The short version of my previous comment: There’s an idea in Jewish theology that i’ve always loved (despite my not being Jewish), that when you go before God at the end of your life, he will call you to account — not only for any forbidden or sinful things you did — but for every *permissible* pleasure that you never tried.

I dug it up because of this line: “God isn’t impressed by the truffle you didn’t eat or the orgasm you didn’t have.” It really does seem to be a point that a lot of conservative Christian (and even some conservative Jewish) theology misses entirely.

“God made the world, and He saw that it was good.” If that’s true, how can orgasms, or truffles, or fast cars, or the Internet — or ANYTHING, really — be bad in and of themselves? And how can self-abnegation be anything other than insulting and abusing one of God’s creatures?

I couldn’t disagree with you more. Preaching about sin needs to come BEFORE preaching about grace. Only people who realize they are sick, can be cured. The age of Law (e.g. the Jewish covenant) came before the age of Grace (the coming of Christ) precisely because it was necessary for men to realize how much God’s justice demanded, and how much they fell short, before they could understand why Christ’s death was necessary.

Personally I think that the modern church in America places much too much emphasis on ’self-care’, ‘therapy’, and ‘feeling good about yourself’, and not enough emphasis on our base, sinful nature, and the need to overcome it. Self-love is, again, the root of all sin. I wish that my church would adopt the Roman Catholic practice of saying that no one should receive communion without first attending confession.

I’ve been too busy and/or lazy to blog about this myself yet, but I will eventually:
http://princetonprofs.blogspot.com/2009/02/womanist-lessons-resisting-lenten.html

This African-American Christian womanist blog talks about how the language of self-sacrifice is heard differently by women, who have been encouraged by society to sacrifice themselves in unhealthy ways. Self-care can be a Lenten discipline if you’re codependent!

Since then, I’ve done the two week “lemonade” fast once. A week in, you don’t miss food so much as you miss chewing. Anyway, I wouldn’t say it brought about any clarity, just a lot of trips to the bathroom. Oh well.

Also, as Lis points out, self-imposed suffering has utility for spiritual growth only to the extent it clarifies rather than muddies introspection.

Very nice post, Hugo!

figleaf

figleaf

I can imagine it becoming a best-seller by that title.