The Religion of Comfort + Williamsburg Pictures
Day 12: A Lenten meditation on leaving Moab, resisting the easy road, and learning to prefer the presence of God over the comforts of escape.
Lent Is Not a Season of Port
In God in the Dock, C.S. Lewis wrote that he did not come to Christianity for its comfort. A bottle of Port, he said, could give him all the happiness and comfort he needed.
That line lands differently during Lent.
Lent reminds us that the Christian faith is not a religion of comfort and ease, but that warfare is inherent to our religious convictions. These forty days press us into the wilderness with Jesus. They strip away the illusion that the Gospel exists to make us comfortable. We fight for things because they are needful and worthy of being rescued. When the people of God leave the presence of God, they inherit all sorts of bad jujus. In the Bible, it is always a bad thing to leave the good thing.
Lent is a yearly summons not to leave the good thing.
When Elimelech left Bethlehem in the Book of Ruth, he left not just a piece of land. He was not attempting to find a better marketplace in Moab. Moab was a place of deep darkness and idolatry. This was not merely taking the U-Haul down to a better place. Elimelech left God’s presence and God’s people because things were hard. And when things get hard, evangelical Christians decide either a) let’s leave town, or b) let’s find a gentler God.
Lent exposes that instinct in us.
