Finding Our Hearts (Fasting V)

Our bodies are connected to our hearts. What we do with our bodies matters. As Paul said, “I plead with you to give your bodies to God because of all He has done for you…This is truly the way to worship Him.”[1] You will notice, for example, that each of the three areas—food, technology, and buying—is connected to what we do with our bodies. As we fast, we train ourselves to live from our spirit and not from the varied impulses of our body, with its endless hungers and lusts. 

It’s not just about mastering the body; it’s about putting our soul in a constant state of trust in the “enough-ness” of God. It’s all about the posture of our heart. I have slowly been learning this reality over my lifetime and especially since meeting and marrying my wife, Rebecca. 

When she and I started dating, I committed to her not to watch pornography.[2] I kept the commitment, but I found that I was often looking to throw curve balls past my conscience. Okay, I won’t watch pornography, but is X (whatever X might be) over the line? Is reading a salacious article—text without any images—a violation of conscience? I’d be on a website that wasn’t pornographic, but the articles took my brain to a salacious place. I found that I engaged in all sorts of behavior which, while technically in bounds and “following the rules,” still violated my conscience. I was going to get away with as much as I could! So I had to keep making new guidelines for myself about what was in bounds and what was out. 

One night I found myself looking through the descriptions of a number of crude movies on Netflix which I could watch. Even if I wasn’t going to, the thought was alluring. The posture of my heart was hungry to indulge, full of lust and longing, and though I didn’t watch any of the movies, I realized later it wasn’t about the letter of the law. Though it was far better not to watch, it wasn’t simply about that alone. I violated my conscience simply by dancing toward an inner belief: I need this and I deserve this. Even if I didn’t technically break the rule, the posture of my heart had drifted deeply into the belief that I wasn’t going to be okay without pornography and, more generally, without having things on my own terms. I wanted the power of knowing I couldindulge if I wanted to. I wanted to dance with my entitlement and that I didn’t have to say “no” if I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to have to depend on God’s enough-ness. It’s always about the posture of our heart, and I violated the spirit without violating the letter.  

I have friends who watch shows with content I cannot watch because I know what it would do to my brain. But I don’t judge the posture of their heart, and I know and trust that they are walking according to their conscience.[3] Each of us must ask, Where do I not believe that God is enough? Again, the root of any temptation, including the first temptation in Genesis 3 and the three temptations of Jesus in Matthew 4, is that God is not truly good. The invitation of darkness is always to believe that God is not enough for our souls. 

You must come to know you will be perfectly okay.[4] We must come to the place of knowing I am perfectly okay without this food, this sugar, this having, this buying, this spending, this screen, this Facebook, this noise. As you fast, just as when you turn away from temptation, you have an opportunity to discover that your soul is perfectly okay in God. Fasting is about increasing this confidence, this capacity of knowing, that God is enough. Ultimately, fasting will increase our capacity for awe and wonder and our ability to live into that second discipleship question, “How can You be so good?” How can You be so good, God, to be enough for my soul? How can You be so good that I don’t need this, that, or the other to be content?

Fasting, then, is a way of living beyond a life of mere comfort into a life led, as Paul says, “by the Spirit.”[5] As we are led by the Spirit, God will free our hearts. We will become outposts of the Reign of God who can make present the love of Jesus for those all around us. The world needs people who aren’t overly rigid or overly indulgent, but who demonstrate the power of delight, restraint, and thanksgiving. Such people can reveal the joy of knowing God’s generous heart. 

May it be so in us.

For all of these readings in one place, order my book 'Learning to Live and Love Like Jesus.'

[1]Romans 12:2.

[2]A noble venture since pornography destroys the brain. See, for example, Hypofrontality: How Using Porn Destroys Your Willpowerby L. Gilkerson. http://www.covenanteyes.com/2014/02/28/hypofrontality [January 10, 2018].

[3]Romans 13-14, I Corinthians 8.

[4]I feel sure I heard or read Dallas Willard make some such statement, but I can’t find a source reference for it.

[5]E.g., Romans 8:9, 14.

The Challenge (Fasting IV)

What are some areas for fasting? We simply need to look to God’s good gifts in the world. Remember, fasting is detaching, for a season, from the good things to which we’ve become (or might become) overly attached. It’s recognizing and correcting over-dependence. As Tim Keller says, idolatry—the great sin of Israel which serves as a warning to us—is making any good thing into an ultimate thing.[1] It’s bending our knee to something and asking it do something which it was never meant to do. Take food, for example. Enjoying food is a good thing, meant to delight our souls. But over-indulging and abusing it—trying to make food our emotional savior—can be crippling. A relationship with a spouse is a good thing, meant to shape us and teach us about God’s love within a covenantal relationship. But when we make that (or any other relationship) the place from which we get our sense of identity or our ultimate emotional security, it can put a strain on the relationship which ends up corrupting the relationship itself.[2] We are meant to have an inner sense of self in God which frees us from finding our identity elsewhere. 

Unfortunately, our human hearts will often wrest (or try to wrest, anyway) a sense of security and stability from good things, trying to make them into ultimate things. Here are three basic categories for good things we are meant to enjoy but which we might also misuse.

Food and drink  

         including alcohol, sugar, junk food, and so on 

Technology 

including screen time, social media, and various forms of entertainment 

Shopping and spending 

         including anything we don’t really need 

These three categories are not definitive nor do they cover everything from which we might fast, but they do cover quite a bit. You might fast from food for a day, or you might fast from sugar for a month or more. You might adjust your diet to eat only fruit and vegetables and proteins for a time (though consult with your doctor before doing so). You might limit or fast from consuming media—the TVor the Internet, for example. Or you might put down your smart phone except for using it to communicate with others (the original use of a phone before they became super-computers available to us at all hours). You might fast, as I said above, from buying anything non-essential for a period of time.

But again, these categories are not comprehensive. I remember, at one point in my life, being so concerned with reading and study that I was perhaps becoming overly attached to it. Then I read the words of Ecclesiastes: “…my child, let me give you some further advice: Be careful, for writing books is endless, and much study wears you out.”[3] Not only did I read these words of Scripture, but they also read me; they pierced me, and I took a period of time to fast from reading. Reading, of course, is a great thing, but I was becoming so attached to my process of study. I was overly concerned with sounding smart, and it was crowding out space in my soul.[4]

Fasting from reading is an unusual fast, and indeed, you might need to choose an unconventional fast that is specific and meaningful for you. This, too, takes discernment and listening to God’s Spirit. While our hearts are uniquely the same, the shape of our souls is different. Whatever the case, the goal, above all, is to experience freedom in our soul, such that we experience God’s nearness and are empowered to love as He does. To that end, look over each of the three areas above, as a starting point, and take a moment to note the place(s) in your life where you most incline toward hedonism. Write it/them down in the margins of this page. 

Now, here’s the challenge: choose one thing from which you will fast in the next month.

You get to set the parameters—what and how and for how long. Make sure it’s something that’s a challenge for your soul. Something that will make you a bit (or a good bit) uncomfortable. Set the time when you will begin and end, in advance, and when the times comes, engage the fast with commitment and curiosity. Commit to see it all the way through, which will create self-confidence, and engage it with curiosity, to see what you learn during the fast.

Finally, while you are fasting, notice each time you are gripped by the longing for the thing from which you are fasting. When that happens, just notice, without judging, the impulse. And then, ground yourself in prayer by saying: “I want X (whatever X may be), but I redirect that energy and longing to You, God. You are enough for my soul. Help me become open to you.” Repeat this process over and over: notice your desire, then release it, directing your energy back toward God. As you practice this, you will expand the capacity of your soul to walk in trust before God. 

For all of these readings in one place, order my book 'Learning to Live and Love Like Jesus.'

[1]Keller, Timothy. Counterfeit Gods: The Empty Promises of Money, Sex, and Power and the Only Hope That Matters. Viking Press, New York, NY. 2009. See Chapter 1.

[2]Our ultimate sense of self cannot come from any other human being. It must come from a source that transcends any person. In Christian thought, transcendence comes in experiencing love or beauty, which are signs pointing to the ultimate Love and the ultimate Beauty, God. 

[3]Ecclesiastes 12:12.

[4]To fast from reading then was fasting from the lust and hedonistic pleasure of wanting to appear smart. Cf. 1 John 2:16. 

Hedonism and Moralism (Fasting III)

Spiritual life is about learning to think in both-ands.[1] It’s about holding tension. For example: “There is pain in the world,” and  “God is good.” When you can think in both-ands, you can find surer footing on the path with God. But walking in tension is not easy. It can feel like walking on a knife’s edge.[2] We are, for example, called to enjoy the pleasures of life and to avoid over-indulgence. We are called to be a people of delight without becoming slaves to pleasure. If you fall too far on either side, you’ll become a dour-faced prude or a wild hedonist. Moralism (the belief you can make life work by being good enough/getting everything right/earning God’s approval) on one hand or hedonism (the misuse and abuse of pleasure) on the other is always the pattern, as one of Jesus’ greatest parables makes clear. We call it “The Parable of the Prodigal,” but it’s really “The Parable of Two Sons.” Each son in Jesus’ story represents how challenging it is to walk in the anxiety of our humanity without resorting to moralism or hedonism in an attempt to control it.[3]

 The younger son turns hedonist, demanding his inheritance early (a galactic insult to his father) and promptly wasting it on wild partying, with “friends” and prostitutes. While his younger brother focuses on illicit pleasure, the older son remains at home and remains a staunch moralist, focused on playing by the rules.[4]  Each extreme, moralism or hedonism, provides the sense of control which our ego desperately craves—control through either the power of certainty/being right (the allure of moralism) or through being able to drown out, even temporarily, our sorrows (the allure of hedonism). Being right or numbing out each has is its own sort of “high,” its own type of transcendence. Each allows us, in a way, to feel invulnerable to and powerful over our inner doubts and insecurities. 

But as followers of Jesus, rather than bouncing back and forth from moralism to hedonism, we are called to turn from both and learn to live in a new place altogether, balancing delight with restraint and discipline with joy. This turns out to take quite a bit of work and a tremendous development of character! What’s the difference between enjoying another glass of wine and abusing alcohol? What’s the line between “one more cookie,” as an act of enjoyment, and gluttony? Or between giving to someone versus becoming codependent with them? It all comes down to conscience; it requires sensitivity to what defiles your conscience and what aligns your conscience with God. No one can write a rulebook for the nuances of spiritual life. It demands, rather, being led by God’s Spirit. It means being led by love, for only when we are in alignment with our own conscience and God’s Spirit are we fully empowered to love others as Jesus does.[5] This will mean a balance of the practice of delight with the cultivation of restraint and self-discipline, and listening always to what is needed in any given moment.

Ultimately, we can only walk this path—the path of life in the Spirit—when we have a healthy God-image. This is perhaps the most stunning message of Jesus’ parable: both sons are on the estate and in the house with the Father, yet neither son understands their Father’s heart! One sees his father as some prudish fuddy-duddy under whose nose he has to sneak fun, the other as a curmudgeonly judge demanding that he get everything right. Each image is a fantasy within their own mind. Neither reflects the heart of their good father. Yet their view determines the course of their story.

In other words, within our practice of delight and discipline, our view of God is revealed. If we are too rigid in our conduct, we do not see the God of all love and delight. If we are too loose in our behavior, we do not see the Holy God who loves us and will never let our soul settle for less than freedom. We must see, at once, both the God who is Generous Father, desiring our joy and our delight, and also the Holy Lover who will not allow us to hide ourselves or numb out through the abuse of pleasure. We must learn to walk the middle path of delight and restraint. If we aren’t trained to live there with God, we may—like these sons—be discontent with how seldom we experience the fullness of God, even though He is quite near to us.

This is why fasting is so crucial. It helps us live in the middle ground. We've pushed back against moralism through The Jesus Paradigm, by making it clear that God’s completed work of adoption cannot be earned, it can only be received. All we can do is learn to say “yes” back to the “yes” God has spoken to us in Jesus. We push back against religious rigidity or legalism by becoming, for example, a people of delight, as we discussed as a part of Sabbath, and by feasting, an expression of hospitality.[6] But we also need a way to push back against hedonism. 

Fasting, then, is a course corrector. It’s a way of checking in on our souls and noticing the attachments and affections our soul is developing. If our soul becomes over-attached to any good thing, or “loves the world” too much, it can be detrimental to our spiritual transformation.[7] Jesus said, “Where your heart is, there will your treasure be.”[8] James K.A. Smith piggybacks on the idea, saying “You are what you love.”[9] We need to be aware of what our heart is growing to love, knowing that lesser love can ultimately crowd out our greater love, even the love of God Himself. We need a way to keep our hearts from losing their posture of surrender before Jesus as Lord. 

Having a lord, after all, means losing your rights and your entitlement. It means we don’t get to say “yes” to everything just because we want it. Indeed, it means learning to say “no.” Abram said “no” to comfort and “yes” to surrender and trust by leaving Ur—and every familiarity and comfort he had known—and going to a land he did not know.[10] When Mary was faced with the great discomfort of bearing a baby and appearing to all the world like a loose, ungodly woman, for the sake of bearing God’s life in the world, she said, “I am the servant of the Lord’s, let it be to me according to your word.”[11] Paul called himself a “bondservant”—a slave—of Christ Jesus.[12] What kind of posture is that, in all three of them? It’s a posture of someone who has surrendered entitlement and made themself a servant. This is the posture of a disciple! In the Western world, we are constantly bombarded with the message, “You are the center of the universe” and “You deserve it.” A disciple of Jesus does not accept this message. They submit their life, instead, to the lordship of Jesus himself, embracing delight and restraint at the same time, as an act of worship before God.[13]

We are always walking this line: between delight without abusing pleasure, and discipline without becoming rigid.[14] Delight keeps us from being Puritanical, fasting keeps us from being hedonistic. The only way we can walk this line is by the Spirit. Sometimes having that extra cupcake misses the mark (the literal definition of sin), sometimes it doesn’t. Caring for the poor and those in need is a constant scriptural command, but knowing how much to give and when and how takes wisdom.[15] This is not nit picking. It’s in these intimate places and decisions of human heart that matter. If we can learn to be faithful even in what seem like little decisions, the habit of faithfulness will bloom in all of our lives. As Jesus said, “If you are faithful in little things, you will be faithful in large ones.”[16]

In fasting, we find a way to enter into this training of becoming faithful that, ultimately, we would become fruitful.[17]

For all of these readings in one place, order my book 'Learning to Live and Love Like Jesus.'

[1]Remember, for example: God is three and one, All-powerful and All-vulnerable, human and divine, and on and on.

[2]It is far easier to live “painting by numbers,” living by rigid laws, than following our conscience, led by the Holy Spirit. But in some situations, follow our conscience is exactly what we must do, as Scripture attests. In Romans 13-14 and I Corinthians 8, for example, Paul says that certain sins are a matter of conscience, not a matter of clear right and wrong. We tend to be much more comfortable with clear binaries (a or b, in/out, right/wrong), but such simplistic thinking can actually prevent us from walking in God’s Spirit. We actually need God and not just a rule! 

[3]Our anxiety stems, as discussed in the first chapter, about whether we are really “in.” Do we really have a place or a future in which we can be ourselves without fear? Are we truly seen, known, and loved? Our anxiety stems from the fear that we will not have such a place nor know such a reality. 

[4]See Luke 15:11-32.

[5]Cf. Romans 8, Romans 13:10.

[6]See “Heart of Sabbath” in ‘Chapter 9: The Slow Life: Sabbath.’

[7]I John 2:15.

[8]Matthew 6:21.

[9]Smith, James K.A. Smith. You Are What You Love: The Spiritual Power of Habit. Brazos Press. Ada, MI. 2016.

[10]Hebrews 11:8.

[11]Luke 1:38, ESV.

[12]Romans 1:1.

[13]See John 14:15, Romans 12:2.

[14]Cf., in philosophy, Aristotle’s Golden Mean.

[15]See, for example, When Helping Hurts: How to Alleviate Poverty Without Hurting the Poorby Steve Corbett and Brian Fikkert. Moody Publishers. Chicago, IL. 2014.

[16]Luke 16:10.

[17]Again, the message of John 15:1-11 is that only in submission and obedience do we become fruitful. Not exactly the mantra of the Western world with its focus on me-first and unrestrained independence.