Lent & Our American Style Fasting March 15, 2006
Now that Easter is approaching, a lot of people are observing Lent, and looking for something they can fast from that will feel like somewhat of a sacrifice, but whose absence won’t impact their lives too negatively. At the same time, there are those who are earnestly seeking God, and their fast serves the purpose of helping them focus on their need for redemption and their abhorrence of sin. Lately, I have been meditating on Isaiah 58, and thinking about what fasting ought and ought not to look like and what should flow from the practice of this spiritual discipline.
First and foremost, fasting is a way of humbling ourselves before God. Going without food for a more sustained period of time forces us to acknowledge that “man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.” (Matt. 4:4) Isaiah wastes no time in pointing out that even this can be twisted into a selfish act:
Behold, in the day of your fast you seek your own pleasure, and oppress all your workers. Behold, you fast only to quarrel and to fight and to hit with a wicked fist. Fasting like yours this day will not make your voice to be heard on high. Is such the fast that I choose, a day for a person to humble himself? Is it to bow down his head like a reed, and to spread sackcloth and ashes under him? Will you call this a fast, and a day acceptable to the LORD?
One might see the outward acts of contrition such as a dour, mopey face, and some other obvious tokens of sacrifice and self-abasement (“Oh, no, I’ve sworn off eating 5-course meals at my favorite expensive restaurants this month; I’m fasting, don’t you know”) and think a couple of different things about the nature of my humility. It’s possible that I might sincerely be offering those things as sacrifices to God, or I might be doing it so that others will take note of my elevated level of personal holiness. But if you were to see those things Isaiah mentions in my life before, during or after my time of fasting, you would be justified in wanting to see God lay the smackdown on me.
Smackdown is precisely what Isaiah lays on Israel. He says:
Cry aloud; do not hold back; lift up your voice like a trumpet; declare to my people their transgression, to the house of Jacob their sins. Yet they seek me daily and delight to know my ways , as if they were a nation that did righteousness and did not forsake the judgement of their God; they ask of me righteous judgments; they delight to draw near to God. ‘Why have we fasted, and you see it not? Why have we humbled ourselves, and you take no knowledge of it?
Of all the things that ought to make me stop to check, recheck, and recheck my motives again, one of them should certainly be the fact that even going through all of the motions of fasting and humbling ourselves, and seemingly delighting in God, it is still possible to not do righteousness and to forsake the judgement of my God. Even in the most intimate moments of worship, self can still rear its ugly head and refuse to relinquish anything to God, and find some way to turn everything to my benefit. This is kind of life looks no different than the unregenerate one, except that it has a veneer of Christian moralism obscuring the the true depth of my wickedness.
But compare this with the results of the kind of fasting that God told Isaiah he wanted to see:
Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of wickedness, to undo the straps of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover him, and not to hide yourself from your own flesh?
When fasting is done with closer communion with God as the goal, self is increasingly pushed aside, and we are now able to see those around us, their needs, and what we need to do to meet them; as Paul says in Philippians 2, “… in humility count others more significant than yourselves.”
In America, there will always be the tendency to find excuses for why the recipients of this kind of care don’t deserve what Isaiah proposes we should be giving. We have become more and more white-knuckled to “our” wealth, as though it wasn’t God who gave it to us, and God who continues to allow us to enjoy it, all the while forgetting that Christ died to give us something that not a single one of us deserves. Even the church can exemplify this stingy spirit; we spend millions on new church buildings, facilities and the latest pet ministry, yet we don’t seem to want to get them dirty by actually using them in the sometimes messy way that kingdom living requires of us. It’s not unlike the guitar collector who spends a couple hundred grand on a ’54 Strat, but won’t take it out of its climate-controlled box and play it, and letting anyone else even touch it is out of the question. In his book Under the Overpass, Mike Yankoski describes one such church where he and his homeless partner-in-crime Sam were asked to leave. The church was having a breakfast function of some sort, and despite having a tailor-made opportunity to share their bread with Mike and Sam, they threw them off the church grounds because “The fact is, they’re not for this…” The obvious question as to what they are for is never answered.
Thankfully, that particular man repented of his actions, but what is distressing is that given the fact that in evangelicalism the Word is supposed to be the final authority in our lives, we shouldn’t even have to argue for the idea of pursuing mercy ministries for the poor and the homeless. All it should take is one look at the many scriptures dealing directly with the issue, and people should be asking, “Where do I sign up?” Instead, living out a consistently merciful life is rationalized away in the interests of comfort. After all, dealing with the kind of dirty, disheveled, smelly, speed fiends that Yankoski did during his five months of living homeless is kind of scary, and not always very convenient.
But if we truly, humbly pursue God for his own sake, as someone valuable in and of himself, and perhaps even fast before him from time to time, so that we would learn to live by every word that comes out of his mouth, we will regain an eternal perspective on life and realize that when we are preoccupied with material blessing we are settling for far less than God can give us. Isaiah paints a compelling picture of what that would look like:
Then shall your light break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up speedily; your righteousness shall go before you; the glory of the LORD shall be your rear guard. Then you shall call, and the LORD will answer; you shall cry, and he will say, ‘Here I am.’ If you take away the yoke from your midst, the pointing of the finger, and speaking wickedness, if you pour yourself out for the hungry and satisfy the desire of the afflicted, then shall your light rise in the darkness and your gloom be as the noonday. And the LORD will guide you continually and satisfy your desire in scorched places and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters do not fail. And your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt; you shall raise up the foundations of many generations; you shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to dwell in. If you turn back your foot from the Sabbath, from doing your pleasure on my holy day, and call the Sabbath a delight and the holy day of the LORD honorable; if you honor it, not going your own ways, or seeking your own pleasure, or talking idly; then you shall take delight in the LORD, and I will make you ride on the heights of the earth; I will feed you with the heritage of Jacob your father, for the mouth of the LORD has spoken.”
Does anything more need to be said?
AUTHOR: Jay has a bachelor’s degree in philosophy from San Diego State University, and is an aspiring school teacher, filmmaker, and all-around adventurist. He attends and plays guitar in the worship band at Kaleo Church, and occasionally blogs his travel stories and culture-related musings at www.thereandbackagain.blogware.com/blog.
Holy (wholly) Hypocrite March 1, 2006
At a recent gathering, I sat down with a relative who is not a believer. This man has been three times divorced, he left his first wife to fend for herself and raise three kids and avoided child support. His children now grown, two have kids out of wedlock, one is a former drug addict and that’s just the beginning. Anyway, as we sat down, he preceded to give me advice on how to have a good marriage and how to raise children. With my head cocked to one side, I thought, how do I respond to this guy? What gives this guy the right to lecture anyone on either of these subjects, when he’s failed so miserably in the very areas he’s suggesting. I ended up listening to him and not pushing the point of his track record. Later, I felt a certain self-righteous, “who does this guy think he is attitude” about the circumstance.
It was only later I saw how wretched a sinner I am with my judgemental, self-righteous attitude.