“I’m giving up God for Lent,” mentioned the put up on my social media feed.

I needed to reread the road once more whereas my mind did a little bit of reorienting. Wasn’t the one that posted this a Christian?

For some believers, the argument goes like this: By deliberately “giving up” God for a season, we give ourselves the prospect to place to dying any inaccurate idols we could have unintentionally created out of him.

Partaking on this follow, they argue, permits us the prospect to see what life could be like with out God—and that, in flip, ought to make us wish to draw nearer to him. The precept goes that by selecting to lean away from God and depriving ourselves of his presence, we will be taught His true worth in our lives.

Maybe unsurprisingly, this follow can be promoted by atheist thinker Peter Rollins, who’s providing a web based course known as ‘Atheism For Lent’—aiming to critique theism and put aside “questions concerning life after dying to discover the potential for life earlier than dying.”

As a local and resident of the Bay Space in California, none of that is surprising to me. However what’s intriguing to me after looking out on-line is that so many Christians, and even some church buildings, are deliberately partaking on this follow as a type of religious formation.

My query is that this: Aren’t most Christians already “giving up God” of their each day lives?

Many people reside our day-to-day existence regardless of the Lord as an alternative of involving him within the day-to-day decisions and selections we make. Some have known as this “useful atheism,” which I discover a becoming phrase. Parker Palmer defines this idea as “the unexamined conviction inside us that if something first rate goes to occur right here, I’m the one who must make it occur.”

I see this on a regular basis right here within the Bay Space, the place now we have nearly every thing at our fingertips. We’ve got entry to astronomical quantities of information, glorious healthcare, and high-paying jobs—commonplace riches past the creativeness of a lot of the world. These realities make it simpler for us to really feel no want for God and take a look at to determine life for ourselves.

I imagine it’s the standard Lent we really want due to its capability to slowly unwrap our fingers from the steering wheel of our lives.

This isn’t only for the person both. It’s particularly vital in sure trendy church contexts the place structured packages are key, the anticipated is predicted, and the curveballs unsettle us deeply. Lent is an opportunity for the Church to permit a “holy disruption” into our communal rhythms. That disruption’s final objective is getting us again to God as sovereign over all we do, together with that which is finished in our sacred areas.

My story with Lent is comparatively transient. It’s solely previously a number of years that I’ve felt convicted to press into the season in intentional methods.

One 12 months, I adopted the standard Jap Orthodox quick from meals. It was difficult, altering my each day meal schedule and impacting what I ate. It additionally allowed my idea of Lent to maneuver from my head to my coronary heart. I went from a totally mental conception of religion to an embodied one.

This minor adjustment in what I used to be consuming challenged my common rhythms and heightened my sense of conviction about different habits in my life. It refined my senses and drew me nearer to God. I spotted how a lot I took God without any consideration, particularly the goodness of His creation. I heard the fixed chorus of the Doxology in my head: “Reward God from Whom all blessings circulation!” and eventually gained deeper perception into what that line of reward means.

To at the present time, that season of Lent has had an enduring impression on me.

As a substitute of leaving God out of the method, involving him created an intimate, radically acutely aware dynamic of prayer all through the day. With out God firmly on the heart of that point, my Lenten quick would merely have been doing what one among my associates as soon as known as “a Christian food plan season.”

For me, the distinction between a food plan and quick is finally concerning the orientation of our affections: Fasting depends on God to vary us, whereas diets are packages we create on our personal for a desired consequence. John speaks to this effectively in 1 John 2:15–16:

“Don’t love the world or the issues on this planet. If anybody loves the world, the love of the Father isn’t in him. For all that’s on this planet—the needs of the flesh and the needs of the eyes and delight of life—isn’t from the Father however is from the world.”

A continuing companion on my Lenten journey was Starting to Pray by Anthony Bloom. Although in reference to prayer, his opening paragraph spoke into my fasting:

“We should always assume, quite, when it comes to an growing development from depth to depth, from peak to peak, whichever components you favor, in order that, at each step, we already possess one thing which is wealthy, which is deep, and but all the time go on, eager for and shifting towards one thing richer and deeper.”

What I found for the primary time in my life was that forgoing a chocolate bar or a meal isn’t meant to create a void in us, however quite to ask God into the damaging areas our fasting has made. The concept is to hunt additional riches from God, not take away him from the method.

Lent is the method of asking our Father to be the all-in-all that we really want rather than many issues in our lives that numb us with consolation. Lent was permitting me to worth God’s character, and to want His presence. Lent has all the time been about “giving up” these issues that blocked us from him within the first place.

We don’t thoughts the verses the place Jesus calls us to be a “good” or “higher” particular person, however we typically forsake or overlook the more durable passages about camels and needles (Matt. 19:24) and lukewarm water (Rev. 3:15–16), the passages about struggling and being hated by the world (John 15:18) and repenting for the sake of the dominion (Matt. 3:2).

Lent is all about these passages as a result of they converse of Christ’s name to give up and sacrifice—and fasting implies our must repent and recenter ourselves on him by denying the issues of this world.

If some individuals wish to attempt “giving up God” for one purpose or one other, that’s their prerogative—however personally, I feel it’s fully lacking the purpose of Lent. Certainly, with out God, there could be no Lent.

On the finish of the day, Lent is about studying to ask ourselves whether or not we live like Christians or useful atheists in our each day lives: Are we waking up and selecting Christ? Are we listening to the Spirit after we encounter somebody in want? Are we caring for the least of those in our midst? Are we really loving our enemies?

Lent isn’t a vibe supposed to attraction to our aesthetic preferences or present us with “emotional launch.” As a substitute, it’s about sacrificing a number of the small however illusory comforts of our trendy lives to remain in each day alignment with God as our Creator, supplier, and sustainer.

Nik Bartunek is a worship pastor and musician within the Silicon Valley Bay Space. He’s passionate concerning the overlap of religion and tradition, and in addition about Wizards and Elves.