Lenten Discipline

It’s not too late to adopt a Lenten discipline.

The season of Lent is a time of preparation for Holy Week and Easter. And part of the preparation is to repent of our sins. “Repent”, as you will recall, means turn away from. Therefore, the best possible Lenten discipline would be one in which you either give up a harmful activity (turn from a sin of commission), or take on a loving one (rectify a sin of omission).

It’s not popular in our upbeat, positive-thinking, success-oriented culture to think about our sinfulness. It’s a downer. In addition, our individualism discourages us from taking any responsibility for the sins of our government or our economic system. I suppose, if one is completely unaware of ever hurting anyone, one will not feel guilt or the need for forgiveness. But most people who look at their lives honestly realize that they are, in fact, prone to sin.

Given that realization, the question becomes, “What are we to do?” We can pretend we have no transgressions, but it’s difficult to fool our own subconscious, which usually finds some subtle way of making us feel worthless. We can look for someone to blame for our shortcomings, a common approach among those with just enough knowledge of psychotherapy to be dangerous. We can project what we don’t like about ourselves onto others, which is a large part of racism. All of these are like taking Tylenol. They ease the pain, but don’t remove its cause.

Or we can take the high, hard, narrow road by looking with clear sight at our own sins, repenting, and asking God’s forgiveness. That is the only way we can actually be set free from our sins. We may still not avoid their natural consequences. But if we can fully receive God’s forgiveness, we can escape the burden of guilt.

The idea behind a Lenten discipline is that it reminds us to look clearly at our sinfulness and repent of it. Thereby the triumph of Christ over every sin and even over death at Easter is made all the more meaningful to us. For we realize what a great blessing it is to be forgiven. And we relive during Holy Week and Easter the events that made such blessed forgiveness possible.

God bless you.