Lent calls for examination of discipline

By Mia Pohlman

I really love bread. Any form of it -- sourdough, bagels, cake, pasta, pizza crust. Carbs are my weakness; bread is my favorite food.

During Lent, I'm fasting from it. Through choosing not to eat it, I'm finding that I go to bread for gratification, to get me through writing unpleasant papers, to fill me up when I'm hungry.

Jesus gives us bread as a way to more deeply understand Him, as a way to become Him. How often, though, do I rely just on bread instead of on Jesus?

Jesus fasted for 40 days and nights in the desert -- a physical stripping of excess. When we live with less, we find that we have what we need. Our God provides for us.

I've been thinking more about discipline lately, craving it, wanting limitations, finding value in boundaries. Our culture tells us to do whatever we want all of the time; this is freedom. What, on the other hand, can consistency, refusal and practice teach me about God and about myself?

Katy Perry's new song "Chained to the Rhythm" critiques the state our country is in due to our society's obsession with entertainment. Although it's ironic for Perry to sing this song since she herself is part of the entertainment industry, her song still challenges: Are we entertaining ourselves to death? Are we eating the lotus flower of pleasure, allowing others to do our thinking and living for us?

And it's true. We buy any form of escape. We get anything we want, whenever we want it. We indulge, thinking that denying ourselves is bad.

Our society has happily discarded the practice of discipline. Discipline's positive origins of attaining something deeper and more thoroughly through regulation of one's actions have been replaced with negative connotations that conjure up images of punishment.

Perhaps this is not entirely our fault, but something we have inherited. The term "discipline" first began to mean "scourging oneself" in England sometime between 1100 A.D and 1500 A.D., a time not exactly known for people full of grace for each other. The residue of this still exists in our collective consciousness today.

Perhaps one of Lent's functions, then, is to make us mindful of how we think of discipline. To remember it is not punishment, but rather refining, and to practice it as such.

Our English word "discipline" comes from "discipulus," the Latin word for "disciple," or "learner." I think there is great joy to be found in discipline -- not the fake kind that strives to cover up misery in the guise of righteous holiness, but rather true, deep joy.

When we say "No" to one thing, we say "Yes" to another. Doing without something that's unnecessary opens us up to God, to others, to ourselves. It is in this opening, this unfolding, this blooming, that we are able to learn, to be changed, to be transformed. This dependence on God and God's transformative grace is freedom.