Self-Denial

A blogger friend who is a Catholic has been writing about Lent which begins next week on Ash Wednesday. I had already been thinking about the self-denial aspect of the season. My worship tradition is not Catholic, but even so, for several years I have found it a profitable spiritual exercise to observe Lent by forgoing the enjoyment of some small pleasure. Even this little bit of self-denial is not required, but it reminds me specifically and regularly of the significance of the approaching Easter Sunday, and so it has been worthwhile. One year it was chocolate, another year, "dainty" food--that is, desserts and other delicacies. Other times, other things. As Lent approaches, I always wonder, "Shall I 'sacrifice' something for Lent? What shall it be?"

I was brought up short by a book I'm reading, an in-depth study of I Corinthians 13, the love chapter. The author, in his exposition on "Love does not seek its own," sees much so-called self-denial as mere disciplines taken on for one reason or another. They are a denial of things, and not a denial of the self at all. The blogger would undoubtedly agree: because if you say, "I'm giving up desserts for Lent—and besides I need to lose some weight," then you are not really fasting for a spiritual purpose. Only if it cuts into the self-life one would choose for personal gratification can it be called a sacrifice. As for giving up gossip or laziness, we should have laid those aside already, just on principle.

We don't see the Jesus presented in the Gospels giving up coffee or cream on His oatmeal or turning off His cell phone, had there been such things then. He gave His real self every day—talking to people when He was tired and hungry, giving children access to His time and His lap, repeating Kingdom precepts over and over to twelve fellows who just didn't get it. Not to mention dying.

All of this is not to say that self-denial means denying that one has, and is, a self. There are those who make a great issue of how unworthy and undeserving they are; they are just non-persons with no ordinary, human needs. They use none of their resources to care for themselves, not realizing that the day is going to come—sooner than God intended—when there is no longer anything left of themselves to give. Women, especially wives and mothers, may fall into that trap more readily than other folks; we have sometimes exalted their self-sacrifice to the point of idolatry. (Which makes it self-centered, after all.)

The Holy Supper is kept, indeed,
In whatso we share with another's need,--
Not that which we give, but what we share,--
For the gift without the giver is bare;
Who bestows himself with his alms feeds three,--
Himself, his hungering neighbor, and Me."

--James Russell Lowell, The Vision of Sir Launfal, 1848

Marjorie

The book I am reading is Love Within Limits: Realizing Selfless Love in a Selfish World by the late Lewis B. Smedes, a professor of Theology and Philosophy of Religion at Fuller Theological Seminary.