Glutton-Free: Cultivating a Theology of Enough
Part 13: The Path of Pleasant Pain
In Winning the Food Fight, Pastor Steve Willis challenges us:
“One cannot help connecting the spiritual dots between our national obsession with food and our lack of fasting. Food has such a stronghold on the American church that even its leaders don’t discipline themselves when it comes to abstaining for spiritual reasons. Simply stated, we don’t fast because we are addicted to physical pleasures.” (Willits, Loc 2802).
Our physical appetite is an analogy of our ability to control ourselves.
“Self-indulgence is a chameleon. Put it near food and it shades itself like gluttony. Put it near a pretty woman (or a smooth-talking man) and it takes on the colors of lust. Because of this, we cannot afford to think that our eating habits are somehow neutral territory in the fight against sin” (Bower. Pg. 80).
Our eating habits then are like training wheels. They help us practice self-control. Once we become accustomed to saying no to food while fasting or to certain foods because they are unhealthy it becomes easier to deny our fleshly desires in other areas. Fasting helps us learn the self-control to say no to all forms of self-indulgence.
The Spiritual Survival Handbook contains the most profound thing I ever read about fasting: that although it is not always pleasant, we can choose to fast “if only to exercise the ability to combat our craving for immediate gratification.”
Perhaps that is why Piper calls fasting “the path of pleasant pain” (Piper, Pg 10).
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