Eugene Cho has a potent reminder:

We are now in the Lenten season and let me begin by sharing outright that Lent isn’t about you or about what you’re giving up. But we’ll get to that soon.

For those that might not be familiar with Lent, it is the 40 day period (not including Sundays) between Ash Wednesday and Holy Saturday that has traditionally been a time of preparation for those who were preparing for baptism and later expanded to include the larger Christian community.  It marks a time of prayer, penance, repentance,  humility, self-denial, and soul searching as one draws closer to the Passion of Christ and ultimately, culminating in the celebration of the Resurrection….

I appreciate the Lenten season for many and various reasons. This year, I’m choosing – along with some other things – to give up “coffee” during the Lent season. Trust me, for someone that runs a cafe, has his offices in a cafe, and has access to free Stumptown coffee whenever I want, this will certainly be a “test” of self-denial.

But even after acknowledging that I  myself am “giving up” coffee during Lent, I’m ambivalent and reticent about how vogue or easy it is to give something up during Lent. Umm, especially when it’s something like chocolate, sodas, sugar, Facebook, Twitter, television, and – umm – coffee.

I don’t want to knock those who give stuff up. Not at all. Go for it. More power to you. [Read more...]

First Sunday of Lent

Almighty God, whose blessed Son was led by the Spirit to be tempted by Satan: Come quickly to help us who are assaulted by many temptations; and, as you know the weaknesses of each of us, let each one find you mighty to save; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Whenever I look for a God, I encounter Jesus.

Many of my friends and colleagues will tease that when I believe, all I am doing is putting faith in an ancient book, but of course that’s not how I get there. When I scan the philosophies about God, when I look for a narrative driving history, when I encounter a personality in my prayers, when I simply ask, “If there was a God what would it look like?”—they move me toward Jesus.

My own conversion didn’t hinge on a bunch of religious experiences. I moved back toward Jesus when I studied, really for the first time, his personality—his magnetically keen personality and the kinds of decisions he made at the end of his life. When looking at those details I not only said, “Yes, this God is real,” but better still, “Yes, and I want this God to be real.”

That’s my move and I don’t apologize for my desires. In fact, I’m inclined to say that in both the search for God, and in our continuing sanctification, our desires matter more than anything else. [Read more...]

Jeff Cook, author of Seven: The Deadly Sins and the Beatitudes , has offered some brief meditations for us to ponder during Lent this year.

Gluttony

During Lent, we will meditate together on the Seven Deadly Sins and use this list as an aid in confession as we prepare ourselves for Holy Week, Good Friday and the Easter announcement of resurrection.

When Adam and Eve fell in the garden, their sin was not about sex or violence. Nor was their sin about pride as some have argued. Eating from the tree was an act of gluttony. Adam and Eve took more than they needed. They believed they could do whatever they wished with God’s creation for their own pleasure and benefit.

Gluttony is not about obesity; gluttony is about what we unite ourselves to. Gluttons wed themselves to meals over and above what is healthy—and by devouring more and more, they always have less. Body weight is not a worthy indicator of this sin. The skinny suffer from gluttony as easily and often as the stout, for gluttony is first and foremost excessive. Gluttony demands a third car when one will do, a third drink when one is best, a third hobby when the other two you started aren’t satisfying enough. Alcoholics are gluttons but so are many bloggers, card players and businesspeople. Gluttony is immoderation, and immoderation is not about having body fat. It’s about having a gaunt soul.

Sin entered the world through the body of a man and woman, and it would take the body of another man to defeat it. During Holy week, let us feed on what Jesus said. “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never thirst … My Father’s will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day” (Jn 6:35, 40).

(Excerpt from Seven: the Deadly Sins and the Beatitudes by Jeff Cook)

Jeff Cook, author of Seven: The Deadly Sins and the Beatitudes , has offered some brief meditations for us to ponder during Lent this year.

Pride

During Lent, we will meditate together on the Seven Deadly Sins and use this list as an aid in confession as we prepare ourselves for Holy Week, Good Friday and the Easter announcement of resurrection.

John Milton’s classic Paradise Lost begins with Satan falling from the presence of God into a dark world. Looking around, Satan affirms himself by saying, “Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.”

Some move toward the void of hell—not because reality is too ugly or painful, but because the kingdom of heaven is about others and not one’s self. The ancients called this attitude of persistent self-focus pride. Pride is the natural love for myself magnified and perverted into disdain for others. Augustine called pride the foundation of sin, for “pride made the soul desert God, to whom it should cling as the source of life, and to imagine itself instead as the source of its own life.”

Unlike the other sins, pride appears when I am at my best. Pride capitalizes not just on my failures but even more so on my successes. When I choose to abstain from base desires, gluttony and lust may be defeated but not pride. Whether I share wisdom or withhold it, give money or refrain, pray or remain silent—pride is always there as a false light to bask in. No matter what I do, pride loves to hold up my reflection as an idol to be cherished. Those hell-bound because of pride do not travel downward; they travel inward, cocooning themselves behind a mass of vanity, personal rights, and defensiveness. Such self-obsession is the defining mark of a disintegrating soul.

To those of us who struggle with pride Jesus said, “Blessed are you who realize that you are in fact lacking what makes you alive. Heaven is here and it has come for you” (paraphrase of Mt 5:3).

(Excerpt from Seven: the Deadly Sins and the Beatitudes by Jeff Cook)

Jeff Cook, author of Seven: The Deadly Sins and the Beatitudes , has offered some brief meditations for us to ponder during Lent this year.

Sloth

During Lent, we will meditate together on the Seven Deadly Sins and use this list as an aid in confession as we prepare ourselves for Holy Week, Good Friday and the Easter announcement of resurrection.

Sloth is not restfulness. Sloth is escapism of the deadly sort. Sloth saps our time and emotions through a favorite sports team, a new set of shoes, or obsession over our appearance—while leaving scant energy for our marriage or kids or duties. Nothing is so clearly modern, so clearly western as is sloth. Despite our fast-moving, success-worshipping, ulcer-ridden society, we invest our energies and talents most often in what is trivial. Despite our frantic pace, our eyes are seldom focused on what is actually “good.”

At its core, sloth moves us away from everything that ultimately matters and directs us toward simple distractions, for sloth is not laziness. Sloth is indifference—indifference toward my soul, my neighbors, my world, or my God. Drug users, Netflix addicts, and excessive videogamers may be poisoned by sloth, but so are most workaholics. In fact, sloth is best expressed not by a sluggish attitude but in zeal over petty matters. Sloth, in fact, is a sorrow about goodness. It finds those things that we were made to enjoy and pursue to be useless and boring.

To those of us who struggle with sloth Jesus said, “Blessed are you who hunger and thirst for all things put right.”

(Excerpt from Seven: the Deadly Sins and the Beatitudes by Jeff Cook)

Jeff Cook, author of Seven: The Deadly Sins and the Beatitudes , has offered some brief meditations for us to ponder during Lent this year.

Greed

During Lent, we will meditate together on the Seven Deadly Sins and use this list as an aid in confession as we prepare ourselves for Holy Week, Good Friday and the Easter announcement of resurrection.

Greed is a misdirected love. Dante depicted the greedy chained to the ground, with their backs turned to heaven and their eyes fixed on the earth. The destructive power of greed was noted by one of those enchained who said, “Greed quenched my love of good, thus all my labors were in vain.”

Notice, greed is not gluttony, which indulges to the point of bursting. Greed in many ways couldn’t care less about enjoying its spoils. Greed pursues accumulation. Greed is the desire to possess more than I need, because of fear or idolatry. A fitting personification of Greed is Ebenezer Scrooge, who sat alone at night with a single candle to light his frigid bedroom. “Darkness is cheap,” wrote Charles Dickens, “and Scrooge liked it.”
Greed does not care about living well in the present for greed is obsessed about the future, and the future is a place of fear—fear that I will not have enough for tomorrow, fear that somehow the God who gives me each breath will stop providing if I do not squirrel away all I can.

Jesus’ brother James called greed the primary obstacle to peace in our world. Paul wrote that monetary greed is “a root of all kinds of evil.” All four gospel writers suggest that Judas betrayed Jesus partially because of greed. At its core, greed prefers wealth to the growth of our souls, to the God who made us, and to peace among people.

To those of us who struggle with greed Jesus says, “Freely you have received, freely give … What good will it be for you to gain the whole world, yet forfeit your soul?” (Mt 10:8, 16:26)

(Excerpt from Seven: the Deadly Sins and the Beatitudes by Jeff Cook)

Jeff Cook, author of Seven: The Deadly Sins and the Beatitudes , has offered some brief meditations for us to ponder during Lent this year.

Lust

During Lent, we will meditate together on the Seven Deadly Sins and use this list as an aid in confession as we prepare ourselves for Holy Week, Good Friday and the Easter announcement of resurrection.

CS Lewis invites us to imagine that we have visited an alien world where scores of people have assembled to watch a striptease. Imagine, however, that instead of a woman, a small, covered platter is brought out—and with all eyes wide, someone slowly removes the lid, revealing a steaming hamburger. We think the striptease is a joke, but all around us, people begin howling. Others snicker, elbowing their friends. Some just sit quivering in their seats. If such a world did exist, we would not think this display merely odd. We would think something inside the audience was broken. A healthy appetite for food is good, but when appetites turn into manic behavior, something is in a state of disrepair.

Like all extremes, an out-of-control desire for sex is damaging. When our desire for sex takes over—when our appetites demand whatever they wish without commitment or care—our sexual longings step beyond their natural role. We call such rule by our primal urges lust. Lust is handing control of my body and mind over to illicit cravings. Those controlled by lust know something is wrong inside them, for they make their habits private. They hide evidence from those they care about most. Shame often reveals not just where I mess up, but where my life malfunctions.

When I give lust the steering wheel, it will rot my normal desire for sex, making it hollow and unappeasable. We can talk sensibly about brain damage. We may even say that a certain man is a lunatic, that his mind is erratic and unstable. In the same way, lust, if given its way, will make our bodies and minds erratic and unstable. When we give control of our lives over to lust, we lose not only the potential joy of sex but also the enjoyment of so much else. At its core, lust wars against the community we ought to share with one another—distorting duties, confusing friendships, breaking up marriages, betraying children, creating false intimacy, turning us away from the pleasure of another person toward mere self-gratification. As one ancient confession says, “With the lusts of passion I have darkened the beauty of my soul, and turned my whole mind entirely to dust.”

To those of us who struggle with giving the authority of our bodies over to lust, Jesus says, “Gouge out and cut off everything that causes you to stumble with lust. It is better for you to remove even a part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into that valley of flaming waste” (Paraphrase of Mt 5:28-29). Take a moment to let the Spirit expose lust in your life, so you may repent and be free.

(Excerpt from Seven: the Deadly Sins and the Beatitudes by Jeff Cook)

Jeff Cook, author of Seven: The Deadly Sins and the Beatitudes , has offered some brief meditations for us to ponder during Lent this year.

Wrath

During Lent, we will meditate together on the Seven Deadly Sins and use this list as an aid in confession as we prepare ourselves for Holy Week, Good Friday and the Easter announcement of resurrection.

There is great pain in our world, and our anger alerts us to the fact that it needs fixing. I become angry when I see the weak exploited, those I care about injured, and what I value destroyed. The desire for justice is legitimate. (In fact, God desires the elimination of evil even more than we do.) Yet when my longing for justice turns to violence and scorn, to lashing out and deprivation of love toward others—I no longer share God’s perspective. I move from being part of the solution to becoming just another part of the problem for I have embraced the way of wrath.

Dante called wrath a “love of justice perverted to revenge and spite.” Wrath is a simplistic, dehumanizing way to address the world’s problems. It takes no intellect or goodness of soul to start swinging at those who hurt me. Ultimately, wrath is a deadly sin because it separates us from those we ought to embrace and cherish as God’s fellow children. Wrath moves us away from those we could potentially spend eternity with. Yes, wickedness hurts us. When the sins of others target our joy, our welfare, and those we love, we rightly long for things to be made right. Wrath, however, is not concerned with restoration, only with revenge and dominance. Therefore, wrath aimed at our fellow human beings is always opposed to God’s activities.

Like the other deadly sins, wrath wars against the community—the kingdom—that God wants to create, and to us Jesus says, “Blessed are you who work for peace. You will be called a child of God … Love your enemies, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good” (Mt 5). Take a moment to let the Spirit expose wrath in your life, so you may repent and be free.

(Excerpt from Seven: the Deadly Sins and the Beatitudes by Jeff Cook)

Jeff Cook, author of Seven: The Deadly Sins and the Beatitudes , has offered some brief meditations for us to ponder during Lent this year.

Envy

During Lent, we will meditate together on the Seven Deadly Sins and use this list as an aid in confession as we prepare ourselves for Holy Week, Good Friday and the Easter announcement of resurrection.

The Deadly Sins are soul-poisons and envy is one of the most lethal. Envy cares nothing for my good, my heart, my future, or even my pleasure—for envy offers me nothing but pain. Envy is masochistic. Envy suggests I look at others—consider their free time, their pay check, their successes, their lovers—and envy says, “The life you have just isn’t good enough.” This may seem a petty step, but it’s lethal. Envy has the toxic ability to distract my heart and mind from the daily bread God puts into my hand each morning, focusing me instead on the gifts, status, talents, and joys he gives to others. This is not only a rejection of the good that God has given to me; this is a desire to become someone I am not, was never made to be, and will not enjoy becoming if my jealousy succeeds.

Envy invites me to put on glasses that see the world as though God has not given me everything I need to be fully drenched in his redeeming, soul-restoring, son- and daughter-creating, joy-producing, exquisitely wonderful love. Envy is a deadly sin because it inspires us to say to God, “The life you’ve given me is simply subpar. I need a new set of widgets. I need to be worry-free. I need to have a different life with different perks.”

As such, envy proves to be the sin of the insecure and beggarly. In the Scriptures, envy is pictured as both the sin of those grumbling against God and of those who drive themselves into exile—away from God and away from others. Neither is a good condition.

To those of us who struggle with envy let us be reminded of what the father in Jesus’ story said to an envious older brother who had exiled himself from the party at hand: “My son, you are always with me, and everything I have is yours.” Take a moment to let the Spirit expose envy in your life, so you may repent and be free.

(Excerpt from Seven: the Deadly Sins and the Beatitudes by Jeff Cook)