Fasting
How to Live a Pleasure-Packed Life
Words and Images by Blaine Eldredge
After the 2019 hunting season, I found myself in front of a fire, late at night, agitated. It was December. I’d spent the evening glassing from a rocky knoll. The aspens were stark and dusky. Ladder-backed woodpeckers came out every so often to break up the monotony with their blood-red heads, and on the horizon, the winter sky put on its typical show, stacking bands of violet, red, and indigo below a dark blue sky. Because we’re pointed at a near part of the Milky Way galaxy in the wintertime, the stars shone brighter and came out faster than in summer, like staged effects.
And I didn’t care.
The winter grass, the snow, the ice-encrusted stems, were all notes played for the deaf. But I knew something was wrong. I’d come to the mountains to restore my soul. It wasn’t working, though God was doing his everyday thing and filling the world with riches. As I spent some time thinking about why it wasn’t working, I came back around to an inescapable discipline, one of the ways God shows a person he loves them: fasting.
I happened upon fasting by, um, reading Bible stories. Several years ago, my wife and I were in an intense period of warfare, and nothing helped. Not concerted prayer, not worship, not “rising above” or anything else. I remembered Daniel 10. In the story, Daniel has received a disturbing vision. He wants interpretation, and he fasts for three weeks. Eventually, an angel shows up. I didn’t know much beyond that. But, like the desperate everywhere, I’d try anything. I stopped eating for 24 hours, it helped, and that was that. Then, one week later, Jesus suggested I try it again. And the week after that, he suggested it again.
So I’ve been cornered into a long-term consideration of fasting, and the first thing to note is that for thousands of years of Judaism, and for the first 1,900 years of Christianity after that, fasting was an assumed practice. If you were a Christian, you fasted. Nuff said. Then, about 100 years ago, it went away, all over and almost all at once. Two factors contributed to the disappearing of the discipline. One was the climax of Enlightenment thinking, which says, in a nutshell, that the mind and the body are separate and that only the mind matters. This assumption penetrated Protestantism early on and got a lot of people thinking that salvation was principally a matter of intellectual assent, as though we could believe something we didn’t ever do. So—away with spiritual practices that involve the body. The second was that WWII ended and introduced a wave of unprecedented prosperity into America.
The country was making more than the rest of the world combined. People in the U.S. were eating 30% more than their European friends. That’s an extra meal a day, like hobbits. Over time, we got used to being comfortable. The rest of the West followed suit. So we’ve come to see comfort as the norm and discomfort as a problem. We don’t usually stop and ask if that’s true.
“David fasts to mourn for his enemies. Daniel fasts for spiritual breakthrough. Esther fasts to prepare herself for a climactic conversation. Jesus fasts in the tradition of the great prophets. The apostles fast to acknowledge changes in their plans.”
And anyway, fasting is weird. Why abstain when Jesus is the Lord of Life? This is the Jesus of Cana, who promises to give freaking Venus to the saints who endure (Revelation 2:28). So, definitely a God of physical abundance and pleasure.
Answer: for a lot of reasons. David fasts to mourn for his enemies. Daniel fasts for spiritual breakthrough. Esther fasts to prepare herself for a climactic conversation. Jesus fasts in the tradition of the great prophets. The apostles fast to acknowledge changes in their plans. In fact, God brings fasting into the story for the same reason he does everything else: to give you everything instead of nothing, which is to say, there’s a lot to fasting.
Here’s but one dimension, an appetizer to the entrée that is the discipline: Fasting reminds you God is generous.
It does this by reminding you God sustains your body. Not food, not rest, not beer, nor anything else. The ancient Hebrews called this God’s ruach, the power of God filling and sustaining all things. It is the Spirit animating creation.
Now, it’s true that God sustains us through food and sleep and micro brews. But we forget. We do. And then we become inoculated against the lush generosity of God that is at every moment saturating our lives. It’s easy to see food and water and clothes to wear as our baseline, as in, what we deserve. And then we expect God to add to that endowment. The problem is, it’s not true. Every meal is a bonus. And it’s not just food. Jesus reminded folks that God made the rain fall on nice guys and wicked folks (Matthew 5:45). Habakkuk worshiped because his feet and legs worked (Habakkuk 3:19). The wedding psalmist gave thanks because he had a knack for words (Psalm 45:1).
See the pattern? Everything is extra. When we fast, we remember, whether we’re fasting from food, or from music, or from a show we love.
This is huge for me because I forget like an amnesiac with a head injury. I can, in the same moment, shout, “Where are you God?” and chow down on an elk burger. Fortunately, there’s fasting to say every bite of every meal I ever had came to me from God. I could overstate the point here, but you wouldn’t believe the attention I’ve given a handful of almonds after a few days of fasting. They become significant, sensuous, altogether fascinating. You wouldn’t believe how exceptional a hot shower feels after a week or so of cold water. Fasting reminds you that the world is packed with the generosity of God. For this reason, I’m convinced that periodic ascetics (read: pleasure minimalists) are more hedonistic than hardcore pleasure seekers. They understand that God wants to fill their bodies with joy, so they take breaks to magnify that reality. The aforementioned pleasure seekers run around looking for the next fragile high.
Which brings us back to hunting. Problem was, I’d come to see aspen trees and sunsets and cool birds as normal. They were what I already had—what I needed was an elk. Because of that, I was missing the love of God. But take a break from hunting, and suddenly it’s all bonus again.
Because really: nothing gives you back the world like realizing none of it’s a given.
A Couple Notes:
If you’d like to try fasting from food, read the chapter on the topic in Richard Foster’s “Celebration of Discipline.” There are important tips at the end, like how long to fast, how to dress to avoid feeling cold while fasting, and what to eat afterward. There are also some kind thoughts on when not to fast from food (like when pregnant, or recovering from an eating disorder). Helpful stuff.
This is important, but I almost never enjoy the actual abstention part of fasting. It’s very uncomfortable. In fact, to this day, I often tell myself I’m not fasting (when I am) in an attempt to win a few ignorant hours. This is OK. You get the good stuff anyway. I can think all kinds of dark thoughts fasting, but I’ve learned to stick with it. Fasting days end. The things that come up can be taken to God. And you still get the world back.
Print isn’t dead.
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