Fasting is Where Things Get Real

I read Heather King fairly often and have cited her before. This article, however, really brings home why it is so important to fast. This Lent I gave up coffee. I have never been a coffee drinker but this past year I have really acquired a taste for it and very much appreciate the good kick in the pants I get from it. Not having coffee has been very difficult this Lent and the tension I feel when I want it really badly does make me desperate to lash out. I am in crisis because of the tension built up within me and my need to take it out somehow and usually on someone. As Heather puts it, “Fasting is where things get real.”

Fasting reminds us that our culture is one giant narcotic and if we don’t pay attention, we can skate through our whole lives anesthetized, asleep, numb. Fasting reminds us that Christianity is not to continue to do what we’ve always done while tacking on a nominal good intention or two. Christianity is not a gesture. Christianity is not a vague wish for goodwill. Christianity is to be stripped, in the name of love, of all that is familiar, safe, anodyne, and nailed to a cross.

Thank you Heather for making it real. Read more here.