Here’s another great post by Mike Metzger, Let Me Hear Your Body Talk about how the Enlightenment has shaped our course (the Western church tradition) for more studying and less doing/practicing/living out our faith. In the post Mike describes the Enlightenment period as such, “The Enlightenment is a 17th century disembodied approach to knowledge—changing the world meant changing the mind…”. In the post he recounts how Lent has become primarily irrelevant for so many in the Western church tradition because we are more concerned with knowing (studying) rather than doing or living out our faith. Personally I can think of so many examples of growing up in the church where knowing was given much more value than actually living out my faith (which I write about in another post All Cuddly In the Ghetto). Now, please understand that I’m not saying that we just forget about knowing what’s in the Bible and we just live our lives que sera sera…if we did that then we wouldn’t know how to model our lives (don’t read that as the Bible is the “answer book”). But there needs to be a balance of knowing and doing (merging x and y instead of choosing x vs y is a topic for a post I’ll have in a couple days…hopefully). I think oftentimes (myself included) we decide if “x” doesn’t work then we should abandon “x” and solely try “y” – well what if it is that we need to merge “x” and “y” to experience the desired results we are striving for? Sometimes we all too often throw the baby out with the bathwater.
I personally hope I can begin to practice Lent in many more tangible ways in my life, and more often than just one time per year. But babysteps right? By the way…how are those New Year’s resolutions coming? ;-)
derekablaylock
