Fasting

I also thought the reading in JCM was interesting, particularly the section on fasting. I'm surprised that the ritual still continues to this day and is "inseperable" for most Christians with prayer. I personally don't believe that through fasting demons will be expelled or our sins will be forgiven. If a murderer fasts, is he/she forgiven for his/her sins then? Another idea that struck me was the statement, "fasting was believed to heighten the soul's power to concentrate on prayer, since it helped to distance it from the demands of the body." When I read this, the first religion that came to mind was Buddhism. In Professor Timm's "Engaged Buddhism" class we learned that Theravadin Buddhists, in partucular fast as a method of purification and as a means of freeing the mind.