Meditation for Ash Wednesday

I've been writing about death, specifically as in our death as citizens of heaven to this world (here and here), for the past couple days because today is the first day of Lent, and Lent is in a sense all about death. In the sense that Advent is a time of preparation leading up to the celebration of Christmas, Lent is a time to ready our souls for the celebration of Easter. Traditionally, this is done by an increased focus on prayer, fasting, and giving: prayer aligns us with God, drawing us nearer to Him; fasting (not necessarily from food, but as a general practice of self-denial) is intended to help us detach from the pleasures and pursuits of this world, to die to ourselves; and giving is a restoration of harmony between people made by considering the needs and interests of others as well as of ourselves. So in our relationship with God, ourselves, and others we seek to put off the old man of sin and put on the new man of righteousness in Christ. Because of where the season falls in the liturgical year, it is also a fitting time to read the gospels and see how Jesus lived and conducted Himself as He prepared for His own death, and then seek to emulate Him in our lives here and now.

Shouldn't we be doing this all year long, though? Of course! Seeking righteousness for forty days during Lent isn't a ticket for pursuing our own pleasures and desires the rest of the year! But I think maybe it is good to have a yearly reminder, encouragement, and challenge to seek God more intentionally, just as it is good to rejoice in His resurrection on a specific day each year even though that resurrection should be a source of joy in our lives on every day. As long as the season of Lent remains just that, instead of becoming a ritual through which you try to obtain righteousness, merit, and the approval of God, I think it can be a very good thing - a time to recommit (to use a more Evangelical-friendly word!) and repent.

My main concern with Lent (and with many of the other traditions and rituals of the Church) comes from Paul's letter to the Colossians, where he writes,

"Therefore, if you died with Christ from the basic principles of the world, why, as though living in the world, do you subject yourselves to regulations - 'Do not touch, do not taste, do not handle,' which all concern things which perish with the using - according to the commandments and doctrines of men? These things indeed have an appearance of wisdom in self-imposed religion, false humility, and neglect of the body, but are of no value against the indulgence of the flesh."

For example, it is really spiritually beneficial to fast on Ash Wednesday, as the tradition goes? Or if I fast as a mere religious ritual, am I really strengthening my spiritual pride in my control over my flesh without actually having to learn self-denial and death in the ways God gives me to learn them? Am I creating my own rules, which I am capable of following, so that I don't have to face up to my failure to follow God's rules? Am I creating my own self-imposed religion, so that I don't have to feel my deep and biting need for God's grace?

While I want to commemorate Lent this year, I need to make sure that my heart is right as I do it (in the same way as I need to do with Advent and Christmas, honestly, although the temptations for each season are different). If I use the time to more intentionally seek God or to strive to be more generous with my resources, I must make sure that I do so without pride, without loudly proclaiming what I'm doing so as to get recognition for it, and with a genuine desire to know God more. He must be the center in order for it to be good - but conversely, if He is the center, than it will be good. And personally I think that if I spend all of Lent trying to follow God with my whole heart, I will be constantly reminded of my great need for His grace, so that when Easter comes (which is the celebration of His wonderful grace and power toward us!) I will be able to celebrate it with incredible joy - and hopefully I will have begun to establish patterns and habits of seeking God in my life, so that after the season is over I may continue to pursue Him just as intentionally and just as passionately.

More thoughts on dying to this world

In C.S. Lewis's book Out of the Silent Planet, an unsuspecting Englishman named Ransom is kidnapped (by other humans) and taken to a planet called Malacandra, where he meets and befriends its rational inhabitants. At one point they are preparing to hunt a dangerous water creature called a hnakra (plural hneraki), and one of the inhabitants of Malacandra is speaking with Ransom about the hneraki (for reference, Oyarsa is the ruler of Malacandra and Maleldil is God):

"'I do not think the forest would be so bright, nor the water so warm, not love so sweet, if there were no danger in the lakes. I will tell you a day in my life that has shaped me; such a day as comes only once, like love, or serving Oyarsa in Meldilorn. Then I was young, not much more than a cub, when I went far, far up the handramit to the land where stars shine at midday and even water is cold. A great waterfall I climbed. I stood on the shore of Balki the pool, which is the place of most awe in all worlds. The walls of it go up for ever and ever and huge and holy images are cut in them, the work of old times. There is the fall called the Mountain of Water. Because I have stood there alone, Maleldil and I, for even Oyarsa sent me no word, my heart has been higher, my song deeper, all my days. But do you think it would have been so unless I had known that in Balki hneraki dwelled? There I drank life because death was in the pool. That was the best of drinks save one.'
'What one?' asked Ransom.
'Death itself in the day I drink it and go to Maleldil.'"

Death itself is not a glorious thing, but it can be a precious and desired thing because of what it entails: because it can throw the piercing glory of life into stark reflection, preventing one from sinking back into the complacent stupor of pleasant and meaningless existence; and because it is the door through which we must pass to receive true and everlasting life and to be with God in a greater way than we yet can. It is not for us to try to thrust open that door before God calls us through it, but it is also not for us to shirk back in fear of the passing through. As Jesus Himself warned us, "He who loves his life will lose it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life."

So let us pursue what is right without regards to the risk. Let us seek what is good without compromising for our own security or comfort. Let us proclaim what is true without omission due to fear or embarrassment. Let us follow God with all of our being, so we may find that death is not the terrifying end of all good things, but is rather the pathway to glory and life.

To seek death

When we seek to live in a way that pleases God, when we strive to be like Jesus in our thoughts and actions, when we desire to know Christ and have Him be the center of our lives - what does that entail? More than I know and can write about, certainly, but one thing it means is that we seek death.

Before you lessen the impact of that statement with all the rationalization of what exactly "death" means when, say, the Apostle Paul says in Philippians that "to die is gain" or that he longs to be "conformed to His death," take the time to think about it honestly. What does it mean to die? It is to be cut off, alone, from everyone else, as a single individual - to see your dreams for your life fading from your grasp, to know that you will have no future in which to do the things you've always wanted - to suddenly wonder what substance or worth any part of your life has had, and if anything you did ever truly mattered - to abandon all material things without a hidden reserve, to lose all earthly treasures without a safety net or back-up plan, to be separated irrevocably from the physical, visible world around you. How could this be the thing that we seek, when we serve a God of life, a God who delights in pouring out blessings upon His people, a God of joy and harmony and love? Is it strictly a physical death that we seek? Clearly not, since those who followed Christ, though they died for Him, did not seek that death as a suicide seeks death. They were seeking something else, and had already attained death before they reached that earthly death.

So what is this death that we seek? We seek to die to this world, even as we still live and remain in it. And how does that work? It means that the things that matter in this world - respect, approval, fame, material security, wealth, physical health, pleasure, comfort, convenience, and so on through the list of all that we pursue and idolize - these things must not matter to us any longer. Whether we are rich or poor, wealth or poverty must not be the thing that matters or the thing we seek; whether we are sick or well, health or sickness must not be the thing that matters or the thing we seek; whether we are well-loved or despised, the opinion of others (negative or positive) must not be the thing that matters or the thing we seek. It should be as though we have been cut off from those things, alone as a single individual on the other side of the great divide, seeing our dreams for this world fading away, knowing that our future does not lie with them, dispensing of every last hidden reserve and secret treasure that would bind us to this world.

Death hurts, dearly beloved.

It hurts like hell to be torn from the things and the people we love, that matter to us, upon which we have built the whole of our precariously balanced lives. And ultimately, death is hell, because it tears apart relationships and we were not made to be alone. But we seek death because we know that in Christ this death is not the ending. If we have attained this death - the death to this world, even as we physically live on in this world - then when physical death does come for us as it comes for all, we will find ourselves in the fullness and completion of life: not physical life, but that greater heavenly life which we begin to taste and see even now as we learn to die to things of earth. If we give up all this world first, simply because we seek to know and be with Christ and not for any other future pleasure we may hope for or any present accolades or admiration, we will find a more wonderful and beautiful life in Him. We seek death so that we might know what is the power of His resurrection; we desire to be conformed to His death so that we may attain to the resurrection from the dead.

Death and life

I think that my mind dwells too readily on death. Sometimes when my heart is full of pain and weariness I think about my own death, and it seems like a doorway of hope into a world of beauty and light. Other times, when my heart is full of need and fear, I think about the death of the people I love because I dread losing them. The slightest thing can go wrong in a schedule and my mind will wonder if they've had a car crash and I'll never see them again - or they can go in to the doctor for a cold or a minor problem and I worry that they'll have cancer or some other incurable disease and I'll have to begin the long process of saying goodbye. Anyway, I don't know if it's altogether good to be thinking of death so much, at least in the ways in which I think of it. Death isn't something either to be sought out or to be feared, I think.

To seek death is to forsake life - to deem all that life holds insufficient and worthless, to spurn the plans of God, to declare oneself the ultimate authority and power while simultaneously feeling utterly helpless and insignificant. It is the fight - the last desperate stand and even the apparent victory - of pride and the desire for self-sufficiency against the seemingly insurmountable obstacles of life and the unconquerable and undeniable faults and sins in oneself. It appears courageous to take that step into the utter unknown, but it is equally a cringing mournful fear of the perceived pain and hopelessness of life.

To fear death is to be attached to the comforts of life at the expense of the greatness of life. It demonstrates a willingness to remain half-human, absorbed in trivial pleasures, blinding oneself to the breathtaking visions and dreams of life because of the risks they entail. It is to see a narrower world than that which exists in reality - to see only the separation for a time and fail to see the reunion of eternity, to acknowledge only the pain of today and not the joy of forever. It is to think, in incredible pride, that one's own pain and suffering in this moment outweighs all the other purposes for which God is calling a person (oneself or another) out of this world.

In both cases there is a lack of trust in God and an attempt to control one's own life apart from Him. Neither reflects those timeless words of the Apostle Paul in his letter to the Philippians: "For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain." He did not go wildly forth seeking his own death in his own timing, because he knew that God had a further purpose for his life here on earth, and likewise he did not limit what he ventured for the gospel in fear of the possibility of death. He risked death because he wanted to live for something greater than himself.