Pastor cautions against unhealthy fasting
At least one local pastor has reiterated the need for common sense to be exercised when one decides to go on a fasting, following a BBC report that a pastor in Mozambique died last Thursday after trying to fast for 40 days.
Francisco Barajah, founder the Santa Trindade Evangelical Church, reportedly died at a hospital in Beira two days shy of the 40-day mark, which Christ is said to have done in the Bible in the book of Matthew. The BBC reported that Barajah went 25 days without food or water, and had lost weight to the point where he could not stand up. He was diagnosed with acute anaemia and failure of his digestive organs. He was in hospital for 13 days as doctors unsuccessfully tried to rehydrate him with serums and liquid foods.
While declaring that fasting was still sacred, Pastor Kirk McIntyre of the Faith Christian Fellowship in Hanover, urged persons to be more practical in their display of spiritual reverence.
"[Fasting] is relevant because fasting is an aspect of humility before God. But you have to first know what you are fasting for and fasting takes different forms. You have different methods of fasting, which theology has taught us. You have dry fast, you have wet fast and so forth. But if you are a diabetic, you cannot jump into fasting like that. You have to follow the principles and protocols of the clinical part of it," said McIntyre, who became an ordained preacher in 2018.
He said that he would first encourage congregants to remember their health conditions and consult their doctors.
"It wouldn't indicate a lack of faith. Remember the physical, mortal body that you cannot just push in that way. You have a medical condition, you cannot just jump in fasting like that. You are going to kill yourself. Whether by faith, we still have to use wisdom. Remember Jesus Christ used wisdom. He went alone, He never brought anybody with him because Jesus was God and man in the same," he said.
McIntyre said that while he was saddened by Barajah's death, he believed that he was trying to emulate Christ.
"I wouldn't do that, that would be tempting the Lord or one would say 'pervert justice'. It would be abrupt for me to say, for example, 'I want to function like our Honourable Prime Minister Andrew Holness'. No, that is wrong! That would be in the sense of covetousness. What I would say is that I would like to adopt the principle of how the prime minister operates and follow within that guideline. That person [Barajah] was not following in the guideline, he wanted to become Jesus and you can't," he said.
- R.M.