Why we should stop trying to earn Lent
Grace, not performance, is the real battleground of desire
Lent is approaching, and many of us are already making plans: what to give up, what to take on, what to improve. We treat it almost like a spiritual project cycle. Set objectives. Track progress. Optimise effort. As students, as academics, as ambitious young professionals and simply as modern people, we are trained to believe that with enough discipline and clarity we can improve anything including ourselves.
And why not? Scripture places the choice before us: life or death. Choose wisely.
It is easy to hear this as confirmation of what we already assume. If you want heaven badly enough, you can get there. If you choose correctly and work hard enough, you will succeed. Lent becomes another arena in which we prove that we are serious, committed, capable.
The Ancient Temptation of Self-Sufficiency
This temptation is not new. In Augustine of Hippo's time, a movement arose that held that human beings could achieve perfection through the proper use of their free will. The fall, they argued, had not truly damaged human nature. With enough effort, holiness was within reach.
Augustine himself had once lived this way. He pursued philosophy, brilliance, influence. He attempted moral reform through sheer willpower. But he discovered something unsettling: he could recognise the good, yet he did not yet love it. His will was divided. He was searching, striving, climbing and still restless.
The problem was not that he lacked effort. The problem was that his desire was disordered.
Freedom Wounded but Not Destroyed
In his debate with the Pelagians, Augustine affirmed the realism of human freedom. We do have real choices to make each day. But we did not create this freedom ourselves. It is God-given. And this freedom, though not destroyed by the fall, has been wounded. It needs healing.
We need grace, not to replace our freedom, but to restore it, so that we may use it rightly.
Augustine famously wrote: “God created us without us, but he will not save us without us.” Our freedom matters. But he also insists that our free will is sufficient to choose evil, yet insufficient to choose the good unless it is helped by grace. That is the drama of Lent and the drama of every human life.
Law, Grace and the Transformation of Desire
Christ’s teaching makes this even clearer. The point is not to multiply rules or intensify moral pressure. The law is relocated internally. It exposes the poverty of our self-sufficient will. The law was given so that we might recognise our need for grace. Grace was given, Augustine says, so that the law might be fulfilled. Notice the word might. Grace does not override freedom. It heals it.
Lent, then, is not primarily about fasting harder, praying longer, or improving our spiritual physique. It is about the transformation of desire. It is about learning to love what God asks of us. That is the real battleground of Lent.
The Inward Journey
Augustine once wrote in The Confessions: “You were within, and I was outside, and there I sought you.” He searched in philosophy, in ambition, in pleasure, always outward. He tried to climb toward God before discovering that God was already nearer than his own striving. That discovery changed everything. The problem was not that Augustine lacked effort. It was that his desire was disordered.
Lent invites the same conversion. Not more intensity, but more honesty. Not more spiritual productivity, but deeper receptivity. The real question of Lent is not whether we can achieve holiness, but whether we are willing to let our freedom be healed.
Grace does not compete with our effort. It reorders it. It does not humiliate our freedom. It restores it. And that restoration begins not with proving ourselves to God, but with allowing ourselves to be loved.
Picture: © Dominicans Rotterdam