Fasting: The Newest Addition to America’s Menu

It has become fashionable to fast! At least that’s what the Los Angeles Times Health Section reports last week. Science now supports “intermittent fasting” not only as a weight-control method, but also as a way to reduce the risk of disease and prolong life. “Running on Empty: the pros and cons of fasting,” 

Now maybe all of us who have been putting it off can start fasting stigma-free because, hey, everyone is doing it. “There is something kind of magical about starvation,” the Times quotes U.C. Berkeley professor Marc Hellerstein.

Levity aside, don’t you just love it when science “discovers” something the Bible has been saying for thousands of years. To be fair, the Bible appears more concerned about fasting to promote spiritual health than as a diet.

As Christians, we fast when we want to clearly hear the voice of God in a particular situation or when we are especially burdened by circumstances beyond our control and approach God for relief. To be effective in this context, fasting is accompanied by prayer. It is often selfless, in that the person fasting is depriving himself for the benefit of another.

In Acts 13: 2-3, the church at Antioch was worshipping and fasting when the Holy Spirit instructed them to set apart Barnabas and Saul (aka Paul) “for the work to which I have called them.” The church fasted some more, laid hands on the men and sent them off. The rest of Acts is the history of how these two men transformed the known world with the Gospel. But what came first was the fasting and prayer of nameless saints who were obedient to the Holy Spirit.

In Matthew 17:21, Jesus answers his disciples who were wondering about not being able to cast a demon from a child. Jesus reminded them, really as a sort of footnote to an explanation about how our faith should be able to move mountains, that “this kind does not go out but by prayer and fasting.”

Jesus is rather famously known for not fasting, at least not in the way the Pharisees expected from a Jew. But read Matthew 4:1-11, the account of Jesus’ sojourn in the wilderness and temptation by Satan. Then, alone expect for the Father, he fasted and prayed for 40 days before he commenced his public ministry.

The Old Testament has a lot to say about fasting, too, mostly in conjunction with holidays and rituals, sacrifices and offerings that clearly applied to both Israel’s spiritual health and physical well-being. The most well-known example of this is found in the first chapter of Daniel.

So, it isn’t such a leap to assume that our Father, who is both prodigiously extravagant and unreservedly practical, would also connect spiritual soundness with physical health. A Savior who is so unashamedly mindful of our needs that he couples the very act of culinary deprivation with increased life (in more ways than one). With apologies to Professor Hellerstein, I’d say fasting is much more about the miraculous than the magical.

And this begs the question: Is there any “sacrifice” we make to honor, glorify and edify Jesus that doesn’t in some way end up benefiting us as well?