1 Because of Christ and the Church

first, we fast because Jesus clearly expected us to. As innumerable commentators over the centuries have pointed out, the text mentioned in the introduction (Matt. 6:16, which provides the title of this book), says when, not if. Our Lord clearly expected that His disciples would continue the Jewish practice of fasting.

The second reason is that the Church commands us to fast.

It’s easy to miss how countercultural that statement is. It stands in complete opposition to contemporary American religiosity or spirituality. That someone might change his lifestyle or alter her eating habits if told to do so by their doctor is accepted. However,

the idea that someone would do so simply because he or she had been told to do so by the Church would sound strange.

The garden-variety church-going American (an increasingly endangered species) treats church like a shopping mall. They are in the market for entertaining worship services, a nonjudgmental congregation, and sermons that are socially conscious and politically correct. Criteria such as sound doctrine, profoundly beautiful worship, and rigorous moral demands usually don’t make the list.

When it comes to faith, most people pick and choose what they like from church and gospel and ignore the rest. There’s even a name for such people: “cafeteria Christians.” To be selected, a church must offer an “open and affirming,” nonjudgmental attitude toward any “lifestyle choices” they’ve made. As far back as 1937, American theologian H. Reinhold Niebuhr summarized the American “gospel” thus: “A God without wrath [bringing] men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross.”4

By contrast, the Orthodox Church offers a call to

4 H. Reinhold Niebuhr, The Kingdom of God in America (New York: Harper & Row, 1959 [1937]), 193.