Lent is about prayer, penance, repentance, almsgiving, and self-denial. Certainly those are good things. The question is whether it's appropriate for Christians to set aside 40 days of the year to do these things in preparation for Easter.

Prayer is good. There's nothing wrong with setting aside 40 days to pray. When compared with the Biblical injunction to "pray without ceasing", however, the Lenten focus on prayer seems misguided. If someone needs a season like Lent to help them learn to make prayer a part of every waking moment, then Lent is good...as long as we don't stop there.

While being penitent is good, penance - in my opinion - has no place in the life of a follower of Christ. It's the process of suffering for your sins, and ignores the fact that Jesus suffered in our place. Along with the doctrine of Purgatory, it denies the sufficiency of Jesus' substitutionary death on the cross. Expressing sorrow over sin is good, but self-abasement for sins as an act of penance does indeed obscure the gospel.

Repentance is awesome. If someone needs a season like Lent to help them learn to make repentance a part of daily living, then Lent is good...as long as we don't stop there.

Giving to the needy is awesome, too...you might see a pattern here. Christians are stewards of all that God has provided for us, so giving should be a daily focus. If it takes a season like Lent, well...good. But don't stop there. Lent is often seen as a time when serious believers take more seriously their responsibility toward God. Unfortunately, the notion of discipleship is obscured by an annual time of doing what should be done all year long.

Self-denial is both a virtue and a discipline for Christians. However: denial as evidence of our piety, or as an act of penance, is a waste of time. We are called to be living sacrifices because of what Jesus did for us, and spending 40 days in self-denial is a great way for someone to begin learning what self-denial means. Unfortunately, Lent is too often seen (like the annual sacrifices for the nation of Israel) as a covering...a way to 'take care of business' for another year.

There's NOTHING wrong with the observance of Lent, of course. Prayer and repentance and giving and self-denial are things that all believers should practice...but not for only 40 days. The modern Christian church has too often replaced discipleship with ritual. A quick fix or a burst of activity might be good, or even necessary at times, to help an immature believer learn about discipleship. Were Lent seen as a gateway to a life lived more consistently, I would promote Lent all year long. Because it's generally seen as an end in itself, I can't pretend that even a devout observance during these 40 days is enough. We should all be doing - and teaching - more, shouldn't we?

Mike Licona is a pretty well-known apologist. He writes book and speaks, especially on college campuses, about the intellectual soundness of the Christian faith.

Bart Ehrman is probably the best-known skeptic of the Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) in America today.

Having debated Ehrman more than once (and having beaten him soundly, in my estimation), Licona here outlines some responses to Ehrman's claims that weren't thoroughly covered in their debates. It's the A's, B's, C's, D's, and E's of the Reliability of the New Testament:

• Authorship
• Bias
• Contradictions
• Dating
• Eyewitnesses

Each one has been more thoroughly covered in other places, and by other people. If you aren't sure about how YOU should respond when someone questions the Gospels, this is a great place to start. Thanks, Mike!

You can follow Mike on Twitter here: http://twitter.com/Mike_Licona

Mike Licona addresses the 5 major objections to the historical reliability of the Gospels: Authorship, Bias, Contradictions, Dating, and Eyewitness Testimony.

Solipsism is the idea that only one's own mind is certain to exist.

Very few people are sincere solipsists. Instead, solipsism is generally used as an argumentation tool. For example, one might ask how another knows that something is true, to which a scoffing reply might be "How does anyone know that anything is true? The only thing we can know for sure is that we exist."

This line of reasoning is related to René Descartes' cogito ergo sum, that is "I think, therefore I am". While one can only be certain that they exist, one cannot be certain that anyone else exists.

While thinking about such things as whether solipsism is true might be entertaining, there is no real value to the point of view in daily life. We act as we must: presuming that the universe and other people exist outside of ourselves.

The doctrine of the Trinity is one of the most contested doctrines in Christianity. As you might imagine, any attempt to explain or describe God might be met with skepticism or disagreement or outright condemnation. This post is not an attempt at laying out a full explanation for the doctrine, which will come later. It's simply an effort to get the doctrine 'on the record'.

God is described in the Bible as the Father, as the Son, and as the Holy Spirit. At the same time, the Bible is abundantly clear that there is only ONE God. Each of the three "persons" is described as having relationship (interacting) with one another, and as being present before, and taking part in, creation.

Because of this, the doctrine of the Trinity can be explained "simply" in this way:

• The Father is God.
• The Son (Jesus) is God.
• The Holy Spirit is God.
• The Father is not the Son, nor the Spirit.
• The Son is not the Father, nor the Spirit.
• The Spirit is not the Father, nor the Son.
• There is only one God.

Clear as mud, right? While analogies abound in our attempts at explaining how this can be so, we have no natural analogues for this kind of three-in-one relationship. We have only the Bible to help us understand, and the Bible doesn't usually lay out such things precisely. Suffice it to say that if anyone denies that one of the above items is true, their theological understanding of God would be considered both unbiblical and unorthodox.