We are nearing the end of the Lenten season, and Easter will soon be upon us.
If you’re like most participants, you’ve been abstaining from chocolate, social media, or other modern conveniences. If you’re more serious about it, perhaps you’ve added to your plate with activities such as volunteer work, increased prayer, or daily religious services.
I’m not going to dive into all the religious details of Lent (the 3 pillars, the liturgical calendar, etc) because I no longer practice the faith I was raised in. That’s not the reason I’m writing this.
I’m writing this because I still love Lent. I always have. I still think it’s a valuable practice for anyone, regardless of religious belief. While secularizing Lent can run the risk of diminishing returns, I generally believe that every person of every faith spectrum would benefit from taking part in it, even the non-religious.
However, we can’t talk about Lent without providing a little bit of context, so please indulge me.
What Is Lent and Why Does It Matter?
Lent is 40 days, not 46 days (Sundays are not part of the Lenten fast). 40 is a symbolic number in the Bible, representing a time of trials, purification, and renewal. It calls back to Jesus’ 40 days enduring temptation from Satan before beginning public ministry and the 40 years the Israelites spent in the wilderness before they reached freedom in the Promised Land.
Superstition kind of makes me freak out a little bit when I think about turning 40 in the near future, about what trials may await me then, considering the ones I’m mired in now, though I’m sure that’s just some of the leftover Catholic guilt.
Lent has been known as the “bright sadness”, the preparation for Easter via prayer, fasting, self-denial, minimalism and (safe) moderate suffering. People tend to give up luxuries in order to emulate Jesus. They may add any number of challenging habits that can be secular, such as giving up dessert, or fast food, or alcohol, for example. Others may keep their Lent focused on religious rituals like daily Mass, daily devotionals, or rosaries where they otherwise would not. This helps them keep Christ front and center during this period.
The thing is, upon my research of this topic, I learned that not everyone agrees with me that this can be a worthwhile practice for people of any spiritual status. Some believe secular Lent is not sufficiently sorrowful, because its participants’ sacrifices are not focused on Christ.
Those making this case believe that the secular community is appropriating Lent, using it for their own self-glorification by way of self-improvement, and completely ignoring the religious roots of the practice. Lent is not a springboard for your vanity, they might say, it’s about uniting yourself with the suffering of Jesus.
Detractors of secular Lent seem to be annoyed that the seemingly toxically positive gym movement is itself too divergent from the mortality-aware, sorrowful practice of Ash Wednesday and Lent.
Let’s Just Have a Good Game, Ok?
While I agree that fitness culture is replete with candy-coated charlatans who are twisting facts in order to sell you miracle solutions, I don’t see anything wrong with secular participation in Lent. Are those people not still benefiting from this period of self-denial? It doesn’t matter to them that it’s not about God, and it shouldn’t matter to you. Making sacrifices, doing hard things, cutting vices out of our lives, these are valuable lessons that do not include belief in God as a pre-requisite.
If you sincerely believe that condemning people for trying to do something positive, regardless of their religious or irreligious beliefs, is the moral thing to do, then I have a bone to pick with you. I’m sorry if you’re bothered by people not understanding, caring, or showing interest or respect for a belief system of yours that they do not share. This, however, is life. Perhaps, for next Lent, you might try minding your own business. There’s also nothing stopping anyone from just living that way in general.
Before you click away, I’m not immune to this toxic trait either. I get annoyed when the average person professes to love the “Lord of the Rings” film trilogy as much as I do, yet they clearly lack the full context and breadth of my appreciation for those movies as someone who studied film and watched those films dozens of times.
“Yes, of course you love Lord of the Rings, everyone should, but don’t pretend we’re the same, because my love goes far deeper than yours.”
This is an elitist and regrettable quality of mine, and I’m exaggerating a little bit, but human beings do this. A person hasn’t earned the love of God or Peter Jackson any more than their fellow human just because something matters more to them. The thing to do here is to say “hey that’s great, I’m glad you’re into this, too.”
Also, just for clarity, no one is limited to the confines of the Lenten season if they want to make changes in their life. Even religious people may arrive at Holy Thursday and decide that their Lenten practices should become permanent fixtures in their lives. In fact, I think it would be cool if people gave up 3 things for Lent, and then only resumed 2 of them upon Easter.
The rigid idea that things have to happen in a specific way during a specific time and only for a specific reason might be why many people are leaving organized religion.
That’s at least my perspective. Lent is great, no matter why you’re doing it, and I think many reasonable religious people would agree. However, there are some religious faithful who don’t even agree that secular ethical people can be close to God in general because they lack belief, and there are others who simply acknowledge that anyone who does good works or tries to benefit humanity is nonetheless making a positive impact on God’s creation. Some people would further argue that this fits their very definition and understanding of “God”, a universal consciousness working to better one another in good faith.
Similarly, if Lent makes someone a better person, more aware of the suffering of others, more in tune with the important things in life, less attached to the superficial, then I think we should applaud that. We shouldn’t be discouraging people from such behavior simply because it is a Christian thing and secular people are doing it wrong, or not all the way.
Lent Has Become Commercialized
I came across this article (over a decade old, mind you) and I was impressed with its brevity and clarity of message. It doesn’t preach to the choir in singsongy, airy language about the spiritual mirth of being close to God. It simply communicates that watering down Lent from its original intent has led society at large to treat it as a higher principle we can name-drop as an excuse to give up vices that we will likely resume once Lent is over.
This is a fair criticism of my position. Instead of attacking practitioners for taking part in Lent despite losing their religion, the writer asks “doesn’t it matter to you that it’s nearly meaningless without the religious aspect?”.
The article wisely points out that secular Lent can be just another faux-virtuous self-deception that we humans like to partake in. We love surviving Lent without our favorite activities, we feel good about ourselves if we stuck to our fasts, and we feel entitled to resume our decadent lives as usual, because “yay, I did it, I’m a good person and I can quit this habit whenever I want to, see?”.
We load our kids up (or ourselves) on Easter with pounds of chocolate, candy, and other treats, bought from big box stores advertising Easter sales and encouraging us to “treat” ourselves, because we “deserve it”, when in reality they’re saying “treat us, because you have money and we’re going to convince you to give it to us”.
This is a completely justified position. My only response would be that while I agree with this perspective, I still think it creates too narrow of a choice for people. They can either believe in God and have the best Lent possible, or they can have a secular Lent and get nothing out of it, according to some.
I still believe that secular people can have a meaningful Lent, the same way that they can have meaningful lives: They make their own meaning.
Their meaning may not come from a deity or a gospel, but wherever their values come from, they should exist beyond their hearts and minds. And perhaps their values come from many different places, stories, people, and experiences, synthesized into this unique person. I think a serious perspective on life, serious values to live by, begin by being an honest student of ideas.
I think people would do well to dwell on the purpose of Lent, even if they don’t believe in it themselves. Context is everything. If one seeks to get the most of out of an idea, they explore its origins and the conditions surrounding its creation. Lent isn’t just about sacrifice, it’s about death.
Confront Physical and Emotional Discomfort
The main article points out that our society has not gotten good at talking about mortality and death, and that’s part of what is missing from secular Lent. I’d probably agree with this, actually. In fact, I think people would be happier if they did this every day.
I’ve mentioned before that I tattooed “Memento Mori” to my arm, as a permanent reminder to “remember thou art mortal” or if you prefer “remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return”, as is spoken to congregants on Ash Wednesday. The words help me to become familiar and comfortable with the fact that someday I will die. I could leave life at any moment. That’s become an increasingly present core value of my life.
The tattoo doesn’t disappear magically on Easter, and neither does the sentiment. That’s the point: it’s there forever. There is no escape.
Mortality and the presence of death is a lesson that should stay with you once you begin to contemplate it. If anything, I could make the argument that it’s Lent, in fact, that doesn’t go far enough, due to its seasonal nature.
But instead, I see Lent as a good-habits fitting room, or like Amazon’s Try Before You Buy program or StitchFix. Though unlike those clothing services, it’s free, and if you do it right, you’ll walk away with a lot more than cool outfits.
This article takes a softer approach to the issue, but it still maintains the core concern of the faithful towards secular Lent: Reflect on the sacrifice.
This appeal for reflection, unlike the appeal for religious belief for entry, I wholeheartedly endorse:
“Giving up something in and of itself is useless. It’s only meaningful in the context of your spiritual journey.”
“Whatever causes you to feel fearful, that’s where you need to go.”
“Why have you been eating so much chocolate anyway?”
“What keeps you from connecting with others? What causes you to be frightened? What makes you self-medicate?”
The point of all this shouldn’t be simply to stop drinking beer and just power your way through 40 days of miserable sobriety. Ideally, not only will you pause drinking, but when the urge to drink arises, you will reflect on that impulse and ask the right questions of yourself. Why do you want to drink right now? Because it’s Friday? Because you’re anxious? Because you can’t engage with your spouse sober? Because you can’t show interest in your kids sober?
That’s kind of a dark example, but I think you get the idea. It’s not just the maladaptive behavior we want to remove, it’s the emotional trigger we’re hoping to identify. Once you know why you engage in your vices, you can find a more healthy behavior to address those feelings and then hot swap that shit like Indiana Jones.
It Was Different When I Was a Kid
As I said, many aspects of being Catholic did not survive to remain part of my personality today, but Lent did.
As a child, I loved the thought that everyone around me was suffering with me, was also going through a short period of discomfort. It was like a fun game. It was socially desirable to participate. It was a lot like being ready with an answer when someone asked you for your favorite band or your favorite football team. Unless your answer is considered lame, you’ll win some cool points just for having one.
When you attend Catholic school and church youth group, there is tremendous social capital in taking Lent seriously. When I heard that some people gave up snacking between meals, or television, or using profanity, or biting their nails, or that some kids were picking up daily Mass, doing one good deed for someone else each day, or whatever, that was fun for me.
These days, wellness and self-help are trendy as ever. Social media and books are replete with influencers and thought leaders who claim to have The Answer, The Secret, The Sauce, The Stuff, The Perfect Lifestyle Change to make you into the person you want to be. Some of it’s great, some of it’s total bullshit. Most of it just depends on your personality and your body type, so be wary.
My point is simply that it’s currently culturally acceptable to be fit and healthy to the exclusion of other cultural mainstays like alcohol consumption, workaholism, visible status, and materialistic competition. It’s trendy, which is good. That means there’s a community out there, even a virtual one, that will encourage you. But because it’s so trendy, it’s a feeding frenzy for “fit-fluencers”. It’s almost too trendy.
Fasting is trendy. Doing hard things is trendy. Going to the gym is trendy. Giving up processed foods is trendy. Ditching alcohol is trendy. Sleep is trendy. Getting off social media sometimes gets to be trendy. Organic food is trendy.
The downside is that what is trendy is usually making someone else rich, so beware of charlatans who hijack wellness just so they can profit from your poor self-image. In fact, the mere ubiquity of fitness accounts on social media can itself be harmful to mental health, even without gym bros or wellness gurus explicitly marketing products to you.
Still, I think it’s ok to use trends to your advantage if you honestly think it’s helping you grow.
Trends Are Fine If You Say They’re Fine
I know my last essay was all about not feeling pulled into seasonal gimmicks and trendy movements like NaNoWriMo or Dry January or No Nut November or whatever today’s young adults are into. I’m not going to fully reverse course, but as tends to be my M-O, I’m going to always leave room for exceptions.
It’s ok to hop onto trends if they are working for you. It’s harmful to hop onto trends if they don’t help you. You’re not a poser or a sheep because millions of other people have the same goals as you.
Obsessing over not having written enough pages during November is not a recipe for success for positive mental health for all writers. That trend is for people who like to feel like they’re part of something, not for people who feel overwhelmed by herd pressure and comparison anxiety.
Conversely, someone who is trying to give up alcohol might feel extremely empowered by Dry January or Lent because they don’t feel alone in their struggle for their physical health and mental clarity. It’s sort of the reason AA uses sponsors, to provide support and accountability.
Trends exist because people perpetuate them. Someone else may be profiting from them, but people still like to do stuff together and they can still experience benefits from trends. People like to have seasonal bullshit to look forward to. It gives them a feeling of community and shared experiences. Even I embrace seasonality when it benefits me.
My Lent in 2024
My Lent is tricky these days, because my plate is already very full, or maybe it’s empty.
I am already intermittent fasting. I already avoid processed foods. I already practice minimalism to the extent that is realistic for someone who lives with 4 kids.
I also recently read Atomic Habits, and if you’ve ever read that book, you’re familiar with the idea that small changes can have lasting effects on your life. Small changes are easier to stick with, therefore easier to build upon. For me, they’re also the easiest to track and the easiest to determine their efficacy. If you give up 5 significant behaviors at once, you might feel better, but you might not be able to pinpoint which one of them was the problem to begin with.
So what am I doing for Lent? I’m simply doing 100 push ups every day.
That may not seem like a lot. Trust me, for me it is. And it’s enough. It’s not even necessarily recommended long-term (you need rest days and diversification) but you bet your ass it’s hard to make time to do.
Funny enough, it’s not even the physical strain that keeps me from wanting to do them, it’s the boredom I experience when I take the time to do them right. Isn’t that crazy? But as I said, this is precisely the point of these sacrifices. I have a problem with boredom and with dopamine. Now I can begin to address it.
Sure, I could be doing more. I could cut out streaming (my goal for next year), I could be adding other weight workouts to my daily load (easy does it, but I don’t have time for this or the discipline yet to do it right), and I could be going to bed at 9pm every night to guarantee a full night of rest.
But I say one thing at a time. The more changes and difficult curveballs you throw at your routine, a routine you’ve reinforced for a long time, the harder it will be to make any of it stick. Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Do It Because You Can
I don’t have God to motivate me anymore, or my fellow congregants. But I do have principle. By my own principles, there is no reason why I should fail to fulfill this task every day as long as I’m able-bodied and breathing. It’s my duty as a healthy human being to reach my potential and to nurture what nature gave me. That’s the plain truth of how I see it. My job is to self-actualize, carry the benefits with me, allow positive growth to happen, and allow change to make me a better person who can better love others.
I’ve been reading like crazy, which I love, and I’ve been doing a lot of reflection and journaling. I believe we’re in a constant state of self-discovery. As we continue to change, learn, grow, and age, we’re meeting ourselves every day, getting re-acquainted with ourselves, and hopefully, accepting ourselves.
To me, that’s the fun part about Lent, about life, about self-improvement in general. We get to choose who we want to be, for our own reasons, and by our own standards.
We can’t let anyone tell us we aren’t doing enough because they think we aren’t. We can’t let anyone tell us we aren’t buying the right products, or sacrificing the right vice, or doing the right workout programs. What you do is no one else’s business, unless you’re hurting people.
You aren’t hurting anyone by practicing Lent without a chosen deity. You might be missing out on the very best Lent can do for you, you might be diluting its meaning and history by secularizing it, and you might be leaving yourself vulnerable to snake oil salesmen hocking green juice. If you’re comfortable with that, then so am I. You’re an adult, you can handle the risks.
I encourage you to reflect on your life and your habits. If something isn’t working for you, (be honest with yourself), have the courage to sit on it and figure out why that’s the case. You’ll quickly arrive at the solution to that issue, and I hope you give yourself a chance to make whatever changes are necessary to improve. Don’t judge yourself, don’t get hung up on mistakes you made when you were younger. You’re a different person now. You can change. I changed.
Today, I heard someone say “stop outsourcing your understanding of the world”. What a concept, I thought. It’s the same sentiment as “think for yourself”.
Don’t let other people or things tell you what to believe, what makes you happy, how you should feel, how you should look, or how things are. You have the freedom and the responsibility to decide what’s right and to go make it happen.
Good luck. Go be your best self, according to you.