my legalistic Lent.

I like challenges. I also enjoy legalism. (It’s so easy!) So, when I was assigned the task of a “Public Scholarship Project” in a class dealing with the spirituality of environmental issues, I was ready.

Here comes Lent. Eating is a spiritual issue with environmental dimensions. Obviously, I’m going to go strictly vegetarian for 40 days. This is a game with simple rules that promises a certain amount of smugness at its end. Who am I kidding? A certain amount of smugness throughout. “Hey, do you wanna grab some Chick-fil-A?” “Oh, yeah, no. Sorry. Gave up meat for Lent, because I love the Lord [more than you do].”

Only, the smugness never came. The rules weren’t so easy. And games are fun.

I gave up meat for Lent, and lived to tell about it. Please join me, as I tell.

Join me in my questions. Help me grapple with the things I learned—some funny things (most vegetarian food is kind of funny), some contentious academic things (Adam and Eve were vegetarians?), and a lot of things that defy categorization as merely funny or contentious, or spiritual.

It has been my experience that any time that God is sincerely sought is a time in which He will move in ways both deeply compassionate, and terrifying. This season has held both. I sought God with questions about the meaning of fasting, and about His provision for us. I set out to understand what it means for me to be a being dependent upon the workings of an intricate system of biology, and sociology and economics. I wanted to know how the most mundane of my weekly tasks, grocery shopping, affects that system, and how my identity as a Christian, and my relationship to a living God, is intertwined with the answers to those queries.

I can’t say that I received the answers to all of my questions. I can say that I’m better for having asked them. That my eyes are open a little wider. That my time with my God goes a little deeper.

I gave up meat for 40 days (37, actually—we’ll get to that). But I’m different for the rest of my days. What about you? Have you had any similar experiences with Lent, or fasting in general? Do you think that faith and eating are related issues? Can someone honor God with their choices in food? And, if so, can we also then dishonor God with our choices of food?