By Gregory Shullai
Many Protestants are uncomfortable with Lent. They have biting questions and comments on this practice that have no easy answers. If there’s anything that could satisfy these questioning Christians it has to be something that they are familiar with and what better than the Bible that they carry around. And so being familiar with what justifies the practice of Lent they are directed to a passage from the Gospel of St Mark, “And the spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels watched over him.” They actually know this verse by heart yet they ask why do Christians need to observe Lent? and the repeated response they get is that it’s all about possessing a personal opinion on the life of Jesus Christ and imitating it as far as possible. One may agree or disagree with this reply, but it’s an altogether different subject to try to follow Christ based on what he went through because what he went through was essential for his becoming what he became – a teacher of morals, ethics and spirituality, and these teachings are an important element in the ethics and spirituality of any religion…not only Christianity, – no Christian can be a Christian if he doesn’t follow the ways of the Christ.
The ethics and spirituality that Christ taught are as relevant today as they were then. The circumstances may have altered but the moral values haven’t changed one bit. That his teachings are as relevant today as they were then calls upon us to examine whether what he went through then should not also be relevant to our becoming as they were to him, and so apply to us in the here and now, because there is the undoubted connection that what he did made him into what he became. It doesn’t make a difference if one regards the historical Christ or the Biblical Christ. The Christs’ teachings focussed on the simple fact that our deeds make us what we are and so we are confronted with the consideration of whether one should or should not observe Lent. Possessing an opinion on why one should do or not do a thing, in this case observing Lent, is like possessing a dog and having an opinion on what to do or not do with it, assuming one has a dog. And if one has a dog then one has one’s own opinions on what to do with it. It is logically the same with Lent…we must discover within ourselves whether we intellectually regard Lent as pertinent in the life of Christ before having an opinion on it, and if we do, we must then go about trying to understand what to do with it. For those that do not have any knowledge of Lent they obviously have no opinion on it and if this practice is to be of any interest to them, perhaps they should try to discover how and why and what Lent really is about. Basically, one can only have an opinion on anything if one has some knowledge about that thing.
The opinions we are speaking of in this case are live opinions, opinions that propel one to do or not do something – or somethings. Those that do not have their own opinions on Lent are satisfied with their collection of beliefs, even some fossilised beliefs which they hide away in their heads as convictions. The fact that people have convictions that propel them into action gives their lives whatever meaning they attach to it. As men and women, we have that levity, that conduct by which we possess a knowledge of something that leads us on a path towards a source where all our questions find an answer. For Christians, essentially for the Catholics and the Anglicans, they believe that the saving grace of Christ is found and felt in imitating his life and this they use to strengthen their argument for the need to observe an imitation of the life that Christ lived on earth. They also have their doctrines and sacraments. There are others that see Lent as a personal mortification and an out-ward display of harsh disciplinary constraints which many believe are totally unnecessary because of the fact that every Christian is expected to know that the Risen Jesus is joyful and alive! we don’t need to mortify ourselves to please God. That’s why Jesus died for us, so we don’t have to be “good enough,” – a very sound conviction if ever there was one.
But isn’t it also a fact that those that practice Lent, the Catholics and the Anglicans, also have convictions? Yes but no; Lent is not practiced out of a conviction; it is practiced out of a desire to feel what Christ felt when he went out into the wilderness for forty days and forty nights. “Is it a doctrine?” they ask, because they absolutely will not accept it as a doctrine of any kind of Christianity, and those that practice Lent reply, “No, it is not a doctrine either.” But the latter are quick to add that Christ said, “If anyone wants to be my disciple, he must deny himself, take up his cross and follow me” and Lent, they say, is one way of following Christ. Whether one upholds Lent or not basically is a question of one’s belief sustained by a belief turned into practice. For those that observe it, Lent then is “an acceptable time” for contemplating and doing this work of following the Master, an appropriate time to try and celebrate those forty days and forty nights here and now and what better time than right before the Passion and Resurrection week – the resurrection day…the kind of victory over death day – and not just any day in the year.
Indeed, one must not allow oneself to be misled in this matter of one’s religion, one must be sceptical about what one is taught and use the vigour of one’s mind and the inherent freedom of one’s mind because not all minds are of an equal strength and vigour – everyone has the freedom to an opinion based on one’s interpretation of the religious teachings they follow. Convictions strangle the ability of the mind to question the value or the disvalue of any teaching and this is not in the interest of discovering the value of the teaching. Relying entirely on one conviction instead of examining as many as one comes across is essentially the spirit of a sceptic. Christians should examine as many aspects as they can of the life that Christ lived and connect these lifestyles with his teachings, because if they do this, they will discover a deeper and a truer aspect of the teachings of their master and perhaps even discover the truth – the truth which sets them free and does not bind them like doctrines and dogmas do. As a Christian one must beware of dogmas and doctrines, and not let them become the cornerstone of their religious belief. Isn’t that what Christ faced in his time?
Ultimately the point is to what end are we believing in the things we believe? The end must be something good, something worthwhile and this is essentially the problem with what we are taught and what we see happening in front of our own eyes and hear with our own ears. There must be something that can be grasped onto and used profitably in one’s life. Lent is not about showing miserableness, there are other ways for doing that. It is totally unnecessary. What we show outwardly should essentially be an inner expression, an expression of controlling and containing one’s greedy desires by focussing on the lessons from the tests and trials that Christ went through while he was in the wilderness for forty days and nights. Just as he faced his tests and did not succumb to them, we too should expect to be tempted by modern day tests and like him not succumb to them. Easier said than done and mind you we are being tested with even greater temptations. In spite of that we too should be able to resist and not give in to them. It is a hard calling no doubt but not something that we cannot overcome.
Ask yourself a question, “who should win your respect?” and the answer would be, “only those that are capable of resisting temptation and have given our eyes and ears to see and hear with some pleasure what each man is capable off. People of such calibre have taught us to esteem the hero that is concealed in everyday characters like ourselves: they have taught us the art of viewing ourselves as heroes, simplified and transfigured. Lent is one occasion when we actually have the opportunity to deal with some basic details in ourselves, especially that basic greediness which like a spell constantly controls the foreground of who we are and what we do, making everything that is closest at hand even the most vulgar appear as if it were the correct thing to do. If Christianity has taught us to view ourselves as sinners, as if sin were the only nature we have – immortal criminals, Lent is that time of the year when we get the opportunity to purposely view that nature in ourselves as something complete and whole – something that has good as well, because during Lent we purposely avoid bribes and kickbacks and temptations…it’s that simple.
Finally, during Lent there is the art of gaining knowledge from mimicry – the process whereby one gains an advantage through superficially imitating another. In today’s context, as it was in the days of the Christ, power is associated with wealth – essentially with those that are engaged in politics and religion, and so everyone believes that the way to power is through getting elected or becoming a religious leader, and the weak, precisely because of their weakness, are incentivized to understand, adapt, and exploit the psychology of the powerful, that is the poor mimic the wealthy by doing what the wealthy did to become powerful…which sadly is to become a corrupt politician or a corrupt priest. And I must quickly add there are good politicians and holy priests as well. Lent reveals that mimicry is the means by which we are able to attain that Christ-like power, the power to reassess what we consider as valuable – a personal thorough introspection rather than blind discipleship, and this is the greatest advantage of Lent. Ultimately, Lent provides an analysis of a compelling possibility of a personal change by imitating the way of the Christ rather than the revelation one gets from those in power, because power as is manifested these days is malicious – it blinds and ossifies people to corrupt ways. Power essentially should be the unambiguous good toward which all living things should strive. It is said that there is a highpoint in each and everyone’s life and one can never realise it unless one has tried whatever there is to be tried, and for Christians the fact that if they want to understand the highpoints of their Christian lives, they need to feel what their Saviour felt – a feeling of perfection and an affirmation of life, a triumphant feeling of wellbeing in oneself and of goodwill towards life.
