Well, friends, it is that time of year again: the (annoying) time of year when a great number of people in the world – for seemingly no particular reason at all – “give up something” for Lent. Buddhist, Protestant, Latin, Agnostic … they’re all in.
For many, it is nothing more than an attempt at “discipline.” We can liken this to “new year’s resolutions” – those pesky ideals that help drive retail sales of vitamins, energy bars and exercise equipment around the first two weeks of January. I say “an attempt at discipline,” because – for the most part – no one really follows through or makes it out of January alive. This is not because the ambitions are beyond one’s potential reach, necessarily, but because we live in a culture of excess, self-satisfaction and pleasure, and are simply ill-equipped (most of us having a “will” that is in bondage to sin and not wholly “free”) to handle the prospect of extended discipline.
In these cases, it doesn’t really matter what “faith tradition” one comes from, and the “fad” of “giving up stuff for Lent” is neither spiritual nor inherently Christian. It is empty, bare, legalistic, pseudo-asceticism practiced by those without any experience of true asceticism (or what that requires) at all. Like most things in America today, it is a trend that will eventually go by the wayside. One can only hope, honestly.
I think we Orthodox Christians in the United States underestimate just how much our culture influences, shapes and controls us, and that in a profoundly negative way. Orthodox Christianity “across the pond” has been through some interesting times, to say the least.
As I continue to examine Second Temple apocalyptic literature, it seems more and more likely that St Paul was drawing on his vast knowledge of this work at times in order to help make illustrations or “give wings” to many of the themes and ideas he was espousing throughout his epistles in the early years of the Church.
