Lent is a time for reflection, soul-searching, confession, repentance, and preparation for the coming grace of God. I’ve always has a suspicion that we Protestants are not quite sure what to do with Lent. The pageantry and triumph of Palm Sunday and Easter are more our style. The church, however, has taught for centuries that we cannot understand Easter apart from the passion and cost of Good Friday. Lent is a time of preparation allowing us to make the connection between the suffering love of God and the new life which can blossom because of that suffering love. To facilitate the experiencing of that connection, I would suggest a simple thought to guide us through Lent. Be honest with God. This was Martin Luther’s first rule for prayer. If we succeed in everything else but fail in being honest with God, then we may eventually fail in all things.
Honesty before God is the prerequisite for genuine repentance and an authentic receiving of God’s grace. Honesty with God will allow the avenues of communion between us and our Maker to remain open and will broaden the experience. Honesty with God will lance the festering wounds of sin, pride, greed, hate, and unresolved guilt and allow those cleansing, healing streams of God’s compassion to do their redemptive work. Honesty before God will help us accept the unchangeable in our lives and transform the changeable in ways harmonious with God’s purposes for our world. This honesty will humble us into a realistic evaluation of our goodness and strengths as we recognize how deep and all-embracing the grace of God is in our lives.
But honesty with God will also allow us to affirm all of our valuable qualities as they come through our walk with God. Sometimes we embrace a false humility which cannot affirm and celebrate our goodness and strengths. I believe we embrace this false humility for two reasons. First, we harbor the notion that God wants us to focus on the negative and imperfect in our lives and would be offended if we were to affirm and act upon those positive aspects of our growth and virtue. With some reflection, we all should see how wrong this assumption about God really is. A God who makes much of the Divine Self by making little of others is certainly not worthy of the revelation we have in Jesus. Such a self-centered God could not desire the best for us and would be incapable of truly loving us into our healing and growth.
Secondly, this false humility we sometimes embrace is not always the result of an unhealthy view of God. False humility can also be the vehicle we use to escape our call to growth and change in the likeness of Jesus. By focusing only on the negative and sinful in our lives and ignoring how good and strong we can be in Christ, we lose sight of our potential and God’s goal for us.
The truth is that God is ambitious for us—not ambitious in the way the world understands the word, but ambitious in the sense that God wants the best for each of us. God wills and promises that one day we shall become, in our own unique ways, the free, creative, and loving individuals we were created to be. Even now we can be experiencing the perfecting process whereby the nature of Christ defines us in ever-deepening and ever-broadening ways.
Being honest with God requires a genuine honesty which understands God’s grace and our limits. Honesty before God, however, does not call for a false humility which is another way of lying to God and ourselves. This kind of unhealthy honesty overlooks the redemptive work of God already in our midst and can be a lazy way out for those Christians who would rather enjoy a pity party than to travel down the Kingdom Road of conversion, change, and God’s empowering newness.
Being honest with God can start an amazing spiritual journey for all of us. Besides, God already knows us better than we know ourselves. Nothing about us is hidden from our Creator. And nothing about us is beyond the transformation God can bring if we “come out” just as we are.
