Archives For Agitations

Understanding the Pigs and Demons Story Through the Book of Job

Nathan Aaberg —  June 9, 2024 — Leave a comment

Print by Jan Luyken of Amsterdam in 1712. Entitled: “Christus in het land van de Gadarenen.” 

I’ve written before (here and here) about the story of the pigs, demons, and Jesus that is told in Matthew 8:28-34 and Luke 8:26-37.

If there is a story that seems to suggest that Jesus thinks little of animals and even Creation itself, this is it. And this is how most interpreters over the centuries, like St. Augustine and Thomas Aquinas, have understood it. They have asserted that this story tells us pigs are disposable beings, whose fate is not worth one iota of concern. We literally have license to kill.

When you come to this story with a mindset already formed by theologies dismissive of Creation, you will very likely come to those same conclusions. This is the story in general of how Christian theologians have assessed Creation’s significance in the whole Bible. Human-centric interpretations have built on earlier human-centric interpretations until readers’ minds and hearts can no longer actually directly experience what they encounter in Scripture nor in Creation.

I will admit that I first examined the story some years back with some trepidation. The story really did seem to suggest that the pigs did not matter to God.

But as I considered the actual data presented in the story, I found another possibility for how to read the story. This possibility – that the pigs actually resisted the demons and sacrificed their lives to eliminate the demons – is quite different from how the story is normally read. But in many ways I believe this reading actually fits the story and the context of Jesus’ life better than more traditional readings.

I am coming back to the story because there is a dimension to it that I didn’t address previously. That dimension is the connection of the story with the book of Job.

A number of other writers and theologians have pointed out the parallels. Specifically, in both Job and the New Testament story, supernatural forces of evil ask for permission from God to afflict a being part of Creation. In the case of Job, Satan asks permission to afflict Job to see if he will be righteous even if everything is taken away from him. In the case of the New Testament story, the demons (“Legion”) beg permission to enter into the nearby herd of pigs.

Is this parallel an accident? Not likely. As the following graphic details, the Bible is brimming with cross-references.

Visual graphic of cross references between books of the bible - with horizontal access depicting all 66 books and colored arcs connecting between cross references

This is a graphic of the 63,779 cross references in the Bible. It was created by Chris Harrison, the Associate Professor of Human-Computer Interaction at Carnegie Mellon University and can be found here.  Here’s how Harrison explains the chart: “The bar chart that runs along the bottom represents all of the chapters in the Bible, starting with Genesis 1 on the left. Books alternate in color between light and dark gray, with the first book of the Old and New Testaments in white. The length of each bar denotes the number of verses in that chapter (for instance, the longest bar is the longest chapter in the Bible, Psalm 119). Each of the 63,779 cross references found in the Bible are depicted by a single arc – the color corresponds to the distance between the two chapters, creating a rainbow-like effect.”

Just one example of a meaningful cross reference is when Jesus says, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” while on the cross. This is the first phrase of Psalm 22. This poem initially conveys the experience of being surrounded by those hate you and feeling an overwhelming sense of abandonment. The way this psalm describes the details of that abandonment is eerily parallel to the details of Jesus’ crucifixion. This further roots Jesus and his mission in what was the Scripture of that time. Then, in a dramatic turn, the psalmist voices hope in God’s rescue and asserts that all the families of the nations shall someday worship before God. Jesus’ reference to the psalm creates deeper resonance for the pain he is suffering while also conveying his faith and certainty in an eventual triumph of God’s love. All of this, in a concise way, adds dimensional depth and meaning to that moment.

Similarly, the parallel in the pigs and demon story with the book of Job should prompt us to look for common themes in both stories. In fact, this thematic hyperlink should actually serve as a filter for correct understanding of the story. An interpretation of the pigs and demons story that is in discord with the story of Job must be missing the boat.

There are three elements I see in the book of Job that have significance for the story of the pigs, demons, and Jesus. I detail those below and then weave those elements together with my interpretation of the pigs and demons story.

 

Insight #1: Creation as Revelation and Delight of God (Job 38-41)

The most dramatic point in the book of Job is when God answers Job’s calls for God to present himself. But instead of arguing with Job about his situation and why Job is suffering, God proceeds to respond with some of the most vivid, expansive Creation poetry ever heard. Here is just a sample from Job 38: 39-41:

Can you hunt the prey for the lion,
Or satisfy the appetite of the young lions,
When they crouch in their dens
Or lie in wait in their thicket?
Who provides for the raven its prey,
When its youngest ones cry to God for help,
And wander about for lack of food?

The book of Job asserts that by paying attention to the vast scale, complexity, beauty, and pure teemingness of life on earth and in the sea one somehow gets a sense of God and God’s transcendence. In short, Creation in its full scope is a revelation of God’s power, majesty, creativity, and mystery. If one reads this and other books of the Bible, it is clear that God is not just aware of this vibrant world but is somehow sustaining of it. A verse I find especially beautiful is Psalm 145:16 –  “You open your hand; you satisfy the desire of every living thing.”

The implication is clear. For consistency with the Job-like situation, we cannot read the story of the demons and the pigs as a narrative that dismisses any part of Creation as outside of God’s concern and blessedness. In fact, I would argue this is where the demons make their fatal mistake. They may have assumed the pigs would not have their own volition and readiness to act for God’s purposes.

 

Insight #2: Creation Teaches Us (Job 12:7-10)

When I interviewed John Kempf and asked him what his favorite Bible verses were, he brought my attention to Job 12:7-10:

But ask the beasts, and they will teach you;
the birds of the heavens, and they will tell you;
or the bushes of the earth, and they will teach you;
and the fish of the sea will declare to you.
Who among all these does not know
that the hand of the Lord has done this?
In his hand is the life of every living thing
and the breath of all mankind.

Interestingly, the first two verses actually foreshadow how God will respond to Job later in the story. This is ironic, because these are Job’s own words to his friends. He is telling his friends to look at Creation to be better grounded in their understanding of God. Job’s words suggest that by having the humility to listen to and to be taught by Creation, we will gain wisdom about God.

How many of us really read these words? Are we really ready to allow our hearts and minds to be impacted? We are used to dictating to Creation what we need and what we will take. Our natural human instinct is to consider ourselves the crown of Creation. What can “dumb” nature teach us, we who are “superior” beings?

And what we learn in Job 12:9-10 is the humbling realization that humanity and the rest of Creation share a common identity. We all exist by the creative power and sustaining grace of God. We do not have ultimate power over ourselves.

The appropriate response to this insight is profound humility before God and a sense of existential kinship with the rest of Creation.

As we consider the story of the pigs and the demons, we must bring humble openness to learning from Creation.

 

Insight #3: Job’s Righteousness Revealed in Selfless Act (Job 42:7-10)

Reread the last chapter of Job. In our abbreviated memory of the story, we make a beeline from Job’s submission in the face of God’s overwhelming grandeur and hidden purposes to Job’s renewal and restoration.

That misses a crucial section of the story.

In the end, Job is called upon, despite having suffered in so many ways, to pray for Eliphaz and the other two friends who had made Job’s suffering worse. Those friends and  the theologies they applied to Job’s situation had not correctly discerned what was happening to Job nor why. Their mistakes and the harm those mistakes caused to Job needed some kind of atonement. Job is called upon to pray to God to forgive those three friends.

And even here we must read carefully. Job agrees to pray for his friends without knowing whether his fortunes will be restored.

Think of that. It is Job who has suffered from what God has allowed Satan to do to him. Not only that, his friends’ arguments compounded the suffering he was already experiencing.  He is still, presumably, suffering from the physical afflictions Satan unleashed on him. God has just overwhelmed him and reprimanded him. And Job is asked to act for others with no promise of his own life condition being changed.

And what does Job do? He prays for his friends.

He likely does so out of compassion. He probably does so, too, because he hears from his friends that God had dictated that Job’s prayers were necessary.

And God accepts his prayers. We can assume, I believe, that the prayer is accepted because Job has a new level of humility and faithfulness to God.

The importance of this act of praying is emphasized in Job 42:8-10 by four references to Job’s prayer.

“Now therefore take seven bulls and seven rams and go to my servant Job and offer up a burnt offering for yourselves. And my servant Job shall pray for you, for I will accept his prayer not to deal with you according to your folly. For you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has. So Eliphiz the Temanite and Bildad the Shuhite and Zophar the Naamathite went and did what the Lord has told them, and the Lord accepted Job’s prayer. And the Lord restored the fortunes of Job, when he had prayed for his friends. And the Lord gave Job twice as much as he had before.”

Again, Job does not know that his fortunes will be restored when he decides to pray and acts on that decision. Only after he prays does God restore Job’s fortunes.

That act of selfless prayer resolves Satan’s challenge that had launched the whole drama. Job, Satan asserts, would not stay righteous even when he has almost everything taken away. In other words, the moment when God’s grandeur overwhelms Job is not the resolution of the story question. Job’s willingness to act for his friends and for God’s purposes is the resolution.

Job’s demonstrates his resilient righteousness by the selfless compassion and obedience that God is calling upon to him to have.

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Looking Again at the Story of the Demons and Pigs

There are multiple ways in which the thematic hyperlink in the demons and pigs story to the book of Job helps us better understand the underlying meaning of the New Testament story.

Let’s start at the highest and most obvious level – the fact that the demon legion must beg permission of Jesus parallels the situation in Job where Satan needs to ask permission before he can do anything to Job. This establishes Jesus as possessing the power and position of God.

Let’s go to the next level – the drama in each of the two stories.

In Job, the wandering Satan wants permission to torment Job to discredit God by asserting that Job only is righteous because he has been richly blessed by God. This gives Job’s situation cosmic stakes. If Job will stray from righteousness, then Satan will not just have damaged Job but will have proven that God failed when he created humanity. Why? Because God’s hope of having right relationship with humanity out of humanity’s free devotion to God, even when devotion to God is not accompanied by material comfort, had failed.

In the New Testament story, the demons desperately seek to continue to exist in this world by being allowed to move into a herd of pigs. There are cosmic stakes here, too. One is whether Creation, in the form of the pigs, can be twisted and perverted away from its goodness, the goodness that God endowed it with. Another is whether Jesus will allow the demons to continue to be a threat in the region. Will Jesus allow evil to persist?

So, as we read this story and specifically this element of testing, we should read the story like we read the story of Job for the first time. As we wondered if Job’s faith will falter, we must also wonder if the pigs, as surprising representatives of sentient Creation, will falter and allow the demon legion to prevail by permitting them to stay in this plane of existence.

(Here it is important to remember, as I asserted in my earlier piece, that the goal of the demons was to continue in existence in this existence. They would have had no reason to want to cause their hosts – the pigs – to die.)

This is where the three insights from Job come to bear.

Creation in all of its grandeur, epic scale, and mystery is a revelation of God. Pigs, despite being considered unclean animals, are in their own way part of that revelation of a boundlessly creative Creator God. Just one distinctive feature of pigs is their intelligence. Another is their sensitive snout which allows them to root about in the soil, which can be either ecologically valuable or highly damaging, depending on the situation.

Joel Salatin has written this challenging and compelling book in his inimitable style about his Christian faith, his farming, and, yes, his pigs. Here is an essay of his that explores briefly some of the themes he more deeply engages with in the book.

Neither the Romans, for whom pigs were an essential part of their culinary culture, nor the Jews saw pigs in the way God sees them. As Rabbi Chaim Steinmetz writes, “Jews associated the pig with the Roman empire, and the pig was the food of the enemy.”

How deeply unsettling and provocative would it be for both Romans and Jews to consider the possibility of pigs defeating a “Legion?”

How you choose to see pigs in the story reflects how you consider God’s earth. If you see pigs as lowly, dirty, expendable creatures, then you will tend to interpret the story in a way that degrades God’s Creation. But that stance towards Creation is in complete contradiction with the book of Job. If you take the book of Job seriously, then your interpretation of the story of the demons and pigs must begin with acknowledging that pigs are distinctive parts of Creation that have God’s attention and have their own desires.

Just as Job’s selflessness and obedience to God’s purposes with no promise of restoration ultimately proved his righteousness, I would assert that the pigs acted out of selfless service to God’s goodness by refusing to allow the demons twist them and use them for their own purposes. The spirit in which the pigs chose to do what they did is in the same chord as Job’s decision to pray for his friends. And their refusal, an act of spiritual struggle, caused them to lose their lives. You could even say the pigs’ decision prefigures Jesus’ own sacrificial death..

And there is precedence in the Bible for animals acting selflessly and having a better understanding of the spiritual realities around them than humans. We see those traits in Balaam’s donkey.

Paying attention to the thematic cross reference of the pigs and demons story to the book of Job should compel us to do three things. First, see the pigs as creatures, like the wild donkeys and ravens of God’s monologue in Job, that God sustains and cares about and who reflect God in some way. Second, we must shake off the theologies that have built up around this story, like a thick layer of barnacles on a ship’s hull, so that we can see the very real possibility that the pigs were ready to sacrifice their lives to be part of the cosmos-level struggle against evil and chaos. Third, we must pray to God for hearts humble enough to learn from the pigs.

If we do those three things, our minds and hearts will be open to the true spiritual significance of the story. And that will have implications for how we live out the joys and responsibilities of taking care of God’s earth.

 

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Longing for the Belonging of Church

Nathan Aaberg —  January 31, 2023 — 2 Comments

I was driving home late last year on a familiar road when I saw a sign for a new church that I had not seen before.

There was no traditional church building in sight. But there was a barn with fresh red metal siding and a metal roof. That, I realized, was the church’s sanctuary. Intriguing.

Perhaps this was it. Perhaps the alternative approach to church architecture signalled an assembly of believers where Creation mattered, where people really believed God loves the whole world.  Could this be a community of faith where Creation’s presence in the Bible was reflected in theology, culture, and way of living? Maybe this would be a place where I could belong.

After pulling away from church a number of years ago, I’ve longed for belonging around faith and Jesus. Seeing that new church in a non-traditional building brought that old familiar pang back to the surface of my heart.

When I got home, I promptly visited the church’s website. It was bright and well-designed. Its photos and text highlighted the church’s racial diversity. The faces, set against a background of wooden barn walls, were friendly, enthusiastic. Promising, I thought.

I found the “What We Believe” section of the website. Hope crashed into reality.

 

Not a word about Creation. Not a single word.

I have to admit this – in that moment, for a moment, I questioned myself.

Maybe I am wrong, I thought. Maybe there’s a good reason why so many churches don’t speak about Creation or care about it. And maybe staying away from church is a rebellion against God’s will. Doesn’t the New Testament speak clearly about the obligation and rewards of being with other followers of Jesus?

That old familiar pang pressed against my heart. Here I was again, feeling guilt for not going to church while longing for belonging in a faith community.

 

Am I Unforgiving?

Some new friends, who I met at a field walk last September at their farm, suggested a different way for me to consider my situation.

They are faithful believers who steward their land carefully and attend a church in Indiana. There they often find themselves alone in expressing a Creation care consciousness. They are not always understood.

During the field walk, we had bonded over our common convictions. I had shared my challenges in finding a church. They wrote this in a recent email:

For us, it’s forgiveness every single time we walk into our church. It can be a struggle for fellow Christians to understand our views, but we think it’s important to lend grace and forgiveness so we can continue to educate them on this matter. People are starting to listen, starting to realize the connection we have to all of His Creation. We pray that you can find forgiveness in your heart so you can go out to disciple this to His people.

These words brought me up short.

Was that the problem? Am I not being forgiving? Was that why I couldn’t fit in and make a home at a church?

Perhaps I needed to commit myself to forgiving fellow believers as they would need to forgive me for my own blind spots. If I repented of the judgments I was making, would I then be able to find a church where I could belong?

 

A Buck Outside the Window

More recently, I was having a conversation with a coworker at the nonprofit I work for in a room with a wide window. Out of the corner of my eye I saw movement in one of our organization’s farm fields roughly 80 yards away. I couldn’t help myself. In mid-conversation, I turned to look closer. Through a row of trees between us and the field, I saw a deer. It was a young buck. The head it held high had a small set of antlers.

Then it strode through the row of trees and onto the lawn south of our office. This was midday. It was now in full view and less than 30 yards away in the middle of a subdivision* in a Midwest town.

By now, I was no longer pretending to be engaged the conversation. We both watched as the buck strode across the lawn. Its eyes were watchful. Its posture powerful.

He passed out of sight. The lawn seemed a wilder place even with him gone. My mind and heart were still absorbing the experience even as my coworker renewed the conversation as if nothing unusual had happened and without a word about the buck.

 

Ears to Hear

Jesus sometimes used the phrase, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.” (Matthew 13:9, Mark 4:9, Luke 8:8, etc.)

In recent weeks I’ve encountered stories and insights that convince me that…… well, let me share them first and then share my conclusion.

The first came from an article in Christianity Today about Bono’s newly published memoir. In it, Bono shares his recollection of a conversation he had with Franklin Graham, the son of Billy Graham. Billy Graham, one of the most famous Christian evangelists of recent history, had invited Bono to visit him. Franklin had picked him up at the airport. From the conversation that Bono recollects, it’s clear that Franklin was dubious about whether the rockstar Bono was an authentic Christian.

“You … you really love the Lord?” (Franklin)
“Yep.” (Bono)
“Okay, you do. Are you saved?”
“Yep, and saving.”
He doesn’t laugh. No laugh.
“Have you given your life? Do you know Jesus Christ as your personal Savior?”
“Oh, I know Jesus Christ, and I try not to use him just as my personal Savior. But, you know, yes.”
“Why aren’t your songs, um, Christian songs?”
“They are!”
“Oh, well, some of them are.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, why don’t they … Why don’t we know they’re Christian songs?”
I said, “They’re all coming from a place, Franklin. Look around you. Look at the creation, look at the trees, look at the sky, look at these kinds of verdant hills. They don’t have a sign up that says, ‘Praise the Lord’ or ‘I belong to Jesus.’ They just give glory to Jesus.”

 

Killer Whale Theology

Cover of Beyond Words by Carl Safina

 

In Beyond Words: What Animals Think and Feel, ocean advocate Carl Safina opens the reader’s mind and heart to the complex world of killer whales.

Three things astonished me. The first is the very creatures themselves. There is, for example, not just one generic kind of killer whale. There are actually estimated to be eight types of killer whales. Some eat only fish, primarily salmon. Others prefer mammals. One type, much smaller than the type that eats seals off of ice flows, hunts penguins. Yet another type hunts sharks. Regardless of type, these are highly social animals with matriarchal leadership. Oddly, pods of the same type of killer whales will not socialize with other pods of the same type. They have their own cultures. Yet, killer whales in the wild have never been seen being aggressive to each other.

Their vocal communication capacity is amazing.

“Killer whales in a  group can be spread out over 150 square miles – and all be in vocal contact,” write Safina.

Having huge nerve cells for hearing and generating sounds from skulls that are sophisticated technologies, killer whales (like other dolphin species and whales) inhabit a world we can only dream of. They live, in fact, by sound.

The second remarkable thing is how little humans have known about killer whales for most of human history. It was only in 1960, just over 60 years ago, that a researcher discovered that dolphins relied on sound for so much and that eyesight was a secondary source of information. And it’s been even more recently that people have differentiated the different types of killer whales and discovered that each killer whale has its own individual personality and remarkable social intelligence.

And the third most remarkable thing?

After detailing how powerfully effective killer whales can be as hunters, with some even hunting down 30,000-pound sperm whales, Safina writes this:

“Even stranger, then, that killer whales have overturned no kayak, emptied no rowboat, and slurped no human. It is perhaps the greatest behavioral mystery on our mysterious planet.”

 

Seeing Blue

In Joni B. Cole’s excellent and warmly witty book on writing – Good Naked – she has a chapter entitled “Seeing Blue.”  In it she argues why each writer’s writing matters and is worth pouring energy into, even when it seems to have no immediate reward.

 

Here’s a paragraph in that chapter. It follows her statement that the Egyptians were likely the first civilization to create a word for the color blue and that research indicates few people until modern times really noticed it as a color (don’t worry – you’ll see the point in just a bit):

The claim that a culture with no word for a color it cannot see is supported by a contemporary study with the Himba tribe in Namibia, whose language has several words for nuanced shades of green, but nothing to describe blue. When shown a screen with eleven green squares and one distinctly blue square, the Namibians could not pick out the blue one. Yet, among the green squares that appear identical to a Westerner’s eyes, they could immediately identify the different shade. The ability to see or not see a shade speaks to its important to a culture. Now just imagine if every culture had the ability to see every kind of color!

Her point – every writer has the potential to help readers see something they could not see before.

What I also see in her words is this – our culture can blind us to truth that is right in front of us.

 

A Misfit Who Can’t Unsee Blue

The blue so many churches and so many church cultures cannot see is the life, beauty, mystery, and vulnerability of God’s Creation all around us. The blue that Franklin Graham and many other Christians cannot see is that Creation matters deeply to God and that care of Creation is part of the very core of what we were created for.

I can’t unsee that blue.

Nor can I force Christians who are happy with their churches to see that blue if they don’t want to see it. Nor do I believe that many churches, who are struggling with declines in attendance, will be open to changing their culture and theology around Creation.

So what is worse? Going to church and not belonging because I see a color in the Bible and Creation others won’t see? Or not going to church and missing the fellowship and singing of songs with other believers? Of longing for belonging to a group of people committed to God and Jesus in a whole way?

Right now, despite those old familiar pangs that emerge from hidden places in my heart when I see a church, I’ve come to accept that I am what Jon Terry called me in our conversation earlier this year.

A misfit.

That’s who I am.

Or, if one puts a more positive spin on it, you could label me an “edge walker,” a term Valerie Loorz calls herself in Church of the Wild.

Is there any reason to think such a path could be faithful to God?

When Jesus responded to the Pharisees who complained that he was healing people on the Sabbath (Luke 14:5), he asked them if they would not act on the Sabbath, despite the prohibition on work, if they heard a child or an ox stuck in a well.

When you imagine the scenario that Jesus presented to the Pharisees, you cannot help but hear the cries. Whether a child or ox fell in a well, there would have been heart-rending sounds – the pleading screams of the child, the plaintive bellows of the ox.

My ears can’t unhear the cries of Creation today. Nor can I unhear the lamentations of people whose lives are or will be in misery because of what is being done to Creation.

Pretending I couldn’t hear those cries or shutting my ears to those cries would be, in my mind, a betrayal of God.

I see the blue.

I hear, and I listen.

And what I hear (and oh how I wish I could hear the sounds of killer whale clans as they race through the ocean) resonates with the thread of Creation’s worth through the whole Bible.

So I need to act as best I can.

I pray that people out there who are like me will find each other and act out of the convictions we have from our faith.

Perhaps we will together form new wineskins?

And perhaps many years from now there will be people who drink the vintage of the wine from those wineskins and smile and nod and make more of their own and please God in the process.

 

 

*To be fair, the subdivision is not just any subdivision. It is the Prairie Crossing conservation community, where a significant amount of habitat has been set aside and managed for natural habitat. This makes the buck’s appearance just slightly less surprising. But still a remarkable moment in the middle of an afternoon.

 

 

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Another Way of Thinking About Jesus, Pigs, and Demons

Nathan Aaberg —  August 31, 2022 — 2 Comments


 

My post about the Bible story involving the pigs, demons, amd Jesus has somehow ended up being the most popular article I have written.

This popularity, along with the the diversity of comments, tells me two things. First, this story from an ancient time and from three of the gospels is still profoundly provocative. In it, Jesus shows powers and a beyond-human presence. He is no mere wise man. Demons, which for 21st century readers raise all kinds of questions, also appear.

And there are the pigs.

Interestingly, we don’t see Jesus interacting with animals very much in the Gospels (although the story from Mark 1:12-13 is very significant), and even here he does not directly do so. We want to ask Jesus, “Do animals matter to you?” I want to ask him, “As someone from a Jewish agrarian society, what did you think when you saw the pigs?”

We have complicated perceptions of pigs, too. In Charlotte’s Web, we sympathize with a gentle, intelligent animal. Yet, we also associate pigs with many negative attributes. We don’t want to be called a pig.

In the story, the massive herd of pigs die suddenly and violently. Their death is clearly connected with the demons being allowed to go into them. But here it’s not clear from the story whether the pigs are passive creatures who are only acted upon in the story or whether they have volition of their own.

Even more strangely, as I have already written, we know pigs can swim. So how could they drown?

And this is where Biblical storytelling creates mystery as well. The story gives us discrete data points. It doesn’t give us a clear statement that explains how those data points fit together. It is up to the reader of the story to discern what that interpretive thread should be.

The second conclusion I gather from the interest in what I have written is that people are not convinced by the standard theological explanations of the story. Despite what many theologians and pastors have said, people with common sense and a heart for God’s Creation have a hard time accepting that Jesus would care nothing about the pigs.

All of this has made me even more curious about alternative readings of the story.

So when I came across one such interpretation in the book by Norman Wirzba entitled This Sacred Life, I wanted to share it with you.

 

Norman Wirzba is, by the way, someone I deeply admire. He is the Gilbert T. Rowe Distinguished Professor of Christian Theology at Duke University and Senior Fellow at Duke’s Kenan Institute for Ethics. He has also written books like Agrarian Spirit: Cultivating Faith, Community, and the Land and From Nature to Creation: A Christian Vision for Understanding and Loving Our World. And I am just scratching the surface of the attention he gives to Creation in his thinking and writing.

So I was surprised to find myself disagreeing with one key element of his interpretation.

Let’s have you judge for yourself. Wirzba’s interpretation appears in a footnote that is just one large paragraph on page 171 of This Sacred Life. I’m sharing it below and have taken the liberty of dividing it into paragraphs for easier digestion:

“Readers of this story are often puzzled and dismayed that Jesus allows the demons (at their own request) to enter a large herd of swine that numbered around 2,000. Upon entering the swine, the whole herd ran down a steep bank and into the sea (or lake) where they drowned.

Why did Jesus allow this? Does Jesus really hate pigs? It is, of course, difficult to know exactly what Jesus was thinking at this moment, but one plausible interpretation would suggest that the death of the herd was Jesus’ indictment of intensive and abusive forms of ancient Roman agriculture practiced on latifundia in the provinces and around the Mediterranean that were known to degrade the land, creatures, and farm workers (many of whom were slaves). To raise a herd that size, the best that a pig can do is register as a “unit of production” (to borrow a term from today’s industrial agriculture).

It is important to note that Jesus did not send the demons into the pigs. The demons asked to be located there, sensing (perhaps) in the pigs’ abusive condition a place where their violent, demonic ways would be at home. If this interpretation is correct, then this story expands the scope of Jesus’s concern for the integrity and value of creaturely life beyond the man to include the pigs as well. Jesus, in other words, seeks to undo the powers that degrade people and pigs.”

There is much in Wirzba’s book that has enriched my understanding of the connection between God, humanity, and the rest of Creation. In particular, he highlights our “creatureliness.” We, like the rest of Creation, have been created. We are created kin. And the life we and all other creatures enjoy is sustained by God. Life, in other words, truly is a gift that we share in common with the rest of Creation.

It is out of that view of Creation that Wirzba’s theory comes.

I’m completely in alignment with that frame of thinking. I do believe that Jesus’ ultimate mission and purpose is to undo and defeat the evil in the world that degrades people and other living things. Jesus redeems people in part so they can be the stewards and humble shepherds of Creation they were meant to be.

Yet, I ultimately disagree with this interpretation of this specific story. Essentially, his interpretation asserts that by permitting the destruction of the pigs by demons Jesus was indicting the inhumane treatment of the pigs within the Roman latifundia system.

That, to borrow a phrase from the Vietnam war, is like bombing a village to save it.

Wirzba’s thinking seems to be based on the assumption that the size of the pig herd was unusually large and abusive. In fact, from what I can tell, large flocks and herds were not unusual in ancient times. As this blog post from the website The Theology of Work reminds us, Jacob made a gift of at least 550 animals to Esau in advance of them meeting again after many years of being apart (Genesis 32:13-15). From the fact that in the story the pigs did not appear to be fenced in, the pigs very likely had the ability to move about and enjoy fresh air and sunlight. This is completely unlike factory farms today.

Nor are large numbers of animals on a landscape inherently damaging to the land. An example of this is White Oak Pastures in rural Georgia, a farm run by Will Harris. View this video to get a sense of the scale of the thoughtful stewardship going on.

 

I don’t mean to be critical of Wirzba’s concerns and sensitivity to the pigs in the story at all. We have a tendency to bring our current concerns with us when we venture into the texts of the Bible. That’s not wrong. It’s entirely human. I’ll admit I do the same thing. But what we need to do is ask hard questions. Are, for example, the ancient texts and contexts of the Bible addressing those concerns in the ways we are thinking about them?

In this regard and in connection with this particular story, I have much more of a problem with the cultural blndness of Saint Augustine of Hippo than I do with Wirzba’s suggestion.

Here is a quotation I’ve found attributed to Saint Augustine in several places on the Internet (yes, I know i need to get a more specific notation) in regard to this story:

Christ himself shows that to refrain from the killing of animals and the destroying of plants is the height of superstition, for judging that there are no common rights between us and the beasts and trees, he sent the devils into a herd of swine and with a curse withered the tree on which he found no fruit.

The lack of nuance in this statement is breathtaking. The cruel callousness towards the life of God’s world is stunning.

A key nuance that Saint Augustine missed and that Norman Wirzba and others have noticed is that the demons asked to be allowed to go into the pigs. They were not driven there. How could Saint Augustine make the argument he did? I’m convinced that the forces of culture around him prejudiced his judgement against what is actually in the 66 books of the Bible and what open hearts can tell us.

This brings us back to a central theme of my past years of study and writing. Christians have demonstrated a lack of discernment in reading the whole Bible in relation to Creation for centuries now. We have also had a weak, shallow, narrow idea of what we are redeemed by Jesus for and for what role humanity was originally created. The result is that we ignore Creation or, even worse, rationalize the grinding of Creation under our heels.

This, I’m coming to believe, is why the interpretation of this puzzling, provocative story matters so much.

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Mulch Volcanoes & Living in a World of Wounds

Nathan Aaberg —  March 31, 2022 — 3 Comments
Trees in a row with mulch applied in mulch volcano way

Row of mulch volcanoes (photo: George Weigel)

My wife Mayumi recently learned about “mulch volcanoes” from the Master Gardener class she is taking through the University of Illinois Extension.

People create mulch volcanoes when they pile up mulch high against the trunk of a tree. This makes it appear that the tree trunk is erupting out of a sloping, volcano-like mound of mulch.

Mulch volcanoes look innocuous, but they’re actually harmful to trees for multiple reasons.

Just one reason is that the constant contact of wet organic material starts to break down the surface of the tree’s trunk. This eventually leads to damage to the phloem and xylem layers beneath the bark. These vascular tissues carry nutrients from the leaves to the roots and from the roots to the rest of the tree respectively. Rotting these tissues away is like applying a tourniquet too tightly to a human limb – it cuts off vital circulation. The tree will slowly die.

Ever since she learned about mulch volcanoes, my wife has been dismayed to see them seemingly everywhere.

They were, of course, there all of the time. But now she knows what to look for and knows the damage the practice does. And my wife, being who she is, wants to save every tree she sees in this condition. Her heart hurts to see these vulnerable plants suffering harm in slow motion.

This is a prime example of the truth of Aldo Leopold’s words: “The penalty of an ecological education is to live alone in a world of wounds.”

Once you understand the fascinating elements (plants, animals, microbes, etc.) of God’s earth and how those elements relate to each other ecologically, then the purposeful and unintended damage we do to Creation becomes painful to contemplate.

I know you know the truth of that statement.

I’m sure you’ve become aware of the wounds done to God’s earth nearby and around the world. Like a subdivision replacing a woods. Like a dam under construction that will drown villages and forests.

You may also have noticed that you are largely alone in seeing that harm and experiencing that ache in your heart. This is often the case in general American culture. It’s also usually the case in church culture.

When was the last time you were at a call for prayer and someone lifted up a concern related to Creation?

That combnation of being aware of the degradation of God’s Creation and of feeling alone in that awareness is something I often feel. And because the pain can be overwhelming, I sometimes begin to allow a callus to grow around my heart. Sometimes, too, I try not to see what I see or distract myself with (and I hate to admit this) YouTube videos.

But those attempts to avoid the wounds or keep them from my heart only work temporarily. I become aware of what I am doing. Or something comes onto the scene that just doesn’t allow me to escape.

The war in the Ukraine is the most recent example. The war is a disaster of epic proportions for the Ukranian people. It is also a tragedy for the many Russians who oppose it or who are simply powerless to stop it.

That’s just one level of pain.

If you remember your whole faith and do a simple Google search, then you can easily enter another level of anguish.  You will find that the Ukraine war, like any other war, is a disaster for the animals, plants, soil, and air that are all part of God’s miraculous world.

Here are revealing articles about the tragedy of the war for Ukranians, their pets, and the life of their country. The first. The second. And this is one about a young woman – Anastasia Yalanskaya – who was murdered by Russain troops while trying to deliver desperately needed food to a dog shelter.

God!

I desperately want to look away from all of this brokenness. I desperately want God to make it all all right. Right now.

As if that it isn’t hard enough, I then find myself aware that it feels wrong in America to be sad and heartbroken. That’s not what our culture wants or accepts.

And somehow it can also feel wrong as a Christian to be sad and heartbroken. I feel like a widower who frustrates his well-meaning friends calling for him to buck up and move on. Sure he lost his spouse, but she “was taken by the Lord” and is “in a better place.” There are countless ways Christian culture tries to deaden our hearts towards Creation and what we do to it.

This all leads me to two questions. The first – why could God allow such suffering for people and all of Creation? God has heard all of Creation groaning for millennia like God heard the Israelites groaning in Egypt. How can a father, the Father, not intervene? The second – how do I live in the presence of so much suffering? How can I persist in acting for God’s love of his people and His earth when the cycle of destruction keeps coming again and again? How can I persist when climate chaos threatens so much? How do I persist when the nature of today is a diminished form of what it used to be?

I know there are many complex theological ways of dealing with the first question. But here’s what I have found works for me. It is not an answer. It is more of a resonance.

The Bible makes clear that this suffering was not God’s intent. In John 3:16 and in the very sending of Jesus, we know that God loves this world. God loves this world dearly.

The Bible also makes clear that the brokenness of this world will not always persist. In some mysterious way, through Jesus the grip of evil and of the rule of destructive principalities over the world will be fully broken. There will be a new heaven and earth that is, I believe, somehow like the body of the resurrected Jesus.

And I believe that this new earth will have all of the goodness and diversity that this current earth has ever had and much, much more.

What helps me in a resonant sort of way is to know that God through Jesus experienced the suffering of the world from our sins. And isn’t it interesting that suffering and anguish are common elements of the Old and New Testaments? The majority of Psalms, for example, are laments of one kind or another. The prophets are full of sadness and anger. Jesus, who knew of God’s future for the world, wept.

I am helped, too, by the knowledge that the early Christians were able to be so revolutionary in their living and in their presence within the empire that had killed Jesus. They stood apart. They treated women differently. They welcomed people of all social strata. They offered hope, and they carried a message that changed people. The DNA of the movement must have been incredibly powerful. That also resonates and inspires.

As for how I live, I will follow the God I know through Jesus.

Jesus calls us to follow him. His path informs our path.

We must expect difficulties and be willing to sacrifice. The fact that such a way would lead Jesus to death tells me a great deal, makes it seem more authentic. In this world of wars, factory farms, and toxic agricultural chemicals being found in ambient air even on mountain tops in Europe, we must expect to face seemingly impossible odds. We must also expect to feel anguish at what cannot be stopped, like when Jesus shared his anguish at the coming destruction of Jerusalem in Matthew 23:37-39.

I find, too, a strange sort of comfort in the fact that the name – Israel – given to the people God chose to be a key part of his rescue mission for the world literally means “wrestles with God.”Moses wrestled with God at times.  So did Job and the prophets.

Faith does not mean absence of struggle. I will wrestle with God even as I follow Jesus. I will argue with God that enough is enough. I will pray for God to intervene for the sake of the whole world – people and Creation.

Mayumi and I will do what we can where we live and work to live out a whole faith with God’s help. We will seek to love God with all of our heart and soul and strength. We will seek to be good and loving to our neighors and to do what humans are meant to do – protect, keep and prosper God’s earth. Mayumi, for example, will use her Master Gardener education to help people care for their gardens and yards. I’ll keep giving all I have to my job. There I seek to expand regenerative agriculture and connect sustainable farmers with the farmland they need to farm. I will do my best to contribute my voice for this kind of whole faith. And, I have written an email to our Lake County Department of Transportation about the mulch volcanoes we saw recently in the median on a county road.

We will balance all of that with rejuvenating our hearts and spirits on a regular basis. We strive to use Sundays as Sabbaths. We enjoy good-for-God’s-world food and the company of our sons via Zoom calls. We read together. I’ll take breaks from time to time for enjoyment and relaxation, striving to have the faith to know that it is not all up to me. God is at work in the world.

Even as the war in Ukraine has brought despair, it has also brought inspiration. I read of a Ukranian couple who, as they fled the Russian invasion, remained devoted to their German shepherd. They carried their aging pet to safety as you can see in the photo below.

They could not save all of the pets and wild animals from the horrors of a war. But they could be devoted to the dear animal in their care.

 

 

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Don’t Miss This Webinar on Biblical Stewardship – December 30

Nathan Aaberg —  December 19, 2021 — Leave a comment

Understanding Ag graphic for Allen Williams' bilbical stewardship webinar

I want to share news of an unusual and free webinar by Allen Williams, Ph.D. on what the Bible presents on earth stewardship next Thursday (December 30) at 7 p.m. CST. I’ve registered, and I hope you will, too.

The webinar is entitled Biblical Stewardship: What the scriptures tell us about our role as Earth’s caretakers. Go to this page, and you’ll find the link to click on to actually register.

I felt compelled to share news of this because of who Allen Williams is. As this profile details, he is a sixth generation family farmer and, as he says it, a “recovering academic.” He is one of the tireless, dedicated regenerative farmer pioneers who has been teaching other farmers how to achieve the same success and satsifaction while rejuvenating God’s earth. I’ve read articles of his. I’ve attended presentations and field walks. I’ve heard him on podcats (this is a great one, by the way). His faith and his convictions come through in all he does.

In short, Allen is a gifted and passionate teacher whose energy and insights are inspiring. If he is going to do something, it will be good and thoughtful. I am very interested to hear what he has to say about the Bible. Are there things he’ll share that you and I have not heard before? There may well be.

Allen Williams, seen here educating attendees of a field walk about adaptive grazing, is a Christian and former academic who has dedicated his life to helping farmers adopt regenerative practices.

Allen Williams, seen here educating attendees of a field walk about adaptive grazing, is a Christian and former academic who has dedicated his life to helping farmers adopt regenerative practices.

The webinar is being organized by Understanding Ag. Based in Alabama, Understanding Ag is a company that provides consulting and advising to farmers who want to move their operations in a regenerative direction. The company’s consultants include some of the most successful and pioneering regenerative farmers and experts in the country.

The vast majority of Understanding Ag’s webinar are on agricultural thinking and practices that, when used by farmers, can bring back life to their soils. So it’s intriguing that a company like that would offer a faith-focused webinar.

But it’s not completely surprising.

In fact, I think it’s brilliant.

Many of the best and most pioneering regenerative producers and experts are Christian. The way they farm is a reflection of their faith. And a large percentage of farmers around our country attend church and take the Bible seriously.

Changing how our country farms is more of a question of values than practices. Changing how our country farms will require that our country’s farmers rethink the values behind their farming.

They, like all of us, need to see that that we have a responsiblity and a creative calling to steward God’s earth in a way that honors God. And then we must all act.

When a fellow Christian farmer speaks that truth to them with conviction and knowledge, perhaps the hearts and minds of some will be turned.

And, of course, you and I are part of our country’s agriculture as well. What we buy tells farmers to produce more of. Our hearts and minds also need to be turned and kept turned in the right direction.

I urge you to join me.

 

P.S. Are you interested in an online discussion about the webinar right afterwards? if so, please email me at wholefaithlivingearth@gmail.com. If I have at least five people interested, I will send out a Zoom link to those who email me. We could have a great conversation.

 

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