Today (assuming you’re reading this issue of ANJ on its publication date) is Ash Wednesday in the Christian world — well, in most of it. Many non-Lutheran Protestants are under the assumption that Ash Wednesday and Lent are, as a pastor identifying himself as “a Christian first, then a Protestant, a Calvinist, a Reformed Presbyterian” told me a few years ago, “a tradition of men and condemned in Scripture.” He went on to say this about those who participate: “Do they not realize that these holy days are not prescribed by God, but by fallen men? Do they not realize ...