“Fasting is the body talking what the spirit yearns, what the soul longs for, and what the mind knows to be true.”

— Scot McKnight

Christianity has traditionally been at odds with the human body. At times in the history of the church, Christians have viewed the body and physical desires as the enemy. Now, Scot McKnight, best-selling author ofThe Jesus Creed , reconnects the spiritual and the physical in the ancient discipline of fasting.

Inside You'll Find:

• In-depth biblical precedents for the practice of fasting;
• How to fast effectively—and safely;
• Different methods of fasting as practiced in the Bible;
• Straight talk on pitfalls, such as cheating and motivation.

Join McKnight as he explores the idea of “whole-body spirituality,” in which fasting plays a central role. This ancient practice, he says, doesn’t make sense to most of us until we have grasped the importance of the body for our spirituality, until we can view it as a spiritual response to a sacred moment. Fasting—simple, primitive, and ancient—still demonstrates a whole person’s earnest need and hunger for the presence of God, just as it has in the lives of God’s people throughout history.

The Ancient Practices

There is a hunger in every human heart for connection, primitive and raw, to God. To satisfy it, many are beginning to explore traditional spiritual disciplines used for centuries . . . everything from fixed-hour prayer to fasting to sincere observance of the Sabbath. Compelling and readable, the Ancient Practices series is for every spiritual sojourner, for every Christian seeker who wants more.

FASTING

Fasting as Body Talk in the Christian Tradition By Scot McKnight

THOMAS NELSON

Copyright © 2009 Scot McKnight
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8499-0108-9

Contents

Foreword...................................................................xiIntroduction: A Montage of Christian Voices on Fasting.....................xiv1. Fasting and Body Image..................................................1PART 1: SPIRITUALITY AND FASTING2. Fasting as Body Talk....................................................153. Fasting as Body Turning.................................................244. Fasting as Body Plea....................................................375. Fasting as Body Grief...................................................516. Fasting as Body Discipline..............................................617. Fasting as Body Calendar................................................818. Fasting as Body Poverty.................................................999. Fasting as Body Contact.................................................11210. Fasting as Body Hope...................................................123PART 2: WISDOM AND FASTING11. Fasting and Its Problems...............................................13312. Fasting and Its Benefits...............................................14713. Fasting and the Body...................................................156Conclusion.................................................................166Acknowledgments............................................................170Recommended Reading........................................................172Notes......................................................................173

Chapter One

FASTING AND BODY IMAGE

Christianity has perennially had a problem with the human body.

At times in the history of the church, Christians have viewed desires and the body as the enemy. In the past few years, the question seems to have been, "What's the body got to do with spirituality?" Yet we are finding today a surging interest in what can only be called embodied spirituality. Young Christians express worship with their hands aloft and their eyes closed, more and more find spiritual strength in candles and icons, and some churches are bringing back kneelers. Other churches encourage releasing creative gifts for acting, painting, and art. Fasting, too, is on the rise.

What is this all about? Thomas Howard, an evangelical who first converted to Anglicanism and then to Catholicism, gets it right with these words: "We are all sacramentalists whether our theology admits it or not: we like physical contact with history." Indeed, there is a rise-let's call it what it really is, a revival-of the value of embodied spirituality. We worship God and we love God in our bodies and with our bodies and in concrete, physical, tangible, palpable ways. Deep in the yearning of humans is the need to "do spirituality" with the body.

This raises a problem for fasting. Fasting is whole-body stuff. Many of us are much more comfortable with candles and icons and kneelers than we are with throwing our bodies into this business of worship and prayer. When it comes down to it, this revival of embodied spirituality has one major territory to conquer for Westerners. We've got a body problem. In the next chapter, I aim to reconnect the spirituality of fasting with the body. Body talk, my expression for what fasting is designed to be, flows out of our body image. Until we have a healthier body image, an image of the body united with the spirit, it is not likely that body talk (fasting) will occur as it should.

So, once again, the aim of this book is to reconnect body and soul (or spirit) so that fasting becomes natural and inevitable when you and I encounter a grievous sacred moment that summons us to fast. These kinds of sacred moments confront us annually, but we often don't respond to them with fasting because that practice has become so unnatural. Why? Because many of us don't see a connection between spirituality and body. Even for the increasing number of people who do see the connection-or at least who want to make that connection-acclimating the body to fasting as a natural response to sacred moments takes time. Since fasting flows out of the natural connection of body and soul, we will do well to look briefly at various body images at work in our Western culture. We begin with the Bible's wondrous emphasis on our organic unity.

BIBLICAL BODY IMAGE: ORGANIC UNITY

What strikes a reader today is how significant the body is in the Bible. The ancient Israelites and early Christians "did spirituality" in the body and with the body. What strikes observers of the church is how insignificant the body has become, though there is evidence of a yearning for a more embodied spirituality. Let's take a quick look at what the Bible says and clarify what we need to see is this: in the Bible, humans are organic unities.

The Bible uses a bursting bundle of specific terms for humans, and these terms overlap with one another. The singular contribution of the ancient Israelites to understanding humans is found in Genesis 1:27:

So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. (emphasis added)

Humans, this text tells us, are "images" (I prefer the Greek word, Eikon) of God. As God's Eikons, we represent God on earth and govern this world for God. In addition, we engage in relationships with God, self, others, and the entire world. These roles of governing and relating are what it means to be an Eikon. And we do what God has called us to do in this world in a physical body. Like a diamond, an embodied Eikon is a multifaceted organic unity of heart and mind and soul and spirit and body. As a diamond refracts light only when all the sides are working, so we need every dimension of who we are to be at work. But we have minimized the body so much in our spirituality that fasting has become unnatural.

There are many "faces," or terms for the Eikon, in the Bible. Each of these terms is important, but it is even more important to understand their organic unity. We begin with the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament), where we find the following terms describing the various dimensions of our organic unity:

soul (nepesh)

flesh (basar)

spirit (ruach)

heart (leb)

In the New Testament, we find:

heart (kardia)

soul (psyche)

flesh (sarx)

body (soma)

mind (nous)

spirit (pneuma)

will (thelema)

Let it be said again: in the Bible, all these terms work together to form an organic unity. The Eikon is composed of these things, but the Eikon is a unified person. What has happened is that we have cut the multifaceted diamond into two parts, the good part and the not-so-good part, assigning the various terms for the Eikon to one of two parts. The two parts are "body" and "soul/spirit." The body is the not-so-good part, and the soul is the good, eternal part. Dividing the Eikon, or person, into two parts is what makes fasting so difficult today. Since fasting is a very physical thing, it must be assigned to the body. And since fasting concerns only the body, it can't be that important, we think. Here's what the two parts look like:

Body Soul/Spirit Body Soul Flesh Spirit Heart...