40 Days of Selfishness, or Why I Take a Break from Cannibalism

Ash Wednesday prompted some research. I found a short news article titled “Lent” via Google search. Its subtitle read, “A growing number of Protestants observe Lent by fasting, abstaining from bad habits”.

A single clause captured everything that is wrong about the forty days before Easter in Western Christianity.

The subtitle’s first clause is no cause for complaint. I’m perfectly happy for Protestants to embrace an ancient orthodox tradition and liturgical season. The problem lies in the parallelism between “fasting” and “abstaining from bad habits”, implying that eating is really a “bad habit” and that Lent is all about abstaining from such behaviors.

Ah, the bad habit of eating. Eating: yes, very bad for you indeed. Clearly, God never encourages that sort of thing by providing good food in Eden, establishing feast days, or using bread and wine as holy religious symbols. Nope, God would be far more pleased with us if we were all as ascetic as possible.

When I picture Heaven, anyway, I envision a bunch of gaunt monks wearing sackcloth underwear and chanting dirges. No bad habits like eating on the New Earth.

Another interesting item I came across while Google-researching Lent was a book for sale called Chocolate for Lent. This is a catchy title (or its publishers hoped that it would be catchy) because of how backwards it is compared to how Christians normally talk about Lent. The phrase usually heard, of course, is: “I’m giving up chocolate for Lent.”

“I’m giving up chocolate.”

“I’m giving up alcohol.”

“I’m giving up desserts.”

“I’m giving up caffeine.”

It’s a giving-up party. Cigarettes. Facebook. Cocaine. Cannibalism.

Who ever says, “I’m giving up fruits and vegetables”? Or “I’m giving up sleeping for more than five hours a night”? No, Lent has become all about self-betterment and saying good riddance to our “bad habits” – like enjoying food.

I like Lent. I really do. And the more I research the spiritual discipline of fasting (and not just during Lent), the more value I find in it. I just don’t think that Lent should be used by Christians as a Church-sanctioned diet or impetus for forming healthy habits they ought to have anyway. “Squelch your nicotine addiction by Easter!” “Get the body you always wanted in forty days!”

Catholics and liturgical Protestants mark the beginning of this season by smearing ashes across their foreheads, reminding themselves that they are human, dust of the earth, ashes to ashes. The ashes symbolize that our bodies – our selves – are not ours at all but God’s. It’s slightly ironic that so many Christians use Ash Wednesday as a jump-start to a grand display of their self-control, self-betterment, beautification, and “holy” ability to have good habits.

No wonder “a growing number of Protestants observe Lent.” The season appeals quite well to the Puritanical Protestant Work Ethic.

I do think that the practice of fasting has a lot of biblical backing and spiritual value. But we need to hear the biblical warnings as well; we need to make sure that we’re not turning Lent into a Gnostic celebration or Easter into a guilty gluttonous chocolate binge. Isaiah tells us why our fasts aren’t worthwhile: “Behold, in the day of your fast you seek your own pleasure” (Is. 58:3, ESV).

Why do we fast? What is fasting? What ought it to be?

These are big questions, and I only hope to give some helpful meditation – not complete answers. But first, some background thoughts on what fasting is not and why it is difficult for us to fast properly in our current mindsets.

Fasting is not giving up what we know is bad for us but to which we are unfortunately addicted. Consider: historically, fasting meant giving up food to some degree. Meat, olive oil, milk products, and fruits of the vine were and are particularly singled out as items from which the fasting person should abstain.

Now, when an ancient person gave up meat or olive oil, it’s pretty safe to assume that he wasn’t doing it because he had read a recent article on the health benefits of vegetarianism. In fact, if you had read him an article on the health benefits of vegetarianism, he would have laughed in your face (Daniel 1:10).

The ancient person was not too concerned about obesity or high blood pressure. He was pretty certain that the healthiest thing he could do was to eat a cow soaked in olive oil, washed down by drinking heavy cream. He did not give up meat because he wanted to give up a bad habit. Quite the contrary. He fasted (believing himself to actually be giving up quite a good habit) for another reason entirely. We’ll get to that in a moment.

Western Christians have often run into the problem of belonging to an Abrahamic faith and worshipping a Creator-God while trying to live according to Greek dualism. This makes for weird theology and a twisted understanding of fasting. I believe that most of our misunderstanding of this particular spiritual discipline comes from our trying to be Greek dualists instead of worshipping a Creator of “very good” humanity.

Plato, the good little neo-Platonists, and all our favorite Gnostic heretics taught that dualism is the way of the universe: the forces of good and evil are derived from the spiritual and the material worlds, respectively. What is spirit is morally good; what is matter is empirically evil. Thus we get the medieval notion that sin entered the world not because of selfishness but because of human sexuality. Our bodies are our enemies. Physicality is a curse.

Although good orthodox Judeo-Christian theology has usually recognized dualistic Gnosticism for the heresy it is, its mindset has nevertheless infused Christian culture. And if we view matter and our bodies as evil, the way we view fasting is quite harmful. A dualistic asceticism often involves a sort of fear of the body. The dualist is afraid of his flesh, believing that it is the source of his sin. He is afraid of giving it pleasure; he is guilt-ridden when he finds any physical enjoyment in food, physical activity, comfort, or sexuality.

He is not necessarily a medieval monk. He is, perhaps, your third-grade Sunday-school teacher, though I’m not sure that the ascetic dualist would work well with third-graders and body humor.

The dualist is afraid of giving her body pleasure. She hates her body. She hates it not just because she wishes she were taller, but because (perhaps unconsciously) she considers it to be the source of all her moral trouble. She feels that she must control her body, must beat it into submission.

Fasting, therefore, becomes this beating. As dualists, we fast because we fear giving our body pleasure and because it makes us feel in control of our unpredictable physical desires.

But what if we’re not dualists? What if we take Genesis and the doctrine of creation seriously – what if we take the Bible seriously – and we affirm the goodness of God’s work in our spirits and bodies? What if we’re holistic in understanding human nature, recognizing that our bodies and spirits were, pre-Fall, not created to be in opposition to one another but rather to work together?

What if we’re children in the Kingdom of God, recognizing that, post-incarnation-of-Christ, we are being restored in all of our being?

If we’re really thoughtful about worshipping the Creator God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, we’ll approach any spiritual discipline not from Platonic philosophy but from holistic Jewish theology. And we’ll have a much different reason for fasting: we’ll fast recognizing that depriving our body means depriving our being, including our soul, of normal nourishment – we’ll fast because we’ll be showing our soul and body how much it needs the food of God – we’ll fast because we want to be intentional about “eating” the word and love and forgiveness of God.

When we fast properly, we affirm the goodness of what it is we are giving up and the goodness of our desire for it. We are thus all the more mindful of God’s blessing given to us in food or sleep or sex. One Muslim writer, meditating on the long fast of Ramadan, explained, “Fasting breaks down all our bodily desires… Suddenly, food is a grace, blessing and nourishment at iftar [the evening meal of Ramadan which breaks the fast]” (rickshawdiaries.blogspot.com).

Fasting has been described by some religious thinkers as choosing a kind of death, and this is helpful to keep in mind to combat those who would like to use fasting as choosing a kind of self-improvement. Yes, fasting is choosing death: choosing the temporary death of some very good aspects of our lives in order to meditate on the source of life: God Himself.

Through choosing the death of our own desires – all the while acknowledging that they are good – we choose even greater Life, submitting to the Giver of desires and satisfactions.

Liturgically, Lent is the question to which Easter is the answer.

[“God, we are broken, needy, unsatisfied, penitential, and hungry. We earnestly seek You. Will You listen?”

“Here is the cross, here is the empty tomb – here is wholeness, satisfaction, satiation, forgiveness, and love.”]

In Judaism, there are three primary purposes of fasting.

First is as part of atonement: fasting is an integral part of Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, and is in fact considered even more important than prayer on that day. It is not that fasting is part of a magical formula which allows the worshipper to gain atonement, but it is an appropriate and helpful way to show contrition – it is a kind of prayer itself. As in Christianity and Islam, the most important fast of Judaism is collective; there is a very communal aspect to this drawing near to God. God calls the people, humanity, not just the Enlightenment’s individualists.

Second, Jewish theology recognizes fasting as a type of commemorative mourning. The individual or (more often) community fasts to remember what has been lost, to recall to themselves the value and brevity of this physical life. Here, only a non-dualistic, holistic understanding of fasting makes sense: fasting not because the physical world is evil and must be denied, but because it is beautiful and fragile and we weep over its apparent transience.

Third, Jewish theologians emphasize that another reason to fast is out of commemorative gratitude. A paradox: fasting can be a joy, can spring from our thankfulness. When we are blessed with much, we stop to consider and thank the Giver. As we rejoice in the good physical gifts of God (again, breaking away from Plato et al), we join fasting with almsgiving. Fasting without almsgiving – that is, donating to the poor the money saved by fasting – is often considered useless or even spiritually harmful by Orthodox theologians. By using fasting as a springboard to almsgiving, we affirm the goodness of the created world in caring for needy people (themselves creation!).

A Lenten fast in some ways combines all these Jewish reasons for fasting. In Lent, Christians remind themselves of their need for atonement. They commemorate the passio of the Lord, heightening their appreciation of the life which Jesus of Nazareth gave up. And they fast to show commemorative gratitude, recalling how much has been given in Christ.

Lauren Winner writes, “We fast during Lent because fasting gets our attention… When we willingly give up something we delight in… we come closer to participating in, understanding, and reverencing the self-emptying act that is Christ on the Cross.” The Lenten season is both penitential and joyful, reminding us of our dust-ness as well as drawing us near to God by heightening our recognition of our need of Him.

Fasting in Judaism and Christianity is also often utilized when a person is seeking discernment, wisdom, and strength. This is true of Esther, who, before risking her life to save the Jewish people, said, “Hold a fast on my behalf, and do not eat or drink for three days, night or day. I and my young women will also fast as you do. Then I will go to the king, though it is against the law, and if I perish, I perish” (Esther 4:16, ESV).

Jesus, too, fasted at the onset of his ministry. “Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. And after fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry” (Matt. 4:1-2, ESV).

The young queen and the recently-baptized rabbi both recognized the humanly-impossible tasks which lay before them and they prepared by fasting, by physically reminding themselves of their dependence upon God for all (good) nourishment. Fasting is appropriate before a spiritual battle not because we are removing “bad” physical things from our lives (Gnosticism) but rather because in removing good and necessary nourishment, we boast in weakness (2 Cor. 11:30) and know God’s grace all the more (2 Cor. 12:9).

So “when you fast” (and Jesus does assume that we will do so), do not do so with a dualistic mindset. Observe Lent this season not to “abstain from bad habits,” but rather to physically remind your soul (which is connected to your body) that it is dependent upon God.

Fast knowing that food is a good and pleasant gift.

And give up cigarettes and cannibalism for your own sake, not as a way to show off your Gnostic spiritual discipline.