Tradition!

One reason I have come to appreciate—even to enjoy—Lent, is the fact that it puts tradition right in your face. We are invited “in the name of the church” to do something we otherwise wouldn't do.

I got started on this train of thought by reading a quote from Karl Barth on somebody else's blog.

To my mind the whole question of tradition falls under the Fifth Commandment: Honor father and mother! Certainly that is a limited authority; we have to obey God more than father and mother. But we have also to obey father and mother. . . . There is no question of bondage and constraint. It is merely that in the Church the same kind of obedience as, I hope, you pay to your father and mother, is demanded of you towards the Church’’s past, towards the “elders” of the Church.

This is in the same vein as Chesterton's famous quote in Orthodoxy (that excellent postmodernist apologetic):

Tradition means giving a vote to most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about. All democrats object to men being disqualified by the accident of birth; tradition objects to their being disqualified by the accident of death. Democracy tells us not to neglect a good man's opinion, even if he is our groom; tradition asks us not to neglect a good man's opinion, even if he is our father.

One of the many saving virtues of such an approach is that, if we make the effort to honor our parents, natural or spiritual, we reap the reward that comes from being forced actually to try something—like observing Lent—that we would otherwise, in our vast wisdom and experience, dismiss out of hand. (We also have the opportunity to avoid a lot of stupidity. Paraphrasing Bismarck, why learn from your own mistakes? Learn from the mistakes and wisdom of others!)

If I offer even a grudging respect for tradition, my willingness to submit and obey opens a door for God to shape me. It's the opposite of looking for an experience tailored to what I think I want. I'm old enough now to recognize that I rarely know what's best for me. The things that will make me a better and happier person are not what I would choose on my own.

Lent in this sense is like liturgy overall: consciously putting yourself in a place where it's not about you, where you don't have to perform, where you're not worrying so much about yourself, is a really healthy thing to do. And it's a relief not to have to make everything up as you go.