Unshackled Moments ~ February 9 ~ Fat Tuesday

We've made it to Fat Tuesday already. My how this year is flying by. Fat Tuesday is traditionally a day to indulge in the foods that are about to be fasted from during the penitent Lenton season, which starts tomorrow with Ash Wednesday. A practice also began which included eating foods rich in fat to literally fatten up some before the fast. Of course, one day isn't really enough for that, so people began to start earlier and earlier. And while we're at it, let's just indulge ourselves period, and not just of the food we'll be giving up but why not enjoy all the things that we've given up for faith? After all, we're about to enter a period of repentance that will last for over a month. In some places, this actually began to start earlier and earlier until it now starts on the day after 12th night, or the last day of the Epiphany season.  We want to indulge ourselves as much as possible after all. Party now repent later. Welcome to Mardi Gras (French for Fat Tuesday).

The original idea behind the day is not a bad one. To enjoy the foods that are about to be fasted from, which are not sinful, is not wrong. Believe me, if I were giving up coffee for Lent this year (I'm not) I would make an extra pot or two today. It's that idea of knowing you're eating the last kernel of popcorn for a while and enjoying it more. I've also done a true 40 day fast and lost enough weight to look like a poster child for a starving country before it was over. So I can understand fattening up if you plan to fast something that can effect you physically like that. But it has turned into more.

Christians indulged the self. It's like the drunk who says I'm going to quit drinking on New Year's day so I'm going to party hard while I can and kills himself of alcohol poisoning on New Year's Eve. It's reveling, literally, in self centeredness. And now people don't think of faith when they hear the term Mardi Gras. We are supposed to diminish so that He can increase and point the way to Him. Mardi Gras should be closer to Gethsemane than Babylon. We're about to seriously concentrate on the cost of the cross. But the light of Mardi Gras shines on the party. For years I never knew it was a religious thing at all, and I felt shocked when I learned.

Now, I'm not on a rant about the evil's of Mardi Gras. I will be celebrating Fat Tuesday today, but not with beads and sin. The problem is twofold. The world began to join in with the party without following into repentance. So the Bride of Christ actually began to lead people astray rather than point the way to the wedding feast. And Mardi Gras isn't even close to the only example of that, I'm sorry to say. Secondly, Jesus never said that there is a special season to focus on the cross and the rest of the time to ignore it. Now I'm not saying there's something wrong with a period of fasting and special focus. What I'm saying is that 40 days of fasting and focus do not negate the call to daily pick up the cross, to deny self every day and follow Jesus.

Whenever we indulge the sinful self, we are taking our surrender back and treading a dangerous path. Whether it goes that far or not, indulging self is always the first step back into the bondage that we've been delivered from. We've been set free. Let us not use the celebration of that freedom as an excuse to return to Egypt in our hearts. Enjoy that coffee, or that cake or that meat or that whatever non-sinful thing that will be fasted from, if you choose to fast. But let us not today or any day  be deceived into thinking that indulging ourselves in and with the flesh and the sinful nature of our old man is a good idea or safe or anything but a way to detract from our purpose of pointing the way to Christ. Whether it happens in the Mardi Gras season or any time of year, living for self breaks our Daddy's heart.

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