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It is only a matter of days before Good Friday and Easter are upon us again. During this season of Lent, the discipline of fasting is often encouraged. It is not coincidental that in our context, it comes soon after the festivities and feasting of the Lunar New Year.
Fasting, however, is not only abstinence from food. It is first of all a discipline, a word that has its roots in learning, or of being a student. In other words, the purpose of a spiritual discipline, as fasting, is for the purpose of learning and being. In order to be, one has to learn. Fasting is not an end in itself; it has a purpose. The reason one abstains (from anything) is so that one can become a person who is clearer about whom he or she is as a child of God. It was John Wesley who said that when one fasts, it is “unto God.” Our aim is that God may teach us, through the discipline, in order to shape us to be like Him.
There is a subtle, yet deceptive, side to the practise of spiritual disciplines. It can become all very self-centered. Health programmes do subscribe to fasting but it is all about “me” becoming fitter, healthier and better looking. One can practice the discipline of prayer, but only so that one can be effective at extracting from God what one needs, forgetting that prayer is essentially communion with Him. The discipline of Scripture can become a means to be knowledgeable about spiritual things that may in the end only puff one up.
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