One probably shouldn’t write a blog post when one is angry, especially on a religion blog. But I want to publish my blog post before the end of the day, and the deadline is coming up. The only reason I mention my anger is that it might have something to do with my fast. It’s not anger at the fast per se, which is going great and which will make me a better person, hopefully. But rather it’s that I’m having greater clarity of thought because of the fast, and I’m seeing things differently. And some of the things I’m seeing are making me angry. The fast isn’t all good, however. The fast is interfering with my ability to concentrate on math and physics. But it is helping me see the error of my ways in other areas of my life. Maybe I’ll talk about those during a future post.

I’ve been thinking a lot about Jesus lately, about how he lived his life and what he must have felt in the days leading up to his death. He must have known that he was in danger. Given his considerable understanding of Jewish law and customs, he undoubtedly knew the great risk he was taking in challenging the system. Of course if Jesus was God, then he really had nothing to worry about. He’s God, and nothing can really hurt him. If the soldiers pierce his human heart, he simply laughs it off and ascends into heaven.

But this notion of God as man needs more consideration. Does it make sense? I’m sure greater minds than mine have pondered this question, but perhaps most of them were not atheists.

God as man.

On the face of it, it’s an absurd juxtaposition. God is all-powerful, omniscient, etc, etc. If God comes down to be among his creation, he can certainly take human form. But does he then lose his power and omniscience? I think not, not if he can still call himself God. Is there a logical problem here? So maybe there’s something else going on, some reason we should pay attention to the Jesus story.

God as man.

Could “God as man” be a metaphor for how we should behave in adversity? I believe that Jesus didn’t fear death because he believed so utterly and completely in his cause, and because he had resigned himself to the inevitable.

I’ve often wondered what I would do if, say, a gunman entered the Barnes and Noble Cafe, where I often have a chocolate chip cookie, and started shooting people. Would I run and hide for my own safety? Or would I help shepherd women and children out the emergency exit? Or would I perhaps confront the gunman in an effort to save others?

God as man.

When your life is threatened, that is precisely when you must protect what you value. Because a threat to one is a threat to all, either directly or indirectly. Is it your own life, or is it the sanctity of life in general that has value? If you protect yourself, one life, while others die around you, perhaps even because you abandoned them, how could you face yourself afterward?

We have an instinct for self-preservation, to be sure. But I believe that we also have an instinct for civilization-preservation which doesn’t get mentioned as often. We talk about heroes, and we engage in hero worship. But do we fully acknowledge the heroism of indirectly trying to save a civilization, for dying for what one believes may make the difference in the future of mankind?

I think that’s what Jesus did. Perhaps he wasn’t misguided or foolhardy. Perhaps he knew exactly what he was doing, and wanted to set an example of what each of us must be willing to do when the time comes in order to protect what we value.

That’s the essence of God-like behavior in a mortal man.

Our Fred group met tonight. Ice cream with all the fixin’s was served, and I declined. Someone from the group had been reading my blog, so I became the center of attention for a while as I tried to explain why I was doing a 40-day fast. “I want to be more like Jesus,” I had told a friend earlier, and I repeated that line tonight. It got a good laugh. Of course, it’s ridiculous that an atheist would want to be anything like Jesus. Could *anyone* be like Jesus? There was even the joke that I didn’t want to be *too* much like Jesus, as he ended up on the cross.

That’s right, I can’t be like Jesus, if that means “The Son of God”. However, I don’t believe that Jesus was God. That will upset many Christians, but an atheist cannot very well believe otherwise.

So Jesus was a man. I’m beginning to see that humans need a role model, and Jesus had it all: God-like powers, sacrifice, wisdom, tolerance, seemingly unlimited knowledge of moral and spiritual issues, strength of character… The list goes on. I want to be more like Jesus because Jesus is a good role model. He’s tolerant but outspoken. He’s vulnerable but wins in the end. He’s supposedly chaste, but he overturns tables in the temple. Did he really wear robes and have long hair, or was he disheveled from all his travels in the desert? I don’t mean to be disrespectful, but we take these things for granted. We form an image of Jesus the man, based on movies and storybooks. Did Jesus set out to become the founder of a great religion? Or did he just get caught up in circumstances beyond his control and end up a celebrity?

But are Christians just engaging in celebrity worship? No, most definitely not. I think that Christians are genuinely trying to be like Jesus, to the best of their abilities.

As I told the Fred group this evening, I think that one of the virtues exemplified by Jesus is creating a vacuum in yourself, emptying yourself of things that don’t matter and letting the things that do matter enter you to fill the void. Living in the desert, fasting, riding a donkey, holding on to no possessions, all these things are a way of emptying yourself of things that don’t matter. I imagine that there are books written about what Jesus would do today. Would he drive an expensive car, or would he just walk about among the people? I suspect the latter. Would he be an obese pig of a man, like so many are today? I think not.

Would the Jesus of today find a desert and seclude himself there for 40 days and 40 nights? Undoubtedly. He would have to. In order to free himself from the insanities of daily life, in order to collect his thoughts and reinforce what is important in his mind, in order to connect with the deepest part of himself. And one doesn’t have to travel far to find a desert today. Just walk down any city street. Turn your mind inward. Empty yourself of all but the essentials. Turn your back on humanity for an afternoon or for six weeks. That’s the desert. And don’t be afraid to cry over what you discover about yourself.

I’ve decided to just avoid the Barnes and Noble Cafe, avoid the temptation of the chocolate chip cookie. I’ll be more productive by studying at home than there anyway, especially in my state of mind, one of impatience. So far, everything is going well. No headaches, no uncontrollable cravings. I’m actually feeling pretty good. But I’m avoiding my kitchen. The end of the day is the hardest, when I would usually be in the kitchen preparing something for dinner, or snacking on things I shouldn’t be eating anyway. And I’m a little irritable. But on day 4, those feelings only happened occasionally and only briefly.

I had a strange thought today. Normally people are trying to figure out how to speed up their weight loss. This might sound crazy, but maybe it makes more sense to slow down, take your time, do a 40-day fast and just settle in for the ride. I’m confident that I can finish the whole 40 days. But I’m a little worried that it’s the same feeling I have when I’m at the 4-mile mark of a 26.2-mile marathon.

If you’ve ever run a marathon, as I have four times, you might know that you feel strong in the first few miles. I’m not a strong runner, but after training for a marathon for up to nine months, with its 20-40 miles of running per week and the long runs of 10-15 miles on Sunday, running 5 miles seems like nothing. In the first few miles of a marathon, you settle into a comfortable pace and you just run, breathing normally, feeling good in the legs, feeling energized.

But things start to get harder after you’ve passed the 13-mile mark, the half-way point, and you realize that you still have more than 13 miles to go. And your legs are starting to get a little bit heavier, and you wonder why you’re doing this crazy thing of running 26.2 miles. It is widely known that a healthy human can run 18 miles if he or she trains for it. The human body can store enough glycogen (the fuel stored in the muscles and liver) for an 18-mile run. But the human body was not designed to run more than about 18 miles. It can’t store enough glycogen. Which makes a 26.2-mile run so difficult. So in every marathon I’ve run, I’ve had to walk a significant portion of the miles between 18 and 24. Then somehow I’ve mustered the energy to run from mile 24 to 26.2, if for no other reason to avoid the embarrassment of walking across the finish line.

Why am I talking about marathoning in the early stages of a 40-day fast? Because it seems easy now. I feel strong. I can do anything. Sure, I’m thinking about food, but so far it hasn’t interfered with my life. If this is life in the desert, if this is what Jesus confronted in His first four days of His 40-day fast, then maybe He was singing. It’s like an oasis more than a desert. But I’m aware that I’ll reach the 18-mile mark in my fast, when I’ll be severely tempted.

And when that happens, when cactus plants are laughing at me, when the sun is beating down on me in this self-imposed desert, I’ll think about Jesus, and how He withstood the temptation, how He survived for 40 days and 40 nights alone, without any nourishment at all.

I will find inspiration in Him.

I guess I should be very clear about my ground rules for this fast. First, it is not a water-only fast. As I wrote in a previous post, I’m also consuming several ounces of a high quality nutrient drink filled with minerals and vitamins. But after the warning of a commenter, I decided to also consume 8 ounces of a protein shake every other day. The protein is high quality whey, and I’m adding a fruit concentrate, along with a calcium additive, magnesium, and kelp (for iodine). The total calorie count on all of this amounts to less than 200 calories per day, which I think still qualifies what I’m doing as a fast. It will also keep my digestive system operating, at a very low level, which I think is important. Under these conditions I think I can make it 40 days without any problems, except the expected hunger, temptations, emotional ups and downs, and everything else I was hoping to achieve with this.

If anyone is interested in the details of my nutritional supplements for this fast, let me know and I will post a link.

So today was Day 3. Actually, one of my greatest fears going into this fast was that I wouldn’t be able to survive without my daily chocolate chip cookie from the Barnes and Noble Cafe. It’s a *huge* cookie, packed with chocolate chunks, and giving it up was one of the main reasons I hesitated so long before deciding to do this fast. Of course Jesus didn’t have to contend with chocolate chip cookies of this magnitude.

So afraid I was of the temptation of this cookie, I avoided the Barnes and Noble for the first two days of the fast. However, I realized that I needed to confront my fear. So today I resolved to enter the book store, make my way to the Cafe, and steer clear of the cookie. It’s not as easy as it sounds. Everyone who works in the Cafe knows that I buy my cookie every day, and so they have it waiting for me as soon as they see me coming. So I figured that I would have to quickly get to the cash register and tell them, “No cookie today,” before they had served it up on a plate and charged me for it. Such are the difficulties of being a regular customer.

However, today it seemed that “higher powers” were at work. Okay, I’m just being silly now. Being an atheist, I don’t believe in a higher power. But when I arrived at the book store, a thunderstorm had just passed over us, and the lights were all out in the store. I walked in, was greeted by an employee who knows me well, and she said that the store was open but they weren’t doing transactions. Hmmm. So I went to the Cafe expecting to buy only a large water, but they wouldn’t even sell me that. No transactions. They didn’t even try to sell me a cookie. I couldn’t have bought a cookie even if I had wanted one!

It was quite depressing.

So I sat at my usual table, prepared to study some math and physics, and was rudely interrupted by loud children sitting at the next table. In my weakened and hungry state of mind, and sitting virtually in the dark, I was only able to stay for a few minutes and then I had to leave.

I’ll have to face my cookie temptation later.

As an atheist, I have sometimes argued that Jesus didn’t really fast for 40 days and nights in the desert, that the bible exaggerates. But now I believe that Jesus did in fact fast for 40 days and 40 nights. I don’t know why He did it, but maybe I’ll have a better understanding when I get further into my own fast.

Today was long. Many of you may not know this, but I teach and tutor math at a community college. Today I started my day on campus at 9AM and didn’t leave until 8PM, and I was either lecturing or tutoring for the entire time. It is exhausting work, but it is also fun and worthwhile. However, it can be stressful, especially if you don’t have a meal to look forward to at the end of the day. There were times today when I wanted to cry, not because the day was bad, but because I didn’t know when my next pleasurable moment would be.

Do I depend so much on food for my happiness? Maybe that’s the first thing that has to get burned off in this desert.

An ex-girlfriend called me today and left a message. I would have taken her call if I could have. It’s complicated, and I won’t share details now, but we recently became friends again after many years, that is until she discovered that I’m an atheist. So she hasn’t communicated with me since then, for a couple of months. But today she calls. She didn’t say why in the message, but I think it might have been because of my 40-day fast. She is Christian, and I hope she is supportive. Maybe she knows that the first few days will be the hardest, until enough baggage has gotten burned off in the heat of the desert.

I’m not hungry. And I’m not going through caffeine withdrawal, because I went through the last of those many years ago. I’m feeling pretty good, physically anyway. No overwhelming cravings. There’s a part of me that would like to report something bad today. But nothing bad has happened yet, except for the feeling that, without food, I will get depressed. Focus on other things…

Jesus was reportedly tempted in the desert. The bible says it was the devil who tempted Jesus. What if it wasn’t the devil? What if it was Jesus’s own human weaknesses? He was reportedly a man, after all. I’ve been tempted today by food. Maybe Jesus’s great strength was that He didn’t succumb to the temptations. He was an example for the rest of us. It seems to us that it was so easy for Him. Isn’t it always that way, that a great man makes it look easy? The bible reports it matter-of-factly, that Jesus went into the desert, fasted 40 days and 40 nights, then came out. He didn’t blog about it, describing in detail his every difficulty. They didn’t have blogs back then, but I suspect that Jesus wouldn’t have blogged about His experience even if there had been blogs. One of the things that makes Jesus great is that He lived simply, without fanfare, and yet now, 2000 years later, a billion people on the planet believe He was God.

As an atheist, I don’t believe that Jesus was God. But I can still believe that He was a great man, perhaps the greatest, and that He continues to inspire many of us to achieve our own modest successes.

So I will focus on the image in my mind of Jesus in the desert…