A Fat Boy's Guide to Fasting

I'm getting ready to teach on spiritual disciplines, so I have been studying on their meaning and practice.  The third most mentioned of the spiritual disciplines, behind prayer and Bible study, is fasting. 

Personally I hesitate to  teach on it.  After all, what does a fat boy know about fasting?  I'm beginning to think that the only people who understand what fasting really is or can be are fat people.  We understand food, and its seductive appeal better than anyone else. 

 A great deal is written about fasting. Nevertheless , it is the least practiced of them all.

There is a lot about fasting in the Bible and in church history.  Jesus spoke about it in the Sermon on the Mount.  What He wrote seemed to be  saying that He expected us to do it,  and not just occasionally,  but regularly.

Some have argued that Christians don't need to fast. They argue this on the basis of a comment Jesus made when his enemies challenged his disciples for not fasting.  "When the bridegroom is with you, you don't fast."  In other words,  who fasts at a party?  That doesn't mean we don't fast the rest of the time.

First of all, I want to dismiss some of the mistaken ideas about fasting. 

Many in the church have been taught about fasting as a kind of "super prayer."  If you don't get an answer from  God by simply asking Him, then we go on a hunger strike until we get it.  Not only does it sound irrational, it doesn't even seem Christian.  Is God like some prison guard who has to make concessions?  Yet this idea of fasting is common among us.

Another misconception is that we go on fasts to gain some kind of deeper spirituality.  We don't think we're deep enough spiritually, so we go on a fast so that we can hear God's will better.  Again, why?  Why not just hop on one foot for an hour to gain spiritual enlightenment? 

Another misconception about fasting is that it is a form of showing how sorry we are for our sins.  Again,  this does not seem rational.  If people starve themselves in our modern culture to show grief, then why do we bring so many cakes and pies to people's houses when they lose a loved one?  It seems to me we should be taking food out of their house, if starvation is a form of grief.    It may be for some people, but not for most of us.

No, fasting is most important for our lives,  perhaps vitally important, but for none of the reasons we think it is.  I am becoming increasingly convinced that we must fast, and fast on a regular basis.  But the reason for it is much simpler than any of these--we fast because we are addicted to indulgence.  We depend upon worldly necessities and pleasures to get us through the day.  The only way we can depend upon God is to stop thinking of food, and other pleasures as so necessary to us.  That can only come when we voluntarily go without them.  We buffet our bodies  (that's in the discipline sense, not the all-you-can-eat restaurant sense)  for the purpose of showing our bodies who is in charge.   Our addiction to fleshly desire is our ruin. We don't follow God, because it affects our compulsion to eat and eat well.

Let me give you an example.  A friend of mine had recently become a Christian.  His occupation was driving a beer truck.  I won't argue whether or not it's unchristian to drive a beer truck, but in his mind it was. Nevertheless, he kept driving it.  His reason  "A man's gotta eat."  

True enough. But what if we didn't.  Suppose we could live on a lot less than we think we could.  Suppose we discovered that we could live on thirty dollars worth of groceries a week, instead of a hundred. Think what that would free up for us.  We could do what we wanted,  take whatever job we wished, because we were freed from the necessity of supporting our self-indulgence habit.  We could drop out of our job, start a church or an orphanage, or just spend more time in prayer and fellowship.  Freed up from the necessity of a full-time job we hated, we could do what we wanted. There would be sacrifices, of course, but so what?  We'd be giving up minor pleasures, but we would be gaining major ones.

Yet faced with the prospect of giving up desserts or television or chocolate, our minds go into panic mode. We behave like heroin addicts on the prowl for another fix.  I saw one T shirt which said "Just give me the chocolate, and no one will get hurt!"   We, especially we obese folk,  are not far from that.  That's why fasting scares us.

Fasting is simply the realization that if we are to practice positive disciplines such as prayer, quiet times,  and exercise  with regularity and zeal, then we must also practice the negative disciplines of fasting,  simplicity, and  dieting.  We cannot be in control of our positive actions while allowing other portions of us such as our  physical hunger,  to act like a spoiled brat, throwing tantrums and demanding whatever it wants. 

It's not just hunger, it's all our appetites.  Why do otherwise intelligent men and women get caught in stupid sexual sins?  Why do some people feel compelled to take on crippling debt over a slick car or massive home, when common sense would say they did not need them?  It is because we can no longer tell the difference between our needs and our wants.

Fasting is a spiritual discipline that teaches us to say "no" to our appetites.  Like Sabbath keeping and tithing, the real power of it is to teach us what we do not need,  and to let us know what we do need.  It is our way of saying to our bodies that they are not in charge.

Seen in this way, fasting is a tremendous boon to our spiritual lives.  But occasional fasting will not do this, only regular fasting.  Regular fasting is establishing regular rhythms of eating and not eating for the purpose of learning that with God's help we can do anything.