About fasting

I want to reflect a little today about fasting, one of the topics of this week's readings. It dawned on me this week—not that it's a big surprise, but I just became particularly conscious of it—that LDS customs around fasting (once a month, skip two meals, donate what you saved, hold a testimony meeting in conjunction with it) aren't mandated in scripture. In fact, the scriptures of the Restoration don't have much to say about the practice, apart from passing references to it. Even D&C 59:13-14, which was the major fasting-focused passage in this week's reading, may not be a literal reference to fasting: a footnote makes it out to be a passage about "hungering and thirsting after righteousness," a shift toward metaphor prompted by the fact that the passage is about food preparation.

Anyway, what I wanted to do today was talk about what the practice of fasting means to me—and as I typically do, I'm inclined to start by distancing myself from various interpretations of fasting current in among LDS people. I don't believe that fasting is a way to get more in tune with spiritual things by virtue of somehow shutting out the physical. I'm at a loss, actually, to paraphrase that idea intelligibly, though I encountered it frequently back when I was active in LDS church life, because it makes so little logical sense to me. It's also a surprisingly Greek idea (Greek as in Plato)—surprising for a people who have at times prided themselves for not buying into apostate forms of Christian teaching perverted by the body-soul dualism of ancient Greek philosophy.

I also don't believe in fasting as an extra "sacrifice" that's somehow supposed to make our prayer more efficacious. For example: Back when I was on my high school debate team, the LDS team members decided to fast before an upcoming tournament so that one team member would qualify for nationals. Looking back, I see it as a sweet gesture of solidarity (more on this later), but at the time I undertook the fast with the idea that this was somehow intensifying my faith, which in turn would help secure the desired outcome. And the team member did end up qualifying, and I even convinced myself there was something demonstrably miraculous about the way that happened. I squirm horribly as I remember that—it was fasting as a kind of magic, or as a form of barter: "Hey, God, how about a deal? We all go without food for twenty-four hours, and in return you answer our prayer."

When I was about 9 years old, a neighbor boy a couple years younger than me was in a diving accident and spent a few days in a coma. A ward fast was held for him. I hated fasting—in my family, you were expected to start observing the fast once you'd been baptized—and I would often find a way to cheat. On the Sunday we were fasting for the neighbor boy, I managed to walk home after church far enough ahead of the rest of my family that I had time to sneak a slice of bread to tide me over until dinner. I silenced the voice of conscience by reminding myself that shortly before, the ward had held a fast for a young woman who had been in a riding accident, and that had turned out all right; so surely my little cheating wouldn't keep this fast from achieving the desired result either.

A few days later, my mother got a phone call and came out to sandbox to tell my brothers and me that the neighbor boy had died. As she walked away, I sat there, pretending to be absorbed in my playing, convinced that the boy's death was my fault. I felt guilty enough to stew over it periodically for the next few years, though not so guilty that I was ever moved to confess to anyone.

If we set aside notions of fasting that boil down to magic, or barter, or body-soul dualism, I believe the practice serves some valuable spiritual functions. Essentially, it functions as an act of solidarity. When my mother goes in for surgery, and I join my family in fasting and praying that the procedure will be a success, every pang of hunger reminds me of her and invites me to be with her in her suffering. Similarly, the monthly fast is an occasion to experience a kind of solidarity—however token—with people who are hungry not by choice but from want. Fasting reminds me that there are people who experience hunger habitually and prompts me to impart of my goods to help. It just occurred to me out of the blue that for someone with a particular concern about body issues in society, the fast could be a way to remember people with eating disorders, people who experience hunger routinely because they're trying to force their body to meet a certain standard.

The point is: the hunger I experience when I fast is instructive. It teaches me. It's not a way to "get more spiritually in tune" (except to the degree that consciousness of others may get me more spiritually in tune). It's not a way to "show faith" or "sacrifice" for the purpose of pressuring heaven to grant my prayer. Rather, it makes me mindful of the needs of others.

The famous passage on fasting in Isaiah 58 (which appeared in a scripture chain appended to this week's lesson) doesn't having anything at all to say about fasting as abstaining from food. What is the fast I have chosen? God asks. And the answer: to undo heavy burdens, to let the oppressed go free, to break every yoke. (That includes support for gay rights, among a lot of other things.) Also: to share your bread with the hungry, to bring the poor into your house, to not hide yourself from your own flesh. I'm inclined to read that last clause as a synonym for the first two—my "own flesh" being all my brothers and sisters in need. That's, um, pretty demanding. It challenges us to offer a lot more than a fast offering (even a big one) or hours at a church cannery. I'm not really comfortable with the idea of bringing the poor into my house, though I suppose it depends on who we're talking about. Of course, knowing Jesus, the people we're talking about are the people I'm most not comfortable about having over.

I need to move on to other tasks. But there are my thoughts for the day on fasting.