Lent - Legalistic or Helpful?
Lent has become increasingly popular in non-catholic circles. The custom of Lent can be traced back to the Canons of Nicaea in 325 AD, which recorded a fasting period of 40 days before Easter. Religious scholars believe the practice to have been started by the early Christians who thought it prudent to engage in special spiritual preparation for Easter.
Many use this season in the Church calendar to focus on God, give up earthly things (fast), and look forward to Easter with their souls.
In the protestant world, you can find all kinds of critiques on Lent. Some call it legalistic. Some call it unbiblical. If you have looked critically at the season of Lent before, I understand your hesitation. But we have always used days and weeks and seasons in our lives and the life of our church.
Seasons
Consider the Christmas season. Usually, the month of December, songs, sermons, and devotional guides are meant to help you see and praise the birth of Jesus. Likewise, Easter is a day we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus. Thanksgiving is a day we try to tune our hearts towards being thankful and feasting and celebrating with family. Our lives have set days and rhythms in the year to focus on specific things.
Lent is no different. It is a set aside time in the calendar where those who follow Jesus work to tune their hearts to identify with Jesus’ time in the wilderness and his life leading up to the cross, his death, and then reseurection.
Unbiblical?
We see in the life of God’s people God calling them to set times of the year to remembrance, for instance, the Passover in Exodus 12. We even set aside a whole day each week for the Lord’s day, where we meet together with our fellow brothers and sisters, worship God, and sit under the teaching of the scriptures.
Lent is no different. For us, it does not earn us favor with God or make us more loveable. It is simply a tool we use to draw nearer to Him. (Matthew 6:16-18, Isaiah 58:6, Joel 2:12, Acts 13:2-3, Ezra 8:23)
Ash Wednesday
Today is the start of the season of Lent. From today until Easter, historically, Christians have set aside things of pleasure and replaced them with spiritual practices that help them grow closer to God.
Some examples:
Giving up alcohol
Giving up sugar
Giving up TV
Giving up social media
Choosing a day each week to fast (the whole day or one meal)
Fasting Reveals Idols
When we seek to remove a thing of pleasure in our lives, we truly see how much of our hearts it has a hold of. Susan Narjala expounds of this:
We observe Lent by fasting from something we automatically gravitate toward—alcohol, chocolate, coffee, meat, screen time, video games, music apps, or social media. By intentionally cutting ourselves off from the things that temporarily satisfy, we confront the fact that we may have created insidious idols of them.
As Tim Keller points out: “A counterfeit god is anything so central and essential to your life that, should you lose it, your life would feel hardly worth living.”
When we stop drinking from the broken cisterns of the world, we gain a heightened awareness that our deep thirst can only be quenched by the Living Water (Jer. 2:13). Instead of being quick to slap on a temporary fix, whether it is chocolate or the distraction of a television show, fasting during Lent helps us understand only the one true God can meet our needs.
When I considered what to give up in this season, I decided on various forms of entertainment. I could sense my heart saying, “no, not that!” That might be all the guidance I need that perhaps I’ve leaned too much on this good thing rather than leaning on God.
Invitation
You may follow Lent each year, or this might be the first time you are considering following this ancient practice. Either way, I hope and pray if you choose to follow along, that this time of replacing things we love with God, you find more of Him in your life. For a while, I have been feeling a low-grade ache in my own soul that God was inviting me into deeper intimacy with Him, but that that intimacy would come with a cost.
Lent is the perfect time to pay the cost. What will you choose to give up over the next 40 days to draw nearer to God and enter into the wilderness with Jesus, which is often where greater intimacy with God is found? Remember, it is not simply about giving something up, but replacing that thing with more time with God.
May God bless you over the next 40 days.
Blessings,
Josh.