"Dung of the Devil"

Tomorrow (Feb. 10) is Ash Wednesday and the beginning of Lent. For Christians around the world, this is the important 46-day period (40 days plus Sundays) of preparation for the celebration of Easter.

Although Ash Wednesday and Lent are now widely observed in Protestant churches, they started, of course, in the Catholic Church—and the main reason the Baptist church I grew up in, and most Baptist churches back then, didn’t observe Ash Wednesday or Lent is probably because they were thought to be Catholic practices.

While I have some reservations about the whole cyclical church calendar thing, I now acknowledge that there are good and important emphases in the observance of Ash Wednesday and Lent. I will be attending my church’s Ash Wednesday service tomorrow and observing some limited Lenten practices until Easter.

Pope Francis’ annual Lenten exhortation for this year was released on January 26. In a Religion News Service article posted the same day, journalist David Gibson wrote that in this year’s “message to the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics,” the Pope uses “some of his most powerful language yet” in talking about “the corrupting influence of money and power.”

In his article Gibson also pointed out that the Pope has called the “unfettered pursuit of money” the “dung of the devil,” and he links to an address that the Pope gave in Bolivia in July 2015. Here is a bit from that powerful speech by Pope Francis:

Today, the scientific community realizes what the poor have long told us: harm, perhaps irreversible harm, is being done to the ecosystem. The earth, entire peoples and individual persons are being brutally punished. And behind all this pain, death and destruction there is the stench of what Basil of Caesarea – one of the first theologians of the Church – called “the dung of the devil”. An unfettered pursuit of money rules. This is the “dung of the devil”.

Some newspapers, such as The Guardian, the British national daily founded in 1821, reported on the Pope’s 7/15 speech under this headline: “Unbridled capitalism is the ‘dung of the devil’, says Pope Francis.”

Others pointed out, correctly, that that sensationalized headline wasn’t exactly true. The Pope went on to say (after the words cited above), Once capital becomes an idol and guides people's decisions, once greed for money presides over the entire socioeconomic system, it ruins society, it condemns and enslaves men and women . . .”

So even though it is often difficult to separate capitalism from greed, it is the latter that can be, and has been, called “the dung of the devil.”

Just recently I learned about a Catholic group whose name is Malteser International Americas (MIA). According to this article, this year is their second annual “Make Lent Count” campaign. They emphasize that Lent is a time for giving and not just giving up.

________________February 10, 2016________

Parenthetically, this same group has recently taken action in South America to protect women and their unborn babies from the Zika virus. (See this article.)

In January of last year I wrote about Super Bowl Idolatry, which seems to have gone unabated this year. But the Pope’s warning is about the idolatry of greed, which is not unrelated to activities surrounding the Super Bowl but is of much greater importance—because it is worldwide and year-round.

The practice of giving up something for Lent—or of extra giving during Lent as the MIA and other Christians emphasize—is important as an antidote to the ever-present tendency to step into the dung of the devil.

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500^th Post

      The first post I made in this blog was in July 2009, and it was very short and tentative. Counting that as the first, though, this is now my 500^th blog posting. At this point I don’t know how many more there will be—probably I won’t make it to 1,000—but I plan to keep on at the same pace in the foreseeable future.

I am grateful to all of you who have read many, of even some, of my articles. My special thanks goes to those of you who have taken time to respond with posted comments and by email.

“Remember You Are Dust”

Growing up as a Baptist, I didn’t hear much about Ash Wednesday or Lent. In my years in the States before going to Japan, including the nine years I was a Baptist pastor, I don’t recall hearing or making any mention of them as a part of worship or Christian practice.

For several years, however, I have observed Lent to a certain extent and have attended a few Ash Wednesday services, which concluded with a cross being made on my forehead with ashes.

For some reason, until last year I had never paid much attention to the words that were spoken then. Perhaps different words were used in the previous services I had attended, but last year the minister said, “Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

I was moved to think about my own mortality by those simple words, maybe more than ever before. Of course, I had never been 75 years old before. Those of us who are 75 or older surely need to think about our mortality, for most of us have only a few years left on this earth.

But even for you who are much younger, the end of your time on this earth is coming, too.

Dr. Wayne Oates, my pastoral counseling professor whom I wrote about last October, was talking in class one day about visiting people who were terminally ill. He mentioned that it is common to say about such people, “Well, it is just a matter of time now.”

Dr. Oates then looked intently at us students and said something like this: “But never forget: that is true for all of us. Some have more time left than others, but it is just a matter of time for everyone.”

People do all sorts of things to keep from thinking about the fact that someday they are going to die—and certainly it is morbid to think about one’s mortality too much. But, regrettably, many people don’t want to think about it at all. 

Last week I read the following words in a Facebook posting by Carol, a woman about my same age who now lives in my hometown:

Someone added beneath those words, “Slow down. Enjoy the day. Live in the moment. It all goes so fast.” And Carol made this brief comment: “So true.” I agree—and would also add, “But don’t forget to prepare for the end.”

One of my favorite people is Dr. Tony Campolo, professor emeritus in sociology at Eastern University in Pennsylvania. As many of you know, he is also an ordained Baptist minister, a popular speaker and a prolific author—and next Wednesday, Feb. 25, is his 80^th birthday.

One year on Good Friday, Dr. Campolo heard a fellow minister preach a sermon regularly repeating the phrase, “It’s Friday, but Sunday’s comin’.” Campolo later wrote a book published (in 1984) under that title.

So today is Ash Wednesday and the beginning of Lent, that 40-day period of reflection and preparation for the celebration of Easter, which will be on April 5 this year. This evening I have the privilege of leading the Ash Wednesday service at the Rosedale Congregational Church in Kansas City, Kansas, where I am serving as interim pastor this month.

When making a cross with ashes on the foreheads of those who come for that purpose, I am going to add to the traditional words. I plan to say to each one “Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return—to wait for your glorious resurrection.”

It’s Ash Wednesday, but Easter’s coming!