Posted on 04/14/2022 5:41:12 PM PDT by nickcarraway
I have never really quite understood what “Evangelical” means.
I think there are good principles about Lent that can be kept at any time. It’s always a good time to put your life on hold in order to make time to understand a Biblical principle or to deny yourself the cost of a pleasure in order to increase a charitable giving.
Where in the New Testament does it implore us to observe “Lent”? Nowhere. It is a man-made tradition.
Bingo
But it's all about the Bible. It's preparation leading up to the crucifixion and Resurrection. It memorializes those Events in his life.
#6
Where in the New Testament does it say that everything Christians do and believe must be in the Bible?
Not a single one of those passages addresses Lent in the least.
There are no commands nor instructions to observe a 40 day period of fasting to prepare us for anything.
References to something that happened are simply that. It’s not an endorsement of a man made tradition.
This. Now, if you feel led to fast do so. But there is nothing in Scripture requiring you to fast or give up something during Lent.
Depends if it’s being decreed as something you must do. If someone says you have to give up something for Lent it’s not based on Scripture.
” the Bible has a lot to say about fasting”. It mentions a number of times that persons fasted but only once does it suggest to fast. God tells His people to feast many times. Jesus did not tell anyone to fast, only if they do - do it this way. As if He resigns that some may fast and He addresses the heart above the public actions.
Lent. Another pretend thing. No true Evangelical buys it.
+1
I fast, but I know nothing about Lent.
It’s what Catholics call everyone else
They used to say Protestant
I’ve never practiced lent but I knew what it was from Mardis Gras
You’ll find it in the Bible next to “altar calls”, “revivals”, and “Wednesday night Bible study” ... all of which are also man-made traditions.
**I’ve never practiced lent but I knew what it was from Mardis Gras**
One of my best friends since grade school, until Dec. 2010 (RIP), was RC. I asked him about Mardi Gras once. He said it’s mostly a time to cram all the fun, you are giving up during lent, into a few hours.
Once, the summer of 77, we were on our way to a disco (to chase chicks, obviously), when he told me to drop him at St Pious (#idk) church in Rock Island, IL.
I sat in my vette in the parking lot, thinking I’d take a nap, when he hops in and says “let’s go”. I said, “Already? We get here when it ended?” He said, “Timed it just right. Came in when the communion line was forming.” We weren’t there 10 minutes.
“Is Lent Becoming More Popular Among Evangelicals?”
I hope not. It’s a made up holiday...like Easter. There are REAL holy days and God created them and expects his followers to observe them.
This is not a trivial issue for me.
Any devout follower of Jesus Christ is a proponent of the Evangelium: the Gospel, the Good News. That label should have nothing to do with a specific denomination or theology!
Starting in the 19th Century, especially with the tent revivals, the term “Evangelical” began to be a term used to distinguish “real” (”born again”) Christians from the pretenders: Catholics and Protestants. They supposed their personal invitation emphasis, and their revival mission emphasis, made them genuine believers.
Contrary to the common conception among the secular media, and even some professing Christians, “Evangelical” is not interchangeable with “Protestant”. The term, as commonly used, actually more closely aligns with the Anabaptist/Arminian conglomerate. Calvinists may be Protestant (Reformed), but they are anabaptist (lower case) in the sense that they do not believe Baptism is anything but a symbolic rite.
John Piper - whom I have distrusted since the 1970s - exemplifies the strangely awkward hybrid of Arminian and Calvinist philosophy that is now common in the “Evangelical” camp. (Piper is from Fuller Theological Seminary, which I consider the premier heresy factory.)
I attended a “non-denominational” Christian junior high and high school. I was then one of just three Lutherans attending. The truth is that “non-denominational” (whether church or school) is a de facto denomination unto itself; it is almost never Protestant (nor welcoming to Protestants), and almost always some sort of Arminian/Anabaptist entity.
I was harassed and maligned by the “Evangelicals” at that school for all six years - including by some teachers, who were all Anabaptist generally, and mostly some sort of Baptist specifically. That “non-denom” would never have hired a Lutheran teacher.
One longtime classmate flatly told me I was not - and could not be - an Evangelical, simply because I was a Lutheran. He did not consider that hateful; he considered it truthful. He was a leader in a Southern Baptist congregation, and went on to become an ordained minister.
I told him (to his confusion and disbelief) that some Lutheran denominations have historically included the term, Evangelical, in their organizational name, and that Lutheran churches historically have spent more on missions than many other denominations. The Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod was created from a union of several Lutheran groups that used the term “Evangelical” in their formal names.
My college roommates were also “Evangelicals” of the Piper hybrid sort; they sneered at the idea that I, a Lutheran, could possibly be an authentic Evangelical.
Knowledgeable Anabaptists do not - not! - regard themselves as Protestants. They consider themselves to be theologically descended from the First Century Church, without having ever been part of the Catholic Church, which they consider a corruption of the true Church: Since their forebears never took part in it, they never had to protest it from within; they consider themselves wholly apart, and never corrupted.
I refuse to abuse this sacred term as do so many in the mainstream media, in conservative literature, and in the institutionalized church.
While I do not enjoy overuse of labels (see I Corinthians 1:11-13), I accept the practical temporal validity of terms such as “Arminian” and “Calvinist”. I do not accept the abuse of the term “Evangelical”: That strikes at the very heart of what it means to be a disciple of Jesus Christ.
I am an Evangelical - whether Anabaptists and Arminians like it or not!
P.S.
To a much lesser extent, I also oppose the incondign appropriation of the term “Reformed” by Calvinists. There were reformers before Calvin, and beside Calvin, and the Calvinists have no right to apply that term exclusively to themselves. That is both deceitful and arrogant.
(That is separate from any argument for or against the entire Reformed movement as being Biblically valid.)
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