“For the natural man is an enemy to God, and has been from the fall of Adam, and will be, forever and ever, unless he yields to the enticings of the Holy Spirit, and putteth off the natural man and becometh a saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord, and becometh as a child, submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon him, even as a child doth submit to his father.” (Mosiah 3:19). I think we can learn a lot about what it means to “put off the natural man” by thinking about the temptations and inclinations and desires of the natural man in terms of confidence schemes. The key to any good confidence scheme is instilling a sense of urgency. The trick is to get the mark, or the intended victim, to believe that they have to make a decision right now or this opportunity will be gone. The urgency is, however, an illusion. It is the same with the “natural man.” Satan, the absolute master of confidence schemes, tries to deceive us into believing that there is this sense of urgency, that we have to act right now on this impulse or urge or craving or we’re going to die or explode or go crazy. The natural man is always concerned with what has to happen right this second. But there is a way to put off the natural man, to remove the sense of urgency, to slow down our thinking and decision making process. And ironically, the best way to slow down is to fast. Fasting at the most basic level is to give up food and drink for a certain length of time. The natural man would have us believe that there is a desperate urgency for us to eat something if we go more than five or six hours without food. But the truth of the matter is that the human body can technically go weeks without food before severe malnutrition sets in. By fasting, we call the natural man’s bluff. We find out that even though the natural man was trying to convince us that we would drop dead after fourteen or sixteen hours without food, we were still in fact alive nineteen or twenty hours later. It is not always pleasant calling that bluff. We can become irritable and impatient and moody if we go too long without food, but by fasting we prove to ourselves that it is possible to put off the natural man. And we can broaden the scope of fasting to incorporate all kinds of things. We can take a fast from social media, or arguing with our siblings, or fantasy football, or gossipping, or really anything that feels urgent and important but that ultimately keeps us from yielding to the enticings of the holy spirit and becoming a saint. Fasting gives us a chance to slow down and really consider if the thought or desire or impulse we are feeling is really worth it.
