Every religion has in its tradition the rejection of food (either all or some) and drink. This period in the life of a believer is called fasting.
This is a form of religious austerity, a way of life and a set of exercises, both physical and moral, aimed at freeing one's spirit.
Christianity, for example, speaks of it not only as a restriction in food, but also in entertainment, communication with the world in general. Coexisting bodily and spiritual fasts are the period of greatest tension in prayer.
Fast to keep - not to eat fat
Having begun this process, to eat something forbidden by its charter is to be dishonored. There are 5 degrees of physical fasting:
- Refuse to eat meat and meat products.
- Don't consume milk or dairy-based products.
- Rejection of fish and animal seafood.
- Don't eat fat.
- Rejection of any food oncertain deadlines.
In Old Slavonic, the word "scrum" meant "fat", so the food containing it is called skrum. This is the flesh of animals and birds, dairy products, eggs.
During fasting, they are replaced with other food so as not to be offended. These are foods such as fruits and vegetables, cereals and legumes, berries and nuts, honey and mushrooms.
In Orthodoxy and Islam there are much more fasts (and they are stricter) than, for example, in Anglicanism and Catholicism.
Not by bread alone
A person also lives “by every word of the Lord” - this is what Moses said in the Old Testament.
Salvation of the soul, according to Christian beliefs, is not achieved by food restrictions alone. One of the three teachers and saints of the Ecumenical says that fasting involves:
- removal from all evil,
- taming your own lusts,
- non-anger,
- stop perjury, slander and lies,
- to curb one's tongue.
After all, fasting is not a diet. And his goal is to stop pleasing the body every minute, focusing on the soul.
To commit a sinful thought or deed (including the consciousness of one's own righteousness or superiority over non-fasters) is another meaning of the word "dishonest".
