Intermittent fasting? Try the 5th century playbook

Lent is upon us – those 40 days of voluntary masochism that we moderns have mercifully put behind us. Or have we?

Julie Canlis

Julie connects Christian spirituality with ordinary life in Wenatchee, Washington State, where she teaches and writes.

A wine glass of water sits on an empty clean plate.

Daylight fasting.

Jean Fortunet, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Fasting, at least in the health world, is no longer a derogatory term but one in vogue. Particularly the merits of the restricted diet, in which you limit the amount of time you eat either to a day (e.g. to an eight-hour window) or a week (e.g. skip eating on two different days). The latter approach, maybe surprisingly, follows in the footsteps of our religious forebears, who fasted every Wednesday and Friday. Could it be that they’d figured out a practice we are just discovering? And what else were they trying to achieve?

To a medieval peasant in Britain, Lent ratcheted up the twice-weekly fast. It was 40 days of a vegan diet, that often increased in intensity as the body adjusted (though the pregnant, young, sick and old were exempt). Lent also issued in much cultural creativity. Who knew that Cathedral at Rouen was a Lenten by-product, as those desperate for butter could get a dispensation by contributing financially to the Butter Towers (as they became known)? And Britons may have Lent to thank for both black peas, a Lancastrian delicacy, and fish & chips, as cooks were challenged to keep Lenten menus interesting.

Despite our caricatures of Lent as a dour and draconian time, it was essential to the enjoyment of medieval life. The purpose of Lent was not the denial but the renewal of pleasure. Maybe it’s precisely that aspect that has echoed through the centuries, manifesting now in our punishing diets, Tough Mudder races, and endurance stunts. Isn’t that a bit part of why we (well, some of us) do them?

This article was first published on March 15 2023.

'One of the principal rhythms of medieval life was this move from feasting to fasting to feasting again.'

Our modern fascination with fasting can also receive wisdom from Lent, which is that fasting for its own sake will always lead to something unhealthy. It must be for the purpose of something greater. Our forebears worried that physical practices could become idolatry, when wrenched out of their context of repentance. As G. K. Chesterton remarked,

'Physical nature must not be made the direct object of obedience; it must be enjoyed, not worshipped.'

The Old Testament prophets were particularly grumpy about this, insisting that fasting would do no good if it did not also help you love your neighbour more. Or as the early third-century Christians who fled from Roman excess into the deserts remarked,

'If you fast regularly, do not be inflated with pride; if you think highly of yourself because of it, then you had better eat meat.'

Fasting on its own will not make us better people, though we might shed a few pounds. Fasting is to restore the pleasure not only to eating, but also to the soul in need of God. Interesting that one of the primary biblical metaphors for a lively spiritual life is that of feasting and eating. Fasting resets the soul with repentance. It is praying with our body. It is not a negation but a purgation of desire – not denying our desires but resetting them. C.S. Lewis wondered whether our desires are not too strong, but too weak.

'We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered to us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.'

So if you’ve considered intermittent fasting, or even if not but you feel you might need a more balanced perspective on pleasure, consider the Lenten playbook. Feast and fast cyclically. Do it for a greater purpose than just losing weight. Let it change and reset your true desires. And maybe, just maybe, you might discover God waiting for you at the root of all your desires.

Article

Assisted dying

Care

Creed

Death & life

19 November 2024

5 min read

“Shortening death” sidesteps the real battle

We need to do more than protest bad deaths, we need to protest death itself, it's more than biological.

Tom Dove

Tom is a physician and completing a theology doctorate.

A hand drapes over the side of an object out of shot.

Michael Schaffler on Unsplash.

What is “death”? It’s surprising the term has received little attention in the assisted dying discussion so far, because more hangs on the answer than one might expect. At a press briefing, Kim Leadbeater MP stated that the assisted dying bill she is proposing is about “shortening death, not ending life.”

But what meaning does “death” have here?

The current bill defines neither “death” nor “dying.” Granted, it implies a biological definition. The bill speaks of administering approved substances to “cause that person’s death” and of capacity and decision-making around “ending life.” These fit the understanding of death with which the medical profession operates—death is the point in time when the combined functions required for human life cease. It is a one-time event, the end of physiology, and so is recognised by a combination of physical signs.

Death, then, is a diagnosis.

So, too, “dying”—though here the waters are murkier. Setting aside sudden deaths, medical talk of dying takes us out of binary territory. Dying speaks of a process, of the “terminal phase.” Within medicine a diagnosis of dying heralds the expectation that a person’s death will occur within hours or days. And so, the focus shifts. The task of care is no longer the coordinated work of investigation, preserving life, and treating symptoms. Now attention is on bringing relief to the process of dying.

The bill seems wise to much of this. Though definitions of death and dying are absent, the bill does define terminal illness—“an inevitably progressive condition which cannot be reversed by treatment” and from which the event of death “can reasonably be expected within 6 months.” And so, it clearly distinguishes terminal illness from biological death and, implicitly, from dying.

Of course, terminal illness and biological death are related. Terminal illness is irreversible, and where terminal illness leads is death. Or, you might say, it leads to the end of life. Apart from the timescale of six months, the same may be said of ageing: ageing is irreversible, and where ageing leads is death. This is why Kim Leadbeater’s comment was puzzling to me. I suspect what she really meant was “shortening terminal illness.” If so, this is confusing because, within the framework of the bill, “shortening terminal illness” and “ending life” are identical. It seems she was getting at something else.

“It seems odd that in the name of eliminating suffering, we eliminate the sufferer.”

Stanley Hauerwas

I suspect Kim Leadbeater was echoing a conviction at home in the Christian faith. That is, try as we might to keep death at a distance and restrict it to a faraway frontier, the life of human beings involves death. I don’t simply mean the biological death we witness—the deaths of friends, relatives, or even strangers. I mean death intrudes upon the way we experience life. Death is more than simply biological.

The fear of death belongs in this category. For some, the impending loss of relationships and joys casts a shadow over life, giving birth to apprehension. Death is not simply a factual matter but something that exerts power and influence. Or take disease and illness. Built into the notion of terminal illness is the idea that the sickness borne by a human body will ultimately bring about that body’s death. That body already speaks of its death. Death is making itself felt in advance.

And so, death is more than a biological event. Even living things can bear the marks of death.

This is no novel claim. The creation account recorded in the Bible says that in the beginning, there was good. But an intruder appears. In the wake of humanity’s choice to go its own way rather than the way of its Maker, death arrives on the scene. And death is an imposter—not simply a physiological fact at the end of the road, but a destructive and alien presence in God’s good world.

Understood in this way, death is not something that God intends humans simply submit to. Death is something to protest. This is why Kim Leadbeater’s comment gets at something important: this kind of death should be protested. The marks of death should not be accommodated, because they do not belong to the goodness of what God has made.

At the heart of the Christian faith is God’s own ultimate protest against the force of death. Christians celebrate that God himself came in the man Jesus to “destroy death.” This is plainly more than biological. Jesus came to free humanity from the entirety of death’s grip. Hence why, when Jesus speaks of “eternal life” he means more than endless biological existence. He means liberation from all the havoc that death brings to bear within God’s world. To the Christian imagination, the power of death must be protested because God protested it first.

The question is how to protest death. Within the framework of the bill, shortening death or terminal illness is identical with ending life. This is the only form protesting death can take.

But the Christian faith makes a far more radical claim: God alone overcame death by dying. This is the point: Jesus was the one—the only one—who emerged resurrected victor in the contest with the power of death. In seeing his death and resurrection, an unshakeable hope emerges. Death is not the victor. And this hope stands above our present experience of death—in whatever form—and, at the same time, calls us to join the protest.

Ethicist Stanley Hauerwas once wrote: “it seems odd that in the name of eliminating suffering, we eliminate the sufferer.” I have deliberately avoided discussing suffering, not least because it would take me too far afield. Yet Hauerwas has put his finger on what I’m getting at. Protesting death—in the big sense—belongs to the Christian faith. Protesting suffering and pain, economic and racial injustice, fractured relationships and broken societies, are all part of this protest. But can eliminating those who live within the shadow of death be part of this protest? I think not. The Christian faith believes there is only one who can overcome death in this way, and that is God himself—who has already done it.