Preston Clegg, pastor
The season of Lent is upon us. Lent is a period of 40 days (not counting Sundays) leading up to Easter. It is roughly a tithe of your year, and it’s meant to be a season of introspection, prayer, confession, repentance, and readiness for all that will come our way during Holy Week. The goal is not a spirit of morbidity and self-flagellation, but a posture of introspection, wisdom, honesty, and humility.
During the Lenten season at 2BC, we will be focusing our attention on the Truth, and training ourselves to be people of the truth. On Sunday mornings, we plan to immerse ourselves in the Gospel of John, in which truth is of the utmost concern and primarily as an expression of love. We’ll consider some important questions like: is telling the truth anything more than getting our facts straight? What is the relationship between truth and love? How do we integrate “truth” into our lives? What does it mean for us that “truth” is a person, not an it.
To compliment our Sunday mornings, we’re planning a 4-week Wednesday night series on discerning the truth in an age of misinformation and disinformation. I’ll be assisting our resident librarian, Lani Allenbaugh, in these sessions. We’ll talk about the difference between bias and propaganda, how to keep yourself from “information silos” that only tell you more of what you already believe, and how to discern truth from falsehood on social media platforms that make it oh so tricky to do so.
I don’t think Lent is the sort of thing I should be “excited” about, but I am. I am excited to consider with you what it means to be people of the truth today. I’m excited to consider how we discern the truth in our ever-complex days. I’m excited to follow the One who is “the Way, the Truth, and the Life” all the way to the cross. And we’ll see what’s on the other side of the cross.
But before Easter, there is a cross. And before the cross, there is a great deal of truth for us to discover. And before the truth, there are the ashes. And each one of these has everything to do with the other.
Let’s go on the WHOLE journey together…and bring a friend.