Lenten Disciplines

By Maria Boccia, PhD
Professor of Pastoral Counseling and Psychology
Director of Graduate Programs in Counseling Charlotte campus

We are in the middle of the Lenten season and as I approached writing this blog, I thought about all the different ways I have approached this season and the tradition of fasting in the past. Having grown up Catholic, fasting meant abstaining from meat on a variety of designated days such as Fridays and certain feast days, such as Ash Wednesday (although for many this meant eating fish instead, our family ate pasta & lentils or peas). During Lent, we all decided what we would give up for the 40 days. The fast may have involved food, such as giving up chocolate, but sometimes focused on other time-consuming and pleasurable activities, such as watching TV. The focus was on sacrifice; giving up something you enjoyed.

If you read theological discussions of Lenten disciplines, however, it is a little more complicated. Catholic theologians see fasting as a form of penance. Among Protestants, the focus is more on discipline with the purpose of becoming more spiritually minded, more aware of God. In both cases, there is the idea of personal discipline, particularly of the body, as a way of reminder of or means to growing closer to God and developing spiritual muscles.

As I was considering this Lenten season, I realized that it is very easy to use the discipline as a means to my personal ends rather than for spiritual growth and focus on God. I struggle with weight. If I give up certain kinds of foods, will I be able to keep my mind on the spiritual discipline or will I be anticipating weight loss? The discipline here would become a discipline of my mind: can I do the bodily discipline and maintain the spiritual focus? And as I reflected on that, it occurred to me this is true of all Lenten disciplines. Whatever we do with our bodies, we must keep the spiritual focus.

I recently came across the concept of “self compassion.” This might sound like just another way to say self-centeredness or selfishness or self-focus. However,

Having compassion for oneself is really no different than having compassion for others. Think about what the experience of compassion feels like. First, to have compassion for others you must notice that they are suffering. If you ignore that homeless person on the street, you can’t feel compassion for how difficult his or her experience is. Second, compassion involves feeling moved by others' suffering so that your heart responds to their pain (the word compassion literally means to “suffer with”). When this occurs, you feel warmth, caring, and the desire to help the suffering person in some way. Having compassion also means that you offer understanding and kindness to others when they fail or make mistakes, rather than judging them harshly. Finally, when you feel compassion for another (rather than mere pity), it means that you realize that suffering, failure, and imperfection is part of the shared human experience. “There but for fortune go I.”

Self-compassion involves acting the same way towards yourself when you are having a difficult time, fail, or notice something you don’t like about yourself. Instead of just ignoring your pain with a “stiff upper lip” mentality, you stop to tell yourself “this is really difficult right now,” how can I comfort and care for myself in this moment?” Instead of mercilessly judging and criticizing yourself for various inadequacies or shortcomings, self-compassion means you are kind and understanding when confronted with personal failings

- Kristin Neff, Associate Professor of Human Development and Culture at the University of Texas at Austin http://www.self-compassion.org/what_is_self_compassion.html

I find myself making a very similar case to clients with whom I work who have very poor self-esteem or self-valuation. I reminded them that God values them enough to send Christ to die for them. Not just for other people, but for them as well. I can agree with them that they have done nothing to earn this value. It is about being not about doing. It is because God in his sovereignty chose to place his love on them. They are valuable because he values them. Therefore, I encourage them to be kind to themselves, to show some compassion to themselves.

So as I was thinking about Lent, I decided that my Lenten discipline this year would be to give up self-criticism. If I am this valuable person whom God has chosen, if I am one for whom Christ died, if I am one for whom God has shown mercy, then I may show mercy to myself. Even as I would show compassion to one of my clients, so too I can show compassion to myself. I am an imperfect, broken sinner, wounded by myself, my own sin, and by the world. I can choose to continue to wound myself with critical self thoughts, or I can choose to agree with God. Through nothing I have done, he has loved me and given me value. God’s grace forgives my inadequacies and encourages me to become the person he intended me to be. That person is one who shows compassion for others yes, but also towards myself and my failings. Because, it is God who is at work within me both to desire and to do his good pleasure (Philippians 2:13).

What The Adjustment Bureau Could Learn from The Last Temptation (and from Christ Himself)

By Roy Ciampa, PhD
Associate Professor of New Testament

The Adjustment Bureau, the new film starring Matt Damon and Emily Blunt, presents an image of a world with a curious religious perspective that will annoy many and presumably inspire some. The film presents a world that functions much as Deism would suggest: one in which the plan of a very distant and normally uninvolved god more or less mechanically unfolds as people fulfill their destinies. In this case the occasional deviance from the plan is corrected by angel-like characters with the power (usually) to put the plan back on track. Matt Damon’s figure falls in love with someone he is not supposed to be with and that leads him to fight against his destiny according to “the plan” to have the freedom to choose his own destiny rather than have to follow that which had been established for him by “the chairman” (the god figure).

So far I’m sure most people will find (as they are supposed to) the religious vision unappealing. They will identify with the protagonist and reject the impersonal and oppressive nature of the religious vision being portrayed. But perhaps more subtle is the way in which Damon’s character and that of his new girlfriend end up being portrayed as martyrs with Christ-like attitudes. They impress some key angelic figures by their willingness “to sacrifice everything” for what they consider most important. [Spoiler alert…] He is destined not only to be elected to the US senate, but also, it is strongly implied, to be elected as the President of the United States. And she is destined to be an internationally renowned dancer and choreographer. But they are willing “to sacrifice everything.” For what though? For their own personal happiness. They can’t imagine any life in which they would be as happy as they would be together and they can’t imagine settling for anything other than the happiness they feel when they are together.

Neither they nor we know what kinds of disasters Damon might prevent as president, nor what kinds of breakthroughs for world peace and prosperity. We don’t know what kinds of ways his girlfriend might have changed the world for the better if she were to play a leading role in her field. We just know they are willing “to sacrifice everything” on the altar of their own commitment to their personal happiness and their perception that it is worth sacrificing everything else to be with this one person. The most troubling part is the suspicion that many people will watch the film and see their own idol of personal happiness at all expenses being held up as a self-sacrificing and noble thing.

That, of course, is where key to The Last Temptation of Christ comes in. In that film Christ’s last temptation on the cross is to come down from the cross and “to sacrifice everything” for the sake of having a normal life, marrying and raising a family with Mary Magdalene. It was to choose his personal happiness over the salvation of the world and thus to come down from the cross and pursue the happiness that could otherwise be his. The Adjustment Bureau is The Last Temptation turned on its head. It is the exaltation of the contemporary idol of personal happiness disguised as noble, self-sacrificial martyrdom. For all the issues with the portrayal of Christ in The Last Temptation, the ideology of The Adjustment Bureau could learn a lot from that film about what sacrifice really looks like.

How much damage has been done in this world in the pursuit of personal happiness and at the expense of other values? We all (or many of us) know marriages that have broken up because one spouse or the other has become infatuated with someone new and has come to believe that they would find greater personal happiness with this new person than they have been able to find with their present spouse. And they could easily interpret all religious and social pressure to remain faithful to their present spouse as a reflection of an oppressive world ideology bent against their personal happiness and committed to some impersonal plan in which they are not interested (like the seemingly impersonal “chairman” and his lieutenants). It is not that personal happiness has no value or should not be a serious consideration in making life decisions, but it makes a poor idol. Luke 9:23-25 (and parallel passages) reminds us that Jesus said, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will save it. ²⁵ What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, and yet lose or forfeit their very self?” (NIV). As Paul puts it, Christ “died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again” (2 Cor. 5:15 NIV).

May our gracious God and loving Father “adjust” our hearts and minds in order that we, undeserving beneficiaries of Christ’s sacrifice, might commit ourselves to loving God and others by reflecting the selfless life of Christ in this world.

Where is Brad Pitt Now?

By David Horn, ThD
Director, The Ockenga Institute

Where is Brad Pitt now? I have just returned from a one-week missions project to New Orleans with nine Gordon-Conwell students, Jeff Arthurs on our faculty, and our wives. We had the privilege of serving post-Katrina New Orleans with a variety of building and recovery projects.

We, of course, visited the Ninth Ward of New Orleans on the first day we were there. A bomb hit it. It must have been a bomb, so devastating was the carnage, and this after five years since the hurricane. But right there in the center of the parish, like a Phoenix rising out of the ashes, were four or five futuristic-looking houses that can only be described through the lens of my own childhood Saturday morning television experience. The houses looked like they came right out of the Jetsons. Brad Pitt built them, I assume from the proceeds deep in the north side of his wallet. Much to his credit, he made an early contribution to the cause.

We stayed on the sanctuary and classroom floors of Faith Bible Church in neighboring Slidell. What a wonderful little, faithful church. When the storm first hit, they did the logical thing: They first cleaned up the two feet of muck and swamp water from their own church, and then went about the business of gutting and cleaning up the houses of their neighbors and others in New Orleans. They have been doing it ever since, hosting groups like us on a wing and a prayer for five years, even as their congregation gets smaller and smaller. To date, this little church, through the hundreds of volunteers they have hosted, has restored almost 60 houses, in addition to hundreds of other restoration projects.

I can’t begin to tell you how proud I am of our students and their contribution to the lives of total strangers this past week. In the grand scheme of things, I suppose, they didn’t sacrifice much other than a week of much needed study time. But they showed up, and on their own dime, and they didn’t have to. They were joined by students from two other schools as well. What an intense little community we became in just one week.

Which brings me back to Brad Pitt. Where is he now? One of the unsung songs in the national media, now that the television cameras are gone after five years, is that it is almost solely faith-based organizations—churches, Christian schools, and other religious organizations-- that are still packing their bags and heading down to New Orleans to patch the city back together again. Where did everyone else go? But why should the national media care? They already have their story. And the story is that apparently the church is full of hypocrites who think about little else but heaven.

I wish they would take five minutes to talk with my new friend, Sarah, as she tells, in her halting Korean-laced English, about her role in tearing down a storm-soaked trailer this week. She probably has never held a hammer before, let alone a crow bar. But there she was, swinging away, along with Sam, her husband, and Caleb and Joan, JK and Joseph, and Anna and Erin and Josh, and Jeff, Liz, and Cec. Just give her five minutes. Now that would be a story.

Fredrick Douglass, the Gospel and Me

By Roy Ciampa, PhD
Associate Professor of New Testament

Fredrick Douglass, the nineteenth-century abolitionist had this to say about American Christianity:

“…I can see no reason, but the most deceitful one, for calling the religion of this land Christianity. I look upon it as the climax of all misnomers, the boldest of all frauds, and the grossest of all libels. …I am filled with unutterable loathing when I contemplate the religious pomp and show, together with the horrible inconsistencies, which every where surround me. We have men-stealers for ministers, women-whippers for missionaries, and cradle-plunderers for church members….The man who robs me of my earnings at the end of the week meets me as a class leader on Sunday morning, to show me the way of life and the path of salvation. …He who proclaims it as a religious duty to read the Bible denies me the right of learning to read the name of the God who made me. ...The warm defender of the family relation is the same that scatters whole families—sundering husbands and wives, parents and children, sisters and brothers—leaving the hut vacant and the heart desolate. …We have men sold to build churches, women sold to support the gospel, and babes sold to purchase Bibles for the poor heathen! All for the glory of God and the good of souls.” [Fredrick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Fredrick Douglass (1845), n. p., http//gbgm-umc.org/UMW/ bible/douglass.stm --cited in Global Voices on Biblical Equality, eds A.B. Spencer, W.D. Spencer and Mimi Haddad (Eugene, Oregon: Wipf and Stock, 2008), pp. 6-7.]

As I read that text I find it so hard to believe that people could treat other human beings as mere objects or possessions, as merchandise to be sold as one would sell stocks and bonds – or worse! It reminds me again of how much harm has been done in the name of Christ and by people whose conscience showed no awareness of just how unjust and inhuman their behavior is.

Of course such reflection can make me feel quite superior in the knowledge that I would never dream of treating anyone that way. That is, until the next time I treat the person behind the counter, or the person who pumps my gas, or the person who serves me food in a restaurant, as just an instrument or means to accomplishing my goals. I may not beat them or sell them or rob them and I may not do anything to them that would be considered immoral or unethical by other people. But I am still quite capable of looking past them as though they are invisible or engaging with them as I would engage a candy machine or a Coke machine or some other inanimate machinery or flesh-covered household appliance that will accomplish some task for me as long as I just crank the right handles or push the right buttons.

And I am more than capable of considering my own needs (or the needs of my friends or the needs of my church’s latest project or campaign of great importance while turning a blind eye to human suffering going on around me, suffering that continues and is perpetuated because I and others with me decide that although it concerns us and should be addressed it just cannot be my/our priority today. Our agenda has us busy attending to other urgent matters….

But I hear the voice of my Lord reminding me of the place of lost and suffering people in his agenda and remember the lengths to which he went to see to it that we might know God’s love and be redeemed from the plight in which we find ourselves. And I am reminded of the words of the apostle Paul:

³ Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. ⁴ Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others. ⁵ Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus. (Philippians 2:3-5 NIV).

May God give us the grace today to recognize our own propensity to subtly treat human beings made in his image as though they are actually something less than we are – as though they are merely means to achieving the goals and objectives we have for our day or for our lives. And may he give me (and you too, if you need it as much as I do) the grace to recognize and act on the opportunities he gives me to follow Christ’s model of treating others not only as fully human beings, but also as the special objects of God’s love and of Christ’s self-sacrifice. May the Christianity I affirm and proclaim with my lips not be betrayed by my own blindness to the injustices around me. May no Fredrick Douglass of the present or future find cause in my behavior to consider my faith a fraud.