Guest Post: On Fasting and Ego Depletion

We have a guest author today—a good friend of mine, Ellie. Her post is a fantastic one for the pre-Lent season.

My minor was psychology, mostly because of how fascinated I was with a cognitive psychology class. Now I read quite a bit on behavioral psychology. It is fascinating to me to understand how people behave and perceive themselves behaving and, surprisingly often, how those two fail to agree.

The connection that I would like to share starts with is what behavioral psychologists call “Ego Depletion”. In this case, you can replace the word “ego” with “willpower”. Studies show that willpower is not a static resource. Over the course of a normal day, we get less and less of it. A temptation that would be easy to resist in the morning after a good breakfast would be more difficult to resist after a long day at work or with the kids. Studies show: we have a finite amount of willpower and when we resist one temptation we have less willpower for the next temptation.

It’s the reason a college student may eat an entire box of Oreos while studying for midterms—all their willpower went into studying. Or why after a long day of avoiding the various sweet treats in favor of veggies at the office, a person might indulge at home with that chocolate cake that was sitting on the kitchen counter.

When I heard this, I was initially surprised. When I thought of someone resisting a temptation, I thought of one “type” of person who is always giving into temptation and another “type” who is always resisting it. But then I tapped into reality. I started thinking of my own life instead of some stereotypical overeater or some prototypical too good-to-be-true Christian. I thought of how I felt after a long day of listening to customer complaints or dealing with empty promises at a previous employer. And I thought of how I carefully choose my words in those times. After those days, going home and giving into the temptation of watching Netflix for hours or slipping up on my fast because I just had a crappy day seemed like a more than occasional trend.

If the research stopped there, I’d feel pretty depressed. If willpower changes throughout the day, and we get less of it, how can we ever be expected to “be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect”? But there was some good news. In “The Honest Truth about Dishonesty”, Dan Ariely says that willpower can be seen as a muscle. It can be strengthened over time. I won’t be able to run 23 miles the first time I put on my running shoes. But with training, I will be able to run that marathon.

This is when I started to make the connection. And I apologize to those for whom this is obvious. The church, in her wisdom, gives us a way to “exercise” our willpower: fasting. When I fast, I am strengthening the muscle. I am working on getting more willpower to resist temptation by creating a situation where I exercise the muscle.

As with many things in the Orthodox Church, there is no one explanation for why we fast. However, this provided a construct for me to explain fasting to non-Orthodox and non-Christians. And it helps me make sense of the day-to-day struggle of a fast. I can tell myself “one more rep, one more rep…”

It also provides an answer for some excuses I give myself. For example, “Fasting drains my willpower and then I am more likely to sin.” That’s like saying, exercising makes me weak and then I am more likely to not be able to lift weights that day. Yes…but how else are you going to get better? If this is a serious issue for you, talk to your priest of course. He should be able to work with you to get the right balance. But I know I can’t make this excuse anymore.

Like athletes, we Orthodox train. The muscle that we are working on is willpower. Every veggie burger works that muscle. The third dinner of beans and rice this coming fasting season gives me a leg up in fighting my passions.

Just remember: Always talk to your doctor priest before beginning a fasting regimen.

 

 

Guest Post: Dating in your 40s

Stephanie is our guest blogger today, and brings with her excitement and experience. Most of The Orthogals’  writings come from the  twenty- and thirty-something crowd, but we know that the over-forty demographic needs to be represented as well. Stef does not identify as a “typical forty-something”, but admits that her share of dating disasters should count for something. When not keeping her friends in laughing fits with her stories and animated style, she enjoys the active cultural offerings of her Midwestern college town.

I have a very robust inner third-grader.  My “i3g” generally serves me well; it’s kind of like having an internal fun magnet.  It reminds me of the mystery of how my dad can make open parking spaces magically appear in front of him, and my mom has a sixth sense of when there’s a sale in the vicinity.

Maybe my dating life would be more successful if I put my i3g on the case.  I really think I was a lot smarter when I was about eight.  The younger version of myself wouldn’t put up with some of the things that I do now, things that we are taught as adults to accept.  For one, my i3g wouldn’t go out with someone “just to be nice,” even when not interested in the other person.  She also wouldn’t spend an excessive amount of time worrying about her appearance or trying to be cool.

And let’s talk about cooties.  Your i3g knows they’re real.  When the thought “that person has cooties” goes through your mind, it means that something is creepy–a boundary has been crossed and things are not right.  The adult world might tell you that you are jumping to conclusions and that you need to override that sentiment.  But your i3g knows that things are amiss–listen to her!

Dates:  Most of the stuff that’s considered part of the standard repertoire for dates is somewhere on a continuum between stressful and boring–certainly not anything fun that brings out the best in each of you.  Or maybe the fun activities *don’t* bring out the best in my date, in which case I’d like to know that, as it would be a whole lot more helpful in getting to know someone than some contrived, artificial situation.

Here’s a quick checklist for anyone wanting to take me out:  Does it involve roller skates, bubble wrap, ice cream, animals, or bluegrass music?  Count me in.  A big no:  overpriced pretentious food, excessive air conditioning, shopping, or anybody asking me, “And now what exactly is it that you do?” in a snotty tone of voice.  I’ll make sure I need to stay home and do laundry that night.

What about gifts?  You got me flowers to show me how you feel about me.  They died within the week.  Not really, I think, what you were trying to convey.  But you found me a heart-shaped rock when you were out hiking?  This tells me you were thinking about me even when I wasn’t there.  If you catch me a frog, we’re in business.  (Especially if it’s a talking frog.  No, not one that turns into Prince Charming.  I mean a real talking frog.  That would be pretty neat.)

We should address another adult concept–the dreaded Friendzone.  Kids aren’t really concerned about this.  “So you don’t wanna be my girlfriend?”  Pause.  “Ok, how ’bout we climb trees instead?”  And everything is all good again.

I think I’ll approach dating with my i3g at the helm.  At the very least, I’ll have fun and end up with some good stories.  And maybe I’ll find someone out there with his own i3g–and no cooties.

On Headship

The following post is by Svetlana Smith, an Orthogal who has been happily married for quite some time. It’s an “in the trenches” post, if you will.

When I was in college, I discovered a most wonderful treasure: The Oxford English Dictionary! This reference work tells you not only what words mean, but what they used to mean. And that’s so important, if you ever read old books. The problem, of course, is that you don’t always realize that the meaning of a word has changed.

In Shakespeare’s Henry V, in the king’s speech before the Battle of Agincourt, when he says:

For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition,

it’s easy for a modern reader to think that the king is saying that dying on the battlefield would somehow tame his soldiers, that their death would allow them to leave the chaos of war and enter the next world in tranquility. Of course that’s not what Shakespeare meant at all — the very idea would be absurd!

But those kinds of misreadings happen. They’re not uncommon. And if they happen when we’re reading things written in English, how much more do they happen when we read translations? How often do we get the right word, but the wrong idea?

Now, I haven’t studied Greek, so when I read that the husband is the head of the wife, it’s easy to assume that, by “head” St. Paul means something like “boss.” That’s what it means, right? The CEO is the head of the company, the general is the head of the army, the husband is the head of the wife.

But my husband has studied Greek, and he tells me that there’s a Greek word that means head in exactly that sense — archon, which is the word that’s the base of hierarch. But that’s not the word that St. Paul used! He used a word that, in Greek, never, ever meant “boss.” He used the word kephale.

So what, exactly, did kephale mean? What sort of head was it?

Almost always, kephale meant that thing at the top of your body that has two eyes and a nose and a mouth. It was almost always used literally. So when Paul talked about the husband and wife being head and body, he was emphasizing their unity. Paul didn’t know that we controlled our bodies with our brains, or that the brain was the seat of our intellect or will. The part of the body Paul would have thought about that way was the heart. But the head and the body are inseparably joined — cut them apart, and the person died. That was what Paul was getting at when he was talking about the husband being the head and the wife the body.

There’s another idea he might have been getting at, as well. Kephale was sometimes used figuratively in the military, to refer, not to the commanding officer, but to the person you might call the point-man: the person in a formation who went first, the one who was prepared to take a bullet (well, an arrow, I suppose, at that time) for everyone else.

So now look at Ephesians 5:23: For the husband is the head (kephale) of the wife, as Christ also is the head (kephale) of the church, He Himself being the Savior of the body.

Christ is the one who was prepared to die for the Church, so that he could save it. He was the head, the point-man, the one who volunteers for the most dangerous position, so that he can either get everyone through or die trying. That’s what it means for the husband to be the head of the wife. The husband is the point-man for his wife, in the same way that Christ is the point-man for the Church, being the One who protected her body (with his own body).