Friday, March 7
Often times in modernity, to be an “independent thinker”, means to be “dangerous”. To break the rules is to “be free”. Therefore religious rules and practices of self control, such as Lent, can often be looked down upon: you are “oppressed” because you sacrifice for faith and not for yourself.
This piece isn’t in defense of rules in of themselves: as an officer in the US Air Force, I’ve seen rules for rules sake. The US Department of Defense creates rules out of good intent, and then enforces them with an iron fist. Since human experience is infinitely more variable than the one-sentence rules the DoD dictates, what started as rules for weapons safety and abuse prevention becomes a machine systematically and routinely deprives its best troops. They are denied care, resources, and time to care for their comrades, care for their families, and care for themselves. In its self appointed purpose of defense of the country, it brutally suppresses those it is suppose to serve.
In faith and spiritual matters in general, we are often trying to find the “divine rules”. In seeking our existential longings and answers, we hope to learn more about being human. We seek to know why we are here. To make progress spiritually, to find the divine, we most often have to reduce the ego to see past our screaming insecurities. Past that is what God has laid out for us.
Our insecurities and hurt flare up when we sacrifice and suppress the ego. It’s our brain’s natural instinct: be bigger so we don’t get hurt. Out of a natural born instinct, our ego gives itself the self appointed task of defense of the self. And as it becomes more and more threatened, it will use more and more extreme weapons to protect the self. What starts as triggers, bad moods, and short tempers, becomes betrayals and isolation from those who love us. In defense of the self, it betrays the very person it was trying to protect.
To sacrifice is hard. Brutal sometimes. To reduce our ego is hard. It’s excruciatingly vulnerable sometimes. But as we fast and abstain, we lower our defenses that our ego has put up. Lenten sacrifice isn’t a self improvement program: it’s to remind us who we really are. We render ourselves vulnerable instead of making ourselves bigger. We remind ourselves that our soul is not a machine or a weapon, but a human being that God has created to be loved.
Nicholas Pumper is a Sacred and Landscape Art painter, US Air Force veteran, based in Belgium.
You can find out more about him here.