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It’s common convention in the church to fast water for some reason. It’s clear that in some areas, this is not advisable- some missions ban their missionaries from fasting water because they’re biking all day in the hot sun (or something like that). Where did the practice come from? When most of the rest of the world thinks of “fasting”, they don’t think of not drinking water.
I’ve wondered this myself because I think it’s a bad idea and not rooted in OT tradition. My best guess is that one of the early latter day prophets understood it to be that way and thus it became doctrine. I do not fast water when I fast. From one point of view, if humans can only survive three days without water then fasting water 24 hours means you’re a third of the way dead, worsened if you were already on the dehydrated side when you started. That’s not a sacrifice I’m willing to make. Even for medical tests, it’s usually only about 8 hours of fasting liquids.
Tradition. Full stop.
I never have. I was raised in a small but heavily LDS town and was told fasting means not drinking water. My parents’ reasoning was that water eases hunger pains and therefore diminishes the sacrifice of fasting. Since I left home if I fast I do drink water because it seems unwise to skip water for even a few hours. Yesterday at church I drank from the water fountain when a child and her mother walked by. I felt a twinge of guilt and wondered if they looked down on me for drinking water. It can be difficult to overcome what we are taught as children.
I remember being verbally harangued by a missionary companion because I broke down and drank water on a particularly hot and strenuous day. He saw it as tantamount to covenant breaking.
I grew up believing and practicing the fasting of water. Gum was a controversial “food product”, but mints definitely weren’t allowed. It seems quite silly nowadays.
Drinking some water usually helps with headaches. ^ Fact I think this is one of those things like not being able to have friends over or go over to friends’ houses on Sunday (which I have since discarded due to single life not having much in the way of family to spend time with). It’s purely cultural, yet it brings unnecessary guilt and shame to some people who do not follow the rule.
LookingHard wrote:
Drinking some water usually helps with headaches.
My husband and I both suffer from migraines and lack of water is a HUGE trigger. I cannot go for more than an hour without food or water otherwise I will have a horrid migraine. So I try to fast with other things like facebook. That way I am giving something up still.
DarkJedi wrote:From one point of view, if humans can only survive three days without water then fasting water 24 hours means you’re a third of the way dead, worsened if you were already on the dehydrated side when you started.
From a nutritionist friend, most Americans go through life averaging 5-15% dehydrated anyway because of responding to thirst with beverages that aren’t ideal for hydration. Combine that with living in a place where triple digit temperatures for a week aren’t that uncommon, and 80+ daytime highs can easily continue through October, and I’d never recommend that anyone fast from water, and generally not from something to replace minerals sweated out. (Generally not Gatorade unless it’s watered down by at least half.)
One of the guys from the dojo also coaches women’s soccer, and just from jogging up and down the sidelines one day last month, he drank two cases of bottled water over the course of 5 hours by himself. The players were going through watered down Gatorade as fast as the crew could refill 5 gallon jugs and haul them back to the field. He said it didn’t hit him until he got home that he hadn’t taken a bathroom break all day, either. Dehydrating at that rate would have you suffering some serious issues within a couple hours without water.
I was in the same apartment as a new convert sister missionary when I was on my mission, and she wasn’t aware of the “fasting water” norm until I said something to her. She protested, “But that’s not even healthy!” I probably said at the time that nobody had died from abstaining from water for 24 hours (and most Mormon fasts are shorter than that anyway), but the fact is, who knows? People could have died from it. She’s right that it’s not healthy. I had a different comp who told me to basically get stuffed, she was drinking water regardless. I didn’t care what they chose, and I figured it’s their decision, but my parents absolutely were zero water people. They would also object to gum. Sometimes I think any idea to make it hard or painful as a sacrifice is what parents try to help their kids learn is meaningful to the spirit. Maybe that is 1st world problems.
Here is how the church defines it on LDS.org:
Quote:Fasting is a commandment from the Lord where we humble ourselves before Him by voluntarily refraining from eating and drinking (see D&C 88:76).
In the Church today, one Sabbath day each month is set aside for the purpose of fasting. Members of the Church go without food and water for two consecutive meals in a 24-hour period and then contribute the money that would have been spent for that food to those in need.
With a quick search to other religions…it seems a common definition, and like everything else, gets interpreted differently. Some apply it as abstaining from alcoholic drinks, and some just food.
I get the feeling in our church the emphasis is more on the spiritual connection to it rather than specific hard-fast rules (pun intended). If you go 2 meals, it may not be exactly 24 hours. If you drink some water, no one is policing it. If you don’t fast at all, no one is policing it. But the focus is a monthly effort to connect to the divine, however that works for your family. They have broad guidelines, but also recognize that many have health issues that allow for adaptation as needed.
hawkgrrrl wrote:get stuffed
I hadn’t heard that one in a long time
😆 I used to have fun with it sometimes because Americans don’t know what it means.Heber13 wrote:
Sometimes I think any idea to make it hard or painful as a sacrifice is what parents try to help their kids learn is meaningful to the spirit.Maybe that is 1st world problems.
Here is how the church defines it on LDS.org:
Quote:Fasting is a commandment from the Lord where we humble ourselves before Him by voluntarily refraining from eating and drinking (see D&C 88:76).
In the Church today, one Sabbath day each month is set aside for the purpose of fasting. Members of the Church go without food and water for two consecutive meals in a 24-hour period and then contribute the money that would have been spent for that food to those in need.
With a quick search to other religions…it seems a common definition, and like everything else, gets interpreted differently. Some apply it as abstaining from alcoholic drinks, and some just food.
I get the feeling in our church the emphasis is more on the spiritual connection to it rather than specific hard-fast rules (pun intended). If you go 2 meals, it may not be exactly 24 hours. If you drink some water, no one is policing it. If you don’t fast at all, no one is policing it. But the focus is a monthly effort to connect to the divine, however that works for your family. They have broad guidelines, but also recognize that many have health issues that allow for adaptation as needed.
I think it was Elder Nelson who gave a talk once on the law of the fast. Talking about the law of the fast as opposed to the act of fasting itself, it is exactly as we do it – giving money saved from not eating to the poor. In ancient times one could also give the actual food not eaten. The law of the fast is about charity or loving our neighbors. That said, I think you’re right Heber – I look at it as more of an opportunity to make a spiritual connection in addition to helping the poor. Granted I don’t think I have ever gained much from fasting itself and I don’t find it especially uplifting or spiritual. On the other hand, I am a bit like a four-year-old in that I get grumpy when I don’t eat. And Scrooge’s nephew’s speech comes to mind (substitute fasting for Christmas):
Quote:There are many things from which I might have derived good, by which I have not profited, I dare say, Christmas among the rest. But I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round – apart from the veneration due to its sacred name and origin, if anything belonging to it can be apart from that – as a good time: a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time: the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys. And therefore, uncle, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me good, and will do me good; and I say, God bless it!
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