A site prepared for a natural burial at the Foxfield Preserve in Wilmot, Ohio. (Photo courtesy of Foxfield Preserve)
Interest is growing in natural burials. That’s good news for people interested in living (and dying) in the ways of a whole Christian faith.
I experienced this firsthand when I attended a session entitled “Dying for Conservation” recently at the Land Trust Alliance’s annual conference in Pittsburgh. The session featured representatives from a number of organizations that are operating conservation-oriented natural burial cemeteries in several eastern states.
One of the speakers was Jeff Corney, executive director of The Wilderness Center in Ohio. He spoke about his motivations to more widely promote the organization’s natural burial ground (Foxfield Preserve) and its conservation benefits. When his father died, their family had proceeded with a conventional burial. By the end of the whole experience, he was convinced the whole process was wrong. It was all wrong because it was not in keeping at all with his father’s life or their family’s values. His heart sank.
Foxfield Preserve is one of a growing number of conservation burial cemeteries around the country. In these places people are buried naturally as part of a larger effort to restore and manage natural habitats in those places. A portion of the fees paid for the burial often funds those restoration and management activities. In this way a person’s death contributes to the life of God’s earth.
This is an encouraging trend. Christians should embrace this with enthusiasm and support. In fact, as I wrote in this earlier blog, whole faith churches should make this the new normal.
Because it’s so much a part of our culture, we often overlook a defining moment of disconnection in the usual burial ritual we attend. At the graveside service a pastor will often use the phrase “dust to dust” in reference to Ecclesiastes 3:20. Yet, everything in the way the body has been treated and the way in which it will be buried is intended to prevent our dust from returning to the dust.
There are at least two reasons why this profound dissonance between the worldview of the Bible and how we actually bury our dead matters.
First, if you believe the earth is God’s, then damaging and diminishing God’s earth is something you will want to avoid at all costs, This should especially be true when it comes to a spiritual-cultural moment of profound meaning.
Yet, we allow the river of culture and tradition to carry us away from our actual values.
Here’s a concise rundown of the cost to God’s Creation that comes from an article in Forbes by Laura Moss in 2011:
Embalming bodies requires cancer-causing chemicals like formaldehyde, glutaraldehyde and phenol — in fact, every year in the U.S. we bury 827,060 gallons of embalming fluid. Plus, caskets are often made from mined metals, toxic plastic or endangered wood. U.S. cemeteries use 30 million board feet of hardwoods, 180,544,000 pounds of steel and 5,400,000 pounds of copper and bronze annually. Casket burials also prevent a corpse from decomposing efficiently, and this slow rotting process favors sulfur-loving bacteria, which can harm nearby water sources.
Obviously, the exact numbers have likely shifted, but the general consequences remain the same.
All of that chemical and industrial activity is designed to prevent the vessel that is our body from naturally being recycled back into God’s earth. Yet, we are compostable!
This is not even to mention the fact that the conventional cemetery itself is a largely sterile and dead landscape. Vast areas of lawn are doused with weed-killing chemicals and mowed regularly by lawnmowers with internal combustion engines.
If your loved one loved God and cherished God’s Creation, you’d have to conclude that the whole process fundamentally contradicts your loved one’s values.
And there’s another reason why our burial rituals matter.
My son and I are reading the Bible together in lieu of confirmation classes. We just finished up Numbers. One of the things we came to better appreciate, especially with the help of the writings of Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, was the way God integrated extensive rituals and laws into the everyday life of the people of Israel.
In his essay “Neuroscience and Ritual,” Rabbi Sacks notes that:
…much of our behavior is driven by instincts that lie beneath conscious awareness and the rational, reflective part of the brain, the prefrontal cortex. The question then arises: How, if our instincts are largely unconscious, can we change them? The short answer is ritual: Ritual is behavior that bypasses the prefrontal cortex. It is action based not on a ritual decision that this is how we should act. Rather, it is behavior that follows a precise set of rules, a fixed choreography. Doing certain acts repeatedly, we form new “habits of the heart” that work at an unconscious level to form new patterns of instinctual behavior.
In other words, rituals shape the hearts of the people carrying them out. And from those shaped hearts come habits of behavior.
As Jesus said in Luke 6:45: “Good people bring good things out of the good stored up in their heart, and evil people bring evil things out of the evil stored up in their heart…”
Unfortunately, our death and burial rituals form wrong habits of the heart as they relate to Creation. Our unconscious comes to understand that death and mortality are things to be afraid of and to deny. At a heart level we understand that we are separate from the life of God’s earth. We absorb the understanding that our eternal destinies and Creation’s eternal destiny are completely different. We deny a Biblical and scientific truth – we are made of dust.
Above all, our burials and our burial places assert a selfish dominion that is the oppostie of what we see in God. They reflect in their tangible details an odd hybrid of Greek philosophy and American industrial culture.
When our core rituals reflect ways in opposition to God’s ways is it any wonder that the rest of our lives do as well?
In that context, the trend towards narual burials and especially those that contribute to conservation of God’s earth is doubly positive. The trend offers hope for particular patches of land and water where people are buried. We can renew the life of what we have been charged to tend and mend.
What’s more, choosing to bury naturally offers hope for renewing the ground that shapes everything else – the landscape of our hearts and souls.
I plan to post some links to related articles on my Twitter feed. I hope you’ll follow it.
I’ve known for some time that I needed to take a step beyond this blog. Intentions became actions when I organized a gathering of fellow Christians who care deeply about God’s earth on a Sunday late in September. I thought you’d like to read about it.
Thanks to the hospitality of Jen and Bryce Riemer, we gathered at the Riemer Family Farm in Brodhead, Wisconsin. Our potluck featured delicious food: fresh salads, Indian lentils, meatballs made from the pasture-raised animals of the Riemers’ farm, Asian pears, zucchini bread, and chocolate chocolate chip cookies made by the Riemers’ daughters.
While we ate and for awhile after, we shared our faith journeys and how our lives have been shaped by the conviction that God’s earth is of great value and importance. All of us were hungry to do this. All of us also shared the rewards and challenges of living out this conviction.
The attendees included a couple who have been running an ecologically-minded tree care company for decades, the director of community relations from the Au Sable Institute, an artist who is also the volunteer steward of two natural areas in Lake County, a land manager for a forest preserve district, a non-profit staff member working to promote sustainable farming (me), an occupational therapist who also gardens organically and teaches tai chi, and an organic grain farmer.
Later, I shared ideas I have on what collective action we could take going forward. In the discussion that followed, there was general consensus that we need to start with gathering together as a network. Through this network we can find ways to inspire each other, support each other, and even take action together. We closed this portion of the event with heartfelt prayer.
Jen and Bryce then led us on a tour of their farm fields where land long farmed in corn and beans is being converted to perennial pasture for rotational grazing of livestock. Rotational grazing on well-managed pasture has a multitude of benefits. It is good for the land and water, for habitat, for the health of the animals, and for the quality of the meat.
About 400 yards away, we could see a massive dairy factory farm’s new metal structures and barren earth. As this industrial farm facility gears up to full operating capacity, it will eventually house 6,000 cows. These living creatures of God will be kept inside 24/7 365 days a week to maximize efficiency and productivity. The contrast with the Riemer’s farm could not have been more stark.
For three years, the Riemers had led the local fight against the startup of this dairy Confined Animal Feeding Operation (CAFO) to try to prevent the damage to community and environment that they bring. This fight was ultimately unsuccessful. Its operations, which are not even at full scale yet, have already forced a neighboring family to move because their their children couldn’t breathe.
Yet, the Riemers have shown amazing grace and are seeing other opportunities to grow sustainable, humane, God-honoring farming out of the situation.
A highlight of our touring was when we passed the trees on the edges of the Riemers’ fields. Clouds of monarch butterflies flew up from the branches of the trees and all around us. The trees offered shelter for the monarchs as they rested together during their long southward migration. This was a fitting benediction to the day.
Thoughts and Insights
Several thoughts and realizations emerged from the gathering and from our conversations:
* The vast majority of people (and not just Christians) are profoundly disconnected from Creation and how it works.
* A feeling of isolation is common for Christians like us. The Au Sable director shared how many of the friends of Au Sable that he had been visiting have started crying when asked why they supported the Institute. They cried because Au Sable is one of the few outlets they have for being part of a Christian community that values Creation.
• We have felt the judgment of other Christians. Stories were told of other Christians suspiciously assuming that if one cared about God’s earth and acted to protect it then one was almost certainly on the road to becoming an earth worshipper and abortion rights supporter.
* Why is it that secular scientists and advocates are the ones mobilizing people to address the destruction being done to God’s earth on an epic scale and not churches and Christians?
* Sharing the message that God’s earth matters to God should be done with patient grace. Zealous judgmentalism will not help.
* Despite the many challenges, we were also reminded of the power of God to change hearts and transform lives. We heard of a Christian farmer who is now in the process of transitioning his 2,200-acre operation to organic methods. He chose to do this, in part, because of his children’s interest and desire to see Creation treated well.
*Our time of fellowship was deeply meaningful. One participant said, “I don’t want to leave and never see you all again.”
Another gathering is in the works. If you are in the Midwest and would like to be invited to the next one, please email me at naaberg19 at gmail.com. If you’re not in the Midwest, know that we hope to share what we learn from these gatherings. We would hope, too, that other groups of Christians will organize similarly elsewhere.
I don’t know where this is going exactly. But, with God’s help, it will keep going.
In a recent post I wrote that whole faith Christians will work to bring more life to the corners of God’s earth they hold, keep, and use. And they will do so even when the culture of land use around them creates pressure to do otherwise.
Whether that corner is an urban yard, a suburban lot, a rural property, or a farm, there are creative ways to bring more life to the parcels of land under our care. Figuring out those ways is one of the pleasures and challenges of being human. Over time I want to share profiles of what Christian land stewardship looks like in real life.
In August, I shared the story of David and Dianda Easter. In this post, you will read about Jeff and Lori Sundberg.
As their daughters went off to college and life after college, Jeff and Lori Sundberg had been thinking about where they wanted to move to for their next phase of life. They lived in a neighborhood in the prosperous town of Libertyville, Illinois. They were long time members of First Presbyterian Church of Libertyville. They had good jobs at nearby Lake Forest College. Yet, they knew that in their approaching retirement they wanted to be in a more rural place.
When Lori had lunch with the husband of her boss who had recently passed away, she didn’t know she would receive insight that would impact their decision on exactly where to move. The husband shared that he and his wife had also had conversations about where to retire to and had talked about different places here and there.
But then they had come to an important realization. “Why,” they had asked each other, “would we want to move away from our community when we’re approaching the time of our lives when we really need our community?”
This resonated with Jeff and Lori. So when they became aware of a 10-acre property on the northern edge of Libertyville in an area where public and private people and organizations had largely preserved its rural landscape character, they were intrigued. Five of the ten acres were in agriculture. The other five included a house that needed to be demolished, a large shed, a small wetland overgrown with nonnative plants, and a small woods also overwhelmed with invasive non-native plants. It was not a posh, pristine place, but they saw potential. They especially liked all of the open space around the property. In September 2015, they purchased it.
This is where a bit of backstory on Jeff is helpful. In addition to being a professor of liberal arts, business, and economics, he is an avid birder who has seen and identified 625 bird species to this point in his life. His ability to share a wealth of bird knowledge in entertaining, vivid, and funny ways makes him in constant demand for talks and for leading bird tours. He has served on the board of local and regional conservation organizations as well and volunteers for workdays restoring natural areas. He saw the land through an ecological lens.
“Some people like to rescue dogs,” says Jeff, “and I felt like this land needed rescuing.”
He explains further. “The land needed rescuing from us. The property was full of stuff that had been planted here on purpose that doesn’t serve any ecological purpose. It was also full of plants that had just come in here because they’re invasive and don’t serve any ecological purpose. An example is the Siberian elm. They are one of the least useful wildlife trees in North America. There’s almost nothing that eats them. They’re all over the place, and they spread like crazy.”
Jeff and Lori began rescuing the land by removing as many of the non-native trees, shrubs, and other plants as they could. This was hard work.
Lori is honest about her level of initial interest in tackling the ecological problems of their new property.
“Before we started the removal of the invasive plants, I didn’t think anything about rescuing the land. And I really didn’t see myself restoring property in my retirement plan.”
“But then when we started in on it and Jeff was showing me the Oriental bittersweet and other invasive plants, I got really into it. At one point Jeff gave me a whole patch of brush back there and a weed wrench and said, “Take out everything.” It was fun.”
“She had never used a weed wrench before,” says Jeff proudly, “but she was an unstoppable force.”
As they removed invasive non-native plants, they also began planting a wide variety of native plants indigenous to the area. They’ve planted over 140 trees and shrubs. The tree species have included six different kinds of oaks as well as two hickory species. The shrub species have included viburnums, ninebark, American bittersweet, hazelnut, and witch hazel. They’ve also seeded prairie plants in the open areas, woodland plants amongst the wooded areas, and wetland plants in and around the wetland.
When Jeff and Lori first purchased their property, this wetland was not visible due to the massive wall of invasive brush that had grown up over time. Since they opened up the area, turtles have returned and frogs have become abundant.
“We’re just trying to undo some of what humans have done or allowed to do to the property,” says Jeff.
There have been signs they are on the right path. “In the woodland, all the native grasses came up right away after the seeding,” says Jeff. “And all of a sudden last year, all these tall bellflowers, were blooming everywhere one day, and it was just spectacular.”
God’s wildlife have responded, too. Turtles have been seen around the pond, after not having been seen at all the first two years. Frog and toad numbers are way up. “We have lots and lots of leopards frogs and chorus frogs and American toads and green frogs,” says Jeff. And Jeff and Lori are seeing tons of birds. While I was there, for example, Jeff pointed out a ruby-throated hummingbird foraging for food.
Jeff has noticed that the birds are mostly seen nesting and foraging in the native trees.
The bud of one of the many oak trees the Sundbergs have planted opens to the glorious green of young oak leaves. Oak trees support an amazing variety of wildlife.
“I think taking care of the earth is part of what Christian stewardship is,” says Jeff. “I don’t in any way think I can make this better than what it used to be, but I’d like to make it closer to what it used to be. I don’t think the earth is here just to give us oil and coal and big muddy pits in the ground.”
“I certainly think there is a Christian element to what we’re doing. Plus it’s fun. When I was out here slaying Oriental bittersweet, it really felt like Onward Christian Soldiers.”
Lori finds that the way their home fits in most with her Christian life is being able to share the inspiring, peaceful setting with her church community. “We’ve had plans to have a silent Saturday out here in the morning,” she says. “I think it would be a good spot for that. There are plenty of places people can spread out, sit, and enjoy nature while doing their meditation or their prayer. We’ve also had deacons’ meetings here.”
“It does feel like a place that has a role to play in other people’s lives and not just ours,” adds Jeff.
They have several pieces of advice for other people who want to restore the beauty and ecological abundance of God’s earth.
1. Volunteer for ecological restoration work days: Volunteering with people who know what they’re doing is a really good way to learn. It can be hard to just take a book and just figure it all out.
2. Not everything will work: “You need to realize that everybody fails in so many ways,” says Jeff, “but especially in what they plant. It would be entertaining, in a dispiriting way, to know how many things I planted that didn’t live a week. That’s just part of the learning process.” Having someone to encourage you and give advice is really important.
3. Keep a record of what you plant and where: Jeff has a spreadsheet of every plant and seed mix they’ve put into the ground. This allows him to track the success and failure of what has been done over time and to make adjustments going forward. Keeping that record will also allow you to feel some satisfaction in what you’ve done over time.
Jeff and Lori live about a mile away from me. It has been wonderful to see the transformation of Jeff and Lori’s property over time. What a world and what a Church we might have if more Christians around the world were committed to rescuing and renewing God’s earth.
I’ve always been challenged by the story in Mark 5: 1-20 of the demons and the pigs.
I knew I needed to finally wrestle with it in earnest when I found a piece about the story by Pastor Andrew Wilson in the latest issue of Christianity Today. Like almost every other article, commentary, and sermon I’ve ever encountered, Wilson’s piece discounts the significance of the pigs.
This story, as you may remember, involves Jesus and a man possessed by demons who call themselves “Legion.” When confronted by Jesus, the demons expresses the desire to remain in the area and ask permission to go into a herd of 2,000 pigs. Jesus grants that permission. The pigs rush down the hill into the Sea of Galilee and die by drowning.
“Jesus and the Demoniac”- Woodcutting
It’s a puzzling story. Wilson shares a personal anecdote of an older pastor who recalled that one of the three most common questions about the Bible and the Christian faith he had received over the course of his long career had been, “And what’s the deal with the pigs?”
Wilson is a skilled writer and provides some valuable insights. However, he,like most other Bible interpreters (see this and this and this), seems to approach the story with the same two assumptions that have long shaped interpretations of the story: (1) the lives of the pigs do not matter and (2) the pigs are acted upon but are not able to choose to act themselves.
What happens if we read this story carefully and with an open mind? What happens if we apply what we know of pigs to the story? What if weave in other themes of Jesus’ life and of the Jewish roots of the Christian faith? What if we apply the whole faith principle that Creation matters to God and is part of God’s eternal plans?
If we interpret with all that in mind, this story comes to be even more wholly and richly provocative.
Below, I draw out that interpretation through a step-by-step, question-and-answer format. As you go forward, I encourage you to have an open mind while at the same time carefully scrutinizing each of my points of logic.
Did Jesus explain why he allowed the demons to go into the pigs and why the pigs rushed into the lake?
No. Like so many other examples of storytelling in the Bible, we are told of actions and statements but are left to figure out the connecting tissue of meaning and context ourselves. So we must be very careful about how we interpret the story. We will be tempted to project our own theories, prejudices, and ideas onto it.
What did the demons say their motivation was to move into the pigs?
To stay in the area. In other words, it seems they wanted to remain a source of torment and danger. This makes it illogical that the demons would want their hosts (the pigs) to die while they, the demons, were still possessing them. If this is kept in mind, it appears that the demons’ desire was ultimately thwarted.
Is there any Biblical basis for expecting that animals, especially higher order animals, might have a clearer and more virtuous perspective on the spiritual reality they are dealing with than humans?
Yes. Read the story of Balaam and his donkey carefully in Numbers 22: 21-35. In this provocative story, Balaam’s donkey sees an angel prepared to strike Balaam (a Moabite prophet) down three times, but each time Balaam’s donkey turns aside to prevent its master from being killed. Balaam, who has not perceived the angel, proceeds to beat the donkey each time, thinking that the donkey is being capriciously rebellious. God opens the donkey’s mouth, enabling it to speak its thoughts and feelings. The donkey reproaches Balaam and poignantly asks, “Am I not your own donkey, which you have always ridden to this day? Have I been in the habit of doing this to you?” Then God enables Balaam to see the angel with its sword drawn and to realize what the true situation was. The angel tells Balaam, “If it (the donkey) had not turned away, I would certainly have killed you by now, but I would have spared it.”
In other words, the donkey sees the spiritual reality Balaam is facing but does not see himself. And not only that. The donkey also acts to prevent Balaam’s death from that spiritual reality, even after it becomes clear that Balaam does not appreciate what the donkey is doing for him.
What do we know of pigs?
They, of course, are considered an unclean animal in Hebrew law. We also know they are highly intelligence animals, as smart as or even smarter than dogs. They have complex social relationships with each other and with humans when allowed. They have saved people from harm. I’ve even read that it is hard to find funding to research their intelligence because, in part, it raises painful questions about the ethics of how they are raised for food today in factory farms and how they are slaughtered. (A great book to read about all of this is Pig Tales: An Omnivore’s Quest for Sustainable Meat.)
It’s also significant that pigs can swim. So just running into the lake should not have caused their death by drowning.
In The Food Revolution by John Robbins, one reads the story of a pig who showed protective instincts while swimming. Robbins shares an experience of a farmer who had had a pet pig when he was young to which he was very attached. He would even sleep together with the pig in the cool barn on hot summer nights. He also enjoyed swimming in the farm’s pond. One of the farm dogs, however, would always swim out and then crawl on top of him, unintentionally scratching the boy with his claws. This was about to cause the boy to give up on swimming when the pig intervened:
“Evidently the pig could swim, for she would plop herself into the water, swim out where the dog was bothering the boy, and insert herself between them. She’d stay between the dog and the boy, and keep the dog at bay. She was, as best I could make out, functioning in the situation something like a lifeguard, on in this case, perhaps more of a life-pig.”
Is there any other explanation for what the pigs did and their demise?
Yes. The assumption in most commentaries is that the demons caused the pigs, directly or indirectly, to rush down the hill and into the water where they drowned. In othe words, the demons either directed the pigs to run into the lake and die or the pigs’ instinctive, non-rational reaction to their possession by the demons was to rush blindly and without thinking into the water.
Another way to read the story begins with assuming the pigs had their own volition. This leads to the idea that the pigs decided it was better to die than live with the demons in them. So they decided to not only rush into the water but also not to swim and keep themselves alive. In other words, they committed suicide with a sacrificial purpose. They committed suicide to thwart the demons’ desire to remain in the area.
In what ways does this alternative reading make sense?
Here are the ways I believe it does make sense:
1. The last story we read before the story of the demons and the pigs is of Jesus calming the storm. The disciples wonder in the last verse of chapter 4, “Who is this? Even the wind and the waves obey him!” A reading of this story that gives the pigs some will of their own enables this story to show that Jesus is both more powerful than the evil forces of the universe and, again, lord of the universe itself. He is able to use Creation to thwart the purposes of the demons. In this case, though, Jesus uses the sentience and intelligence of creatures within Creation.
2. We have seen in the story of Balaam’s donkey an animal that sees aspects of the spiritual world that people, including Balaam, cannot see and reacts out of good motives to preserve the life of Balaam. Why can’t pigs, who are as intelligent as donkeys and potentially more so, also act with their own will in a situation where they are confronted with the spiritual world intervening in the material world? This is so unexpected, of course, that our minds recoil at the idea. But perhaps the unexpected is part of what Jesus meant when he said earlier in Mark, “The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!” The kingdom of God upends all that seems normal in the world!
3. This reading fits, in a radical way, with the theme we see in the Gospels of the Gentile world sometimes recognizing Jesus and God’s ways more aptly than the Jewish world. The pigs are an extreme symbol of not only uncleanness but even of pagan and Roman culture, which were opposed and hostile to Jewish culture. What could be more radical than the kingdom of God leading pigs, the epitomy of all that seemed opposed to the Jewish understanding of God, to serve God’s purposes and eliminate evil from the world?
4. There is evidence that higher order animals can take action for good. There is also some potential evidence that higher order animals can commit suicide. A recent paper by David M. Pena-Guzman examines that possibility as does an article in Psychology Today.
5. If the pigs chose to take action for good by deliberating running into the lake and allowing themselves to be drowned (remember, pigs can swim), then this story actually picks up on the theme of sacrifice being needed to break the power of evil in the world. This is part of the fundamental story of Jesus dying on the cross. Jesus had the power to remove himself from the situation but chose not to in order to fulfill God’s purposes. The demons thought they had saved themselves by appealing to move into the pigs while evil thought it had triumphed over God by having Jesus killed. Both were wrong. And the pigs, which were likely used in sacrifices to pagan Gods, redeemed their goodness in Creation by being sacrifices for the removal of evil.
6. The theme of sacrifice that we see in the life and death of Jesus being paralleled here in this story actually enables us to feel better about Jesus allowing the demons to go into the pigs. Reading this story with the usual interpretations projects callousness onto Jesus. Why would Jesus allow demons to take their evil elsewhere in the world and cause the death of other members of Creation? Why wouldn’t he just have the demons leave the world forever? Why have compassion on the demons?
What if Jesus wasn’t having compassion on them at all but was taking advantage of their underestimation of the rest of Creation? What if Jesus was giving the pigs the opportunity to have a more noble purpose in their lives than they would normally have had – being slaughtered for food or sacrificed to a pagan god? Maybe their example of sacrifice to eliminate evil was a radical message from the least likely source? Maybe it was a profound sign?
7. This reading also fits with theme of Jesus having more knowledge and power in this world than demons. If one reads the exchange between Jesus and the demons, Jesus doesn’t actually assent to them staying in the area. He only assents to them moving into the pigs. Why couldn’t Jesus have known that pigs would be the agents of destruction of the demons?
8. And check out verses 16-17 – “Those who had seen it told the people what had happened to the demon-possessed man – and told about the pigs as well. Then the people began to plead with Jesus to leave their region.” Maybe what was so unsettling to the people of this region was not just Jesus’ ability to free the demon-possessed man of the demons but also the seeming suicide of the pigs. People there would have known that pigs could swim. Perhaps the idea that the pigs they ate and sacrificed on a regular basis could actually choose to do something good at the costs of their own lives would have been deeply unsettling?
9. In his article, Pastor Wilson picks up on the potential connection between the name of the demons being “Legion” and the Roman rule over the area. Doesn’t it add to the subversiveness of the story to think of pigs, a symbol of Roman culinary culture and their pagan religious culture, causing the demise of a legion?
In what ways is this alternative reading open to criticism of its own?
1. There is no commentary in the verses that provides clear basis for believing that the pigs had their own will in this situation or that Jesus expected the pigs to act on their own to resist the demons. You could just as easily read the verses to suggest that the demons either drove the pigs mad or drove them to run into the lake in some sort of purposefully destructive act. This story is a Rohrshach test of sorts. We project onto it what we bring to it. What’s more, there is no indication in the story whether the demons came back or not. So much is left unsaid!
2. There is no scientific consensus about whether animals can commit suicide. Here is an article that casts doubt on the whole idea.
3. You can make the argument that just as the demons caused the man to act irrationally, violently, and self-destructively the pigs would have lost control of themselves, even to the point of rushing into the water and losing the ability to swim.
4. It seems to our modern mindset to give too much agency and volition to the pigs in the story. These are the same intelligent animals we put into factory-like facilities that we call farms. Even worse, the culture of almost every church sees no problem with eating the flesh of these animals, even after the way they have been treated in life and death has been counter to every fruit of the spirit and the opposite of loving stewardship. Anything that suggests that pigs (and other animals under our control) have intelligence and can serve God’s will with some autonomy is deeply unsettling. We are not truly open to a Kingdom of God that upends and unsettles all of our expectations and assumptions.
You, of course, should make your own judgments. Nevertheless, no matter how you read the story, it is worth mentioning that both the possessed man and the pigs are capable of being afflicted by the demons. That should give us pause as well.
We tend to emphasize our unique qualities as humans and to avoid thinking of the commonalities we have with our fellow created beings around us. But just as Jesus was both God and man, we are simultaneously both special image-bearers of God and plain members of Creation. This should give us humility and a sense of fellowship with the rest of Creation.
In a recent post I wrote that whole faith Christians will work to bring more life to the corners of God’s earth they hold, keep, and use. And they will do so even when the culture of land use around them creates pressure to do otherwise.
Whether that corner is an urban yard, a suburban lot, a rural property, or a farm, there are creative ways to bring more life to the parcels of land under our care. Figuring out those ways is one of the pleasures and challenges of being human.
I would even assert that taking on the challenge of bringing life to different places and at different scales is a path towards growth in our hearts and minds. It takes patience. It takes careful observation and nuance. You need to research and gain new knowledge while also using practical, down-to-earth skills. Anyone doing this will make mistakes. What works at one point may not work at another point. Love and faith will be needed. Sometimes discipline will have to be applied. Sometimes hard choices will have to be made.
Sounds a whole lot like parenting, doesn’t it?
Over time I want to share profiles of what Christian land stewardship looks like in real life. And in this post, I share the land-to-life story of David and Dianda Easter.
In 2008, they acquired a 7.5-acre property near Urbana, Illinois after a search of over a year. They were living in Ohio at the time and had been working with a real estate agent for their search. David’s sister was eager to help. She drove back county roads looking for properties that might not be listed. Her efforts paid off when she found an abandoned Christmas tree farm.
Your average person might have seen only problems. The Scotch pines that were left on the property were succumbing to disease. The former owners had been harvesting the Christmas trees with a big digger but had not been replacing the missing trees or filling the holes that had been left behind. There were over 200 holes scattered about. Each was 3-5’ in diameter and 2-4’ in depth. What’s more, invasive non-native plants like Asian honeysuckle and autumn olive now dominated the undergrowth.
The contrast is stark. Across the Easters’ property line in the background of this image, you can see their neighbors’ land is still dominated by a thick mass of invasive shrubbery that prevents light from reaching the ground. In the foreground you can see what the land looks like after the Easters have removed invasive shrubs and diseased trees over the last 10 years.
It was an aesthetic and ecological mess. The Easters saw a chance to restore and renew God’s creation.
Its context, which David’s sister had noticed, also gave the property latent potential to be ecologically valuable . The property, for instance, is next to a river. River corridors are especially important for wildlife. Their property is also across from a publicly-owned natural area. By restoring this degraded property, the Easters saw they could have a larger impact.
The Easters were motivated by their long-time Christian faith to take on this challenge.
“We’ve done organic gardening for thirty something years,” says David. “We’ve always felt that God created the earth, and the earth should be protected. We believe we need to protect and improve the world around us and leave it a better place, both spiritually and physically.”
The Easters were able to retire early to this piece of land because they had long committed themselves to living as simply as they could, which itself was a reflection of their Christian values. They chose not to buy into consumer culture, which compels people to keep consuming and buying.
“Early in our marriage we set a lifestyle, and we capped it, even when our incomes rose,” says David. “Instead, we saved, and we gave.”
In 2008, they weren’t quite ready to move, but were eager to begin improving their new land. So for the next four years, they would travel from Ohio and spend several weeks of their annual vacations filling in the holes, clearing the invasive plants, taking down the diseased pines, and planting native trees and shrubs.
“The first years we planted and went back to Ohio so we didn’t care for them well so we had to replant quite a few.”
In 2012, they moved to their property in Illinois, building their own passive solar house there with solar panels on the roof providing much of the energy they needed. They also planted a large garden so they could grow more of their food. Now that they were there year-round, their restoration of the land picked up in pace and intensity. To bring ecological life to their land, they’ve planted a wide variety of native trees and shrubs.
The Easters have planted hundreds of native trees on their property since they bought it in 2008 and have also seen native trees and shrubs spring up even when not planted by them. Here is a young oak with protection from deer.
David is proud to recite the diverse native species of woody plants he and his wife have planted, both from seed and as live plants – 10 species of oaks, four species of hickory tree, two maple species, persimmons, sassafras, viburnums, pawpaws (a favorite of mine), hornbeam, Juneberry, wahoo, snowberry, coralberry, ninebark, hazelnut, witch hazel, and spirea. For their own sustenance, they’ve also planted fruit and nut trees and bushes. These include pecans, gooseberries, currants, blueberries, pears, peaches, and plums. In all, they’ve planted 82 different species of trees and shrubs on their property.
“We have a book called Trees of Central Illinois,” says David, “and we’ve planted everything in the book, I believe, except perhaps for the ones that would belong on the river bottoms. Based on the number of fenceposts we’ve purchased for marking the location of the woody plants we’ve planted, there at least 750 trees and shrubs growing right now.”
David stands by one of the pawpaw trees he and Dianda had planted some time ago. Seeing what they planted grow and prosper over time has been a great pleasure for them.
They’ve had pleasant surprises as well. After they cleared out the invasive plants that had been dominating the land under the trees, native plants began springing up that the Easters hadn’t planted, including sassafras, oaks, and spicebush. “We’ve seen plants come up that we would not have expected and had not done so in 20 years,” says David. His guess is that birds were bringing in nuts and dropping berry seeds from other nearby properties.
The rich variety of native plants and the pollen, nectar, fruit, nuts, and cover they provide has attracted a variety of wildlife. They have seen turkey walking through, hawks and eagles flying over, and owls in the woods. Deer are actually overly abundant. They are happy to see coyotes using the land frequently. The red fox are a mixed blessing, as they are beautiful animals but have also absconded with several of the Easters’ chickens. Monarch butterflies, which face a difficult future as a species, often visit their land. Dave and Dianda enjoy watching bluebirds nesting in the next boxes they’ve installed on the property as well..
They’ve even had moments of discovery. “In the tallgrass area one day we saw hundreds of swallows and hundreds of dragonflies,” says Dianda. “Were swallows eating the dragonflies or were they both eating insects there?”
David and Dianda have advice for people who want to bring life to their properties:
1. Do research before you begin
2. Use native plants whenever possible
3. Start planting native plants (especially trees and shrubs) as early as possible in your ownership or stewardship of a piece of property so you can enjoy them as they grow
4. It’s never too late to start planting and restoring your land
5. Start small so you don’t become overwhelmed and can learn lessons that you can easily fix as you go
It was a pleasure to spend time with David and Dianda on their property when I took the photos you see. They were simultaneously at peace with who they were and energetic in their life purpose that is bound up with their Christian faith.
I first met David at a land conservation meeting we both attended in central Illinois. In addition to what he and Dianda are doing on their land, David also works to help God’s creation be protected and restored to life on a larger scale by serving on the board of Grand Prairie Friends. This is an organization that protects ecologically important lands from development by purchasing them and also by using legal tools like conservation easements. David and Dianda attend and are active in the life of Stone Creek Church in Urbana.
Nathan believes that a whole Christian faith includes an imperative for us, individually and collectively, to actively show God’s earth mercy and compassion every day. For more than 15 years, he has worked for non-profit conservation groups that restore and protect natural habitats, change the relationship people have with nature, and promote sustainable farming. To learn more, click here.
