On Digging Your Own Grave

“Man digs his grave with his knife and fork.” This old bit of wisdom encapsulates a very contemporary truth. We eat too much. Period. End of story. What we as a society need is not a new pill to suppress appetite, nor a new exercise machine, nor a new brand of potato chips fried in “no-cal” grease. What we as a society need is some old-fashioned self-restraint. We’re killing ourselves with our knives and forks.

In the last century, the big advances in medicine were in surgery and drug development. The science of nutrition, alas, has lagged far behind, and only now are we beginning to see the connection between a lifetime of overeating and the modern plagues of the Western world: heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure, and others. But too often the prescription for these chronic ailments is an expensive pill instead of a simple change in lifestyle. Not without insight did an ancient cynic observe that “Man lives off one-quarter of what he eats, and the doctor lives off the other three-quarters.”

And so enters Dr. Orthodoxy with her time-worn prescription: fasting. Great Lent has come again, the “Forty-days” of fasting—some seven weeks of eating lower on the food chain, eating less overall, and eating not at all as we prepare ourselves for the different liturgies of the season. Unfortunately, far too many of us greet Great Lent with a groan and a roll of the eyes. “Yeah, right. Fasting. No meat, no cheese, no fun. Seven weeks of self-inflicted torment. Hallelujah.”

This attitude is fed by a severe misunderstanding of the purpose of fasting. Lenten fasting is not a form of punishment, and not a way to atone for sins. We don’t win brownie points with the Almighty by racking up days of growling stomachs. In fact, self-inflicted pain is never a way to impress God. Jesus’ self-sacrificial pain on the Cross was enough for eternity: we don’t presume to add to it. Fasting is a penance, yes; but penances are not “punishments,” any more than physical therapy to help an bodily injury is a punishment.

Fasting—far from being a burden—is meant to be a joy. Fasting, properly done, does not lead to weakness and lethargy. Quite the opposite, people who fast intelligently report feelings of lightness and energy. Sure, there are hunger pangs, but there are ways to lessen their intensity, and even these become manageable as our bodies adjust to a smaller intake of food. This is the purpose of Great Lent—to designate a time when we can give ourselves an excuse to eat less and—for many of us—to eat better and consequently to feel better. If you take nothing else away from this article, remember this: the rules of our Church are for your benefit, not for your punishment!

Did you ever see an Orthodox bishop’s staff up close? It’s not a shepherd’s crook, like the crozier of Western prelates—which is to say, it is not an instrument of chastisement. It is the caduceus, the symbol of the healer, with two serpents intertwined around the staff. In Orthodox theology, the bishop is a living icon of Christ the Great Physician. And the Church is primarily a hospital, where mankind receives healing from its fallen condition.

This healing, of course, is first of all a spiritual healing. But the welfare of spirit and body are interdependent, as most ancient philosophical traditions recognize. You cannot treat physical conditions without thinking about the patient’s spiritual situation, and you cannot overcome spiritual problems (like depression, attention deficits, hysteria, and so on) without considering physical issues like diet and lifestyle. The ancient Greeks, for example, thought carefully about how physical health was affected by diet, sleep habits, and even the kind of music that a patient listened to! We have lost this balanced approach to human nature as a psychosomatic unity, with the result that many doctors nowadays treat conditions rather than patients. (How often I have seen this in my hospital visits!)

Fasting, therefore, is a part of every ancient philosophy. The body, overburdened with food, can weigh down the spirit. Is it merely coincidence that the rates of obesity and of depression are both going up in our society? And so the hospital of Orthodoxy asks that every patient—according to his ability—try to cut down on food for a season, and especially on the heavier foods: meats, cheeses, fried foods and fatty things in general. The nearly vegetarian diet of Lent is not to hurt or weaken you: it is to help and strengthen you. Most of us could live quite nicely on a fraction of the food we take in every day, but we never give ourselves a chance to discover that.

In our theology, it is significant that the primordial sin of Adam and Eve was accomplished through overeating, in a sense. Whereas other Christian communions focus on sexual sin as the original no-no, in our Church gluttony is viewed as the source of many other sins, including lack of sexual restraint. For this same reason, the focus of our ascetic exercise is primarily dietary. In some other churches, Lent is a time to “give up” or “sacrifice” non-food items or activities, such as watching a favorite TV show, reading the sports page, or playing cards. Orthodox Christians do not make these kinds of commitments for Lent: if an activity is spiritually dangerous, we should never be doing it; and if it isn’t, then “giving it up for Lent” won’t help us, will it? I repeat, Lent is not about “suffering for Jesus.” Jesus doesn’t need your self-inflicted pain.

In the Bible, of course, the word “fasting” is very often found after the word “prayer.” “Prayer and fasting,” says Christ, are the only medicine for certain kinds of spiritual oppressions. And so the hospital of Orthodoxy also commends to us extra times of prayer in Lent, both personal and corporate (i.e., alone and in church). At home, both morning and evening, we are asked to pray the Prayer of Saint Ephraim. And there are many extra services at church during the week. We mentioned above how the ancients used different kinds of music to heal sicknesses of the soul: the hymns of Lent and Holy Week are specially attuned to address the needs of those in suffering. There is no more beautiful season of song in our Church than Lent.

Come, pray along, and be healed! Lent is for you. Put down your knife and fork and live a little!