Photo by Eberhard Grossgasteiger

DEFICIENT FASTER: It’s been tough fasting these past few weeks.  You know it’s not the same when you switch the ingredients.  It’s not as delightful eating soy cheese and soymilk ice cream.  And tofu beef tacos are not the same as regular tacos on Taco Tuesdays.

ANCIENT CHRISTIAN: What are you babbling about?!

DEFICIENT FASTER: Fasting, of course!

ANCIENT CHRISTIAN: I heard you talking about something you called Taco Tuesday, not fasting.

DEFICIENT FASTER: Oh yes, but that’s on fasting days during Great Lent.

ANCIENT CHRISTIAN: I’m sorry, but if you may please teach me; I don’t think I know what you mean by fasting.  I do not think that word means what you think it means.

DEFICIENT FASTER: Sure!  I’d be happy to teach you!  Fasting is when you change the type of ingredients you eat because they are not allowed during periods of fasting.  It is a way to please God and to store up treasure in Heaven for ourselves.

ANCIENT CHRISTIAN: Why though?

DEFICIENT FASTER: Uh… because… uh, we should show our gratitude to Christ for what He did for us.  If He died for us on the Cross, then the least I can do is fast for Him all the fasts during the year.

EXCESSIVE FASTER: Dear brother ANCIENT CHRISTIAN, I must apologize for this uncultured barbarian who thinks fasting is changing ingredients and has no idea what fasting is nor why we do it.

ANCIENT CHRISTIAN: I was hoping that he was sharing his own opinion and nothing that he has actually heard taught at church.

EXCESSIVE FASTER: I hope not as well, brother; there are so many ignorant people out there with strange ideas.

ANCIENT CHRISTIAN: I am glad to hear there are other sensible people out there who don’t believe such things.  Please explain to this fellow here what the nature of fasting is.

EXCESSIVE FASTER: Certainly!  Fasting is when you try to destroy all desire in your body so it does not cause you to sin because desire is the origin of sin.  Thus, fasting is a virtue because one has worked so hard to uproot this problem in themselves.  Then they can be well pleasing to God.

ANCIENT CHRISTIAN: Why though?

EXCESSIVE FASTER: Because in this way we are pleasing Christ who destroyed desire in His body too.

ANCIENT CHRISTIAN: Are you being serious or are you being sarcastic with our brother here who was talking about Taco Tuesday?

EXCESSIVE FASTER: I am serious.  Why would you even ask such a question?

ANCIENT CHRISTIAN: Oh boy, I am afraid of these strange modern times in history.  I would rather go back to the grave than spend my leisure with you too.

DEFICIENT FASTER: Hey, that’s not very nice.

EXCESSIVE FASTER: I finally agree with you on something, Mr. Taco.  How insulting of this ANCIENT CHRISTIAN!

ANCIENT CHRISTIAN: You are a sensitive lot aren’t you?

Both modern Christians were silent.

ANCIENT CHRISTIAN: The least you could do is ask me “Why though?” and not call me “insulting.”

DEFICIENT FASTER and EXCESSIVE FASTER: Why though?

ANCIENT CHRISTIAN: Because that is not how we understood fasting in the early Church.

DEFICIENT FASTER and EXCESSIVE FASTER: How did you?

ANCIENT CHRISTIAN: We understood fasting as a sort of training (Gr. askesis) for a competition.  Just like when athletes of different sports train, their bodies’ orientations change so that some muscles are prominent and others not quite.  For example, a swimmer has a different build than a runner and both are different than a wrestler.

Now training by itself is worthless unless we use our training to win the competition.  But what is the competition that we are training for?  The competition is our day to day life, and the championship is inheriting the kingdom of God.  By reorienting our person to God, we compete successfully.

EXCESSIVE FASTER: That’s quite a thought-provoking analogy.  Explain that further.

DEFICIENT FASTER: So where do the ingredients come in?

ANCIENT CHRISTIAN: Fasting is not a virtue like love is a virtue.  Love by its very nature is the goal of the Christian life: love for God and love for others and the two are interwoven as we learn from the First Epistle of the Apostle John, if we love one another then we are able to love God, so the two are intimately related.  The Apostle John says, “In this the children of God and the children of the devil are manifest: Whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is he who does not love his brother.  For this is the message that you heard from the beginning, that we should love one another” (1 John 3:10-11) and “If someone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen?” (1 John 4:20).

Another virtue is hope because hope is the state of being that drives you to act because you believe you will receive the promises which the One you love has promised you.  Hope is also the sign that you have a real faith in the One who promised.  I’m sure you can tell that fasting is nothing like faith, hope, and love.

DEFICIENT FASTER: I guess not.

EXCESSIVE FASTER: No, fasting is not like those three.

ANCIENT CHRISTIAN: Nor is it like the other virtues such as prudence, courage, temperance, and justice. All these virtues are states of character and action.  Fasting is neither a state of character nor is it like the actions of the virtues.  Both the root and the result of the virtues differ in nature than fasting.  Fasting is an action, but it is not necessarily a result nor is it a root of anything.

DEFICIENT FASTER and EXCESSIVE FASTER: So what is it?

ANCIENT CHRISTIAN: It is a type of training (Gr. askesis) to orient us toward God.  Just like in any training there are three types of athletes: those who train too hard and injure themselves; those who train too lightly and fail quickly at the competition, and those who train moderately and are competitive and can win, so there are also three types of fasting: an extreme type, a deficient type, and a moderate type.

We as humans are susceptible to being conquered by the power of our impulses, the two most powerful impulses we have are the desire to eat and sexual desire.  These desires are good in themselves and for what they do because God created us to eat to live and to have fellowship with others and He also created sexual desire for husbands and wives to enjoy each other and from that relationship to replenish the human race.  But these volatile desires when not properly moderated lead to gluttony and sexual indulgence, and these things can warp a person’s attention and character.

You see, for these reasons, fasting is a way to reorient our attention toward what is truly important.  If we fast too lightly by making it about ingredients, then you have lost the whole point of fasting which is to train your soul to be stronger than your bodily impulses and to be attentive to the spiritual realities.  When you think fasting is nothing more than a change of ingredients, then you have not actually trained your soul to be stronger than your bodily impulses, but you have fooled yourself into thinking that you are fasting.

Now for someone just learning to fast, that might be a proper start, but only as a start.  It is like kindergarten.  An adult Christian who fasts in this manner is like a child who has not graduated kindergarten.

Such fasting will make us less attentive to our souls and to God.  It will also make us reactive.  Those who are given over to their bodily impulses are reactive.  When they feel hungry, they will nibble on whatever they can find.  Or worse, they will drink hard drinks immoderately.  And those who are overpowered by their sexual impulses are consumed by the search for the next sexual activity or sexual partner.

Both the nibbler and the lustful person are fully reactive to their impulses.  They don’t respond, but they react.  That’s the definition of slavery.  They don’t have inner motivation, but they have become impulsive. Their impulses have conditioned them like those in the circus have conditioned the animals they perform with.  This should not be so.

But it goes further than that, such people become obsessive and fantasize (which I define as dreaming while awake).  They obsess and fantasize about when they will eat, what they will eat, and what is that new thing that the other person is eating.  Ironically, the refrigerators of such people are full of spoiled food because when they go to the market they fantasize about food and buy all sorts of items, but in reality they don’t satisfy their desires, but they become disorderly both in their souls and in their homes.  They are bad stewards of what they have.  Everything is in a state of disorder.

As a whole, they lack self-control or what we in the ancient world called inner power (Gr. enkrateia) which is the ability to have power over yourself, and this power is the foundation of the virtues.  This is why fasting is a type of training; training by itself is useless, but when the training builds you and orients you to be a winner, then the training has value.

EXCESSIVE FASTER: You just described the fasting regimen of this impoverished fellow here who thinks he will please God.  You also just called him a loser, which in truth he is.  He should be ashamed of himself.

ANCIENT CHRISTIAN: And you should be too.

EXCESSIVE FASTER: What?!  I don’t fast like him.  I don’t have anything in common with his style of fasting.

ANCIENT CHRISTIAN: Yes, you do.  Both you and he are extreme.  He is extreme in his deficiency of both the definition of and practice of fasting, and you are extreme in your excess.

EXCESSIVE FASTER: But it surely is better than his form of fasting.

ANCIENT CHRISTIAN: Actually no.  In some cases, it might be worse.

EXCESSIVE FASTER: How?!

ANCIENT CHRISTIAN: You see, those who are too excessive in their fasting lose attentiveness.  Their attention becomes static.  Everything becomes focused on fasting, and thus instead of being active, they become stagnant.

Soon, they are not motivated to do anything other than fast.  They come up with excuses for not doing certain activities especially those that are the most meaningful like spending time with the ones you love.

Then they too become obsessive, but instead of over their impulses, over the smallest of details of fasting.

For this reason, self-control (Gr. enkrateia) is unable to develop in them because they create unnecessary temptations for themselves.  When such people go to sleep, they dream about eating non-fasting foods.  The subconscious speaks loudly in dreams!

Then they become guilt-driven and frustrated.

The spiritual life is not about guilt nor should it be frustrating.

EXCESSIVE FASTER: But you are supposed to struggle through the spiritual life.  It is not supposed to be easy.

ANCIENT CHRISTIAN: My friend, there is a difference between struggling through something and being frustrated.  A competition, such as a race, is a struggle, but it is not frustrating.  Frustration comes when nothing happens in any regular or logical pattern.  Certainly, those who run a race have some level of predictability and pattern.

When you think of it, all of life is a struggle, but that does not make it frustrating.  Actually, that struggle gives life its meaning and it is one of the main windows that shows us the beauty of life.  Because when we overcome all sorts of struggles one by one, life’s beauty shines out little by little until it is very clear.

Excessive fasting turns the spirituality of fasting into frustration and unnecessarily so.  Unnecessary frustration is a hindrance and it is no credit to you to put yourself through that.  It’s extra without benefit or reward.

EXCESSIVE FASTER: I never thought of that before.

DEFICIENT FASTER: Neither did I.

ANCIENT CHRISTIAN: So what’s the point of fasting then?

Both modern Christians were silent.

ANCIENT CHRISTIAN: The point of fasting is to move you from being monological to being dialogical. When you are a slave to your impulses as in the case of the one who doesn’t fast or the deficient faster, everything is focused on the self.  There is no space for any part of your attention to be offered to anyone outside of you whether to those you love or to God.  All conversations and interactions are in reality conversations with yourself, a monologue.

DEFICIENT FASTER: But I have certainly seen people who do not fast and those who fast like me (which I see now is truly deficient) and we can have regular conversations with people.

ANCIENT CHRISTIAN: It appears to be a regular conversation, but the word regular is overrated.  By regular you mean just like everyone else.  The reality is the types of conversations such people have, even though they appear to be meaningful, are in reality directed toward fulfilling the goal of eating or having sex.  I’ve seen your young people here speaking with one another, and it is bizarre.  I see a young man and a young woman sitting and talking with each other, but there is no substance to what they are saying, and the conversation can go on for a while too.  The goal is sex.  But then once they have had their fill, whether in marriage or illicitly, they say “communication problems” arise.  But it is not communication problems, but the reality of the lack of substance rudely slaps them in the face after they have been satiated.  There was never anything of substance, and it caught up with them once the vigor of early youth had its time.  This is why so many relationships have failed in your generations.

EXCESSIVE FASTER: And what about those who fast excessively?

ANCIENT CHRISTIAN: They are also living a monological existence because everything is referred back to fasting and whether “you are doing it right.”  You end up talking to yourself, even in what you think is prayer and meditation.  Too much of your energy is exerted toward excessive fasting that you cease to be productive spiritually in a similar fashion to how ground that is plowed too much loses its moisture and nutrients and cannot bear crops like ground that is plowed properly.

EXCESSIVE FASTER: But I have known many people who are austere in fasting and they have deep spiritual lives.  How do you explain that; is it just an appearance, an illusion?

ANCIENT CHRISTIAN: No.  Bodily impulses are like a moving target.  Those who rule them effectively will can eventually become less attentive for smaller reasons.  For example, you have heard of those who fast until noon without food or water, those who fast until evening, and those who fast on only uncooked fruits and vegetables.  It seems like increasing degrees of austerity in fasting, but the reality is after years of practice, such apparently tough forms of fasting are no longer strong enough to help them reorient their attention to God and their souls, and the small things like a cooked vegan meal becomes too distracting for them, and they give it up when they fast kind of like those who give up social media and television during fasting; it makes them inattentive, but for others it may not be an issue.  But this increasingly austere fasting comes after years of fasting; you should not start a person on this regimen.  To compare it with sports again: for a child running half a mile without walking at all is incredibly tough, but for a seasoned long-distance runner, they will do it without sweating.  It is no longer a challenge and cannot develop their abilities, and if they “train” by running a mile every day, they will eventually lose their ability to be long-distance runners.  This is why you cannot compare any two types of fasting to each other, but we certainly have a baseline.

EXCESSIVE FASTER: What is that baseline?

ANCIENT CHRISTIAN: That baseline is that there should be a time without eating at all for a specific portion of the day, and that we abstain from certain foods such as those derived from animals.  This is the right start.  It allows for an appropriate standard of rigor no matter what level anyone is at.  These are the letters and numbers of fasting in the same way that a kindergartner learns their letters and numbers.  It may seem like a joke at first, but the letters and numbers that a kindergartner learns in their first year of school are the foundation for all reading whether it is a novel, or history, or philosophy or theology and all work with numbers whether balancing your checkbook, or engineering spacecraft, or managing a fund.

When we take the principles of this baseline and engage in a moderate fast (of course under the guidance of a spiritual father who knows us well so we are not too light on ourselves or are too ambitious).  At that point, we will become dialogical; our attention and conversation with both others and God will be of an exchange that is truly substantial.

When we fast, it frees up our attention because we rule (or to say it better, we properly order our bodily impulses) so that they are not as imposing as they are in non-fasting periods.  This causes us to become more attentive to our souls, to prayer, to loving others, and to ascending to God.

We become active because we have trained our attention by practicing restraint of the bodily impulses and freeing that energy for spiritual pursuit.

DEFICIENT FASTER and EXCESSIVE FASTER: But what is the sign of a dialogical existence?

ANCIENT CHRISTIAN: To begin with our motivation is planned and thoughtful and we act on those plans.

We become balanced in our behavior, and do not obsess nor fantasize.  The desire of the spirit is given way.

Then we develop self-control (Gr. enkrateia) which is the foundation of the virtues.

A sign of being dialogical is that we are able to listen to others, to just listen and to reflect on what they are saying.  We then learn about the people with whom we are interacting. We are able to engage them and share wisdom and edify them.  This edification is for their good, which is the definition of Christian love (Gr. agape): to will the good of the other.

And if they are dialogical or become so by interacting with us, then we can be edified by them when we reflect on our conversations.  That becomes honest conversation as well, one that is not for ulterior motives like eating or sex.  This type of dialogical conversation is real pleasure, pleasure that fills.  And is not of that baser sort that your generation calls pleasure, but which is really relief of pain.

This becomes a preparation for learning how to pray to God and listen to Him through the Scriptures and the Fathers.  When we become dialogical, we don’t just command and demand.

When you think about it that is what children with large egos do: they command and demand.  It is also how the masses conceive of prayer.  We demand things from God.  We try to command the One who commands the order of the universe.  Now think about what types of relationships you would have if that is the only way you spoke with your family and friends.  You wouldn’t have family or friends.  So what makes you think you can speak that way with God?

By being dialogical we also learn to be patient with others, and this develops love.  This patience also prepares us to be patient with God’s plan in our lives, or at least if we are not adequately patient, we don’t fall into despair because we know that He does things in His Providence.

When we also deal with people for real, we learn that they are not like the images we have formed of them, and this does not upset us like it does the masses.  Rather we deal with the reality of the people we love.  This also leads us to understand that God’s reality may not be like the image we had formed of Him.  And we develop a more real love for Him and not just butterflies in the stomach.

And that brings me back to something you, DEFICIENT FASTER, said.

DEFICIENT FASTER: What was that?

ANCIENT CHRISTIAN: At the beginning of our conversation, you said, we fast because “we should show our gratitude to Christ for what He did for us.  If He died for us on the Cross, then the least I can do is fast for Him all the fasts during the year.”  While the way you word it makes it seem like a good work or virtue (which fasting isn’t), there is something truly spiritual in there which is the dialogical element in that we should respond to God’s love.  This response is thoughtful and planned from us.

The Apostle John in his First Epistle talks about this when he says, “We love Him because He first loved us” (1 John 4:19) and “because as He is, so are we in this world” (1 John 4:17).  This is dialogue and it has started with Our Lord Jesus Christ.  We continue it by responding to Him and becoming like Him just as two who are truly conversing with each other in a dialogical with another become like each other.  We become like Christ and we radiate that to the world.

In the end, depending on how a person is oriented, it changes something in them whether it is a physical orientation or a dispositional one.  True fasting, which is done with moderate rigor, reorients us and makes us dialogical so that we are oriented to our Lord Jesus Christ and thus we transform into the likeness of God and radiate it that to the world.

When we fast excessively, we become oriented toward moralism.  When we fast deficiently, we become oriented toward our own individual impulses and desires.  But when we fast moderately, we become oriented toward God.  Our desires are reoriented toward Him.  We allow the rational soul to develop.  We fan the sparking embers of the rational soul, and then everything becomes interpreted through the desire of the soul for God through our Lord Jesus Christ.

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