What are you giving up for Lent?

What are you giving up for Lent?

“What are you giving up for Lent?” A question so many Christians ask at this time of year, but now I wonder if the idea of forgoing some of life’s little pleasures isn’t becoming old fashioned.

Tradition says Lent is largely about using abstinence to focus on how our spiritual lives can better inform our religious ways. However, more and more people seem to be asking if Lent should be less about doing without and more about doing for.
Many faiths have a designated period of fasting. In the Muslim tradition it’s Ramadan when all able Muslims abstain from food or water during daylight hours. Likewise, Baha’is preach abstinence during the first three weeks of March.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints fast on the first Sunday of each month. Fasting is important to Hindus and for Jews, fasting on days like Yom Kippur means that you can’t even clean your teeth during the designated period.

Fasting

Clearly religious thinking suggests depriving ourselves simplifies our lives, gets us back to basics and helps us remember why (people of faith say) we are on this planet in the first place. By doing without food, drink and any form of stimulants we will focus on what should be really important.
Not every religion urges us to fast, one of the concepts of Buddhism is to live a simple life, yet Buddhists believe that fasting can guide them away from the central path.

Last Wednesday was Ash Wednesday, the traditional start of Lent which is the major Christian fasting period. It lasts 46 days and nights. What seems to be little appreciated is that each Sunday is not seen as part of the fasting period, and so we have the often used term 40 days and 40 nights.
To compliment Lent, BBC Lancashire has a Lent course you can follow and our faith programme has begun carrying a Lent series at 7.20am each Sunday morning.

Ash Wednesday is signified in Christian circles by the dispersal of very small amounts of ashes. On our radio programme, we told you about people from churches in Darwen who walked around the town, stopping to pray for those who work in key areas of their community. They left small amounts of ashes at each location.

Making your mark

Christians often go to an act of worship on Ash Wednesday where a minister or priest will apply a cross like thumb print of ash on the forehead of each member of the congregation. The imprint is a sign of repentance and the ashes are often the result of burning the previous year’s palms which were handed out on Palm Sunday.

Lent continues until we reach Holy Week, Good Friday and ultimately the Christian joy of Easter Day.
Fasting has obvious spiritual value as well as the more earthly benefit of helping shed those extra pounds. However, what appears to be a growing number of people are now questioning the concept of merely fasting for Lent. They say abstaining is all right for the abstainer, but in what way does it help the wider world?

In Christian terms, where the fasting is not as strict as in some faiths, there are those who question (say) giving up chocolate during Lent, only to dive head first into an Easter egg on Easter Day. OK, often part of the deal is the money saved during the chocolate ban goes to help those who are less fortunate, but is there a better way of making your mark?

Do something positive

There are those who say giving up your favourite food or hobby during Lent, only to do twice as much afterwards, rather defeats the object!
They say it’s better to spend Lent being proactive. Yes, by all means consider your life and your purpose for living, but instead of, or maybe as well as, doing without, why not do something positive like spending Lent working for a charity? They urge us to endure a social hardship rather than the more manageable difficulties of doing without some of life’s little pleasures.
Why not spend some time in places and with people you might not really want to be with? Rather than give up Coronation Street for a month, why not help those who we see on the street who hold out their hands to us on a daily basis? As The Bishop of Blackburn once said in an interview with BBC Radio Lancashire, “Why not look in the back streets of our major towns and help the people there?”

So it appears that for many Christians Lenten times are changing from asking “what are you giving up for Lent?” Now they ask “what are you doing for Lent?”

Joe Wilson

Joe presents the faith programme on BBC Radio Lancashire from 6am each Sunday