I remember taking part in Lent as a child.
Raised Catholic, educated Catholic and formerly Catholic, I can recall my childhood penances: sodas, video games, biting my fingernails or “asking too many questions,” as my teachers may have said.
Surely, God understood the magnitude of these feats.
But I find the application of the annual Lenten penance to be far broader than the Catechism would suggest.
According to Catholic teaching, Lent is a time of repentance and sacrifice — or more specifically, self-denial — to prove the sincerity of your regret. But like all apostolic teachings which ask anything of the constituency, the “reason for the season” has been distorted under the warped glass of inconvenience.
It boils down to intentions.
Are you eating less to suffer or to fit into that size-two dress? Are you exercising for purification and health or to be sexually attractive to the girls on spring break?
I always appreciated the Apostle James’ logic in Bible verse James 2:17, which reads: “Thus also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.”
What James suggests is that just as intentions without actions are useless, so too are actions with no intentions, and his logic is astute regardless of one’s faith — or lack thereof, in my case.
It’s the difference between doing something because you have to rather than because you care. Wanting to help others does not merit the praise of doing so just as wanting to succeed does not merit success.
But given the massive ideological shifts of the Christian faith over the past few decades, one can no longer pigeonhole Lent under the Catholic masthead.
Numerous Christian denominations and followers have also used Lent for self-improvement, but the question remains: Are you doing it for you, or for faith?
While some readers may immediately have thought “faith,” the correct answer should be both, for if faith is something you care about, then acting on its behalf should please you as it would God.
And this circles back to Ms. Size Two and Mr. Beach Body: There’s nothing wrong with acting on rational self-interest.
The only problem would be if your actual interests were incongruous with your proclaimed interests, and that’s why I write about Lent like an ornery neighbor across the fence — or religious divide.
It’s a strange feeling, being an atheist writing about the authenticity of faith, but even though I disagree with the logic of the matter, it’s not faith I’m looking for nor judging by.
It’s integrity.
Any nonbeliever should be able to respect the religious just as the religious should be able to respect the nonbeliever. Traits like honesty, courage and integrity have no religious implications or barriers.
British Renaissance man Stephen Fry put it beautifully:
“It would be impertinent and wrong of me to express any antagonism toward any individual who wishes to find salvation in whatever form they wish to express it. That to me is sacrosanct as much as any article of faith is sacrosanct to anyone of any church or any faith in the world.”
So whether you’ve given up Facebook, candy or masturbation should mean nothing to anyone else so long as you frame it honestly and earnestly.
Don’t complain about your penance if you’ve taken one, for it becomes obvious that faith has nothing to do with the matter.
Everyone should act on their own interest, faithful or not — with the obvious caveat of acts which infringe on the rights of others. But Libertarianism is only the secular version of the Golden Rule.
You should be doing it for yourself.
If you claim to be religious, pleasing God should please you as acting on behalf of my philosophy pleases me.
Clayton Crockett is a 20-year-old international studies sophomore from Lafayette. Follow him on Twitter @TDR_ccrockett.
 
 
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Contact Clayton Crockett at [email protected]