“Have a (nearly) Cheerless Lent!” He said thoughtfully.

Recently someone said: “Happy Lent!”

I paused and considered. Lent strikes me as a terrifically unhappy time of the year.

If we are having a happy Lent in that sense of “happy,” we are doing something wrong.

Now I could be Mr. Philosophy and point out that “happy” can mean “human flourishing” as the Declaration uses it in “pursuit of happiness” but it would not help matters. Fasting from the world, the flesh, and the devil is necessary for human flourishing but it is not human flourishing. A person in a coma is certainly refraining from the world, the flesh, and (I assume) devils but I would not describe his condition as flourishing. I flourish when I love properly and loving properly is natural to humanity but not always natural to me.

Lent is a time when I examine my unnatural desires and actions, am sorry, and work to change. Lent is a good time not a happy time which is a combination that would not have happened in Eden and will not happen in Paradise, but must happen here and now. When did Americans decide Lent (of all things) should be cheerful?

Maybe it began with us deciding “what we would give up for Lent” instead of starting with community fasting rules and building from those instructions. Maybe it started when we began viewing remorse or sorrow as “bad” and tried to eliminate them in constant cloying cheer or endless entertainments. We are a people who take aspirin to mask pain that is telling us that we have a deadly disease.

Lent is not a jolly time and thank God for that.

My sin is serious.

The world, the flesh, and the devils beset me. There is growth I must achieve in Christ. This does not mean the false humility of “woe is me” or exaggerating my sins. It does mean accounting for them and improving as God gives me grace. When I am crabby with my adult kids, then I must repent, apologize and change. This year they should be able to see moral progress in me. Nobody is perfect, but I am somebody and that means my actions count since they hurt others, myself, and God.

The evils of this age are serious.

Racism infects our nation. Poverty blights the future of people worldwide. Sexual immortality is called morality in parts of the West. Human slavery still exists. People sell products they know will hurt people and use the profits to defend their actions. We are destroying the environment.

The coming judgment is serious.

God will bring me before the Judgement Seat and all my deeds will be revealed. Nothing will remain private, not even a Clinton could keep an email secret on that Day! The blood of Jesus will be sufficient and I trust His grace and mercy to save me, but just as nobody looks forward to going to the dentist, even if the dentist will end your pain, so nobody should look forward to the Day of Doom. It is presumptuous and a failure to recognize how many deeds I have done wickedly or not done when a good action was needed.

Lent is a time to face the real dread that is in all our hearts, not wish it away by reality denial, and then find in Jesus Christ the solution. Lent leads to jollification, but it is not jolly.

Americans want us to lighten up always. Saturday Night Live already is making jokes about ISIS/IS recruitment of our kids. One week ISIS martyrs twenty-one Christians, next week we can yuk it up with Saturday Night Live about those idiots in ISIS. Suggest that the topic is not really appropriate, at least not yet, to laugh about ISIS and you are a kill joy.

It is true that the devils cannot stand to be mocked and deserved mockery, but it is also not true that it is always good to mock them. When contending for the body of Moses, Scripture tells us that even a Holy Angel rebuked Satan in God’s name. Laughing is (sometimes) inappropriate and rude.

I have seen humor at death beds that was gentle, family driven, and appropriate. Death was not funny or fun, but we could find fellowship during a long illness that included laughter. Still the time was serious and nobody I know would live through it again for the jokes. Mostly dying is hard and sad.

And so Lent, a kind of dying, is hard and often sad. We should not parade our sorrow like a celebrity on a relief junket, but we can still sorrow: sorrow for our sins, sorrow for wickedness of the times, and sorrow for the Day of Doom. It is good for us in a negative way. . . one that will end after death. It is an operation, a purging of the soul. Mostly it is painful.

Lent is a time I will be glad to see end and I long for Easter. Have a serious, but blessed Lent, Easter is coming!