When Lent comes to a close, Christians across the world celebrate. They spend Holy Week focusing even further on preparations for Easter, and many of them fast for at least once during that final week of Lent. Then, on Easter, there is celebration. The celebration for most Christians has several layers to it. On one hand, they are celebrating the true meaning of Easter, and the single most momentous occasion in human history. They are celebrating the resurrection of Christ, the salvation of mankind and the destruction of sin. Simultaneously, many Christians celebrate their families. It is not unusual for people to travel for Easter weekend and spend the holiday with loved ones they may not see very often. Third and finally, Christians celebrate the end of Lent, and with it their Lenten sacrifice. They can once again eat chocolate, go on social media or gossip. This third layer of celebration, however, may not be a good idea. No one wants to hear that they should probably continue their Lenten sacrifice after Easter. After all, no one likes to be told they cannot have something. That does not, however, make it any less of a good idea. Here are six reasons you should keep up your Lenten sacrifice after Easter.
You are healthier without it.
The most common Lenten sacrifices are things that are already unhealthy for you. Think about it. What do most people in your life give up for Lent? The odds are that they give up things like chocolate, soda, donuts, pizza or other sugary or fatty foods. If they do not give up a food item, they might have chosen to sacrifice alcohol, gossip, social media or other unhealthy activities. It is true that donuts taste fabulous and that a bit of gossip can feel like you are part of a fun conspiracy, but you are healthier without either one of them in your life. Sugary and fatty foods are, obviously, bad for your physical health. Similarly, things like social media and gossip are bad for your mental health. So, why would you bring them back into your life after Easter? Given that you just spent 40 days without gossiping or eating chocolate, you can clearly live without them, so why not continue to do so?
Your sacrifice was distracting you from God.
The point of a Lenten sacrifice is to remove something from your life that was keeping you from growing closer to and deepening your relationship with God. It was getting in the way of your spiritual life in some way, shape or form. For 40 days, you successfully removed it from your life. You brought down the barrier that was keeping you from growing in Christ. Even if you failed to adhere to your Lenten resolution for the full five weeks, you still did your best. You were aware of the problem and tried to fix it. Given that, why would you willingly put up that barrier again? Facebook may be fun sometimes, but if it was encouraging you to make unkind comparisons, judge others and elevate your own popularity over your relationship with God, why would you let it back in your life? Is a blue number with “likes” next to a picture really worth harming your relationship with Christ?
You already formed a healthier habit.
Forming habits is not an easy thing to do. You have likely noticed this in your own life. You desperately want to get to bed earlier, but you still reach for the TV remote at 10:00 p.m. You want to get back in the habit of exercising regularly, but you still come home and flop on the couch after work. You would like to lose a couple pounds, but you still help yourself to those donuts in the break room. You know that you are shooting yourself in the foot when you do those things, but you do them anyway. They are habitual.
The time it takes to make a new habit or break an old one varies by person and by habit. That said, 40 days is enough to have either broken the worst of the old habit or gotten a good start on creating a new one. Why would you go back to square one by adding your Lenten sacrifice back into your life when you could simply continue with your new and better habits?
You were showing off during Lent.
Jesus makes it very clear in the Bible that times of fasting are not times to show off. Christians are not supposed to use their fasting to get people to look at them and think they are so pious. Jesus knew people like this. He had nothing pleasant to say to them or about them, but Christians sometimes fall into this mindset. They know that Lent is a time to sacrifice, so they make a big production of giving up something that is impressive to go without. If their friends give up chocolate, they give up coffee. If their spouse gives up social media, they eschew the internet entirely. You may not even realize you are doing this, but it means you have gotten less than nothing out of Lent. As such, you should continue your sacrifice. During Lent, it is both expected and fashionable to give something up. If you tell people you have given up coffee after Easter, however, you are going to get odd looks. It is no longer a statement of fashionable piety. It is an actual sacrifice which was the actual point of Lent.
You kept your eye on the “prize.”
For some people, giving up something during Lent actually distracts them from the meaning of the sacrifice they are making. They are so busy counting down to the end of Lent that they lose track of why they are participating in Lent in the first place. Worse, Easter represents less the resurrection of Christ and the salvation of the world to them than it does the day that they can go back to drinking soda, eating chocolate or tweeting regularly. They do not feel the squeeze from their sacrifice too much because they can look at the calendar and see that they only need to keep it up for another 30 days, 20 days or 8 days. As such, Lent becomes less a time of penance, prayer and sacrifice than a few irritating weeks of patience. This is not what Lent is about. If you spent half of Lent counting down to Easter for all the wrong reasons, you should continue your sacrifice. It might not seem like a big deal to lose something for five weeks, but what about five months? What about giving it up for a year? This may be more of a true sacrifice and a better path to the internal transformation Lent is meant to encourage.
You made your sacrifice forbidden fruit.
Lots of people talk about how the best way to break habits is to go cold turkey. You simply cut something out of your life entirely and immediately. You do not do it gradually. You go all in all at once like ripping off a band aid. Sometimes, this is the best way to break a habit. Sometimes, it is the only way to break a habit. Sometimes, it is a terrible mistake.
Going cold turkey can turn something into forbidden fruit. Every Christian with access to the book of Genesis knows exactly how well that usually turns out. Unfortunately, today’s humans do little better when it comes to avoiding forbidden fruit than Adam and Eve did, and today people do not even have the excuse of a talking snake.
If you turn your Lenten sacrifice into forbidden fruit, you are going to overindulge when you are “allowed” to have it again. This can make your consumption or use of whatever the sacrifice was an even bigger problem in the future because it is much harder to resist forbidden fruit than it is to simply pass on something you can have whenever you wish. If you do not trust that you can enjoy your sacrifice again in moderation, you are better off leaving it out of your life entirely.
No one likes to hear that they have to sacrifice something. No one likes thinking about giving something up for a long period of time, much less permanently. That does not, however, mean that it is not a good idea to give up certain things, and continuing to give up your Lenten sacrifice is one of those unpleasant but good ideas. After all, it is easy to give up something for a few weeks when you know you will get it back, but why would you want to invite unhealthy habits back into your life in the first place?
