Lent

THEU

THEU

2,500+ Posts
This year around our place Lent is going to be a bit different. For the past many years I have given up Mexican food, and last year moved that up a notch by giving up meat. It was a hard thing and a constant reminder and sacrifice.
This year I am giving up watching sports on the television. That is right. The winter Olympics and March Madness gone.
One thing I am doing new this year is adding something. My wife and I, and really our church (at the prompting from a member) are going to be investing in water.
More people die each day from a lack of clean water (and related diseases) than any other single cause in the world. We aren't a big church, but we have set a goal to drill at least 2 wells in the Darfur region of Sudan.
I was just wondering if anyone else was abstaining from or taking on a dicsipline this Lenten season, and thought we could talk about ideas here.
 
Well, THEU, as a Longhorn fan, you wouldn't have much to cheer about during March Madness anyway.

I quit making Lenten sacrifices a few years ago, and I really don't know why. So I guess you could say that I gave up Lent ... for Lent.
 
My family and I were discussing what each one of us would give up for Lent this year. I mentioned that it was too bad that Christ couldn't have recommended to Pontius Pilot that he give up sweets for 40 days in lieu of crucifixtion as the punishment for his crimes.
 
"For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one should boast." (Eph.2:8-9)
 
Lent means nothing to me, but your well drilling deal does.

IMO, if there is a God, he/she is a lot more concerned about people doing things like providing water for those that have none, than he is with anyone skipping TV shows.

I wish you and your church great success with this noble goal
 
HatDaddy nailed it. This is the gospel reading every year on Ash Wednesday. It is not a difficult one to interpret.

Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21

Jesus said, "Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them; for then you have no reward from your Father in heaven.

"So whenever you give alms, do not sound a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, so that they may be praised by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your alms may be done in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

"And whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, so that they may be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

"And whenever you fast, do not look dismal, like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces so as to show others that they are fasting. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, so that your fasting may be seen not by others but by your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

"Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal; but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also."
 
As a recovering catholic, I'll consider giving something up for Lent when I see the pope (or even cardinal dinardo) wearing a t-shirt, jeans, and tire-tread sandals instead of gammarelli gowns and prada slippers...
 
Do people really think that Jesus is watching down and actually taking note of who is and who isn't participating in Lent and planning any kind of consequence, good or bad? Curious.
 
Observing a Lenten discipline is, as has been stated, an opportunity to try to draw closer to God. There is no act any one or group of sinners (hence all bishops, priests, laity, nonbelievers, etc.) currently wandering the planet could perform or fail to perform that would cause me to criticize God. He gave us free will, and He loves us. I admire all of your following your own respective consciences, and I wish you all peace.
 
Yea,
The Eyes of Texas, I'm not Catholic, so it would be hard for me to give Catholocism up.

Also, I don't follow the pope, and because I am not Catholic, I guess I don't see how the pope is related necessarily to my relationship with God. Lent is about growing closer to God. It isn't that watching tv is bad, or anything like that. It is about instead of spending time doing that, spending time with God, and working on my relationship with God.
It is about more than following some institutional rule. If that were the case than it would be empty. It is meaningful to me, because it is about a relationship with God. Growing closer to God should motivate me to make a difference in the world.
It is a relationship with God that motivates me, and my church to drill water wells for those who have no clean water.
 
longtex,
no offense taken at all. My comments were really to The Eyes of Texas who suggested giving up catholocism... I can't. Also, to me, I did want to make the point that the pope doesn't change one way or another the way I observe Lent. That was my point.
 
I always find Lent here in South Texas interesting. The Long John's Silvers down the street is packed every friday. They also have a paid security guard in the parking lot. Any other time of the year, the place if pretty dead.
 
That’s very interesting, longtex. Thanks for the response.

But I was thinking just now, as I was reading over what you wrote, that maybe you had in mind something similar to what Karl Marx meant when he said that “Religion is the opiate of the masses.” Here is the more extended quote (in a different translation) that helps us to understand what he meant:
In reply to:
Click to expand...
 
Then what did you mean when you said "by yourself, for yourself"?
 
It seems to me that you are describing more of a feeling than a relationship. It is, if I understand you, an esoteric experience that we have when we approach God in this way, an experience that cannot be described any more than, say, describing the color red, or describing the feelings of love or of sadness.

But isn't it true that we can still distinguish red, and love, and sadness from other things by discussing them? In other words, they possess a relational truth in addition to their experiential truth. I can, for instance, distinguish between a more general sort of sadness, and the more particular types of sadness known as nostalgia, or grief, or melancholy, or any of the other sub-sets within the general notion that we call sadness. These things all have distinctions which can be observed objectively, and we can in each case employ language for the purposes of describing those distinctions. I can refer to fiesta red, or candy apple red, or Dakota red, or burgundy mist, or shell pink (running through the Fender custom color chart), and in each case I invoke the notion of red. Yet we agree that there are different shades of red.

And so even if we cannot use words to effectively convey the experience of red or of sadness, yet we still know what it means to be red or to be sad by virtue of the comparisons and contrasts that are manifestly evident to our senses, or else conceptually evident through the dialectic of our common langauge.

And maybe now my meaning will be more clear: Even if we can't convey the experiential truth of knowing God, it does not follow that God's relational truths cannot be discussed with language.

So please tell me what you can about the relational truths of God: how God relates to humanity, or to other life, or to the various material objects of the world, or to the idea of creation or annihilation. These things may not amount to "knowing God" in the ways that you have described, but they are nevertheless interesting and substantial topics that need to be understood. Part of knowing God, I should think, is knowing how exactly we relate to God.

It seems to me that there are three possible avenues of explanation: (1) We can insist that these relational truths are beyond language as well. (2) We can say that there are no relational truths within the ONE because the idea of ONE repudiates the very idea of relation. Or (3) We can begin to examine the relational truths within this newly proposed system of God.

Any of these three avenues will produce an interesting subject for us to discuss, I think.
 
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