It’s hard to avoid the subject of fasting when Lent comes around every year. Should we give up Facebook or chocolate or eating meat on Fridays? As with all parts of Christian living, it depends on the motivation of your heart.

You should not give up something if your motivation is to suffer a little bit with Jesus or to follow the rules.

For the Christian, Lent is ultimately about fasting from sin. It is an avoidance of anything that could interfere with, distract from, or disturb the preparation for the new Christian life with the risen Christ. The temporary interruption of some selfish habit for a limited period of time, with the intention of resuming the old habit after Easter, does not accomplish the Christian’s goal. Lenten observances should aim at permanent improvement of the Christian life.

You may give up something if your motivation is to grow in your faith.

While not necessary for forgiveness of sins, fasting can do good things for you. In the Small Catechism, Luther says, “Fasting and bodily preparation are indeed fine outward training.” Fasting can remind us of our dependence on God rather than on the resources of this world. Fasting can be a means of saving resources so they can be given to the poor. Fasting is a means of self-discipline in a world where self-denial is almost seen as a crime against humanity.

Fasting or some other Lenten observance is up to you. Those observances do not forgive our sins, but they may help us center our thoughts on the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, which does forgive our sins. But don’t stop with only thinking about Christ, follow him!

The habit of fasting before Easter developed gradually—starting already within the first one hundred years of Christianity—and with lots of diversity in practice.

The Roman Catholic church requires various forms of fasting and abstinence from meat as an obligatory form of penance. Lutherans do not impose such rules about fasting on Christians, but leaves the decision up to each individual. Our Augsburg Confession says, “Fasting in itself is not rejected, but what is rejected is making a necessary service of fasts on prescribed days and with specified foods, for this confuses consciences. . . . Such outward forms of service do not make us righteous before God . . . therefore it is not a sin to omit them.”