Fasting versus Abstaining

It is Palm Sunday as I write this and we are nearing the end of this year's Lenten season. This week's online version of Christianity Today has an article about fasting, noting that it is currently popular to fast for a cause. This year several groups have advocated fasting to show solidarity with the poor. At other times fasting has been recommended for a variety of reasons, including to use the food money you would have used as an offering for the hungry, or to free up time for prayer by saving the time used for food preparation. The article this week in Christianity Today  promotes the idea of fasting in order to gain more self-control and even to shape the desires of our subconscious. As I grew up my friends and neighbors who were Roman Catholic would not eat meat on Friday, which they referred to as a 'fast'.

These seem to generally be good causes. It is good to help the poor, to gain self-control, and so on. Yet, these various approaches to try to explain fasting illustrate how we as a culture have a difficult time relating to the very idea of fasting and how we continue to be confused about it. Today in our Sunday morning Bible study we were looking into the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 6 where Jesus tells His followers not to fast the way the 'hypocrites' do, who would put ashes on their faces and make a show of it, but rather to look happy and keep it secret from those around you. He said very similar things about prayer and about giving to the poor.  The Greek word used there in Matthew which is translated into English as 'fasting' comes from 2 Greek words, 'not' and 'to eat'; it is very much about not eating, not about a general idea of 'giving something up' for a time.  Fasting is clearly focused on not eating. Fasting is a different thing than abstaining.

This is not to say that there is no benefit to abstaining. The Jews were to continually abstain from some things like non-kosher foods; they were to periodically abstain from some things, like sexual intimacy during a woman's monthly cycle; they were on special occasions to abstain from some things, like leaven during Passover. These are not fasts; they are abstinence.

The only fast specifically prescribed in the Torah is for Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. In the description, in both Leviticus 16 and Leviticus 19, it is clear that the purpose is to 'humble yourselves'. The text does not even use the word 'fast', yet the Jews clearly understood it that way. The focus was on humbling themselves before God. This comes up again when fasts are called for by Ezra, by the prophets, and by David for himself (see Ps. 35:13 and Ezra 8:21).  Repeatedly in the Old Testament fasts are about one main thing: humbling ourselves in repentance. It is not about 'solidarity'; it is not even about self-control. It is about humbling ourselves.

As time went on this got muddled. After the Babylonian captivity, there were fasts to commemorate the fall of Jerusalem, the destruction of the temple, and other things. By Jesus time, the devout were fasting twice every week. Long before this, in Isaiah's time it was clear that they had begun to miss the point. (See Isaiah 58:3-5). Jesus displeasure with fasting in His day sounds rather like Isaiah.

Abstinence still had its own place, though. Again, repeatedly in the Old Testament we see the reason for abstinence as being related to purity. So they 'purified' their houses from leaven before Passover; they did not eat 'unclean' animals; women would 'purify' themselves after their monthly cycle; and so on. The focus of abstinence was on purity, and the focus of fasting was on humbling ourselves before God.

The article calling for fasting to show 'solidarity with the poor' shows that the muddled thinking continues. I do not object at all to caring for the poor. I also think our culture could stand a great deal more self-control, as learned by abstinence. I just don't think that is the point in fasting. As I contemplate the arrival of Easter next week, I need to focus more on repentance than on 'solidarity'.