Recently in Fasting Category

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This is the fourth in a series of posts looking at the implications of the fact that we are fully embodied beings created in the image of God.  We have body and soul - but these are not separable entities. (The third, on Science and Christian Virtue, contains links to the first two on Science and Sin.)

I will get back to NT Wright and his development of the idea of Christian Virtue, but today I would like to focus on Scot's book Fasting: The Ancient Practices. I don't want to review  the book (which is excellent) here, but use it as a focus point for what it means to think of humans as "organic unities" (a term I picked up from Scot's book).

Here is how Scot introduces the idea in connection with fasting:

The thesis of this work is simple: a unified perception of body, soul, spirit, and mind creates a spirituality that includes the body. For this kind of body image, fasting is natural. Fasting is the body talking what the Spirit yearns, what the soul longs for, and what the mind knows to be true. It is body talk - not the body simply talking for the spirit, for the mind, or for the soul in some symbolic way, but for the person, the whole person, to express herself or himself completely. Fasting is one way you and I bring our entire selves into complete expression. The Bible, because it advocates clearly that the person - heart, soul, mind, spirit, body - is embodied as a unity, assumes that fasting as body talk is inevitable. (p. 11)

The core idea here - that a unified perception of body, soul, spirit, and mind creates a spirituality that includes the body - has profound implications for worship, for spirituality (including fasting), and for discipleship. For one thing, discipleship should lead us concern for the bodily well being of others.  The command to love God is not an issue for intellectual assent, but a command for whole life transformation; loving others is not cerebral  empathy - but a matter requiring concrete action.

This leads to the question I would like to ponder today.

What are the key ways that a unified perception of body, soul, spirit, and mind impact worship, spirituality, and discipleship? 

Or - to put it another way (thanks Scot):

Where are you seeing dualism in Christian worship, in spirituality and in discipleship? What does dualism look like?

The good folks at Englewood Review of Books and I tried something: an interview on Twitter.

The "twinterview" was about our Fasting: The Ancient Practices book, and Josh has an amazingly clever post of the tweets.

 John Frye has just begun a multi-post review about the book, too.

Thanks folks.

What is fasting? Try defining it, and I'll make a suggestion. Go ahead -- in your mind define it.

Here's my suggestion: If, in defining fasting, we are tempted to define fasting as something we do "in order to" get something, I suggest we need to look again at the deepest wells of the Christian fasting tradition: the Bible. In Fasting: The Ancient Practices I suggest that in the Christian tradition we somehow got sidetracked.

Instead of seeing fasting as a discipline we use "in order to" get answers to prayers, "in order to" become more attuned to God, or "in order to" become more spiritual, the Bible's focus is on fasting as a response to life's sacred, grievous moments.

Lent is a time for fasting, but I suspect most of those who spoke of "fasting" were talking about "abstinence" (not the same as what the Bible means by fasting). And now that Lent is over, we can think again about what fasting is.

This book is in a series that is now four books tall: Brian McLaren, Finding Our Way Again, Robert Benson, In Constant Prayer, and Dan Allender, Sabbath. It's a series on the recovering the ancient practices.

As with Advent and even our Holy Week, ideas for a major seasonal shift like Lent can be difficult to come by. This year I want to focus on something simple. I'm going to focus on fasting one day each week. (By the way, I'm not convinced giving up chocolate or TV is a "fast." Those sorts of denials are better called "abstinences." Fasting is a response to something and entails giving up food or even all food and water for a designated period. It does not focus on getting something in return.)

Each week I want to focus on fasting as a response to sin -- original sin and its effects -- as I anticipate Good Friday and the glory of Easter.

And I invite you to prepare for Lent and to participate in Lent (as preparation for Holy Week) by taking a look at Fasting: The Ancient Practices .

Our book on fasting is now available. We worked on this book for about a year; it is one of the volumes in Nelson's The Ancient Practices Series. Phyllis Tickle is the General Editor and other volumes now available are by Brian McLaren and Robert Benson.

I hope you can find a way to use it in your own spiritual disciplines as well as for Lent this year. It is called: Fasting: The Ancient Practices .

Ruth Haley Barton says there is a radical reorientation to fasting in this book, and I'd like you to consider the central thesis of this book that challenges what I call the "instrumental" view of fasting. That is, fasting is something we do in order to get something else, regardless of what the "something else" might be -- including personal growth in spiritual formation.

I propose instead what I call a "responsive" understanding of fasting: that we fast in response to something rather than fast in order to get something.

I [or We] have a book coming out this winter in a series with Thomas Nelson. The series is about returning to ancient practices and my [or our] book is on Fasting. Here is a pdf of the cover ......

Here is a thesis statement in my book on fasting: Fasting is never the central spiritual discipline of the Christian life. Fasting is not a separable spiritual discipline like prayer or study or solitude. Instead, fasting is a physical condition...

Fasting, as we see it in the pages of the Bible, has been appropriated in the Christian tradition in a way that often abandons its biblical sense. In particular, it has become for many today a technique. What do I...

I make a confession: I'm a bit surprised by a trend I'm seeing in some of what I've read about fasting. Most of my time has been spent pondering (1) what the Bible says in its context and how that...

I don't think I've mentioned this -- perhaps I have -- but I'm now at work on a book on fasting. I'm curious what you are all thinking ... good books? stories about fasting? advice you have?...