Lent: 40 Days Of Self-Aggrandizing Pseudo-Sacrificial Piety

Lent… it’s not just the stuff in your belly button.

It’s supposed to be a time for Christians to draw closer to their Maker, to become more Christ-like, more holy, more sanctified… to be more set apart to do His work on this Earth.

Instead, Lent has become nothing more than a self-serving, self-aggrandizing moment of pseudo-sacrificial piety in much the same way as Easter or Christmas has become secularized. It’s piss-poor, utterly worthless, and without any redeeming cultural, social, spiritual, or religious value.

Where does “giving up” chocolate, liquor, teevee, or red meat on Fridays for 40 days improve one’s spiritual life?
Seriously?

Some have expressed sympathy for this expression, as if it were my experience.

I never said that was my experience.
It’s “my estimation” based upon observation.

My observation is precisely that Lent has produced NO MORE holiness among Christians than did peeing into Moses alleged “burning bush” extinguish it. For if Lent did produce more holiness, more sanctification, more love, more joy, more just laws, we’d have less hatred, and better laws. And so far, it has only put us a few steps closer to Hades.

Show me where it’s made people more holy.
Show me where hypocrisy is reduced.
Show me where laws have become just to the widow, the orphan, the stranger, the least of these my brethren, the prisoner… where?

Where has ANY of it made the world or this nation any better?

Where?

If one’s faith does NOT improve the world, or more accurately, the people around them by the behavior of their witness, it is worthless, and they are – as stated in Hebrews – “crucifying the Son of God all over again and subjecting him to public disgrace.”

“So why do you keep calling me ‘Lord, Lord!’ when you don’t do what I say?”