Lent at

After the Cyber-Church of Jesus Christ Childfree observed Christmas Eve, we decided to always observe some holiday or season of the Christian church. Our seasons list is here. And this time of year, the season is Lent.

Now it's the latter half of winter. It's something of a sad time of year, but here in the Northern Hemisphere, spring is near. We just have to make it through the next six weeks.

From times of old, societies would have rituals of purification at about this time of year. Food stocks used to run low then, so it made sense to go without meat. And then and now, there really should be a religious reason to do everything, because all things that we do should be for the glory of God.

But today, if you can type at a computer, you probably live in a society which does not have shortages of meat in March. Ever since people in the Northern Hemisphere discovered that the Southern Hemisphere exists and can grow things at different times of year, it's been pretty easy to circumvent seasonal food shortages. So many people today ask, what relevance is there to Lent. There's no simple answer to that. But...

The book of Romans says: "One man's faith allows him to eat everything, but another man, whose faith is week, eats only vegetables. The man who eats everything must not look down on him who does not, and the man who does not eat everything must not condemn the man who does, for God has accepted him." (Romans 14: 2-3)

This certainly makes a good rule for Lent. The Cyber-Church of Jesus Christ Childfree has added Lent to its church year, by popular demand. We may not observe Ash Wednesday the way normal churches do, any more than we observe Fat Tuesday (in French, "Mardi Gras") the way people do in New Orleans. But Lent is still a time when some people find it useful to observe rituals of purification, and God commands us not to object to that.

Happy Lent to you all. I hope those of you who observe Fat Tuesday had a joyous time then too.

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