David Brisbin Podcast

Many of us who grew up with Lent hold dark memories of being forced to give up favorite things as penance for our sinfulness—even before we could really sin—with the implied punishment of self-deprivation as preparation for Easter, but more deeply as appeasing an angry God. Whatever the doctrinal intent, without further teaching, this is what we kids absorbed: a cementing of the reward/punishment paradigm that negates Jesus’ concept of a love that self-exists as the oneness at the heart of everything. Lent, the forty days of fasting and prayer before Easter, was originally the rite of passage for those approaching baptism, the transition into new life requiring a complete change of values and perception. Meant to mirror Jesus’ forty days of exhausting deprivation in the wilderness, the church and its people gradually lost the meaning behind Jesus’ suffering, letting it fall into superstition as an end in itself, the penance needed to regain God’s favor. What was Jesus really doing out there? He certainly