FASTING

Meaning of Fasting by Ogiri John Ogiri. What is fasting? Every day, every week, some visit prayer houses and they're told to fast-21 days, 7days and so on. Even as I write, some are yet to descend from the mountains where they had gone to pray and fast. These are not bad but the question is 'do they understand what fasting actually entails? Fasting is one of the most commonly observed spiritual exercises in the world today. However, it is interestingly one of the most misunderstood spiritual exercises. When I checked the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, the following definitions popped forward " to abstain from food, to eat sparingly or abstain from some food". In this sense, if one can stay without food or eat sparingly for some time, even if such person remains corrupt, and sinful in thoughts, words and actions, one is sure of being called a committed, serious christian. Indeed, that's the physical meaning of fasting. In order to understand the spiritual meaning of fasting, what true fasting connotes, I had to turn my attention to the prophetic book of Isaiah chapter 58:1-14. In this chapter, the people of Israel wondered why God didn't listen to all their entreaties despite that they had fasted. They forgot that fasting meant more than abstaining from food and wearing sackcloth. When they petitioned God, He replied them through Prophet Isaiah. He directed Isaiah to " cry aloud; do not hold back; lift up your voice like a trumpet; declare to my people their transgression, to the house of Jacob, their sins..." God replied them thus " behold in the day of your fast, you seek your own pleasure and oppress all your workers. Behold you fast only to quarrel and to fight and hit with a wicked fist. Fasting like yours this day will not make your voice to be heard on high. Is such the fast that I choose, a day for a person to humble himself? Is it to bow down his head like a reed and to spread sackcloth and ashes under him? Will you call this a fast and a day acceptable to the lord?" Having berated them, God went ahead to outline what He could accept as true fasting. " Is this not the fast that I choose: to loose the bond of wickedness, to undo the strap of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free and break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover him and not to hide yourself from your own flesh?..." This was the kind of fast that could win them God's favour and blessings. From the foregoing, it is clear that abstaining from food alone is not the kind of fast God wants. In fact, it is safe to state that God doesn't literally want us to stop eating food. He is not merely proposing that we fast from food and water as is the practice with  many of us today. He simply wants us to fast from the evils we do. In other words, to stop sinning. It's not the food we eat and the mountains we climb to pray and fast that matters to him. It's not the 'abracadabra' we utter daily in the name of speaking in tongues that matters to God-we have been doing those in this country since the coming of Christianity in between 18th and 19th century. Nothing has changed much -corruption is still rife, unemployment hasn't left us because some people prefer to allocate job vacancies in government offices to their cronies or those who can pay. People still commit heinous atrocities in the name of religion. Yet we have been abstaining from food and water and praying. This is not what God wants.  He simply wants all of us who pray and fast and yet still perpetrate these evils in government offices and in the society where we live to repent and fast from these evils. As long as we don't change, as long as we don't act to stop the evils we perpetrate, we fast and pray in vain. And if we like, let's stop eating food and drinking water for thousands of days, we can only get one reward and that's, to die from intense hunger and thirst.
Ogiri John Ogiri is a constructive social critic and a believer in the new united Nigeria. He lives in Abuja.