation I had hoped would be sparked by this blog. Yay!
Get ready for a long post. I keep being reminded of what I recently read in G.K. Chesterton's book Orthodoxy (after being sucked into it from Peter's post). In chapter 6, "The Paradoxes of Christianity," Chesterton takes on the claims of agnostics he heard as a seeker that Christianity is too eastern, too western, too pessimistic, too optimistic, too warlike, too pacifistic, too celibate, too family-oriented, too ascetic, too ornate, etc. He argues that Christianity does not merely find a balance between these opposites, but incorporates them fully. I've pasted several paragraphs here, but it's shorter than reading the whole work. I think it definitely speaks to the themes of Lent, and even to the premise of having liturgical seasons.
"One accusation against Christianity was that it prevented men, by morbid tears and terrors, from seeking joy and liberty in the bosom of Nature. But another accusation was that it comforted men with a fictitious providence, and put them in a pink-and-white nursery. One great agnostic asked why Nature was not beautiful enough, and why it was hard to be free. Another great agnostic objected that Christian optimism, 'the garment of make-believe woven by pious hands,' hid from us the fact that Nature was ugly, and that it was impossible to be free. One rationalist had hardly done calling Christianity a nightmare before another began to call it a fool's paradise. This puzzled me; the charges seemed inconsistent. Christianity could not at once be the black mask on a white world, and also the white mask on a black world. The state of the Christian could not be at once so comfortable that he was a coward to cling to it, and so uncomfortable that he was a fool to stand it. If it falsified human vision it must falsify it one way or another; it could not wear both green and rose-coloured spectacles.
"But granted that we have all to keep a balance, the real interest comes in with the question of how that balance can be kept. That was the problem which Paganism tried to solve: that was the problem which I think Christianity solved and solved in a very strange way.
"Paganism declared that virtue was in a balance; Christianity declared it was in a conflict: the collision of two passions apparently opposite. Of course they were not really inconsistent; but they were such that it was hard to hold simultaneously.
"And now I began to find that this duplex passion was the Christian key to ethics everywhere. Everywhere the creed made a moderation out of the still crash of two impetuous emotions. Take, for instance, the matter of modesty, of the balance between mere pride and mere prostration. The average pagan, like the average agnostic, would merely say that he was content with himself, but not insolently self-satisfied, that there were many better and many worse, that his deserts were limited, but he would see that he got them. In short, he would walk with his head in the air; but not necessarily with his nose in the air. This is a manly and rational position, but it is open to the objection we noted against the compromise between optimism and pessimism — the 'resignation' of Matthew Arnold. Being a mixture of two things, it is a dilution of two things; neither is present in its full strength or contributes its full colour. This proper pride does not lift the heart like the tongue of trumpets; you cannot go clad in crimson and gold for this. On the other hand, this mild rationalist modesty does not cleanse the soul with fire and make it clear like crystal; it does not (like a strict and searching humility) make a man as a little child, who can sit at the feet of the grass. It does not make him look up and see marvels; for Alice must grow small if she is to be Alice in Wonderland. Thus it loses both the poetry of being proud and the poetry of being humble. Christianity sought by this same strange expedient to save both of them.
"It separated the two ideas and then exaggerated them both. In one way Man was to be haughtier than he had ever been before; in another way he was to be humbler than he had ever been before. In so far as I am Man I am the chief of creatures. In so far as I am a man I am the chief of sinners. All humility that had meant pessimism, that had meant man taking a vague or mean view of his whole destiny — all that was to go... Christianity thus held a thought of the dignity of man that could only be expressed in crowns rayed like the sun and fans of peacock plumage. Yet at the same time it could hold a thought about the abject smallness of man that could only be expressed in fasting and fantastic submission, in the grey ashes of St. Dominic and the white snows of St. Bernard. When one came to think of one's self, there was vista and void enough for any amount of bleak abnegation and bitter truth. There the realistic gentleman could let himself go—as long as he let himself go at himself. There was an open playground for the happy pessimist. Let him say anything against himself short of blaspheming the original aim of his being; let him call himself a fool and even a damned fool (though that is Calvinistic); but he must not say that fools are not worth saving. He must not say that a man, quâ man, can be valueless. Here again, in short, Christianity got over the difficulty of combining furious opposites, by keeping them both, and keeping them both furious. The Church was positive on both points. One can hardly think too little of one's self. One can hardly think too much of one's soul.
"St. Francis, in praising all good, could be a more shouting optimist than Walt Whitman. St. Jerome, in denouncing all evil, could paint the world blacker than Schopenhauer. Both passions were free because both were kept in their place. The optimist could pour out all the praise he liked on the gay music of the march, the golden trumpets, and the purple banners going into battle. But he must not call the fight needless. The pessimist might draw as darkly as he chose the sickening marches or the sanguine wounds. But he must not call the fight hopeless. So it was with all the other moral problems, with pride, with protest, and with compassion. By defining its main doctrine, the Church not only kept seemingly inconsistent things side by side, but, what was more, allowed them to break out in a sort of artistic violence otherwise possible only to anarchists.
"Christian doctrine detected the oddities of life. It not only discovered the law, but it foresaw the exceptions... Any one might say, 'Neither swagger nor grovel'; and it would have been a limit. But to say, 'Here you can swagger and there you can grovel' — that was an emancipation."
And from chapter 9, "Authority and Adventure":
"Everything human must have in it both joy and sorrow; the only matter of interest is the manner in which the two things are balanced or divided. And the really interesting thing is this, that the pagan was (in the main) happier and happier as he approached the earth, but sadder and sadder as he approached the heavens. The gaiety of the best Paganism, as in the playfulness of Catullus or Theocritus, is, indeed, an eternal gaiety never to be forgotten by a grateful humanity. But it is all a gaiety about the facts of life, not about its origin. To the pagan the small things are as sweet as the small brooks breaking out of the mountain; but the broad things are as bitter as the sea. When the pagan looks at the very core of the cosmos he is struck cold. Behind the gods, who are merely despotic, sit the fates, who are deadly. Nay, the fates are worse than deadly; they are dead.
"The mass of men have been forced to be gay about the little things, but sad about the big ones. Nevertheless (I offer my last dogma defiantly) it is not native to man to be so. Man is more himself, man is more manlike, when joy is the fundamental thing in him, and grief the superficial. Melancholy should be an innocent interlude, a tender and fugitive frame of mind; praise should be the permanent pulsation of the soul. Pessimism is at best an emotional half-holiday; joy is the uproarious labour by which all things live. Yet, according to the apparent estate of man as seen by the pagan or the agnostic, this primary need of human nature can never be fulfilled. Joy ought to be expansive; but for the agnostic it must be contracted, it must cling to one corner of the world. Grief ought to be a concentration; but for the agnostic its desolation is spread through an unthinkable eternity... Christianity satisfies suddenly and perfectly man's ancestral instinct for being the right way up; satisfies it supremely in this; that by its creed joy becomes something gigantic and sadness something special and small. The vault above us is not deaf because the universe is an idiot; the silence is not the heartless silence of an endless and aimless world. Rather the silence around us is a small and pitiful stillness like the prompt stillness in a sick room. We are perhaps permitted tragedy as a sort of merciful comedy: because the frantic energy of divine things would knock us down like a drunken farce. We can take our own tears more lightly than we could take the tremendous levities of the angels. So we sit perhaps in a starry chamber of silence, while the laughter of the heavens is too loud for us to hear."
Dang. That is some good reading.
I'm reminded of Psalm 23 and I think it ties right in here.
"The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.
He makes me lie down in green pastures...
...Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil."
I think its important that we don't get those two actions mixed up. This psalm is a testament not only to the fact that our home is in the green pastures, but also that we will pass through seasons of trial. The important thing is that we fear no evil.
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