American Idol – Season 11 and Lent

 

Lent, a season of fasting and penitence for forty weekdays in preparation for Easter, began this year on February 22, 2012 and will end on Sat, April 7, 2012. For whatever reasons, it is my childhood religion’s reminder that giving up a guilty pleasure – a.k.a.  Idol(s) is a punishment that I deserve and will put me in better standing with “God.” In church-speak, fasting and penitence are necessary mortifications, a putting to death, of the flesh.

I toyed with the idea of what I could give up or take up this liturgical season -- Not that my foregoing or embracing pleasure or disciplines would impress God.  But, before Ash Wednesday ended, I ate the first temptation – being careful to cut the brownie in half, however. And I now have blown three beautiful opportunities to resume a walking routine. 

The bad thing about Lent is that it puts me on a guilt trip;  that is also its chief benefit.  Forty days of going without a few pleasures, and forty days of doing  what I won’t “naturally” do is less than 10% of one year. Why, one might argue that “Lent” is simply a reasonable tithe!  But, I have read what God thinks about tithes!  (See Malachi 3:8-11)    

So, “Final Judgment Week” on American Idol stirred up all kinds of emotions when its 42 contestants had to take a long walk into the judges’ presence to hear their fate. Those 24 souls, whose performances were consistent and excellent, escaped elimination. No excuses were accepted -- like the ones I could make for giving into my guilty pleasure or eschewing the benefits of a brisk walk.

I think more about life after life every year – Christians believe in a life after the grave, anchoring all our hope to Christ’s empty grave. And we believe we will face the Living God as either our Judge, or our Defense Counsel. My life has been inconsistent and less than excellent on too many days. Even if I could rise to make a plea, what possible defense could I make to a holy God for my faults, failures, and sins?

Forty week days is little enough time to ponder what my inconsistent and lame performance cost my Defender and Friend.(See Isaiah 50-53)

Ed Welch writes of the idols “Lent” can reveal:

An ‘idol-hunt’ would turn me introspective and self-analytical. It would make me mistreat you. Faith makes me extraspective and God-relational. Love makes me extraspective and other-relational. Faith and love draw us out of sin’s enmeshing self-obsession (including enmeshment in obsessive introspection). So come forth. Our Savior gives us his own joy, and joy is an interpersonal emotion. He throws open the doors to the fresh air and bright light of a most kind grace. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me bless his holy name!  Idols of the Heart )

Making Lent a Way of Life

In the church, Lent is a  time of preparation for Easter – the celebration of the Lord’s Resurrection for the dead; it is marked by prayer, penitence, almsgiving and self-denial. I grew up in a church that observed Lent. Whether it was their teaching or my obtuseness, I could not understand the point – it only showed me what a weak-willed so and so I am.  So, I gave up Lent long before I left the church. 

Decades later, though, when I began looking into what Scripture really said,  I made it through one Lenten season, faithfully abstaining from two pleasures. At the end of those forty days, abstinence taught me more than I bargained for.  I became a Christian and with Christ, I had the courage to face my addiction to alcohol.

I learned that Scripture commends fasting – but in a better way than the one to which I was originally  introduced. Fasting isn’t about just giving up, but it means taking on – becoming active in opposing evil and producing good. (Isaiah 58:1-14) So, a different slant on Lent might be seeing it as a continuing time of learning, changing, doing – not simply as a time of going cold turkey off simple pleasures. Forty days of no chocolate isn’t enough time to make me a  life-giving garden in the 21st century deserts of our world.  And it isn’t enough time to learn contentment with who and where I am.  (1 Timothy 6:6)

 Paul gave up and took on many things and at the end of his life could say, "I have learned, in whatever state I am, therewith to be content." (Philippians 4:11)

    These words show us that contentment is not a natural propensity of man . . . Paul says, “I have learned . . . to be content;” . . . Do not indulge the notion that you can be contented with learning, or learn without discipline. It is not a power that may be exercised naturally, but a science to be acquired gradually.  (C. H. Spurgeon)

 Learning contentment is key to recovery – and it is key to growing up in Christ, daily.

    . . . Living one day at a time;
    Enjoying one moment at a time;
    Accepting hardships as the pathway to peace;
    Taking, as He did, this sinful world
    as it is, not as I would have it;
    Trusting that He will make all things right
    if I surrender to His Will; . . . (From the Serenity Prayer)