Lent is right around the corner.
I rant a lot about how low-church Protestants tend to misunderstand Ash Wednesday. I've written over the years how many low-church Protestants, and my own church is an example of this, think Ash Wednesday is about death and "contemplating our mortality." Ash Wednesday, in this view, is a moody existential moment.
This confusion is, perhaps, understandable given the words of Ash Wednesday: "Dust you are, and to dust you shall return." But the point of those words aren't to turn you into a French existentialist. These words come from the curse pronounced in Genesis as the consequence of human sin. What you're confronting in the ashes of Ash Wednesday is your sin. We're on a 40 day journey to Golgotha, walking the Stations of the Cross, pondering how and why Jesus ended up in that place on our behalf. Ash Wednesday is the start of a penitential season. The object isn't existentialism.
A related problem here is how most low-church Protestants don't have a category for penance in the first place, and so struggle to figure out what Lent is even about. Without the category of penance what to make of a penitential season? Lacking any clarity on this point, low-church Protestants make up their own customized version of Lent, a self-selected self-guided self-improvement project.
Perhaps the deep problem here is how, to borrow from Psalm 36, we don't really enjoy discovering and hating our iniquity. Talking about sin, the curse, and the Fall is a bummer. Too medieval. Too guilt-inducing. Too triggering for the deconstructing class.
For my part, I don't "contemplate my mortality" on Ash Wednesday. Rather, I take a hard look in the mirror. I walk the Via Dolorosa with Christ. I step into a season where I come to re-discover and hate my iniquity.
