Fasting as seriousness of the spirit ... no really

Rev. Tom Dolph

“At the heart of [fasting] is a desire to shift our attention away from our immediate needs and to focus more on spiritual concerns.” So says Lauren Winner as she unintentionally sums up my problem with the practice of fasting. You cannot imagine the number of jokes I have told about “giving up” broccoli, or board meetings, as my preferred form of fasting. I readily admit that fasting is not high on my priority list.

Unfortunately, I don’t think the reason fasting ranks so lowly in my preferences is just because I love food so much that I don’t want to go without. I have long understood that fasting is about more than just not eating. Though there is a “sacrificial” component to it, fasting has almost always been connected in my mind with the idea that its purpose was to tune our attention, in a more acute way, toward God. Here John Wesley’s words ricochet frequently through my brain: a “more weighty reason for fasting is, that it is a help to prayer.” He goes on to say that the profit of fasting is “seriousness of the spirit, earnestness, sensibility and tenderness of conscience, deadness to the world, and consequently the love of God.” As I’ve said, in my head I know this to be true. So why don’t I fast? If the problem doesn’t really lie with my love of food or my understanding of the practice, what is holding me back? Enter Winner’s highly convicting words “At the heart … is a DESIRE to shift our attention…”

I have to face the reality that my own desires may, in fact, be holding me back from gaining ground in “seriousness of the spirit and the Love of God.” Oh how I wish I could abstain from owning that claim, but I cannot. My desires, what I want -- to do, to be, to have, deeply distract my focus, my attention. As long as my attention is turned elsewhere I will be missing what God wants me to do, to be, to have. Crap, now I may have to give fasting a shot…