Here is a small tidbit for you. What was Adam and Eve’s sin?
OK, here are answers that, while true, do not capture the question I am asking. Yes, they did disobey God. However, every sin is a disobedience of God. Yes, they did rebel. However, every sin is a rebellion against God. Yes, they did lie. But, that lie took place after the sin they had committed, thus it could not be the sin they had committed. Yes, they thought they could be like God. However, that was not the actual sin, that was the temptation to commit the actual sin. What request of God did they actually break?
God asked them to refrain from eating of the fruit of a certain tree. When we are asked to refrain from eating a particular food, it is called abstinence. Actually, in Orthodox terminology, we call it fasting. Besides “be fruitful and multiply,” which some debate was not so much a commandment as a blessing, the first commandment from God, according to St. Basil the Great, was that we fast. St. Basil says, “Because we did not fast, we were chased out of Paradise; let us fast now, so that some day we return there.”
This means that fasting, as a means of growth to maturity, was part of God’s plan from before the entrance of sin. Does that give you a different view of fasting?
Father Bless!
Ah ha! I had never considered this nor heard of it before! Surely this drives home an excellent point!
Thank you!