hungry? always…

Yesterday Jen raised the question of fasting and it got me thinking… Right off the bat, my impression would be that fasting is a normal commonplace thing in the New Testament that everyone does but that we don’t really do… for no particular reason. So should we be doing it?

In Matthew 6:16-18 Jesus is commenting on a common Jewish understanding of piety – loving God involves the practices of prayer, fasting and alms-giving (see for example the apocryphal book Tobit 12:8); only one fast was mandated by the Jewish law on Yom Kippur but many more fasts were added over the years and the Pharisees would fast twice per week – see Luke 18:9-14. They, like Jennie’s Orthodox friends, understood these threefold acts of piety as a way to please or appease God; and in this passage I’m not sure that Jesus is challenging that at all – he’s making an entirely different point.

So if fasting was a common Jewish religious practice how does it translate across for us? I went digging to see what the New Testament actually says about it…

• The only mention of Jesus fasting himself is in the gospels at his temptation in the wilderness when he has no food.
• Jesus disciples don’t fast and this is a point of conflict with the religious leaders and John’s disciples, Mark 2:18-22. In response to this discussion Jesus tells the parables of the cloth and the old garment, and new wine and old wineskins.
• There are a few references to “prayer and fasting” in Acts, none of which includes Gentiles.
• There are no direct references to fasting in the rest of the New Testament – all of the epistles and revelation; with the exception of 2 Corinthians 6:5, 11:27 where involuntary starvation is in mind.
• One possible reference is Colossians 2:16-23, where the phrase in v18,23 translated asceticism in ESV, false humility in TNIV, may be translating a Hebrew idiom referring to fasting (in some Jewish writings at the time fasting is seen as a way to invoke angelic visions).

So should we fast? I think at the very least you’d have to say – we don’t have to do it – Jesus enables us to know God… And if by fasting you ever thought that you were somehow atoning for your sins or helping get closer to God then you’d be better off not doing it all! Jesus’ parables of the cloth and the wineskins in Mark 2 are confusing, but I think they warn us against mixing the “shadow” of traditional cultic practices with their fulfillment – knowledge of God in Christ.

What do you think?