Lent, Self-Denial, and Negativity
With some people, you can’t joke about anything; you can’t even joke about lent. “I’m giving up Catholicism for lent,” or “I’m giving up [something I don’t do].” Not really ha ha funny, but that’s the point. We’re tired and we’ll laugh at anything. But some people have to take everything seriously. Even non-Catholics:
“You shouldn’t give up something for lent, you should [do something positive] instead.”
OK, maybe you missed the point, but we were joking. Lent is about self-denial, about giving up something that isn’t really that harmful, which is intrinsically funny! We make fun of lent by joking about giving up something that is genuinely harmful in our lives, or something that would negate the whole concept of self-denial. Take the self-denial out of lent, and you’ve made it un-fun, even if you take it seriously.
At the root of this attitude is intolerance for any form of negativity, no matter how silly or beneficial. If there is something in your life that is bad, giving it up is not negativity. Don’t think positive thoughts while your spouse beats you, just leave! Don’t look on the bright side of chlamydia, go to the doctor and have it destroyed! Negativity is not intrinsically bad. For example, try these negative sentences:
- “I am not sick.”
- “There are no dents in my car.”
- “We played music all night and nobody threw rotten vegetables at us.”
Negativity also serves another important purpose. Critical self-awareness (metacognizance) is vital to improvement. Self improvement does not happen without negative feedback. If you think you are perfect, you will not improve. Protect your feelings and stay mediocre for the rest of your life.
Oh sure, you can increase the positive feedback when you do good things, but have you really removed negative feedback, or just addicted yourself to positivity? Then the withdrawal of incessant positivity will be your negative feedback, and you risk becoming an annoying Pollyanna, intolerant of anything that is not phrased in glowing terms. All you have really achieved is to redefine “excellent” to mean “pretty good” and “pretty good” to mean “somewhat disappointing”. Pollyannas get to be “positive” all the time because they aren’t speaking the same language as the rest of us. And their praise is fairly meaningless because we have to translate it down two notches.
Pollyanna: “You did great out there!”
Normal human: “Sorry, I’ll try to do better next time.”
Yes, there is nothing bad about giving up something harmful. But, Lent isn’t about giving up something harmful, it is about giving up something important to you that someone else (society or the Church) disapproves of. For a few weeks. Which is really silly, because it’s not even about genuine transformative change–more like a fad diet.
In Lent you sacrifice for a few weeks, knowing that you get to go back to your guilty pleasure afterwards. The pleasure will be that much sweeter when you return to it! And, when you are rewarded in heaven, you’ll be there for eternity; the 40 days of lent is 0% of your existence, right? “Sacrifice,” indeed. Plus we all know you’re (temporarily) giving up something that is harming you. At lent, true sacrifice is only for people without vices.
Lent is only about sacrifice when you’re bragging about what you gave up.
The whole lent thing reminds me, as it is intended to, of Jesus’s great “sacrifice” to the world when he “died” for our sins. As the story goes, he was dead for three days, which he may or may not have spent in hell. Oh sure, nobody really wants to be in hell, or even just dead for that matter. But hang in there for three short days, and he becomes part of God for all eternity, ruling over heaven. So… aside from a short waiting period, his great sacrifice is that he became one with god. Clearly, we all owe him for that one. What percentage of his total existence was spent in hell? Since his birth, to date, Jesus has spent less than 0.00041% of his existence in hell, the rest in heaven. As god.
The 40 days of “sacrifice” in lent and Jesus’s great “sacrifice” for our sins are both pretty weak. We joke about lent, but we don’t joke about Jesus. Well, we don’t like having our tires slashed. :)
Spending 40 days without your favorite vice might be good for you, or it might be spending 0.16% of your short existence passing up on the one thing that makes life worthwhile. Decisions, decisions…
