Food and Spiritual State

The first commandment given to Adam and Eve can be seen as abstaining from one type of food; the tree of knowledge of good and evil (Gen 2:16-17).

From the beginning, God allowed Adam and Eve to only eat from herbs and fruits:

“And God said, “See, I have given you every herb that yields seed which is on the face of all the earth, and every tree whose fruit yields seed; to you it shall be for food.” (Gen 1:29)

After the flood, the restriction was relaxed to allow the eating of meat

“Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you. I have given you all things, even as the green herbs.” (Gen 9:3)

This shows that food and spiritual state are linked. In addition, we find that fasting was the way of the prophets of the Old Testaments. Moses fasted 40 days before receiving the Ten Commandments (Exodus 24:16-18). The story of Daniel and the three young men that chose fasting to remain faithful to God in a spiritual way (Daniel 1). Elijah fasted 40 days before he met the Lord (1 Kings 19).

What Satisfies Us

Before we talk about why we should fast, we need to understand our original state and how it is different than our current state.

We were created on the image of God. Our rest comes only from being with Him and focused on Him. St. Athanasius describes the first man as: “having at the beginning had his mind to God-ward in a freedom unembarrassed by shame”¹ Another way to look at our original state is that we are machines and our fuel is God and the contemplation on God.

Sin changed all that. Instead of being God centric, we became self-centered and material centered. Again, St. Athanasius describes it in the following way: “For he also, as long as he kept his mind to God, and the contemplation of God, turned away from the contemplation of the body.”²

Today, the tendency of the body is to seek its own pleasures and to focus on one’s self, which is contrary to our purpose, destiny, and what makes us happy. This is why we feel the internal struggle described by St. Paul in Romans chapters 6 & 7. The body has certain desires that it tries to fulfill and the spirit has spiritual desires that are in conflict with those of the body.

“For I do not do the good I want,

but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing.

Now if I do what I do not want,

it is no longer I who do it,

but sin that dwells within me.” (Romans 7:19-20)

Our goal as Christians is to let the spirit flourish and succeed over the body and that the body participates in the worship and struggle against sin.