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To Lent or not to Lent
Jim West has composed some anti-Lent screeds that sound like they've been preserved in amber since 1525 and contain all the snark of the contemporary blogosphere. Quite a rhetorical feat.
A question about Lent is really a question about how Christians sanctify time. A big difference between early Christians and pagans (both Romans and barbarians) was how each marked time. Pagans believed that time was cyclical, and religion's task was to appease the gods in order to make the endless cycle of death and rebirth run as smooth as possible. But Christians believed that time was linear. History is hurtling toward an End, a final judgment, and the judge has already appeared in history.
As pagans converted, the pagan way of reckoning time got Christianized.... READ MORE.
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