Featured Ready for Lent?

Your obsession with the Roman Catholic Church is clouding your mind. The Roman Catholic Church is irrelevant to the way I have observed the Lenten season - or any other spiritual discipline or scheduled fast.

It seems like you are actually the one captive to the Roman Catholic Church since you can't imagine anyone else doing any similar Christian tradition without it someone being a crypto-Catholic conspiracy.

Did you know that Catholics pray? Therefore, if you pray, you don't have any clue what Catholics mean when they pray.

 

Except that the "traditions" for Lent include, "Penance", Self-Affliction, "mortifying the flesh," ect. Educate yourself.

 

Repentance and correction of wrongs of commission or omission (aka "penance") is a Christian discipline. Christians do NOT have to do it the way that the Roman Catholics do it.

Mortification of the flesh - that is, bringing the body in subjection to the mind and the grace of Christ is a Christian discipline. That's part of what fasting is about. It is denying the body what it craves as a spiritual exercise to provide control over the body on future occasions of temptation. All Christians should be involved in "crucifying the flesh) as Paul taught in Galatians 5:24.

I don't know what you mean by "self-affliction", but there have been a lot of bad practices associated with it. However, the good practices involve denial of the momentary desires of the body as part of the mortification of the flesh.

You seem to have an issue with the use of spiritual disciplines.

 

I'm not going to continue to go 'round and 'round with you. Educate yourself. I understand clearly what good Biblical spiritual disciplines are. This idea of "will-power worship", "asceticism" (Colossians 2 speaks on these), Penance, Self-affliction, etc as "offeratory sacrifices so God would be pleased," are not Biblical. I'm done.

 

Certainly people of all "kinds of faiths" observe something they call Lent. The question is not whether they do, but whether they should.

Interestingly, Lent is kind of obvious, usually with public (or at least religious) announcements that one is involved in a fast, from what, and how long (starting with the ashes on the forehead for most, I presume). Seems to violate the spirit of Matthew 6:16-18 where Jesus tells us to do so in a way that it is not obvious to others that we are fasting.

 

Where is the "Lent" observance found in SCRIPTURE??????????????????????????????????

 

Spare me

 

Do you think they follow scripture!?!

 

Colossians 2
16 So let no one judge you in food or in drink, or regarding a festival or a new moon or sabbaths, 17 which are a shadow of things to come, but the substance is of Christ. 18 Let no one cheat you of your reward, taking delight in false humility and worship of angels, intruding into those things which he has not seen, vainly puffed up by his fleshly mind, 19 and not holding fast to the Head, from whom all the body, nourished and knit together by joints and ligaments, grows with the increase that is from God.

20 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— 21 “Do not touch, do not taste, do not handle,” 22 which all concern things which perish with the using—according to the commandments and doctrines of men? 23 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.

1 Timothy 4
1 Now the Spirit expressly says that in latter times some will depart from the faith, giving heed to deceiving spirits and doctrines of demons, 2 speaking lies in hypocrisy, having their own conscience seared with a hot iron, 3 forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from foods

 

Define "Lent"; thanks!

 

Thank you for your reply!

 

You lack the understanding that fasting and other spiritual disciplines are not legalism, but self-imposed spiritual training. Fasting does not assume food is evil. Fasting is not neglect of the body, but the training of the body.

 

I agree that Scriptures do not forbid Lent, though as #45 noted, its public nature (by some) seems at variance with Christ's comments on "show-off" religiosity. However, the argument that "If it's not specifically forbidden then it's okay" (which I'm not trying to pin on you or anyone else here) is used by many professing Christians as license rather than liberty.

 

I am not against fasting. I am against commanding it, showing it off, and boasting about it. I am against teaching it with the wrong motivation. Last time, educate yourself on Lent.

 

I was talking to @Baptist Believer