Mortality In a Culture of Self-Optimization
Part 1 of the Lenten Series: The Season We'd Rather Skip
We are living in the golden age of self-improvement. And I don’t just mean the gym memberships and the meal prep containers, although those are part of it. I mean the entire ecosystem that has been built around the idea that you are a project. You are something to be optimized. There is a better version of you out there and if you just read the right book, follow the right routine, wake up early enough, journal with enough intention, meditate for the right number of minutes, and align your habits with your goals then you will finally arrive at the version of yourself that is worthy of love and admiration and success.
Do me a favor. Open your phone right now and count the apps designed to make you a better you. Fitness trackers. Habit builders. Sleep optimizers. Mood journals. Productivity systems. We have turned the human experience into a never-ending renovation project and we are both the contractor and the house. The message is everywhere and it is relentless. You are not enough as you are, but you could be if you just tried harder or tried something else.
And here’s the thing that nobody in the wellness industry wants to admit. The church helped build this. Evangelicalism in particular has been running its own version of the optimization gospel for decades. I experienced this firsthand in youth group. Pray more. Read more. Serve more. Give more. Be more disciplined, more obedient, more on fire for God. The language is different but the engine underneath is the same. You are a project. God is the project manager. And if you’re not showing measurable growth then something is wrong with your faith.
Dirt on Your Forehead
Then Ash Wednesday walks in and flips the whole table over.
You are dust. And to dust you shall return. That’s it. That’s the whole message. No life hack. No action step. No five-day challenge to become a better version of yourself by Easter. Just the most honest sentence the church will speak all year. You are finite. You are fragile. You are going to die. And there is nothing you can optimize your way out of when it comes to that particular reality.
I think that’s why my first Ash Wednesday service hit me so hard. I had spent years in a religious culture that was obsessed with growth and progress and transformation, and all of that sounds great until you realize it’s built on the assumption that you aren’t acceptable as you are right now. Ash Wednesday doesn’t ask you to become anything. It just asks you to tell the truth about what you already are. Limited. Mortal. Dust.
And somehow that’s not depressing. It’s the most freeing thing I’ve heard in a church in years.
The Counter-Cultural Gift of Limitation
Richard Rohr writes that “we do not think ourselves into new ways of living. We live ourselves into new ways of thinking.” How good is that? I love it because it pushes back against the idea that transformation is primarily a mental exercise or a willpower project. Lent doesn’t start with a strategy, it starts with ashes. It starts with the body. It starts with someone touching your forehead and telling you something your Instagram feed will never tell you.
You are not a brand. You are not a project. You are not an algorithm to be optimized or a platform to be built. You are a creature. A human being. You are dust that God breathed life into and that breath is a gift.
In a culture that profits off your insecurity and rewards your hustle and tells you that rest is laziness and contentment is complacency, Ash Wednesday is an act of holy rebellion. It says slow down. It says stop. It says the most important thing you can do today is not accomplish something but acknowledge something. You are small. You are temporary. And you are loved not because of what you produce but because of whose breath you carry. Do you believe that?
What If We Actually Believed It
I wonder sometimes what the church would look like if we took Ash Wednesday seriously for more than one service a year. What if we built communities that weren’t obsessed with metrics and attendance numbers and growth strategies? What if we stopped treating discipleship like a self-help program and started treating it like what it actually is, which is learning to be human in the presence of God?
Jesus didn’t recruit people with a pitch about becoming their best selves. He said follow me. He said the last will be first. He said blessed are the poor in spirit. Everything about his ministry was an invitation to stop performing and start being honest about your need for grace.
That’s what those ashes are about. Not guilt. Not shame. Not some morbid fixation on death. Just honesty. Just the kind of radical, countercultural truth-telling that says you don’t have to earn your place at the table. You just have to show up with open hands and a dirty forehead and the willingness to admit that you are not God.
And that is genuinely the best news you’ll hear all year.
A Word Before Lent
This is the first devotional in a Lenten series I’m calling “The Season We’d Rather Skip.” Each week between now and Easter, we’ll be sitting with a different way that Lent quietly pushes back against the cultural water we’re all swimming in. Next week we’ll talk about fasting in a culture of consumption. I hope you’ll stick around for the whole journey. Lent is better when you don’t walk it alone.
I write Becoming Mainline because I needed something like it when I was leaving evangelicalism and didn't have it. If these articles are meaningful to you, the best way to support this work is a paid subscription of $8/month or Buy Me A Coffee. But honestly the thing that helps the most is just showing up week after week or sharing with a friend. Blessings to you.
This is so profound…. It resonates with me.
On another vein— how about all the DYI videos that lure you into a consumer mentality? That keep you in a spiraling anxiety to HAVE better.