Have you ever wondered why giving stuff up for Lent is
still a thing? In our largely non-religious culture when faced with the choice
of going big or going home on parts of the ecclesiastical calendar we have, on
the whole, gone home. In our deeply consumerist culture we would usually say
that to be asked to give something up is to be deprived of some vague sort of
human right. But we still quite fancy giving something up for 40 days before Easter.
Odd, isn’t it? Surely, if we’d be happier and healthier without something
during Lent, we’d be happier and healthier without it all year – so why do we
not just give it up full stop? And if
giving it up doesn’t make us happier or healthier, why are we doing it?
But then I guess we all know that in real life things are
messier than that. There’s all kinds of stuff we know we’d be better off
without, but we keep wanting it anyway, and we keep giving in. And there’s all
kinds of stuff we know we’d be much better off doing which we just never quite
find the energy to get up and do. When you think about it, it’s almost like whatever
is actually in control of what we do does not entirely have our best interests
at heart! Which is quite a troubling thought…
And this is why Lent is useful for us, basically as a
cunning way for the bit of ourselves that does want the best for us to
negotiate with the less benevolent bit that seems to actually be calling the
shots, and say, ‘Well come on I’m not asking for forever, how about just 40
days?’ And we do indeed get temporary permission. But even that permission turns
out to be an ingenious counter strategy! You
can have 27 days but then on day 28 you’ll cave and you will know for certain who’s
in charge around here. Or perhaps even more devious, Go on – take the full 40. Enjoy yourself. And when you’re done you’ll
feel so proud of your self-control that you’ll run back into my arms all
flushed and pleased with yourself, and you’ll joyfully give me back control and
let me ruin your life for the rest of the year!
I realise it all sounds a bit over the top there, but if
you think about it, unless there’s some kind of conflict inside us doing something
for Lent makes no sense at all – and it clearly does make quite a lot of sense
because so many people still do it.
Including me.
And what I’m going to do for Lent this year is take blogging
back up. Because I actually love writing, but the less-than-benevolent bit of
me that doesn’t have my best interests at heart but tries to run my life anyway
(I call it ‘Sin’), has this infuriating tendency to always offer me something a
bit easier to do, a bit lazier, and a lot less satisfying.
And the more I think about it, the more it seems a very
appropriate thing to do for Lent. Because traditionally, the whole point of
giving things up for Lent was this: use a focused period of time to exercise
the power Jesus has given you to overcome that inward drag towards stuff that’s
a bit easier and a lot less satisfying, and in doing so make more space in your
life to enjoy Him – which is a bit less easy but a lot more satisfying. And
actually I have always found that writing about Jesus is one of the best ways I
know of making more space in my life for me to enjoy him! To mix my metaphors
horribly, it’s like the act of trying to share with other people how delicious
he is motivates me to chew on it properly, and not just gulp it down like a microwave
dinner in front of the TV hardly even noticing the taste.
And I was reminded of that the other day by a brilliant
talk I heard about why God wants us to praise him. It’s not that he’s got a
fragile ego and he needs us to give him some self-esteem. It’s not that he’s a
narcissistic despot who demands that his subjects cringe and fawn before him.
It’s that we humans love to praise what we enjoy – when we come across The Good Place on Netflix, or the Lake
District, or a peanut butter and honey and banana sandwich, we want to tell
people about them! We want to communicate and express their astonishing
brilliance! (I’m serious about the sandwich, try it.) As CS Lewis once put it,
“I think we delight
to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes
the enjoyment; it is its appointed consummation.”
Praise is the consummation of delight. And Jesus it
utterly and ultimately delightful. So I’m looking forward to the next 40 days.
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