Archives For Christians to Know

Bold Insights from a Different Francis

Nathan Aaberg —  July 16, 2015 — Leave a comment

Before I began reading his book Pollution and the Death of Man, I had only heard of Francis A. Schaeffer in reference to the Christian pro-life movement. He is one of the founding fathers of the intense conviction that abortion is profoundly wrong and that Christians should do all they can to stop it.

In light of the fact that there are many fellow Christians who are zealously pro-life when it comes to abortion and yet are completely sanguine about the destruction of the rest of life on God’s earth, I couldn’t help assuming that Schaeffer had a similar theological incoherence. This impression was reinforced by the fact that I first heard of the book from listening to Christian radio talk show host Janet Parshall. She regularly refers to Pollution and the Death of Man when she talks in alarm about the growing concern people have for the environment. She reminds her audience that Schaeffer had warned that human dignity would be compromised if humanity was presumed to have anything in common with nature and if humanity’s freedom to use the world in any way was questioned.

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Forty-five years since its publication this book’s arguments still resonate.

Nevertheless, out of curiousity, I ordered the book and read it. I was floored. It certainly conveys a fierce love of God and commitment to the ideas that come from the Bible. But it also fiercely asserts that those ideas uniquely give real value to nature and that Christians have for too long been AWOL in caring for nature the way they should. It contains powerful ideas about what the true relationship should be between humanity and the rest of nature. And these ideas challenge the way Christians have thought about nature and acted towards it for centuries.

Because the book’s essential ideas have been misrepresented and because those ideas are still relevant today, I am using this blog post to share 10 key points about the book. I am including Scheaffer’s own words as much as possible because of their passion and power.

I would also encourage you to learn more about Francis Schaeffer. He was a complex person who led a complex life and challenged, in some way or other, almost everyone.  He was a relentless warrior on behalf of Biblical truth in the world of theology and philosophy. There are, in fact, elements of what he wrote and spoke that I profoundly disagree with. He was also a person who desired to bring people together and engage with them in conversation, fellowship, and mutual learning. He and his wife Edith founded the L’Abri community in Switzerland in 1955 which has become a network of learning centers around the world where people can ask honest questions about the Christian faith while enjoying fellowship and hospitality. He also believed that Christians should be compassionate and engaged with the culture around them even as they hold tightly to Biblical truths. Along those lines, he wrote this startling sentence: “Biblical orthodoxy without compassion is surely the ugliest thing in the world.”

You can learn more about him here. The best article I read was by Michael Hamilton in a 1997 issue of Christianity Today (you must, sadly, be a subscriber to read the whole thing). Here is an excellent quotation from that article about Scheaffer:

“Ideas were to him literally matters of life and death. History, thought Schaeffer, taught that the intellectual base on which a people build their society will determine that society’s laws and character: “There is a flow to history and culture. This flow is rooted and has its wellspring in the thoughts of people.” His singular message was that a society cannot hope for righteousness and justice without thinking the thoughts of God from the bottom up.”

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This gives you a sense of his intensity and intellectual energy. It also helps you understand a bit why in his view the unmooring of Western civilization from Christian foundations and its movement towards cultural relativism alarmed him.

That same intensity and intellect is displayed in Pollution and the Death of Man. I don’t necessarily agree with every single point he makes.  Yet, there is much treasure and truth here. It makes one wonder what would the world would be like if Christians and the Church had been living out the principles Schaeffer presents in this book over the last two millennia. Above all, this book shows that taking the Bible seriously and reading it carefully leads to a profound commitment to being a good shepherd of the earth who finds wonder and beauty in it.

1. Schaeffer wrote in the context of a growing consciousness that humanity is destroying the world that led some to blame Christianity: Published in 1970, Pollution and the Death of Man was Schaeffer’s effort to insert Christianity into the battle of ideas surrounding the realization that nature was being destroyed. In 1962 Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring was published and caused America to rethink its relationship with chemicals. In 1966, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation released plans to build two dams in the Grand Canyon (can you imagine that?), but the Sierra Club and others vociferously fought those plans and were ultimately successful. In 1969 the Cuyahoga River caught fire for the thirteenth time in its history, a brutal symbol for all that was wrong with America’s use of technology and relationship with nature (check out this article about how local responses to the problem of industrial pollution, not necessarily the Clean Water Act, resulted in the 1969 fire being the last on the Cuyahoga).

Thinkers grappled with the ultimate causes of this environmental destruction. In 1967, Lynn White, Jr.’s article “The Historical Roots of Our Environmental Crisis” was published. In it, he centered the blame for Western civilization’s unrelenting exploitation of nature on Christianity. An expert in Medieval technology, White argued that the paradigm-shifting triumph of Christianity had squashed the notion that there was spirit and sacredness in nature. Instead, it established humanity’s proper role as harsh, exploitative dominators. Nature, in other words, existed solely for the use of humanity. This assumption, White insists, has always made Christianity the most anthropocentric religion in the world.

Another key thesis of White’s was that the tsunami of negative impacts brought by science and technology can’t be addressed by applying science and technology in new ways. Christianity is at the root of the marriage of science and technology and is at the root of the idea that a tree is just a tree and is there for our exploitation. If we don’t change how we think of nature morally and ethically, nothing else will change. And because Western civilization’s great moral ideas come from Christianity, Christianity must be part of any solution. White pointed to Saint Francis as offering a better Christian path of faith and life.

2. Neither polytheism nor modern science are the answers, and both threaten the true nature of humanity: In Pollution and the Death of Man, Schaeffer wholeheartedly agrees that there is an environmental crisis. He also agrees with White that the destruction of nature is, at heart, a religious and moral problem. But he asserts that neither pantheism nor a modern, science-based philosophy are good answers either.

A morality based on either results in only a pragmatic concern for nature. “The only reason we are called upon to treat nature well is because of its effects on man and our children and the generations to come. So in reality,….man is left with a completely egoistic position in regard to nature. No reason is given – moral or logical – for regarding nature as something in itself.”

Schaeffer asserts, too, that pantheism and modernism undercut man’s dignity and will indeed bring the death of man in a metaphorical sense because all is reduced to particles and particles have no meaning. When humanity is merely another part of nature, which both pantheism and modern science suggest, then people can be treated like any other element of nature.

3. The wrong kind of Christianity will lead to wrong views of nature: Listen to these words by Schaeffer:

“It is well to stress, then, that Christianity does not automatically have an answer; it has to be the right kind of Christianity. Any Christianity that rests upon a dichotomy – some sort of Platonic concept – does not have an answer to nature; and we must say with sorrow that much orthodoxy, much evangelical Christianity, is rooted in Platonic concept. In this kind of Christianity there is only interest in the “upper story,” in the heavenly things – only in “saving the soul” and getting it to Heaven.”

In one of the best stories of the book, Schaeffer relates how he walked over to a pagan community across a ravine from a Christian school he was visiting. He was told that he was the first person from the school to ever have visited them. What especially struck Schaeffer was that the Christian school was ugly while the pagan community’s landscape and buildings were beautiful. Schaeffer considers this situation and writes: “Here you have a Christianity that is failing to take into account man’s responsibility and proper relationship to nature.”

Later, Schaeffer writes: “God is interested in creation. He does not despise it. There is no reason whatsoever, and it is absolutely false Biblically, for the Christian to have a Platonic view of nature. What God has made, I, who am also a creature, must not despise.”

4. We should respect what God has created: For Schaeffer, understanding nature properly rests on the fundamental truth that God created the world and the cosmos. God is not part of nature. Nature is separate from God. This, Schaeffer asserts, is the basis for science.

But the distinctness of God from nature does not mean nature is of no value. Because God made nature, all of nature deserves our “high respect.” Listen to what Schaeffer writes:

“But while we should not romanticize the tree, we must realize God made it and it deserves respect because He made it as a tree. Christians who do not believe in the complete evolutionary scale have reason to respect nature as the total evolutionist never can, because we believe God made these things specifically in their own areas. So if we are going to argue against the evolutionists intellectually, we should show the results of our beliefs in our attitudes. The Christian is a man who has a reason for dealing with each created thing with a high level of respect.”

To consider the things of this world as worthless or low, Schaeffer asserts, is to insult God.

In addition, we have God’s own example to follow. Schaeffer writes, “… God treats His creation with integrity: each thing in its own order, each thing the way He made it. If God treats His creation in that way, should we not treat our fellow-creatures with similar integrity? If God treats the tree like a tree, the machine like a machine, the man like a man, shouldn’t I, as a fellow-creature, do the same – treating each thing in integrity in its own order? And for the highest reason: because I love God – I love the One who has made it! Loving the Lover who has made it, I have respect for the things He has made.”

5. Jesus’ death, resurrection, and ascension remind us that all things spiritual and material have value and will be redeemed: The things in front of us are sometimes the hardest to see. Schaeffer looks directly at the historic center of the Christian faith – Jesus’ death, resurrection, and ascension – and sees an affirmation of a principle that is too often overlooked by Christians. He writes: “The resurrection and ascension prove there is no reason to make false dichotomy between the spiritual and the material. That is a totally non-Biblical concept.” In other words, matter matters. Nature matters.

Schaeffer pays attention, too, to the eighth chapter of the book of Romans. “As Christ’s death redeems men, including their bodies, from the consequences of the Fall, so His death will redeem all nature from the Fall’s evil consequences at the time when we are raised from the dead.” In other words, nature is an essential part of the Biblical story of the world from the beginning to the end.

6. Separate from yet united with nature: A core theological concept for Schaeffer is that the God of Christians is unique “in being both infinite and personal.” All of matter is separated from God who is the Creator and who is infinite and who has always been. Yet, God created people in God’s image, which makes them unique. This means that people have a unique relationship with God that the rest of nature does not.

While many Christians stop right there, Schaeffer doesn’t. He asserts that we simultaneously have two different relationships with nature. Yes, we are unique, we are separate, and we do have dominion (the right kind of dominion). But we also have fellowship with everything else in nature. Why? Because we collectively share the same status – we are all creations of God.

“This is the true Christian mentality. It rests upon the reality of creation out of nothing by God. But it also follows that all things are equally created by God. All things were equally created out of nothing. All things, including man, are equal in their origin, as far as creation is concerned.” (Those italics are Schaeffer’s.)

Schaeffer emphasizes this point throughout the book. Here is a startling line in the context of the balance Schaeffer advocates between our right to use nature wisely for our ends and our fellowship with the rest of nature. “Even the moss has a right to live. It is equal with man as a creature of God.”

Humans, especially Christians, however, are quick to assert that we are distinct and separate from the rest of nature. Schaeffer would agree that we are distinct and different and would argue that our ability to have consciousness, choice, and will power are key elements of our uniqueness. This presents a fundamental and spiritual challenge to us. We as humans do have options. We have choices. One of our fundamental choices is whether we do all to nature that we have the capacity to do.

Unthinkingly using all of our unique capacities to manipulate the rest of the created order for our satisfaction and convenience at the cost of nature’s vitality lowers us to the state of the rest of the natural order. Conversely, making the conscious choice to limit ourselves for nature’s prosperity affirms our own humanity.

This is where Schaeffer is making, I believe, a subtle argument that people like Janet Parshall are not picking up. It is easy to conclude that Schaeffer’s title refers only to the idea that pantheism and modern materialism, as reactions to the ongoing destruction of nature, will lead to the death of man. But Schaeffer is also all but saying explicitly that if we do not exercise conscious and moral choices in relation to nature than we are also denying human uniqueness. In fact, if we do that, we are acting with exactly the same values that would flow naturally from an evolutionary, materialist perspective. In other words, not limiting ourselves in how we use our creative powers to extract from nature what we want and not opening ourselves to a psychological relationship with nature leads also to the spiritual death of man even if we have some theologically correct ideas of God.

7. Christians have acted badly: Christianity has, in Schaeffer’s estimation, the answer to the environmental crisis. This is because “It is the Biblical view of nature that gives nature a value in itself…” Nature, in other words, is not just valuable for its practical benefit to us but has its own ethical and spiritual standing. And if we give ourselves to God and allow God to guide our values and actions, then we will treat nature as it should be treated.

But despite having a clear basis for acting rightly toward nature, Christians haven’t. In fact, Schaeffer’s story of the pagan community across from the Christian school captures the sense that Christians have done far worse than many non-Christians in how they treat nature.

“The Christian is called upon to exhibit this dominion, but to exhibit it rightly: treating the thing as having a value in itself, exercising dominion without being destructive. The church should always have taught and done this, but it has generally failed to do so, and we need to confess our failures. Francis Bacon understood this, and so have other Christians at different times; but by and large we must say that for a long, long time Christian teachers, including the best orthodox theologians, has shown a real poverty here.”

And Christians have committed sins of omission throughout history by not defending nature.

“They (hippies) were right in fighting the plastic culture, and the church should have been fighting it, too, a long, long time ago before the counterculture ever came onto the scene.”

Schaeffer even poses this powerful question: “…what would have happened if the church at the time of the Industrial Revolution had spoken out against the economic abuses which arose from it?”

And listen to this critique of Christians and their selective interest in nature that is, 45 years later, as trenchant and stinging as ever.

“Nature has become merely an academic proof of the existence of the Creator, with little value in itself. Christians of this outlook do not show an interest in nature itself. They use it simply as an apologetic weapon, rather than thinking or talking about the real value of nature.”

Amen. AMEN.

Schaeffer takes that line of argument a step further.

“We must confess that we missed our opportunity. We have spoken loudly against materialistic science, but we have done little to show that in practice we ourselves as Christians are not dominated by a technological orientation in regard either to man or nature. We should have been stressing and practicing for a long time that there is a basic reason why we should not do all that with our technology we can do. We have missed the opportunity to help man save his earth. Not only that, but in our generation we are losing an evangelistic opportunity because when modern people have a real sensitivity to nature, many of them turn to the pantheistic mentality. They have seen that most Christians simply do not care about nature as such.”

This is one of the reasons why Schaeffer believes the church has become “irrelevant and helpless in our generation.”

“We are living in and practicing a sub-Christianity.”

In other words, when Christians articulate and live out a faith that is not whole, that does not give proper emphasis to the earth and cosmos, then people are not to be blamed if they find the Christian faith unappealing, inauthentic, and inadequately challenging and so decide not to become disciples of Jesus.

Ultimately, Schaeffer levels a damning suggestion about the impact of a wrong view of nature as well. He suggests, in the form of questions, that our faith in God is not real, that we don’t truly love God (the ultimate Lover), that our faith is not whole and complete and alive in us, if we don’t care for nature.

“If I love the Lover, I love what the Lover has made. Perhaps this is the reason why so many Christians feel an unreality in their Christian lives. If I don’t love what the Lover has made – in the area of man, in the area of nature – and really love it because He made it, do I really love the Lover?”

8. The Church should bring substantial healing to nature: Schaeffer believes that the Fall caused many divisions – man from God, man from himself, man from other people, man from nature, and even nature from nature. These divisions will eventually be completely healed when Christ returns to earth. But we are not simply to wait passively until then. Christians are to believe that with God’s help “substantial healing can be a reality here and now.” “God’s calling to the Christian now, and to the Christian community in the area of nature (just as it is in the area of personal Christian living in true spirituality) is that we should exhibit a substantial healing here and now, between man and nature and nature and itself, as far as Christians can bring it to pass.” In short, the Church and the local church are to do their best within their sphere of influence to live out God’s healing of all relationships as a sign of what God’s kingdom will look like when fully established in all dimensions of life.

What are some characteristics of the substantial healing the Church and the local church should bring?

One is an emphasis on Creation. It is important and not some secondary, optional, tertiary concern.

Another is the right idea of dominion. Dominion is not sovereignty. “It (nature) belongs to God, and we are to exercise our dominion over these things not as though entitled to exploit them, but as things borrowed or held in trust.”

And at the heart of the correct understanding of dominion is the concept of conscious, self-imposed limitations in light of the fact that our dominion is under God’s dominion and that nature is something God values. We will accept limits to our freedom for the sake of what is good and holy. We will not do all that we can do with science and technology. We will be patient.

9. The Christian who gets the relationship with nature right will have a psychological bond with it: Schaeffer is careful not to condone a romanticization of nature but in a nuanced way he repeatedly declares that we can and should have a psychological bond with nature because we know that we are distinct from nature and yet part of it.

“Psychologically, I ought to “feel” a relationship to the tree as my fellow-creature. It is not simply that we ought to feel a relationship intellectually to the tree, and then turn this into just another argument for apologetics, but that we should realize, and train people in our churches to realize, that on the side of creation and on the side of God’s infinity and our finiteness we really are one with the trees!”

Elsewhere Schaeffer writes, “In this sense Saint Francis’s use of the term “brothers to the birds” is not only theologically correct, but a thing to be intellectually thought of and practically practiced. More, it is to be psychologically felt as I face the tree, the bird, the ant.”

He also writes, “Because it is right, on the basis of the whole Christian system – which is strong enough to stand it all because it is true – as I face the buttercup, I say: “Fellow-creature, fellow-creature, I won’t walk on you. We are both creatures together.””

10. Making the choice to accept limits and treat nature rightly brings many benefits: When Christians and the Church act toward nature and relate with nature in the way they should, Schaeffer asserts there will be substantial healing. This healing will be seen in a “new sense of beauty.” “The aesthetic values are not to be despised. God has made man with a sense of beauty that no animal has; no animal has ever produced a work of art. Man as made in the image of God has an aesthetic quality, and as soon as he begins to deal with nature as he should, beauty is preserved in nature.”

And the resulting improvement in the ecological condition of the world will benefit the long-term health of our economy as well as the value of humanity.

We will also experience a renewed sense of wonder. I love this line from Schaeffer in connection with this them: “Life begins to breathe.” And, provocatively, he calls attention to the fact that Charles Darwin shared in his notes that as he got older he lost his joy in the arts and in nature. By contrast, people who believe in God’s creative force behind the world’s creation can and should find that nature inspires joy and wonder.

Finally, choosing to relate to the nature as God intended will endow us with psychological freedom and open up an enhanced relationship with God.

My guess is that you already knew that.

 

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Cover Crops & God’s Renewal: An Interview with Dave Robison

Nathan Aaberg —  April 23, 2015 — Leave a comment

I met Dave Robison at a talk he gave about cover crops to a farmers group in downtown Chicago. I was struck by his passion for his topic, his gracious way of interacting with the audience, and his gift for communicating complex information clearly and with humility. Many people came up to him afterwards with many questions, which he patiently answered for more than a half hour. This commitment is not new. For many years now, he has poured tremendous energy into sharing insights into this way of being a good steward of farmland. At one point, for instance, he made 51 presentations on cover crops in 50 days. And as you’ll see in this interview, he is a Christian who does what he does out of his faith. As way of background, Dave and his wife Sally have seven children and live in northeastern Indiana. Dave manages the alfalfa division of Legacy Seeds. The love, energy, and mission that come from his faith are palpable in his words. (To learn more about Dave and cover crops, visit his blog at www.plantcovercrops.com. Cover crops, by the way, are crops that farmers plant for land stewardship purposes – like preventing soil erosion, managing water, building soil fertility, creating better soil structure, and suppressing weeds. Uncovered soil is vulnerable to erosion, weeds, and a decline in soil vitality.)

Dave Robison

From your blog, I learned that you received a degree in agronomy from Purdue and that you were also the pastor of a country church for three years. That’s an interesting combination. Can you tell me a little about your life and your faith history?

DR: I graduated from Purdue in 1980. I got married right after college, and few months later, my wife got saved. In the church I was in, it was all about works and working my way to a relationship with God. My wife started spending a lot of time reading the Scriptures, obeying God’s Word, and I was seeing a real contrast between what I had grown up with and her life. Of course, I always thought she was wrong. (laughter) Then I began listening to Bible ministries of J. Vernon McGee and Chuck Swindoll and John McArthur and started having a better grasp of the Scriptures. I had taught Sunday school for years. I became chairman of the deacons, and there were 60 deacons in the church. I was chairman of committee on committees. So I was working hard to prove to myself, to my wife, to everybody that I was a Christian even though I had no relationship with Jesus. In 1989, nine years after my wife had been saved, I was listening to a sermon by Charles Stanley and it was just like, “I give up.” Salvation by grace through faith is the only way. So that day, as I was driving around Indianapolis on Highway 465, I gave my life to Christ and started crying. It was one of those Apostle Paul scales-falling-off-your-eyes kind of experiences. I had taught Sunday school for years, youth group for years. I was in some fairly high positions at the church, and then I got saved. A few months later I got baptized, which really sent reverberations around the church. What’s the chairman of the deacons doing getting baptized?

A couple years later, we felt called to the mission field, and both my wife and I went to Grace Theological Seminary. We got our masters of divinity at Grace, but during seminary we also had two more children so that now gave us four. We had school debt and farm debt and still owned a farm. So foreign missions was not going to work. But God brought the mission field to us in the fact that in the area where we live we have somewhere close to 10,000 Hispanic families. So about 12 years ago we started working with Hispanic families and sharing the Gospel. Most of that is with children and teenagers. There have been a number of families that have been saved and some teenagers that have been saved.

There’s been a remarkable difference in my life once Christ was truly Savior of my life, and I didn’t have to work to be saved.

So how does this tie in with your farming past and your cover crop work?

DR: We farmed for 11 years after we graduated from Purdue in 1980. In our first four years of farming (’80, ’81, ’82, ’83) we had two major weather events, and we had a mismanagement event. So all of sudden in those four years we had lost close to $90,000. We went from “This might work” to “This is really going to be hard.” So then I started working off the farm for a dairy farmer running a feed mill for him and that’s when I started learning about improved forages, especially improved alfalfa.

From a cover crop perspective, our family started no-till farming back in 1968. My father was very much one who wanted to take care of the soil but part of that was also out of convenience. We were growing rapidly, and we did not have massive equipment and did not have massive amounts of labor. It was my mom and dad and myself and my wife, and once the babies started coming, my wife was very helpful but she was a stay-at-home mom and taking care of babies. My mother had a bad back, and my dad worked full time at Eli Lily as a research scientist. So we, pretty much out of necessity continued to do a lot of no-till. Like a lot of pioneers in industries, we tried things that just flat out did not work.

But one year in the early 80’s we had a tremendous crop of sweet clover that came up volunteer (in the farming and land management world, “volunteer”refers to plants that appear without having been planted) on one of our farms. I guess the weather conditions had been just perfect over the winter. We ended up having corn that year that yielded almost 200 bushel an acre. That was way before other folks were getting 200-bushel-an-acre corn. The fellow that sprayed for us had a sprayer in the back of a pickup, and the sweet clover was taller than his boom. He ended up getting some mediocre kill. We ended up having to come back in and do some rescue spraying and so forth and he told us, “If you ever do that again I’ll never spray for you.” So we heard that message loud and clear. We also saw that we got 200 bushels per acre, but we didn’t put together that it was the sweet clover that gave us the improved yield so we never allowed for much growth in anything to be there in the spring again.

About seven or eight years ago as my father and I were talking about cover crops, I said, “Dad, do you remember the year at the one farm where we had sweet clover?” And he said, “That was the best corn we ever had.” And I said, “That’s because we followed a cover crop.”

To go back to the faith question and cover crops, I guess the biggest issue for us was no-tilling was convenient. But, for me, after I was saved, it became “You know what, this isn’t just convenience, this isn’t just farming. This is we have to be good stewards of what God has given us.” We would verbally say that but then it became something that was real when we started seeing the results of the experiments we were doing. We started experimenting on our home farm south of Indianapolis, and that’s when we started seeing quite a bit of difference in soil.   Some of these soils have been no-till for 25 to 30 consecutive years, and we were seeing massive differences in our soil even after having cover crops for only one year.

Not that we worshipped the earth. We worship Christ. But we also realized then that we had a responsibility. It became a real issue for us when we found that we had compaction at about three inches deep on our farm, even though we had been no-tilling for so long. It was like, “Wow. We’re only farming an extremely shallow amount of soil here.” When we started using cover crops we started noticing that we were farming much deeper in the soil profile. I was on a farm then where we were having corn roots 70” deep. That’s really good for drought tolerance.

Back in 1979 I was in Fort Collins, Colorado, at a national public speaking contest for the American Society of Agronomy. The morning of the contest we were given a topic that we were to speak on, and my topic was on soil health, and I actually ended up winning the student sub-division of this national contest. I used an orange to compare the fact that we’re just farming the peel and even though the peel is the most nutritious part of the orange we typically don’t real good care of it. Therefore we need to do a better job of taking care of our layer of soil that God’s given us and that has the most nutrition.

I’ve thought many, many times over the years about the truth that God has given us the best part, but we have to take care of it and oftentimes we throw it away. We need to recognize that we have a responsibility not only to ourselves but also to future generations, a responsibility to take care of what God has given us. God’s called us to be responsible and good stewards, and we as farmers and as people involved in agriculture have some of the greatest responsibility.

How did you go from that insight to becoming a cover crop blogger and, to use the term loosely, evangelist?

DR: Back about six years ago I was working for a really awesome company out of Indiana as their forage manager and agronomist. I was in charge of alfalfa and forage sales and went all over the five-state region, especially Michigan and Indiana and Ohio, sharing about the value of improved forages and proper grazing techniques and how farmers could be much more profitable in their operations if they were managing well. I was invited to a field day at Purdue University’s southeast farm, and I was looking at the top growth of the winter rye and of the annual rye grass and the different wheat. They had dug soil pits, and I’m looking at all of this awesome feed that’s on top of the surface of the soil. It’s anywhere from knee high to waist high, and I’m thinking this will be fantastic for a dairy or a beef operation. Then we got into the root pit, and we were finding roots 35” deep on annual rye grass and the rye and the wheat about 20” deep.

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Dave in a root pit showing soil health impact of turnips used as cover crops.

Now I had already been doing some things about cover crops at that time, but I wasn’t thinking anything more than erosion control. Even with the experience with the sweet clover, I still wasn’t connecting everything yet. So I made a statement to Dr. Eileen Kladivko from Purdue who was running the field day. I said, “I really don’t care about what’s happening beneath the surface of the soil. All I care is about is what can be harvested on top. “ And as soon as I said that I realized that was contradictory to how I had farmed and also contradictory to what I had just seen. And everybody was like, “Whoa, I can’t believe you just said that!” I realized that my size-11 shoe was sideways in my mouth.

Two days later Eileen calls me and asks, “Would you be interested in being on the Midwest Cover Crop Council?” I agreed, went to a couple of meetings, and realized that this cover crop thing is vital to agriculture.

So then the company I worked for back in 2008 and 2009 was hit hard when the housing crisis hit. We took some pay cuts. I had already got pretty involved on the cover crop side and was already starting to promote our cover crops. I saw a huge need for our company to find another income source, but I also found that I was getting five to 10 phone calls per day from farmers saying, “Hey, I’m interested in these cover crops. Can you give me an hour?” That’s 10 hours in a day. So one of my best friends who worked at the same company said, “You know what? I’ve been looking into this stuff called blogging (of course, I had no idea what that was.). You write it. I’ll do some editing. And we’ll get it online, and maybe we can send people to the blog so you don’t have to spend so much time on the phone.”

So we did that and now we have about 80,000 people a year reading the blog, and somewhere around 3,000 people on the email list. And I probably get 20 emails a week from the blog that I try my best to answer. I speak all over North America on cover crops, especially the eastern half of the U.S. (Nebraska eastward) and in Ontario and Quebec. I don’t make money on that. It’s all volunteer.

The beautiful thing to me is that the company I got started with is now moving over 20 million pounds of cover crop seed per year. The company that is a kind of a sister company to them is moving somewhere around 10-15 million, and our company is moving 2-3 million. More and more farmers are recognizing the value of utilizing cover crops. From my perspective, if we can help farmers to be more profitable and do it in a very responsible way at the same time, then we’ve accomplished something outstanding for that family farm but also at the same time been good stewards of what God’s given us.

And I believe if it’s not going to be profitable for the farmer then the farmer’s going to be put into a situation where he’s going to have to say, “Well, I want to be a good steward, but…” And frankly I get a lot of those comments. There are a lot of times we do things that don’t pay, but this is one that I see a lot of people saying, “Well, if I’m not going to get my money back I’m not going to do it.” Which tells me that there are still a lot of farmers that aren’t understanding the stewardship issue yet.

What have you learned about God, people, and God’s earth from promoting cover crops and testing them?

DR: We have corn plants and soybean plants that when they hit a zone of compaction will take their roots horizontally. We have a little radish plant that might be the size of a pencil lead or an annual rye grass plant that is two inches tall or crimson clover that’s three inches tall that will get through that compaction zone. So in God’s Creation He has created different species of plants that have different characteristics that we can utilize that will help us to be able to best utilize our cash crops. God is not a God who deteriorates but is a God who renews. He has given us opportunities through his Son Christ to have a relationship with Him and a renewed spirit, a new life, and renewed hope. He has also given us, on the agricultural side, different species of different plants that help to better renew our soils and to better replenish our soils.

God, at least the God I see through Scripture, is one who always provides new hope, new life, new renewal, and man, because of sin, is one who deteriorates. That to me is a major theological foundation for us to understand that as we are stewards of what God has given us. He has given us the opportunity to renew some things that we have deteriorated, and some of those species of cover crops allow us to do that.

It’s interesting that Christians like Joel Salatin, Gabe Brown, and yourself are having a positive impact promoting sustainable farming practices.

DR: I think there are more. I know some other folks that are strong believers that are doing things on a local basis. Some of us are called to be, and I don’t know if I want to use this phrase, the Billy Grahams of the cover crop world. There’s no question that God has blessed Gabe and myself and Joel and a variety of other folks who are believers to be able to verbalize and communicate well and communicate with integrity. But there are a lot of Christians who do things on their local and regional basis.

I want to make sure I tell you about Zambia. A real good friend of mine that I worked with a lot took his family to Zambia. He is now an agricultural missionary. They are running a farm to feed the community, and they sell produce off of this farm and make money for the community. It’s been a fabulous ministry not only from an agricultural perspective but also for sharing Christ with this community. I got an email from him a couple of days ago, and he was thanking me for teaching him as much as I did about cover crops and for my blog and for my YouTube videos.

They are using cover crops in Zambia to be able to build their soil health.   He said their farming yields and soil have improved tremendously since they started using cover crops. That made me say, “OK, God, this has been worth it over these 10 years now.” It was really interesting to me to hear a brother in Christ halfway around the world who is using training he got when he was in Fort Wayne, Indiana, to now be able to use those practices to help witness for Christ about not only soil health but spiritual health. What a blessing.   When I got that email from him I got goose bumps.

What you do for a living, what I do for a living, for me it’s Colossians 3:17. “And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.” Everything we do is for Christ.

Do your wife and your children get as excited about cover crops as you do?

DR: My wife does. In fact, I’ve called her the cover crop queen on my blog, because we have some relatively sandy and relatively poor soil on our property and she is always urging me to do something different. In fact, late last fall when I thought it was way, way too late to plant cover crops, she said, “Do you have any samples of seed?” And I said, “Well, yeah.” And she goes, “Well, I’m going to go out and plant cover crops.” The ground was nearly frozen. I’m like, “Honey, this just isn’t going to work.” She’s like, ”Well, remember when we planted radishes a few years ago when it was too late, and we ended up with a real nice radish crop in the spring? And how many earthworms were in my flowerbed?” “Yes,” I said. “Well,” she said, “we’re going to do that again.” So she planted cover crops really late, and now we have a really beautiful crop of hairy vetch that’s survived the winter and is looking beautiful in our flowerbeds, and it is producing nitrogen.

All of my children recognize the value of stewardship, whether that be stewardship of our soil or taking care of our brothers and sisters or of taking care of the needy. We want to make sure our children see that giving is better than receiving. Again, it’s all about Colossians 3:17.

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On Video: Our Father’s World

Nathan Aaberg —  November 23, 2014 — Leave a comment

In 2013 the 15,000-member Northland Church and Emmy-award winning filmmaker Bob Giguere teamed up to produce a video called Our Father’s World.  I encourage you to take the time to view it.  There is much inspiration and insight.

Here are a few things that struck me:

1.  We learn that Bill Hybels of Willow Creek Community Church apologized that it took him 33 years to give a sermon about the importance of caring for God’s earth.  When was the last time you heard a sermon about this topic?

2.  The video contains a very strong vein of thought that the poor are the most vulnerable to the consequences of the degradation of God’s earth.

3.  A note that was heard once but then not picked up again was Matthew Sleeth’s comment that “sacrificial action” is required in the care of God’s earth. This is a profound and challenging insight.  Another speaker,  Dr. Sandy Richter of Wesley Biblical Seminary, notes that being Christian is inherently a countercultural calling but that Christians too often are so embedded in the culture that we the don’t live out what God actually desires.  Ironically, in this same video you’ll note that Bill Hybels seems worried that his message might make SUV owners in the audience uncomfortable.

4.  Tony Campolo puts his finger on something important when he calls attention to the fact that because Christians abdicated leadership on the issue of the environment some time ago there’s an instinctive suspicion of concern for the environment because the issue is now associated with New Age adherents.

5.  I particularly liked the section in which the pastor of Vineyard Boise talked about how some of his parishioners challenged him with the question of how they should vote – for the party that cares about the unborn or for the party that cares about how God’s earth is stewarded.

6.  Did you notice that in this nearly half-hour video wildlife and animals in general are hardly seen or mentioned? The phrase “the elephant in the room” never seemed more appropriate!  You don’t hear about how wildlife are under siege around the world and that habitat is being lost at a tremendous rate.  You don’t hear about God knowing every bird in the mountains and how those birds are disappearing.  You don’t hear that the extinction of species is the ultimate sign that we are failing at good stewardship of this earth.  You don’t hear about how poorly animals are sometimes treated in agricultural production.

7.  Did you notice that voluntary recycling and reduction of energy use are the default ideas for how we take action?  Those are important changes of habit but they do not go far enough in two different ways.  First, we have an impact on God’s world beyond waste and energy use.  One of the most important is what we eat.  Our food choices and our nation’s food policies have tremendous impact on the land, water, and animals that are ultimately God’s. This needs to be wrestled with, but this video doesn’t even touch it, except for a brief mention of thinking about where your coffee comes from.  Second, there’s a failure of logic when the proposed solution to a problem is not at the scale of the problem.  Small individual actions by individual churches and individual churches will not be enough to counter the tide of forces that are depleting and degrading God’s earth.

Finally, it is interesting that if you go to Northland Church’s website you really have to dig (look under Media &  Blogs then click on Blogs and then look for the link in the right column for Creation Care) to find any mention of the importance of caring for Creation.

And it is even more telling that the Purpose/Mission/Vision/Belief section does not address how we treat God’s earth at all.  (And to be fair, after years of looking at church websites, Northland is completely conventional in this way.)

Please don’t get me wrong.  I am very encouraged that a video like this would be produced with the idea of inspiring more people and churches to be good stewards.  It is a reminder that the radical idea that this earth matters is actually an orthodox, Biblically-based one.  It is a sign that perhaps there are seeds of change in mainstream churches. And I do understand that for Christians that have not thought about these issues before from this perspective, hitting them with too much too soon might be counterproductive.

But what we need and what we need quickly is for an active, action-oriented concern for the vitality and flourishing of all of God’s earth to become part of the spiritual DNA of every church and Christian.

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Ms. Coyote: Interview with Barbara Waller

Nathan Aaberg —  October 29, 2014 — Leave a comment
Barbara Waller by the native plant garden of First Baptist Church (Waukegan, Illinois)

Barbara Waller by the native plant garden of First Baptist Church (Waukegan, Illinois)

There are many Christians who are living with compassion towards God’s earth and working to foster a better relationship between people and nature. And what they do is an outward manifestation, a good fruit, of the work of the Spirit in their hearts. By sharing their stories and insights, I am hopeful that you will be encouraged and inspired by the goodness that a whole faith can bring.

 My first interview is with my friend Barbara Waller. She was gracious enough to sit down with me recently to talk about a summer learning program (Cool Learning Experience) she has been organizing and leading in Waukegan, Illinois, through the First Baptist Church. This program serves 3rd through 8th graders in this economically depressed area, engaging them in science learning experiences focused on the environment. Through the program, they also encounter the natural world in a variety of settings.  And if you’re around the kids at all, it’s clear that they’re just plain having fun. Known to her campers as Ms. Coyote, Barbara has worked tirelessly to build this camp in partnership with senior pastor Keith Cerk. Barbara has also been an effective ambassador for the program, inviting a multitude of generous partners in the greater Chicago area to share their services and resources. She is a gracious, warm, energetic, modest woman who loves God and cares for God’s earth deeply.

 Q: Can you tell me about the Cool Learning Experience program and how it started?

BW: Cool Learning Experience started in concept in 2007 at First Baptist Church in Waukegan when our denomination, American Baptist Churches USA established a children in poverty initiative. That year, one of the senior pastors and I participated in the denomination’s national conference for leaders from local churches to explore ways to provide outreach ministries to support children in poverty as an expression of our faith. We came back, and we thought, “Why not bring a summer learning program to our community?” As a church we decided to offer the program to middle elementary age children in the summer months when children generally experience the greatest learning loss and when many parents need a safe place for their children to be engaged in learning. In July 2008, First Baptist launched it as a three week, all-day, nature-based summer learning program to children in 4th and 5th grades.  With an all-volunteer staff, we served an ethnically and racially diverse group of 10 children, most of who came from families reporting incomes at or below the federal poverty level.

Truly for me, and I believe for Pastor Keith, too, it was a walk of faith.   After he and I read Last Child in the Woods by Richard Louv, we knew immediately any program we offer must be nature-based. We were convinced that providing opportunities to experience the awe and wonder of nature while engaging children in fun learning outdoors would best support our mission to foster the well-being of children in every way – emotional, mental, physical, and spiritual. We decided to co-direct the program. This allowed us to draw upon Pastor Keith’s skills and passion for engaging people in exploring the wonders of nature and my experiences and passion for developing and implementing summer learning programs. We decided on a full day program to better serve those parents needing an organized program that would accommodate their workday schedule. They needed more than a half-day or 9-to-3 program.

Children examining a rare prairie wildflower as part of the COOL Learning Experience summer program.

Children examining a rare prairie wildflower as part of the Cool Learning Experience summer program.

N: How has the program grown since 2008?

BW: We grew from a daily maximum attendance of 10 children the first two years to maximum attendance of 73 in 2012 and 2013. In 2008, we served children in 4th and 5th grades. In 2014, we served 3rd – 8th graders. The program expanded from three weeks in 2008 to eight weeks in 2013. Teaching staff has grown from one part-time certified elementary teacher in 2009 to a 2014 staff of three full-time teachers, three teaching assistants, one administrative assistant, and five part-time counselors.   The continual growth in volunteers from teens to senior adult has been most amazing. We have grown from an all-volunteer staff of 5 in 2008 to 45 regular volunteers in 2014, and this does not include our many faithful parents who volunteer in various capacities as needed. We are very pleased to have more partners join us each year, creating even more diversity in our faithful supporters. We experienced the same with the cadre of volunteers who give thousands of hours each summer.

N: I understand the program engages the children in learning in nature in a number of ways.

BW: Yes, the goal is to provide an inter-disciplinary, multi-year curriculum. Since 2012 our theme has been exploring water, land, and air. Thanks to one of our funders, we developed a curriculum which integrates science, math, technology geography, arts and creative writing to offer hands-on learning focusing on water, land and living things over a three year period. We treat air as an integral component essential to each system as well. We explored water in 2013 and land in 2014. Next year we will explore the living things in the diverse ecosystems of water and land. The curriculum is designed for delivery in six weeks of the eight-week program. Children are engaged daily in hands-on learning experiences in the outdoor classroom of nature around us, such as our butterfly and raised-bed gardens as well as local ravines, prairies, woodlands, local waterways, and Waukegan Harbor. Field trips to local and regional sites also support the written curriculum in significant ways. Visits to the Chicago Botanic Garden, Lake County Forest Preserves, Volo Bog, Prairie Crossing Learning Farm, and Horicon Marsh in Wisconsin have become standard trips each year. These repeat visits bring deeper learning for the children.

N: Can you share a story of a child who was impacted by Cool Learning Experience?

BW: During a trip to Volo Bog in 2013, a fifth grade boy suddenly grabbed me as we were following a naturalist into the bog and walking on a rickety boardwalk. In a fearful voice he said, “Ms. Coyote, she’s going to drown us. I don’t want to go!” He was very frantic and insisted on not moving another step. I said, “Come on, it’s going to be OK.” And literally within five minutes after spotting a turtle, he turned around and said to me, “Ms. Coyote! I can’t believe this. This nature is awesome. Nature is beautiful.” It seemed like a spirit of calm overwhelmed him. He truly enjoyed the rest of the walk as we went throughout the bog pointing to another turtle and some frogs. He was full of excitement when he saw a blue heron. That was a life-changing moment in his life. Since then I have never seen him express fear when exploring new places in nature. As a matter of fact, he now encourages other hesitant children.

NA: All of the camp participants have nature names. Can you explain how you chose your nature name of Ms. Coyote?

BW: You know what? It was by default. I selected it in 2008 when Cool Learning Experience participated in the U.S. Navy Starbase Atlantis program at the Great Lakes Naval Base. As part of this program, all of us, including the navy instructors, chose a name to adopt from a prepared list. After our children and staff picked their names, there were only two names left.  Coyote was one and I chose it because the other didn’t appeal to me. Interestingly, I’ve learned much more about coyotes since then, and I’ve learned that the coyote is an extremely adaptable animal. For many years I have thought of myself as having an adaptable personality. I attribute this primarily to living the first 21 years of my life in the rural, segregated South. You learned to adapt. It was necessary for survival in some pretty hostile environments. As I read more about the coyote’s qualities of adaptability and survival, I thought, “That’s me. That name fits me.” So, I now embrace my nature name with pride.

Participants enjoy the natural world in a variety of places (like Skokie Lagoons) in the Chicago area.

Participants in Cool Learning Experience enjoy the natural world in a variety of places (like the Skokie Lagoons in this photo) in the Chicago area.

NA: Can you tell me more about your faith journey?

BW: I’m grounded in the sacred texts known as the Bible. I remind myself daily of the awesome price was paid for me to be a free person inside and a transformed person for the better. That is very humbling. God knows all about me and loves me and loves all of the other billions of people on this planet.   Knowing and experiencing His deep everlasting love makes me feel special, and at the same time I feel such a sense of responsibility. If I believe Scripture to be God’s truths and I’m grounded in it, then I’m called to be transformed and to be an agent of transformation. My daily walk with God – freely choosing a discipline of daily prayer, studying the Bible – leads me on a path of service to humankind out of His deep everlasting love.

As I said earlier, I grew up in the country in the segregated South. I am grateful that my parents were people of faith. I witnessed my parents show love and forgiveness in the midst of unjust treatment and acts of hatred. You know, there is much truth in that old saying: children learn more by what we do than by what we say. I saw my folks love those who mistreated them and others in our community. I have a memory of my mom saying, “You can never hate.” I never saw them hate other people no matter how much injustice they experienced. As I grew older and reflected on that life, I realize that attitude was rooted in their faith, in their sense of who they were as children of God. And we caught it because they taught us well! I know that the God that I serve is a God of love, a God of forgiveness and compassion and grace and mercy who calls me to be likewise.

NA: It’s very clear from your life that you care a great deal about God’s earth. Why? How does taking care of God’s earth relate to your faith and your walk with God?

BW: I have loads of fun memories growing up in the country surrounded by wild places to explore, creeks to fish in, wild berries and plums to pick, lightning bugs to catch at night under star filled skies, and much more. My childhood was a time when we were immersed in the natural world. Nature offered us endless fun adventures, wonders, and peaceful places. I still remember falls in Memphis, Tennessee. I would lay out under the trees and on the leaves. There’s something about the fall sun in the South.

Nature also offered us food to sustain life. I strongly believe I learned some foundational life lessons growing up in the country where we depended on the land for growing vegetables and raising animals to provide food for our family and others in need. I remember when it was time to kill the hogs, there was always a man designated to shoot the animals. As a child I didn’t ask why this man had that job. Years later, I realized their reasoning. He was the marksman and better skilled than others. My parents and others didn’t want these creations of God to suffer needlessly. So, for them it had to be done as humanely as possible.

They were also mindful of how they use other natural resources of nature, especially water, wood and, coal for cooking and heating. I remember my mom saying, “Waste not, want not.” Honestly, this was drilled in us. So there was never waste of water, food, wood, or anything. I learned early that there were neighbors who had less than we, and you just didn’t waste because there were many needs in our community. Just as God had instructed his chosen children throughout scripture how to care for others, like gleaning the fields – all of those things we just did. We didn’t question it. I learned caring for others was the righteous thing to do.

And caring for the earth was a part of caring for others. You see my folks were depending on the land to provide vegetables and fruit to feed their children. They knew if they didn’t care for this land, it wouldn’t continue to care for us, producing enough quality food. They were thankful for hogs and chickens to sacrifice for food to sustain human life, so they acted humanely. I read in one of Michael Pollen’s books something like, “Food is not a product of industry. It’s a gift of nature.” I love that statement. Food produced from our land was indeed a gift of nature that sustained us. How could you not take care of the land? I observed much through the senses of a child, but when I became an adult those observations became instructive and life shaping. My folks understood God as creator of all things – land, water, plants and animals. He created it for our use and pleasure. Yet, they knew to respect and value all these creations.

Scripture tells us He gave humans dominion over all living things. As I now understand Scripture, dominion does not mean we can do whatever we want to His creations. No, we are called to be respectful and responsible for all God created. God has entrusted all that He created to our care. I have dominion and responsibility for my children but it doesn’t mean I can abuse them or leave them home unattended when they were infants. I couldn’t feed myself first. No, you care for them first. So God has given us an awesome responsibility.

I’m not of the mindset that we can say, “Well, I can mess this earth up because we’ll get a new earth anyway.” In the first book of the Bible, Genesis, we read of God giving humans this awesome responsibility of dominion and at the end of the Bible in Revelation we read of His plan to create a new heaven and a new earth. In the end God is going to bring it all together according to His will. Now, the question is what have I done in between the beginning and the end? And I believe that’s what I’m going to be held accountable for by our loving God who created it all.

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Food for thought on Reformation Sunday

Nathan Aaberg —  October 26, 2014 — Leave a comment

It’s a pleasant surprise anytime I read a news story with good news.

So I was delighted yesterday to read an article in the New York Times (“Gaining in Years and Helping Others to Make Gains”) that highlighted the stories of the six winners of the Purpose Prize, an award given to Americans 60 years old and above who are making a positive impact on the world.

It’s an inspiring article worth reading just for its own sake and for thinking about as you and I consider what we will do with our experience and skills as we get older. Do we head to the beach and the golf course or do we invest as much energy and time as we can back to our communities as long as we can?

What struck me were the stories of two of the winners. Elements of their stories resonated with my growing conviction that Christianity needs a new reformation.

One of the winners is the Reverend Richard Joyner. He is 62 and the pastor of the Conetoe Baptist Church in a rural part of North Carolina. The Purpose Prize award is to recognize the impact of his founding of the Conetoe Family Life Center. Here’s a brief section of the article that describes the Center and its impact:

The center uses its 25-acre garden to improve the health of the congregation members and to increase the members’ high school graduation rates.

“It’s not easy getting people in the South away from fried chicken and sweet tea,” Pastor Joyner said.

In 2005, Pastor Joyner had faced too many funerals at his church of 300 congregants. In one year alone, 30 under the age of 32 had died. Most of the deaths were health-related, stemming from poor diet and no exercise, he said. His own sister and brother had died of heart attacks.

So he founded the center which offers after-school and summer camp programs for children 5 to 18. The youths plan, plant and reap the produce, which, in turn, they peddle at farmers’ markets, roadside stands and to local restaurants. They also maintain beehives to produce and supply honey to low-income neighbors. The income they earn goes to school supplies and scholarships.

Getting involved with farming was not easy for Pastor Joyner. “I was a sharecropper’s son, and we experienced a lot of racism,” he said. “I never wanted to ever have anything to do with farming.”

But that changed. “The eyes of the youth have helped me to see the land in a different perspective,” he said. “Land is the soul. Farming gives these youth, who are struggling, the power to grow something that impacts the health of their family.”

“As healthy eating and exercise have become routine, people in the community have lost weight, emergency room visits for primary health care have dropped by 40 percent, and the number of deaths have dwindled. The youth are enrolling in college and finding jobs.”

What does this story tell us about the relationship between our love for our neighbor and how we care for the land and raise food?

And think about this from another angle – could Pastor Joyner have continued in good faith to preach salvation from the pulpit while ignoring the health problems of his congregants and community members? Could he have ignored the connection between what is done with the land and the food that comes from the land with the health of people around him?

Being completely filled with filled with God’s love compels us to treat God’s earth with love and patience and self-control. This, in turns, requires us to raise food differently and eat differently. And that, in turn, gives us abundant life, both physically and socially.

This awareness needs to be an essential element of what Christians are aware of and what our hearts are full of. This needs to be an essential element of how we as Christians live.

One of other Purpose Prize winners is 76-year old Charles Irvin Fletcher. This former microwave systems engineer has long been interested in the potential healing value of equine therapy for children with disabilities.   To implement the insights he had about how the therapy should be done, he established SpiritHorse International in Corinth, Texas in 2001. Here’s what the article describes:

His ranch is now home to 31 horses and ponies, and is the headquarters for a worldwide network of 91 licensed therapeutic riding centers that serve children with disabilities in the United States, South America, Africa, and Europe.

At Mr. Fletcher’s ranch in Corinth, roughly 400 children with disabilities, some as young as nine months, receive free weekly riding sessions on ponies with names like Buttercup and Peter Pan. The riders have a variety of medical conditions, including autism, Down syndrome, cerebral palsy, multiple sclerosis and spina bifida. 

More than 5,000 children have been helped through the network since the gates opened.

“I believe that horses can feel spiritual messages,” Mr. Fletch said. “They can feel love. They can feel gratitude. They can feel approval, and they transmit those very simple feelings to the children.”

He added, “The reason this therapy works so well is that children with disabilities also have a very open spirit, and the horses sense it.”

Is there anything in conventional Christian theology and instruction that would prepare us for this? Is there anything we hear in church that would remind us that we share an amazing world with amazing creatures with spirits of their own?

What adds an interesting dimension to this story is that Charles Fletcher is all about science. He is an engineer by training. His unique approach to equine healing is based on his commitment to science and measurable outcomes. Yet, he matter-of-factly points to the spiritual connection between horses and people as one of the fundamental reasons why equine therapy works.

This world and its creatures are, I am convinced, part of God’s story.

And an important, irrevocable part of our right place in the world is to be the shepherds of God’s earth even to the point of service and sacrifice. That service and sacrifice is to be part of our story. 

But too often it isn’t, and we miss opportunities to bring life and healing and beauty into this world and in doing so to honor God.  And in part this is because the Church has a very large blind spot when it comes to how we think about God’s earth.

Now more than ever that must change.

 

 

 

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