Fasting and Self-Denial

The scriptures referred to are mentioned in the text.

When a certain someone turned 5 she said that she was now an adult and could use bad words. I pointed out that since she couldn't legally drive or vote she wasn't an adult, but she was in denial about those things. In her mind, she was all grown up. If I wanted to prolong the argument, I could have pointed out that one mark of maturity is having a fairly accurate perception of who you are.

There is no culture that sees anyone whose age can be expressed in single digits as fully grown. For certain civil rights you have to be at least 18. While you can get a learner's permit in Florida at age 15, you have to have a licensed driver who is at least 21 in the car with you. At 16 you can get a restricted license, but to get a full license you must be 18. Yet most car rental companies will not let anyone under 25 rent a car. And it turns out that is closer to the age neuroscientists say a person is fully adult, though some of them would put it at age 30. Their criteria includes having the prefrontal cortex completely hardwired. The prefrontal cortex is the part of your brain just behind your forehead and it is where judgment and impulse control reside. Among other things, it puts the brakes on the emotions, instincts and basic drives that come out of your limbic system. For most people the prefrontal cortex doesn't have the reins fully in hand until they are in their mid- to late-twenties. So while children think of adulthood in terms of all they can do, scientists realize it is really when you have the ability to see that just because you can do something, it doesn't necessarily mean you should.

The wise have long known this as well. Indeed, without the benefits of neuroscience, the framers of our Constitution put the minimum age when you can be elected to the House of Representatives at 25, the age you can serve in the Senate at 30 and to be President you must be at least 35...chronologically at any rate. Ironically, this is highlighted in the movie Wild in the Streets which came out in 1968. It posited a United States where the voting age was lowered to 14. Anyone over 30 was put in a “paradise camp” and kept on LSD. It ends with a child looking at the new 22 year old President, who is depicted as a jerk, and vowing to put everyone over 8 out of business! Though marketed to youth, the movie was obviously meant as satire.

Yes, we all know children who seem older than their age and adults who have terminally arrested development, like the man-child who is only entertaining in TV and movies but not in real life. Sometimes tragedy causes one to grow up fast. Sometimes wealth and lack of consequences abet the person who perpetually acts like a spoiled child. But most people agree that “adulting” is all about taking responsibility, and that requires being able to say “No” to some things you'd like to do and “Yes” to things you'd rather not.

Maturity is a recurring theme in the Bible. Paul writes, “Brothers and sisters, stop thinking like children. In regards to evil be infants, but in your thinking be adults.” (1 Corinthians 14:20) Children frequently resort to magical thinking. They think that certain powers like athletic prowess, musical or artistic excellence, or academic achievement come easily to those with the talent and a belief in themselves. But in fact they take lots of practice and perseverance. If you don't do well at something, it doesn't mean you will never do well at it. If you persist in doing it, and, usually with the help of a coach or mentor, figure out what you are doing right and what you are doing wrong, and make improvements in your technique, you will get better. Even prodigies, who seem to effortlessly do things well at a young age, often find that maintaining that level of skill as they get older requires a lot more work than before. The actors playing superheroes don't have those bodies when they are cast. They go on diets and have trainers to get that look.

This Sunday we are talking about the Lenten disciplines of fasting and self-denial. And they are disciplines, like art, music or athletics. Practicing these disciplines is like working out in a gym. You don't do the exercises as an end in themselves but as a means, the way someone might lift weights not to become a professional weightlifter but in order to play baseball or football or do gymnastics. Fasting is not an end in itself but a means to improve spiritually.

Fasting is a common religious practice. And researchers have found that fasting does improve alertness and mood and can improve subjective feelings of well-being. It might even relieve symptoms of depression. For one thing, it shows that a person does have some self-control in some areas of their life, making them feel less helpless. And it is a demonstration of how important praying to God and seeking his favor is. Thus all religions have days where the whole community fasts.

A strict or absolute fast involves not eating any food for a whole 24 hour day, from sunset to sunset, as Jews do on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. And if it is a multi-day fast, since you can't survive much longer than 3 days without water, such fasts usually allow one to drink water for hydration. In contrast, a normal fast lasts from sunrise to sunset, which is what Muslims do for the whole month of Ramadan. They neither eat nor drink during daylight hours. A partial fast, which many Christians do for Lent, is to restrict one's diet and abstain from certain types of food.

The connection between giving up food and seeking God is not obvious. It becomes a little more understandable when you realize that in the Ancient Near East fasting was usually a reaction to a disaster, suffering or mourning. When in the grip of such powerful emotions one often forgets to eat or simply loses one's appetite. Thus a natural reaction became a custom or rite. And it is also natural to turn to God at those times. In the aftermath of losing a loved one, or a community, or one's own well-being, talking to God about it and dealing with the existential questions it engenders might even be seen as taking a precedence over eating. If someone told you that ever since a person started working on some matter, they haven't even taken the time to eat, that would show you how serious they were. When David's son by Bathsheba was dying, we are told, “David pleaded with God for the child. He fasted and spent the nights lying in sackcloth on the ground. The elders of his household stood beside him to get him up from the ground, but he refused, and he would not eat any food with them.” (2 Samuel 12:16-17)

And that's another reason why people fast: to show God they know how serious their sin was. When the Israelites respond to Samuel's call to turn from other gods, it says: “After they had assembled at Mizpah, they drew water and poured it before the Lord. They fasted on that day, and they confessed there, 'We have sinned against the Lord.'” (1 Samuel 7:6) After the Babylonian exile, when Ezra reads the book of God's law and the people of Jerusalem hear it for the first time, they fast and confess their sins. (Nehemiah 9:1-2) When the people of Nineveh hear Jonah preach imminent judgment, they fast. (Jonah 3:4) As it says in Joel, “'Even now', declares the Lord, 'return to me with all your heart, with fasting and weeping and mourning.'” (Joel 2:12) After all, you would hardly think a person was sincere if while apologizing to you he continued shoveling food into his mouth.

The purpose of a fast should be to get closer to God, not to lose weight or look especially holy to others. God says to Zechariah, “Ask all the people and the priests, 'When you fasted and mourned in the fifth and seventh months for the past seventy years, was it really for me you fasted?'” (Zechariah 7:5) Jesus said, “When you fast, do not look somber as the hypocrites do, for they disfigure their faces to show others they are fasting. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full.” (Matthew 6:16)

In the Hebrew text about the Day of Atonement, the usual word for “fast” (tsom) doesn't appear but instead a word meaning “self-denial” (anah) is used. (Leviticus 16:31; 23:29; Number 29:7) In fact that word can also mean “to afflict,” “to weaken,” and “to be humble.” Thus on Yom Kippur observant Jews also abstain from bathing, from wearing leather shoes, from anointing oneself with oil or perfumes and from sex. You are denying yourself even little pleasures and normal things.

Again such self-denial is not for show but to get closer to God. Money usually spent on such pleasures could be given to charity or the church. Time spent on such things is given to prayer or reading the Bible or other Christian acts. In Zechariah, following up on his question of whether their fasting was sincere, it says, “This is what the Lord Almighty said: 'Administer true justice; show mercy and compassion to one another. Do not oppress the widow or the fatherless, the foreigner or the poor. Do not plot evil against each other.'” (Zechariah 7:9-10) And on Yom Kippur, Jews are to do 3 things: pray, repent and give to charity. In fact, in comparing the Instructions for Lent in the Ash Wednesday liturgies for our two denominations, I found that the word “self-denial” in the Episcopal version is replaced with “sacrificial giving and works of love” in the Lutheran version. We will deal with that next week but the point is to redirect our attention, energy and talents towards things of the spirit.

We live in a time when self-restraint is not much in evidence. We have an economy driven by an unsustainable, ever-increasing consumption of goods and services. We have celebrities known for their personal excesses. We have companies who ravenously run through natural resources. We have leaders who cannot control their emotions or words. And all this at a time when the low hanging fruit of problems with obvious solutions are gone. The problems we face in this century are complex in nature and are going to require everyone in almost every field to work together. More than ever, ensuring the survival of humanity will take cool heads and self-sacrifice on the part of all. If we can't forgo some small pleasures for 40 days, how can we expect to give up some big pleasures for the common good?

Jesus said if anyone was to follow him, they must first deny themselves and then pick up their cross and follow in his steps. The word translated “deny” can be rendered “disown” or “repudiate.” Giving up all rights to our own way is not an optional part of following our Lord but an integral step in being a Christian. Much of the church has downplayed that part in recent decades. Preachers have tried to remake the gospel in the image of our consumer culture and called it the "prosperity gospel." We have recovered the fact that God pronounced all that he had made as very good in Genesis 1 but we have skipped over the part where in Genesis 6 God saw how humanity had ruined the earth and filled it with violence. (Genesis 1:31; 6:11-12) We live in a fallen world. And the reason is we don't restrain ourselves.

In Genesis 9, God makes a covenant with Noah, the new representative of humanity. God says on his part he will never ruin/destroy (it's the same word in Hebrew) the earth by flood again. Our part in this first-ever covenant is to restrain ourselves from killing one another. And the reason given is that we are created in the image of God. Since God promises to restrain himself, we, his children, should also restrain ourselves. In fact, if you wonder why God does not magically stop evil, why he doesn't just step in and start kicking butt and taking names, it is because of that promise. We are all guilty of harming or being complicit in the harm of others, even if not through violence. The strict application of justice would not go well for anyone. By holding back, God is keeping his part of the bargain. And while he vows never again to destroy/ruin the earth, that does not mean we will not ruin it on our own and destroy ourselves.

In Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, geographer and historian Jared Diamond posited that the success of the Eurasian peoples was not due to genetic superiority but to the fact that the region where they settled offered a wider variety of plants and animals suitable for domestication. In his book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, he examined a number of civilizations and argued that it was not whether a culture was superior or not that determined its survival but how it responded to the challenges of changes in environment and climate and to both their hostile neighbors and to their trading partners. The biggest problem is that overpopulation tends to outstrip the carrying capacity of the environment. One of Diamond's suggestions is that we find “the courage to make painful decisions about values.” Again Jesus was saying that 2000 years ago. We are going to have to deny ourselves. To paraphrase J.K. Rowling we need to choose between doing the easy thing and the right thing.

Hopefully, you already have chosen what you are giving up for Lent. May I suggest in addition looking at changing some aspect of your lifestyle in a way that will be more sustainable for this creation God has given us? You can choose foods that require less resources to grow and harvest. You can cut down on plastics, which are choking our environment and literally choking our sea life. You may have read about the starved young whale whose body was washed up onshore with 90 pounds of plastic in its stomach. Last year one was found with 80 plastic bags in it. Petroleum products in all forms are destroying the environment in a kind of revenge of the dinosaurs, from whose organic remains we get oil, gasoline and plastics. So consider a partial fast from such things.

All we have comes ultimately from God, so we are not really giving up anything that is ours in any permanent way. We are giving back to God things that he has loaned us and which he expects us to use wisely and to share. (1 Chronicles 29:14) We are not owners of anything in this life but stewards. And part of our problem is that we strut around this planet acting like we own the place. We don't own it anymore than we own other human beings. We don't even own ourselves. We have been bought with a price, the blood of our Lord Jesus Christ. (1 Corinthians 6:20) We are his but he gives us the freedom to be who we were meant to be. In this life we are to grow up into an ever better reflection of the God of love in whose image we were originally made. And anything we have to give up to achieve that is ephemeral in the light of eternity and is not worth the weight of the glory he will bestow upon us. (2 Corinthians 4:17)

As C.S. Lewis put it, “The principle runs through all life from top to bottom. Give up your self and you will find your real self. Lose your life and you will save it. Submit to death, death of your ambitions and favourite wishes every day and death of your whole body in the end: submit with every fiber of your being, and you will find eternal life. Keep nothing back. Nothing that you have not given away will ever be really yours. Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead. Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin and decay. But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in.”