The Wisdom of Wilderness: An Introduction
Monday, February 16, 2015 – A Pre-Lenten Reading Introduction to “The Wisdom of the Wilderness” by Jerry Webber During Lent, I’ll provide daily meditations based on the stories and sayings of the Desert Fathers and Mothers (3rd – 5th centuries). First, though, I want to provide some background and context: Who were these men and women? How did they get to the desert? What did they do there? In the years after Christ, followers of Jesus faced a number of challenges. For many decades, Christians were persecuted by a hostile Roman Empire, which viewed Christian faith as atheistic (Christians did not worship the gods of the Roman Empire, nor the Emperor as deity). Christians were imprisoned, tortured, or put to death, often for sport in the Roman Empire. Another challenge arose about three centuries after Christ, when Constantine became Emperor of the once-hostile Roman Empire. The new Emperor declared that Christianity would be the official religion of the Empire. Suddenly, the ho...