Category: Ethics

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Recent Work on the Virtue of Open-mindedness

By Jim Spiegel

One of my current research projects concerns the virtue of open-mindedness, and recently two of my articles on the subject were published in scholarly journals.  One of these, which appears in the March issue of Theory and Research in Education, discusses several accounts of open-mindedness and defends William Hare’s account against some prominent alternatives, including those of Peter Gardner and Jonathan Adler.  In the essay I also compare and contrast open-mindedness with the related virtue of intellectual humility.

My other article, published in the April issue of Sophia, discusses what I call the paradox of open-mindedness and religious devotion.  To be religiously devout is presumably to be firmly committed to believing in and following God, and this includes behaving virtuously in all respects.  But such commitment seems to rule out openness to changing one’s mind about certain beliefs and values that are entailed in that religious devotion.  Now assuming (as nearly all virtue ethicists and epistemologists do) that open-mindedness is a virtue, this creates a paradox, where it appears to be virtuous to display an intellectual vice, namely closed-mindedness.  In my essay I explore a variety of potential ways of resolving this paradox.  The route that I think succeeds appeals to the possibility of personal knowledge of God via direct experience.

My work on open-mindedness is ongoing, and my long-term goal is to do a book on the subject.  More immediately, I am working on a paper entitled “Open-mindedness and Christian Flourishing” which I am slated to present at a Society for Christian Psychology conference this fall dealing with the theme “Towards a Christian Positive Psychology.”  I’ll say more about this conference in a later post.

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Gendercide

By Jim Spiegel

The issue of “gendercide” has been in the news lately, as the U. S. House of Representatives failed to pass a bill that would ban abortions motivated by the preference for having a baby boy.  Opponents of the bill insist that it was just a conservative ploy to limit women’s reproductive freedom.

One sad irony in all of this is that the term “gendercide” was coined by Mary Ann Warren in her 1985 book Gendercide: The Implications of Sex Selection.  Warren decried this most brutal form of sexism, yet her influential philosophical defenses of abortion, such as her landmark article “On the Moral and Legal Status of Abortion”[1] in the early 70s, reinforced the very pro-choice culture that has made gendercide so rampant in the United States.

There are some lessons here.  For one thing, this further reveals the incoherence of the notion that the pro-choice position is pro-women.  For years we have known just how devastating abortions are for the women who have them, both psychologically and physically.  Now we’re seeing how the abortion culture is especially deadly for women, even before they leave the womb.

Secondly, as Sidney Callahan has brilliantly pointed out,[2] the pro-choice culture is actually a disguised form of patriarchy in the sense that it ultimately gives more power to men, not women.  The abortion culture does so by: (a) encouraging women to think of childbearing as a burden rather than as a source of life-giving power and (b) further enabling men to engage in sex with women without any concerns about long-term commitment or support.

So as bad as gendercide is, it is but one more symptom of the fact that abortion rights are anything but pro-women.

[1] Mary Ann Warren, “On the Moral and Legal Status of Abortion,” The Monist (January, 1973): 43-51.

[2] Sidney Callahan, “Abortion and the Sexual Agenda,” Commonweal (April, 1986): 232-238.

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The Virtue of Wisdom

By Jim Spiegel

An exciting new book has recently been released.  It is entitled Being Good: Christian Virtues for Everyday Life (Eerdmans), edited by Michael Austin and Douglas Geivett.  The book features chapters on eleven different virtues—faith, open-mindedness, wisdom, zeal, hope, contentment, courage, love, compassion, forgiveness, and humility.  I was pleased to be among the contributors, which include many superb Christian philosophers.  Each chapter aims to explain the essence of the virtue discussed with a view to benefiting readers in a practical way.  My chapter is on the virtue of wisdom, and below is an overview of what I discuss.

Generally speaking, wisdom is a kind of practical moral insight.  So it appears to be both a moral virtue and an intellectual virtue.  For the wise person has knowledge of what is the best conduct in particular situations, and this knowledge is manifested in good conduct.  So you might say that wisdom is a sort of “governing” virtue that is necessary, to some degree, for the development of all other virtues. This is why wisdom is especially important and perhaps why we find such a strong biblical emphasis on it.

How does one become wise?  Is it just a matter of study and cognitive reflection?  While we usually think in terms of beliefs determining behavior, Scripture suggests that the causal dynamic runs the other direction as well.  The Old Testament wisdom literature tells us that God makes wise the simple and grants understanding to those who humble themselves (see Psalm 19:7, Psalm 25:9, Prov. 1:4, and Prov. 11:2).  And some New Testament passages underscore the critical role of behavior when it comes to belief formation (e.g., Rom. 1:18-32, Eph. 4:18-19).

Alvin Plantinga has provided some insights regarding how vice undermines wisdom.  He notes that cognitive faculties are like any other aspect of human beings, in so far as they were designed for a purpose (to form true beliefs) and that they function properly only under certain conditions.  Like any physical organ, such as lungs or eyes, cognitive processes can malfunction because of corrupting influences.  And moral vice, such pride, resentment, or the habitual indulgence in perverse behavior, is a major cause of cognitive malfunction.  In other words, sin compromises a person’s capacity to form true beliefs, particularly regarding moral and spiritual matters.

Psychological studies have shown that, when faced with a conflict between their personal beliefs and behavior, people will often reconcile this conflict by changing the way they think about their behavior.  Rather than alter their conduct, they will take the less demanding route and search for some way to rationalize it.  This response is almost always unconscious, which of course makes for a morally insidious dynamic in contexts involving vicious behavior.  These moral-psychological insights appear to confirm the Apostle Paul’s remarks in Romans 1:18-32 where he describes how wicked behavior leads to futile thinking.

So immorality undermines the quest for wisdom.  But on the positive side, virtuous living leads to wisdom.  By living rightly we diminish the corrupting impact of sin on the mind.  Consequently, our cognitive processes can function properly, and we are more likely to form true beliefs about moral and spiritual issues.  So those who faithfully obey God will grow wiser, just as Scripture tells us.

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Is God a Moral Monster?—A Book Review

By Jim Spiegel

Anyone familiar with the writings of the new atheists is aware of their penchant for taking potshots at Old Testament ethics.  Their moral objections target such things as:  (1) God’s desire to be worshipped, (2) God’s preferential treatment of the Israelites, (3) the Old Testament’s apparently low view of women, (4) the Old Testament’s approval of slavery, (5) the divinely ordered massacre of Canaanite people groups, and (6) the Old Testament’s peculiar laws related to food, hygiene, and other matters.

Richard Dawkins infamously sums up these complaints and more in The God Delusion when he calls God “a petty, unjust, unforgiving control freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sado-masochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.”

So where and how to begin responding to these raving claims?  One good place to begin is Paul Copan’s new book, Is God a Moral Monster?: Making Sense of the Old Testament God.  Copan systematically addresses each of the above objections and more.  He not only presents helpful rejoinders to the new atheists’ objections but also provides an astute analysis of Old Testament ethics that demonstrates a proper sensitivity to (1) the historical-geographical context of the ancient Near East, (2) numerous complex and perplexing hermeneutical issues that arise in Old Testament studies, and (3) the moral, social, and cultural presuppositions that contemporary readers invariably bring to their reading of the Old Testament.

In sum, what Copan offers is an informed, patient, and crucially nuanced treatment of the Old Testament moral code.  Of course, as Copan rightly notes, the new atheists are not interested in nuance, so his responses to their objections are unlikely to change their minds or, for that matter, soften their inflammatory rhetoric.  For those who are willing to approach the text sympathetically, Copan’s treatment of these thorny issues is richly rewarding.

Here is a brief summary of some issues Copan addresses and how he responds to each:

  • Arbitrary Dietary Laws:  The Israelites were only permitted to eat split-hooved and cud-chewing animals.  And they could only eat fish with fins and scales.  Isn’t this irrationally arbitrary and just plain kooky?  Copan proposes that the point of these requirements was their symbolism.  Organisms that meet these criteria do not cross spheres or living boundaries.  That is, they live entirely on land or in the water.  Thus, the dietary criteria symbolized purity for the Israelites.  And “unclean animals symbolized what Israel was to avoid—mixing in with the unclean beliefs and practices of the surrounding nations.  Israel was to be like the clean animals—distinct, in their own category, and not having mixed features” (81).
  • Polygamy:  The Old Testament was apparently misogynistic.  After all, doesn’t it endorse polygamy?  Copan notes, however, that the fact that many O.T. patriarchs had multiple wives does not imply that this was a morally acceptable practice.  “Is” does not imply “ought.”  (This is just one instance of many where this principle applies to Old Testament ethical issues.)  Also, Copan shows how passages that have been interpreted as showing divine approval of polygamy (Exod. 21:7-11; Deut. 21:15-17; 2 Sam. 12:8) actually do no such thing.
  • Slavery:  Ancient Israel’s moral code permitted slavery.  This is morally repugnant and a sure sign that the God of the Old Testament was indeed a “moral monster,” right?  Not so fast.  First, Copan notes that the Old Testament “servant” (ebed) should not be equated with “slave” as we understand the term (vis-à-vis Amercian slavery).  In ancient Israel, such servanthood “was a voluntary (poverty-induced) arrangement not forced” (126).  Secondly, the Old Testament standard for servanthood constituted an enormous moral advance on other ancient Near East practices where slaves were considered property and were stripped of their familial and social identities.  O.T. servants were considered persons, not property.  And, thirdly, the Old Testament servant laws were actually devised to protect the poor.   “Israelite servitude was induced by poverty, was entered into voluntarily, and was far from optimal.  The intent of these laws was to combat potential abuses, not to institutionalize servitude” (127).
  • Killing the Canaanites:  In several O.T. passages, God commands the Israelites to completely destroy several Canaanite people groups, including the Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites.  This appears to be blatant genocide.  Copan makes many interesting points in response to this accusation, most importantly that this was not genocide or “ethnic cleansing” because God’s command was not was not based on ethnicity but sin (162).  In fact, Canaanites who repented were spared and welcomed into the Israelite community.  Secondly, we tend to overlook just how severe the Canaanite debauchery was, as they were steeped in extreme idolatry and sexual perversion.  Thirdly, as Copan puts it, “the conquest of Canaan was far less widespread and harsh than many people assume” (170).  The O.T. phrase translated “utterly destroy” does not imply that literally everyone is killed, but need only suggest a good trouncing of the enemy.   And, fourthly, the main concern was to eliminate the Canaanite sins and the deadly religious practices that inspired them rather than the Canaanite people themselves.

Copan offers a variety of observations intended to either diminish or eliminate our moral qualms with God’s commands and moral regulations in the Old Testament.  Depending on the reader, these will be more or less convincing.  But however helpful or persuasive his points are, we need to keep in mind the biblical observation that God’s ways are not our ways (Isa. 55:8).  In particular, as Copan wisely notes, “We live in a time when we’re very alert to racial discrimination and intolerance, but we aren’t as sensitized to sexual sin as past generations were.  We live in a time that sees death as the ultimate evil.  Perhaps we need to be more open to the fact that some of our moral intuitions aren’t as finely tuned as they ought to be.  The same may apply to our thoughts about what God should or shouldn’t have done in Canaan” (192).

One of Copan’s emphases in the book is that we should not resist the new atheists’ accusation that the Old Testament ethical standards were imperfect:  “Instead of glossing over some of the inferior moral attitudes and practices we encounter in the Old Testament, we should freely acknowledge them.  We can point out that they fall short of the ideals of Genesis 1-2 and affirm with our critics that we don’t have to advocate such practices for all societies” (62).  This cannot be stressed enough.

What we find in many of the Old Testament laws and regulations are either temporary concessions to human sin (e.g., regulations regarding divorce, slavery, and polygamy) or God’s punitive response to human sin (i.e., God’s commands to destroy certain Canaanite people groups).  The new atheists consistently ignore or refuse to adequately appreciate this context of God’s response to human fallenness.  Scripture’s moral “ideal” when it comes to all human relations, as Copan notes, is found in Genesis 1:26-27, which affirms humans as divine image-bearers who should work together in harmony.  It is also evident later in the New Testament, such as in some of the teachings of Jesus.  To represent the Old Testament moral code in isolation of this is a gross distortion of Scripture and a complete Christian ethic.

My criticisms of the book are minor.  First, Copan occasionally refers to God as “other-centered” (e.g., pp. 27 and 201), presumably to combat some new atheists’ claims that God is ego-centric or, in Dawkins’ terms, “megalomaniacal.”  While God is surely extremely other-concerned, even self-sacrificially, he is not other-centered.  This would be inappropriate, since God deserves everyone’s primary respect and concern, including his own.  (For a brilliant and inspiring exposition of this point, see Jonathan Edwards’ essay “The End for Which God Created the World.”)

My second quibble is less significant and essentially a matter of emphasis.  There were a few places in the book where I thought Copan would have done well to concede the difficulty of some of the problematic O.T. passages.  He does make this general point at times, as when he says, “For anyone who takes the Bible seriously, [the] Yahweh-war texts will certainly prove troubling” (188).  But I was disappointed that Copan did not concede his (or anyone’s) inability to completely resolve the moral problems presented by a few other passages.

Again, these are really minor complaints, especially when you consider the breadth and depth of the discussion in Is God a Moral Monster?  Because the book deals with so many controversial and sensitive subjects, I suppose that readers should expect to take issue with some of Copan’s analyses.  (I was surprised that I agreed with nearly all of them.)  But whether or not readers agree with Copan’s approach to each particular problem passage, his book is sure to educate and edify.  Is God a Moral Monster? is an immensely valuable resource for anyone interested in Old Testament ethics or for those who seek informed responses to the new atheists’ objections concerning the topic.  Copan is to be commended for this superb work.

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Taylor University: Central States Region Ethics Bowl Champions!

By Jim Spiegel

For the last ten years I have had the privilege and joy of coaching the Taylor University Ethics Bowl team.  Ethics Bowl is an intercollegiate debate competition focusing on moral issues.  Each Fall semester teams are given fifteen cases dealing a variety of ethical dilemmas, including issues in business ethics, bioethics, social ethics, and international politics.  Being located in Indiana, Taylor participates in the Central States regional competition, which was held last Saturday at Marian University in Indianapolis.  This year fifteen colleges participated.  Schools are allowed to enter a maximum of two teams, and five schools did so, including Taylor, which brought the total number of teams competing to twenty.

Among the issues debated were these:

  • Do developing nations have the moral right to use coal despite its negative environmental impact?
  • Should the NCAA allow women an extra year of athletic eligibility (so that female athletes will not be tempted to play sports while pregnant)?
  • Should the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution be changed by dropping the citizen-by-birth clause (to eliminate an incentive for illegal immigrants to cross the U.S. border to give birth to their babies)?

There are ten regional competitions across the country, and the top finishers in each region receive bids to the national Ethics Bowl tournament, which is held in the Spring.  In our region, the top four teams were to receive bids to nationals.  Our teams finished 1st and 4th overall, thus (doubly) clinching a bid to nationals (and actually allowing the 5th place team to qualify as well).

Both of our teams performed brilliantly.  My co-coach, Jeff Cramer, and I were thrilled for the students when the results were announced.  We beamed like proud parents.  Soon we will begin to prepare for nationals.  In fact, our line-up for the competition has already been established.  (Since each school may enter only one team at nationals, we had to select five students from among the ten students on our two teams who competed at the regional.)  We’re all excited to see the next round of cases, which will be announced in early January.

Taylor teams have made it to nationals 50% of the time over the past decade, and this is our second regional championship since 2003 (along with two 2nd place and a 3rd place finish).  However, we have never made it to the quarterfinals at nationals, and that is one of our goals this year.  Time, as they say, will tell.

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Homosexuality, State Dogma, and the Censoring of Christians

By Jim Spiegel

A lot of attention is being given to two recent legal cases regarding Christian counseling students who are being censored because of their views on homosexuality.  Last week a federal court upheld Eastern Michigan University’s expulsion of Julea Ward, a graduate student, due to her belief that homosexuality is immoral.

And down in Georgia, school officials at Augusta State University have informed counseling graduate student Jennifer Keeton that she must complete a remediation program to change her views about homosexuality or else she will be dismissed.  Keeton has decided to sue ASU.

Now a few observations.  Notice that the issue in both cases is the students’ beliefs about homosexuality, not their conduct.  This is, as one of the attorneys in the Ward case said, “scary stuff,” and I would add that it is just the sort of thing that John Stuart Mill warned us about in his classic On Liberty.  The State has no business controlling or attempting to control people’s consciences.  And to shut down freedom of opinion on such a crucial issue as sexual immorality is especially frightening.

The district court judge, George Steeh, declared that the university was justified in “requiring students to counsel clients without imposing their personal values.”  And EMU is not imposing its values on Ward by insisting that she change her views?  Clearly there are values at stake in this case, but it is not just Ward’s personal, or Christian, values.  EMU’s values, specifically that homosexuality is morally appropriate, are involved too.  To insinuate that EMU is value neutral here is ethically naïve or, worse, disingenuous.  The truth is that EMU, Augusta State, and no doubt most other state universities, have an ethically dogmatic position on the homosexuality issue, no less dogmatic than that of Ward, Keeton, and other conservative Christians.

Also, consider the irony that the EMU and ASU officials aim to change these students’ beliefs when it is also presumably the view of these university officials that homosexuals cannot change.  The notion that homosexual orientation is somehow fixed and immutable is, after all, the most popular argument in defense of its moral legitimacy.  The irony here is that between the two, beliefs and conduct, the latter is far more susceptible to voluntary change.  In fact, many philosophers would argue that one’s beliefs are not at all under one’s control.  (Try changing your belief about even a trivial matter, and you’ll see this is so.  And even the prospect of long-term intentional change of one’s beliefs is a controversial matter.)  But one’s sexual conduct is under one’s control.  The decision to have sex is a choice (except in cases of rape, of course, but that’s beside the point).  Human beings have free will, and that applies in the sexual sphere as well as anywhere else.  To deny this and insist that those with homosexual attraction (even if it is innate, though there is little evidence to suggest it is) “cannot help themselves” is to affirm hard determinism, a radical and morally deadly view in itself.

Yet, despite these problems, moral permissivism about homosexuality is becoming a dogma in our culture, including the academy and the legal sphere.  This is bad news—not just for religious freedom in America but for the state of our public discourse.

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Evidence for an Innate Moral Sense?

By Jim Spiegel

In the book of Romans the Apostle Paul writes, “when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law, since they show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts now accusing, now even defending them” (Rom. 2:14-15, NIV, emphasis mine).

This is one of the key biblical passages supporting the idea that human beings have an innate moral sense, that is, an inborn sense of the difference between right and wrong.  This is, of course, a controversial idea, but recent studies might actually provide empirical evidence for the doctrine.  See this report regarding some fascinating research conducted by Yale University Psychologist Paul Bloom, and draw your own conclusions.

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Why Illegal Drug Use is Immoral

By Jim Spiegel

From time to time I am approached by students who have sincere questions about why illegal drug use is wrong.  They come to me, I suppose, because I sometimes mention in class that in my pre-Christian days (now over thirty years ago!) I used drugs myself.  Here is a student’s email I recently received which is fairly representative:

I used to use drugs, mainly just marijuana, and sometimes I feel the urge to go back to that.  When I became a Christian a couple of years ago, I didn’t have the urge to smoke anymore and just recently I’ve been trying to figure out where I stand on the matter….  I find that it’s not a black-and-white issue and even when I was smoking, I would think to myself “What’s the big deal?” or “How would this keep me from following Jesus?”  I know the Bible has a lot to say about intoxication but that seems to be when other debauchery, sexual immorality, etc. are involved and how drunkenness/intoxication leads to those other things that separate us from God.  I’m wondering if I’m missing the big picture when it comes to intoxication and following Jesus.

Indeed, what is the big deal?  Well, the biggest part of the big deal is that “following Jesus” essentially means living according to Christian moral standards.  As Jesus tells us, to love him is to obey him (John 14:15, 21).  So to knowingly disobey God but to claim to “follow” Jesus is simply incoherent.

But perhaps this student is really wondering whether there is anything morally problematic with smoking pot or doing other illegal drugs.  And this, I have discovered, is really the crux of the concern of most other students who ask me about the issue.  Over the years I have developed a multi-pronged response, which I will now very briefly summarize:

  1. The biblical mandate to obey governing authorities – Scripture makes clear that we must obey the law (Rom. 13:1-2 and 1 Pet. 2:13-14), given that those laws do not compel us to sin.  Smoking pot or using other illegal drugs is a clear violation of this biblical standard.
  2. The biblical mandate to care for one’s body – The apostle Paul tells us that the body is the “temple of the Holy Spirit” (1 Cor. 6:19).  This, combined with the more basic fact that one’s body is a gift from God, implies that we have a responsibility to take care of our bodies and not cause them unnecessary harm, which, of course, is a common consequence of illegal drug use.
  3. The argument from lawlessness – Piggybacking on the first argument above, the point here is that habitual lawbreaking deadens moral conscience.  Consistent flouting of civil laws, however “trivial” or “unfair” they might seem, nurtures a rebellious spirit and insensitivity to the demands of God-ordained authority generally.
  4. The argument from bad company – Since illegal drug use necessarily involves one in crime and, at least indirect, association with hard core criminals (those who deal the drugs), this risks inadvertent involvement with other illegal activities and character corruption.
  5. The argument from moral complicity– The drug trade is, of course, ultimately connected to the dark world of narco-terrorism, where theft, assault, sexual violence, murder, and all kinds of attacks on innocent human lives are commonplace.  To financially support this underworld constitutes complicity with all of the evils it perpetrates.  And, of course, to be complicit with evil is itself a form of evil.

These are my “top five” moral arguments against illegal drug use.  To these I would add a couple of further observations, which may be used as supplemental arguments.  One I call the “problem of sloth.”  Illegal drug users tend to be slackers in their work and life commitments.  I’ve never known a regular marijuana smoker who didn’t display irresponsibility of various kinds.  Dope smoking diminishes industry and ambition, making one less productive than one could or should be.  Finally, one could make an “argument from narcissism.”  Drug use encourages self-absorption, and not just because it is all about giving oneself pleasure but also because it is necessarily secretive in nature.  This encourages moral implosion and is yet another reason why illegal drug use is not the sort of activity in which a morally serious person will be involved.

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God Judges Animals?

By Jim Spiegel

Amy and I have practiced what we call a “cruelty-free diet” for more than a decade.  We do this out of a conviction that it’s the least we can do to avoid moral complicity with the factory farming system in our country, which is so horribly inhumane to cows, pigs, and chickens.  (I defy anyone to see what goes on in those places and not be disturbed by the extreme cruelty of it all.)  We’re hardly radicals, but the little we do is aimed at honoring what we regard as a biblical duty of compassion toward animals.

There are numerous Scriptural passages that speak to the moral significance of our treatment of animals.  There is a biblical duty of compassion for animals, and this has implications for the dinner table as well as the backyard.  (See, for example, Exod. 23:12, Deut. 25:4, Psalm 50:10-11, Psalm 104, and Prov. 12:10.)

Recently, as I’ve been reading through the book of Genesis, a passage jumped out at me that I had overlooked before—Genesis 9:5.  Amazingly, this verse refers to the fact that animals themselves will be judged.  Getting a running start from verse 4, it reads like this:

“You must not eat meat that has its lifeblood still in it.  And for your lifeblood I will surely demand an accounting.  I will demand an accounting from every animal.  And from each man, too, I will demand an accounting for the life of his fellow man” [my italics]  

That’s the New International Version of the Bible.  Several other translations instead refer to animals giving a “reckoning,” and some use the term “punish.”  But what is consistent in each translation I’ve seen is a sense of something like moral culpability and judgment.  Now some folks could read too much into this and erroneously infer that animals are on the same moral plane as humans.  Clearly, we can’t run to that extreme given the unique standing of human beings as divine image bearers (cf. Gen. 1:27).  Still, it seems noteworthy that God will judge animals in this regard (and that God would make special note of this in Scripture).  This appears to be one more biblical reinforcement of the moral significance of animals.

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The Discipline of Fasting

By Jim Spiegel

Recent years have seen a significant increase of interest among evangelicals in spiritual formation.  Authors such as Richard Foster, Dallas Willard, and John Ortberg have led the way in reminding us that personal sanctification is not properly a passive affair.  Spiritual growth demands intentional practice, active exercise of the spiritual disciplines, such as prayer, worship, study, confession, sacrifice, confession, and frugality.  Each of these disciplines is useful for uniting the believer with God and building moral strength.  When used with the proper devotional attitude—aimed at growing in obedience in response to divine grace rather than to earn God’s favor—the spiritual disciplines are extremely powerful.  However, one of the most powerful disciplines remains tragically underappreciated by Christians today:  fasting.

Historically, fasting has been practiced by the great Christian leaders and theologians, including Augustine, Martin Luther, John Calvin, John Knox, John Wesley, Jonathan Edwards, and Charles Finney.  Biblical figures including Moses, David, Elijah, Esther, Daniel, Paul, Jesus and his disciples fasted as well.  Yet today I suspect that only a small minority of American Christians fast with any regularity.  This is a tragic irony given that one of the besetting sins of our culture is overindulgence.  If ever there was a time and place in history where the church desperately needed to develop self-control, this is it. 

In case you haven’t thought much about the discipline of fasting, let me address a few basic questions: 

1. What exactly does fasting involve? 

Fasting is the intentional abstinence from food, and possibly drink, for the sake of spiritual growth.  It can be extended to other contexts (e.g., technology, recreation, etc.) and can be applied to particular foods (e.g., meat, coffee, sweets, etc.). 

2. Why is fasting important?

Regular fasting:  a) builds moral strength (through the practice of self-control), b) trains us to maintain our focus on God through suffering, c) makes a statement of our moral-spiritual earnestness (especially in combination with prayer), and d) reminds us that our bodily comforts are not what is most important.  All of these benefits serve to make the believer more Christ-like in character, which of course leads to many other blessings. 

3. What is a good occasion for fasting?

Some common occasions for fasting include:

a) Seeking God’s forgiveness – Lev. 23:27 (Day of Atonement); 1 Sam. 7:2-6 (Israel’s repentance of idol worship); Jonah 3 (the repentance of Ninevah); Acts 9:1-9 (Paul’s repentance)

b) Seeking God’s counsel or blessing – Acts 13:2-3 (the commissioning of Paul and Barnabas); Acts 14:21-23 (Paul and Barnabas’ commissioning of elders at the churches of Lystra, Iconium, and Antioch) 

c) Seeking God’s strength – Matt. 4:1-2 (Jesus fasted when “he was led by the Spirit into the desert to be tempted by the devil”); Matt. 17:20 & Mark 9:29 (in some manuscripts Jesus says “this kind can come out only by prayer and fasting”).

But it is wise for Christians to fast even aside from these occasions.  Fasting is powerful for building self-control, and we all need to improve in that area. 

4. What about the problem of abuses?

Abuse is no argument.  The distortion of a good thing does not justify our throwing it out.  Sex, prayer, worship, and even religion itself are constantly abused, but we don’t properly reject those things.  However, two concerns deserve special attention: 

a) Eating disorders:  Those who have had this problem may be advised to avoid fasting for a time, to do so only with strict accountability, or to practice only selective fasting (e.g. refraining from sweets, meats, or other particular foods).

b) Legalism:  We don’t allow legalistic abuses of the other spiritual disciplines to discourage us from practicing them, nor should we when it comes to fasting.  But we should be on our guard against the legalistic mindset and pride which might ensue, especially if we are unique among our friends in fasting. 

5. What approach should I take in learning to fast?

Start with short fasts, one or two meals.  Do this dozens of times before going on to longer fasts.  You might want to begin by fasting once monthly and perhaps increase in frequency to 2-4 times per month.  Many people prefer to pray more often while fasting in order to maintain focus and request spiritual strength.  If you get discouraged as you learn to fast, this is normal.  As with all spiritual disciplines, observable benefits typically emerge only as a cumulative effect of repeated practice.