:: Lent & Giving Things Up, part 3 ::

What is the purpose in giving things up for Lent?

First, let’s agree that there are several wrong reasons to give things up for Lent, among them being...

1. Tradition of a family (“my family always has”)
2. Empty tradition of a church/organization (rote tradition without knowing the meaning)
3. Personal gain (giving up sweets for the purpose of weight loss)
4. Pride (giving up things to “prove yourself” more holy, or to display this holiness to others)
5. “Just to do it” (giving up gum just to give up gum)
6. Because you think it will “earn you points” with God (as if you can do ANYTHING worth his love?!)
7. And my personal favorite: Lent is NOT a time to give stuff up "to identify with the suffering of Christ" (this is what I was taught as a kid. Seriously?! Christ didn't give up chocolate for a month; he DIED FOR US! There's no way Lent could give us even the tiniest taste of suffering!). Now to be sure, God can allow us to suffer during Lent, as reminders of his suffering for us and the sufficiency we find in him - we had a pretty rough Lent last year! In fact, God can allow us to suffer whenever God wants, for any other that fits his purposes for our lives (Gen 50:20; Rom 8:28). But what I mean is that the typical giving up of some menial habit, enjoyment, or trinket does not come even close to equating ourselves to Christ's suffering.

Not one of these are good reasons to give something up… and I would make the case that some of them might even be bordering on sin: pretending something in the name of God while having another basis for it is a dangerous line to walk!

So what IS a good reason to give things up for Lent? That's the topic of Friday's finale of this little "blog series" - have a great Ash Wednesday, all.