Too Righteous for Ashes

You can call me a Christian, but please don’t call me religious.  This used to be my attitude.  Ash Wednesday?  No thanks.  That’s what “religious people”do.  I’m a Christian, and my faith doesn’t involve ashes, or chanting, or beads, or kneeling, or any of the “ritualistic, going through the motions stuff.”  Hello #kevinisajerk. 

I could ramble on about my narrow-minded, predjudiced, hypocrital ways, but I’ll digress from self-shaming.

I have no qualms with you calling me religious now, because I see “religious” in a new light.

It’s all too easy to judge those that seek God in different ways than you do.  Growing up protestant, I felt that my understanding of God was superior to Catholics, Lutherans and any person that worshipped in a church that didn’t have “Church of Christ” in it’s name.  Why?  Because it made me feel like I “had it right.” Like I had the “right interpretation of scripture.” Like I’m good to go when I die.  I was ignorant, to say the least.

Fortunately, with lots of prayer, study and introspection, I’ve moved on from looking at other Christians of different stripes, and people of different faiths and even no-faith with ugly condescension.

I see religious traditions like “Ash Wednesday” a lot differently now.  Even though I’m not “religious” about observing them, I do see a lot of value in observing some of these orthodox traditions. 

I look at Christian rituals and traditions as one way to help us break out of our punch-in, punch-out, autopilot, daily routines.  When we mindfully enter into these traditions we shift our focus toward what brings us life – a God who loves us, and shows us that life comes when we offer self-sacrificial love for others. Especially in western culture there are countless distractions – AKA “secular traditions and rituals” -- that draw us away loving others, and draw us into our own little kingdoms. More “religious traditions and rituals” that displace the self-focused ones isn’t a bad idea, in my opinion.

Reflecting back – why did I have negative attitude towards rituals like Ash Wednesday? For one, it was a tradition that I didn’t grow up with, so it was the typical “fear and disparaging of what you don’t know” and it was also a negative stereotype of thinking that people who do these traditions are just going through the motions, and not really understanding what they’re doing.

Is this stereotype true?  Actually, it doesn’t matter.  What matters is that if YOU mindfully enter in to Ash Wednesday, Lent, and most any Christian tradition that focuses our attention on God revealed through Jesus, it will break you out of your daily self-focused life and help you focus on God and others.

That’s being religious. And this is good.