Comment by David West » 28th March, 2007 @ 04:05:02 PM

Amen.

I am profoundly grateful to Jesus from releasing us from such religious hokum. Its a real mixed bag of emotions when you come across a brother/sister accepting without question that giving up chocolate or Diet Coke for 40 days has some sort of spiritual benefit. You want to honor our Lord’s trial in the Desert? – pray thanks during those 40 days (and anytime thereafter, as the Spirit moves you) that God has not put your salvation, or your reward, on the basis of such nonsense.

Comment by John Malone » 16th April, 2007 @ 09:29:59 AM

Once again, Joanna, you cannot have it both ways.

If “Lent” is about the Lord Jesus’ 40 days of fasting in the wilderness, then it should be more like “Ramadan” than “Lent.” If what you claim is true, then fast for 40 days AND 40 nights (something Ramadan is NOT: most Muslims eat after sundown as if there is no tomorrow during Ramadan). Moses did. Elijah did.

If that is too hard for you to pull off, then you are unqualified to “do Lent,” according to your own definition.

Jesus did not give up meat on friday, or potato chips: he FASTED.

By the way, while fasting is always presumed to be practiced in the Bible, you do not see anyone commanding anyone else to do it. fasting is to be a PRIVATE practice . While you are at it, wipe those ashes off your forehead: they look ridiculous!

Fasting is Biblical: Lent is not. You ought not confuse the two.

Now, in principle, if, because Jesus did something, it gives rise to a Christian practice, then isn’t that a rather large agenda? And don’t you have an IMPOSSIBLE one because you are female? And if the fact of Him doing something isn’t the basis for your Lenten practice, then what is it? (I know: someone in Roman hierachy tells you you must.)

Marvel not that He says to you you must be born from above.

What is NOT too hard for you is to have faith ALONE in Christ ALONE for eternal life.

Just some things to think about …

Comment by Rob M. » 16th March, 2008 @ 07:40:32 PM

And just a follow up note, I do think you’re right on about rituals and practices that obfuscate what grace is really about, but I don’t want any catholics, or non-catholics that just happen to follow lent, to feel like they’re getting clunked over the head and called heathen and ignorant.

Comment by Fidelis Onwubueke » 6th April, 2008 @ 09:11:56 AM

Thank you for your write up on Lent. The church today is filled with all types of heathen practices and customs. There shouldn’t be any apologies for anyone who falls under the axe of the truth. After all , the truth is what sets us free. Jesus was hated and killed for daring to declare the truth how much more his we today. The fact remains that we are commanded by God not to have any part in pagan practices – read Deuteronomy 18: 9-14 – We as christians always seem to think there is a middle ground, but there isn’t. We are either going to serve God the way he wants or we aren’t. We can’t go on polluting the faith with all sorts of foreign practices borrowed from other religions and think this is acceptable to God. Paul said to the Galatians in Galatians 5:9 A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump. Once you get seduced into believing and justifying something based on a lie, it’s only a matter of time before you get compromised in other areas. If you reject the truth continuously, you shut the door to your own salvation. Let us not deceive ourselves, what is false is false, but today all types of fancy names have been used to make what is false more acceptable. Lying is called stretching the truth, etc. Please read thessolonians 2:1-12 for the consequences of rejecting the truth.

Comment by Duns Scotus » 15th February, 2009 @ 06:17:36 PM

Hilarious!!! Rejecting Lent because of its etymology is so profoundly a rejection of the intelligence that God has given us that it borders on the insane. Why not ban Easter then (named after a Nordic goddess!!!) This is why Christianity without apolostic teaching makes no sense. The early church saw this (witness paul’s constant reining in the excesses of those who had a small amount of Christianity) and provided leadership that was tested based on authority and apostolic witness. What seems to be happening here is that a tradition that emerged from the early Church (the community of believers) to acknowledge the price paid for our sins and to show the cost of salvation which found its origins in Judaic custom has not been properly researched and summarily rejected because of its association with the Catholic Church which preserved it from earliest times. My friend remember when you quote the Bible it was a living Word of God within the Christian community before finally being codified sevearl centuries after the apostles (not as Dan Brown makes out at the insistence of Constantine) Please read early Church history before you make any proncouncements!!

In Christ

Comment by Robert Bravo » 17th February, 2010 @ 04:39:35 PM

Hmm. I hear both sides of the story. Let me give you mine.

I also at one time believed the same thing the author here believed, until i studied a little more and found that the facts demonstrate that lent was practice by the apostles and has been dated back before Constantine and the organizing of Christianity.

Now I do agree with not practicing lent in the way the roman Catholics do so. They can really “religionize” something. But Lent is a great way for many believers to realign themselves with the cost of the gospel. It realigns us to the reality that we are called to live holy, dedicated lives to Christ. Period. There is no getting away from that high call.
This part of the gospel is hard for many to understand because Christianity has become more about what you believe and not how you live. We love to argue about how this belief is wrong and how that belief is wrong all the while missing the point that it is in how one lives that makes the real difference. Jesus said “why do you call me lord and not do what I commanded” and “not everyone who calls me lord shall enter the kingdom of heaven but only he who does the will of my father in heaven” Paul calls us to present ourselves as a living sacrifice holy and pleasing to God.

Now participating in lent does not achieve any of this in and of itself, and not participating in it doesn’t either. Lent is about the personal reflection and intentional devotion. It can help build Christian character. It helps with our spiritual formation. A term and concept almost completely lost in this day and age.

My fear is that the reality is that during the reformation the fear of being “to roman catholic” by well intentioned but ignorant people, we have lost a lot of good Christian character building exercises. They threw the baby out with the bathwater which was wrong. In my opinion anyway.

Comment by Dan Backens » 22nd February, 2010 @ 10:39:40 PM

Tom,

You probably also realize that Romans 14 is about receiving a WEAKER brother as a brother, regardless of his errors and WEAKNESSES, not that you never mention them, or help him to be free from such things, as his conscience allows. Romans 14 does NOT allow for such a WEAK brother to teach others to join with him in his WEAKNESS.

So, if you want to practice your religious behavior, it will not have an impact on me receiving you as a brother, assuming you have the testimony of Jesus Christ, of which you haven’t stated. But I will not permit that kind of false teaching to go unchallenged to the rest of my brothers and sisters, to stumble them.

After you finish with Romans 14, read Colossians 2 . You will find the man of God lives by grace through faith, the same way he received Christ Jesus in the first place (v6), departing from the traditions of men, including taste not, which are NOT beneficial to him. Go ahead and read the entire chapter.

And again, lent is not fasting. If you want to fast, fast to yourself, by yourself, and have your reward before God. Don’t make a pact with everyone around you to merely abstain from something silly for 40 days, once a year, and then go around pronouncing your great sacrifice. You have your reward in full.

Comment by Dwayne » 25th February, 2010 @ 06:11:30 AM

fasting should be a matter of choice, not a regulation. All those who fasted in the Bible such as Moses, Elijah and Jesus were fasting to be closer to God; to strengthen their faith. The “lenten season” of “fasting” is a pagan practice in actual sense, regardless of the intentions of those who practice it. If we all just read the Bible, we can all know how to fast the right way. Thanks John Malone, for shedding some light on this matter.

Comment by John Malone » 5th March, 2010 @ 10:25:06 AM

Let’s take this comment apart a bit.

I will say this: Lent fits the Roman Catholic system excellently, both historically and in practice. I was never under the impression that Ash Wednesday was a Holy Day of Obligation (HDO). I suppose my Roman Catholic education, now over 50 years old in part, was too rigorous for me to be wrong about that one. (I’m certain far more RC’s are confused about the doctrine of “The Immaculate Conception” than they are about Ash Wednesday.)

For those of you unfamiliar with RC HDO’s, they are days which the Pope rules that if RC’s do not attend the portion of the RC mass – beginning with the “Offeratory,” where they claim priest begins to sacrifice Jesus again “in an unbloody way” in the form of an unleavened wheat wafer, and culminating with the priest eating the wafer he has so “consecrated” – you will be committing a “mortal sin,” which, if left unforgiven by a RC priest, or in the unusual case of a “perfect act of contrition,” will send you directly to the lake of fire when you die.

That’s what an HDO is. There are a few of them besides every single Sunday throughout the year. They vary from nation to nation, and even from state to state. There used to be a whole lot of them: dozens. Now they are under 10 in most countries. One is All Saints Day, November 1st. There are three “feasts of Mary” that are HDO’s including, for instance, the two false doctrines of her alleged sinless birth and her alleged bodily ascension (“Assumption”) into heaven. I remember that years ago, my brother agreed to read through the book of Acts with me in order to show me where the doctrine of the “assumption” could be found. He quit reading with me after 15 or sixteen chapters. I’m sure he read ahead, and realized we weren’t going to find it!

Now I find it interesting that the RC who wrote this comment to which I am replying found it important to educate himself on Roman Catholic doctrine, and yet remains entirely ignorant of the Scriptures of God! THIS is really essential RC’ism! The Lord Jesus pointed out to the religious leaders of His days on earth that they made the Word of God of no effect due to their traditions. Those Jewish leaders had tied up their entire generation in such a way that overwhelmingly the Lord Jesus was rejected by that nation when He came to them. Today, perhaps not as overwhelmingly, but still in mass numbers, RC’s reject the truth of Scripture, and therefore the Lord Jesus Himself, and instead hold to the traditions that men have authored and delivered to them. Lent is perhaps the epitome of this form of practice, and it is telling today that the so-called “Protestant” world (made of people who have quit protesting anything!) marked as it is with the post-modern rise of various forms of Reformed doctrine, has quietly and nearly uniformly adopted the Babylonian “Lent.”

Now, there are those who would consider that I am singularly anti-RC’ism. This is not precisely true. I am against all forms of the rebellion that commenced at at ancient Babylon that resulted in the discipline of God in confusing human language. This rebellion was, at its base, a political one, with religion being used as the “opiate of the masses.” RC’ism, in the Western World, is still the leading Babylonian protege. The rise of Islam, which some have claimed is a RC creation, is another example object inheriting features of the Babylonian class. In both of these religious systems, sacrificial work for forgiveness, for spiritual growth, or for some form of spiritual attainment is commended. “It HELPS me get closer to Christ.” Oh, really? One wonders who his “Christ” is?

The Lord Jesus Christ – yes THAT “Christ” – told the religious of His days on earth to “go and learn what this means: I will have mercy and NOT sacrifice.”

Now, does “Lent” help a RC understand “Christ’s sacrifice?” Hardly. The ONE THING RC’s do NOT understand is the substitutionary sufferings and death of the Lord Jesus Christ, which is to say the vicarious nature of his sufferings and death. Further, they do not understand the sufficiency, the completeness of His sacrifice. Instead, lacking this understanding – and the faith which follows – they come to us as if “brothers and sisters” and try to sell their religion to us, while they claim to be sacrificing Jesus bodily every day in their hideous idolatrous practice.

My brothers and sisters don’t participate in the hideous idolatry that is the Catholic mass. They don’t countenance the parading around of (mostly homosexual) clergy that call themselves “fathers.” They believe the Holy Spirit, and not some “Pope” with a funny hat, is the Vicar of Christ on earth. They find that “faith comes by hearing … the Word of God,” and that the traditions of men make that of no effect.

I agree with Rick A. here that true Christians should challenge the practices and beliefs of their RC acquaintances and friends. They should ask them why they are weeping for Tammuz when Jesus Christ has paid the penalty for their sins. They should ask them why they are hoping they might find some way to heaven when Jesus Christ offers them eternal life, starting right now, if they will simply receive Him for Who He is: the Savior of the world Who conquered sin and death, and proved it in His resurrection out from the dead. Indeed, he had power to lay His life down, and He had power to take it up again.