Why Do Christians Eat Fish on Friday and During Lent?
In the secular world, ‘fasting’ means abstaining from all food and drink, but in religious circles, ‘fasting’ means going on a disciplined diet. The purpose of a fast is to find out who is in control, you or your belly, and to win that control if necessary. It’s also a way of using your appetite as a spiritual snooze alarm that moves you to pray. So now that we understand that fasting means a diet and not total deprivation, I can answer the question. In the first century, Jews fasted on Mondays and Thursdays. The original Christians were all Jewish and were used to the fasting as a spiritual discipline. They moved the fast days to Wednesdays and Fridays, because Judas engineered Jesus’ arrest on a Wednesday and Jesus was crucified on a Friday. Most often that fast took the form of avoiding meat in the diet. In those days, meat was a luxury food. You either had to buy it in a market or you had to own enough land to keep cattle. On the other hand, anyone could grow vegetables or forage f
