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Food & the Whole Faith Church (Part 2)

Nathan Aaberg —  January 29, 2017 — Leave a comment

Back in mid-August of 2016, I posted a blog entitled Food and the Whole Faith Church. In it I wrote the following:

“A defining feature of a whole faith church will be that this community of believers will be fully committed to demonstrating the proper and attentive relationship between humanity and Creation in its common meals, including communion.

This means that the food of the whole faith church will come as much as is practically possible from farms where the land, water, and animals of God’s earth are stewarded in ways that God would find fitting of a good, loving shepherd and from farm enterprises which support a good quality of life for the farmers and their communities.”

Then in late September, I wrote a follow-up piece that explored some of the practicalities of applying that principle with ten supplementary principles.

Because food is so central to culture and because forming a church with a new culture of food would be radically different from the life of churches most people know, I believe it’s necessary to wrestle with more of the practicalities and concerns this idea presents. Below you’ll find a series of questions that might reasonably be asked about the ideas I’ve proposed followed by my responses:

 

Isn’t a focus on choosing right foods to eat a new legalism that replaces the Gospel of grace with a gospel of deeds?

No. And an emphatic double no.

It is true that early Christians were concerned about food arguments dividing them and compromising their ability to evangelize diverse groups of people. And I’ve become convinced that church members should not be so focused on food purity that they refuse to eat, if there is no other choice, food they normally wouldn’t eat when it is offered to them in social situations with people who are not members of the church.

But you would have to twist what is in the Bible as a whole to believe that a Christian faith does not express itself in action and in daily decisions. This conviction is one of the pillars of a whole faith church.

Living out the faith and the loving spirit that comes with that faith will compel us to make every detail of our church’s life fit together. The common meals of a whole faith church are the home turf of that church. In those common meals we have the right to express our faith completely and holistically. Not doing so actually hollows out all of the meaning of the Christian faith. How Christian is a community that eats ham, for exactly, that has come from pigs raised in factory farms where thousands are kept inside their whole lives, where fecal particulates fill the air, where local waterways are defiled, where the lives of neighbors are made miserable, and where the pigs are fed a steady stream of antibiotics to promote growth which contributes to antibiotic resistant bacteria that kill people?

Our faith is an incarnational faith. It is not just an abstract assent to abstract doctrines and ideas. It calls for belief in God through Jesus that our actual lives rest on and are rooted in. Jesus showed us what that looks like. Jesus’ earthy parables, like that of the Good Samaritan, rooted ideas and values in paradigm-shifting stories.

Nevertheless, there is nuance in this conversation that must be respected and approached carefully. There is, for example, a whole spectrum of farming methods. And the question of how to balance ideals and practicality is one a thoughtful farmer must wrestle with everyday. I hope all of us are wise enough to know that there are things we don’t know that we don’t know. The whole faith church will need to avoid legalism and harsh judgment. Its members will need to humbly do their best they can to discern what kind of food is fitting for the common meals of the church. They will need to do so with a commitment to truth and also with God’s abiding love and in their hearts.

 

Won’t this turn away potential members?

Yes. The whole faith church will unapologetically have a tangible, distinctive culture that reveals itself in many aspects of the common life of the church and in how members live out their lives. As a result, there will be many aspects (and not just food choices) of the common life in the whole faith church that will be challenging and countercultural. The degree of commitment asked of members may be too much for people who want a casual commitment to God.

But this approach to food and other elements of a church’s common life together also has the potential to attract people who would otherwise not find church meaningful. Some of the people this approach to food might attract are justice-minded, loving people who would respond to a church’s message if the culture of the church was consistent with the Gospel message.

And we should not underestimate the attractiveness of any group of people who are loving, action-oriented, creative, diverse, and who stand for something in all aspects of their lives.

 

Isn’t this a case of a social fad or movement influencing the church rather than the other way around?

I don’t think so. What I am proposing is that the culture of the whole faith church to reflect a willingness to actually apply a transformed and remade heart that sees the world the way God sees it and translates those values into actions in everyday life.

But, hypothetically, if there is some truth to the idea that the larger good food movement is having influence on this conception of a whole faith church, then I believe it is a positive influence. The Church has been largely acquiescent in accepting “progress” that has actually been systematically injurious to people and to Creation in many fields. Technological advancement, the application of that technology, and the direction the free market takes our communities are not automatically good or in keeping with Christian principles. And, of course, neither are they automatically bad or not in keeping with Christian principles. The Church and local churches have simply not been paying attention or guiding Christians in moral, nuanced ways. This is because the Church has largely been spiritual in an abstract and has tried to avoid conflict with the powers that be. As a result, all too often the loudest voices of love and hunger for righteousness in our world are not Christian.

 

Won’t this be expensive?

It’s true that applying Christian values to food choices would mean that the cost of food purchased by the local whole faith church would be higher than it would be buying typical food from a typical grocery store.

But I would make a number of points. First, any church can, if motivated, find a way to afford something that is important to its values. Tradeoffs can be made in other areas.

Second, a whole faith church will think of food and eating choices as part of their community practice of faith, in essence a faith discipline. Food choices in our modern world are not just “food” choices but declarations of what one truly values.

Third, it is far more expensive in the larger context to eat food that has not been raised in ways compatible with a whole faith understanding of the Christian faith. If a faith community supports a food system that is contributing to the diminishment of God’s world, to health issues, and to an agriculture that is not as good as it should be for farmers and their communities, then the faith community is not truly loving its neighbors nor God.  It is not putting its money where its mouth is.

Finally, a church with a dynamic culture that gives purpose, community, and coherence to everything in its members’ lives will be tremendously inspirational and meaningful. People who are members will give generously, perhaps more generously than they would at church where there is more of a lukewarm sense of common commitment.

 

Would this mean whole faith churches would be vegetarian?

Not necessarily. Each whole faith church would have some latitude in what it deemed to be food choices compatible with the loving heart a Christian will have shaped by God. Respect should be given, within the general commitment to apply a whole faith church’s values to the common meals, to the community context of the church.

I must admit that I’ve come to see the consumption of animals in a more complex, nuanced way over the years. Through the research and teaching I’ve been exposed to through my work, it’s become clear to me that for farms to be truly sustainable, livestock are indispensable. It is very hard, for example, to find a natural ecosystem where there are not animals that eat vegetation and poop and help nutrients stay in the system. What’s more, I’ve now seen and read about a number of pasture-based livestock farms that are very humane and treat the animals with great respect. If we make the sacrificial commitment to treat the animals and the land with great respect and affection at the cost of some commercial success, then asking the livestock to also make a sacrifice as part of whole lives that are generally good and respectful of their natures seems to me the best that can be expected of in this fallen world. That’s a hard sentence for me to write as I was vegetarian for many years.

But I must be clear about one thing – I do believe that there is no place in a church’s common meals, for example, for meat from factory-raised, inhumanely treated animals.

 

Will the effort and resources needed to do this take away energy and time that would be better used to advance the core mission of the church?

There would certainly be an upfront investment of time and energy to figure out the guidelines for the church’s common meals and to find the new sources of food to implement those guidelines. But once a system and sources were figured out, this would, like other elements of church and family life, become relatively routine. Down the road, members will have a hard time remembering when and why they could have done it any other way.

 

Won’t this principle antagonize farmers and create an unnecessary divide in the Church?

This is a big, sensitive topic. For an established church in a rural area, it might be too hard to try to adopt this principle because of the controversy and rifts it would create. But I foresee whole faith churches primarily being new churches that spring up to serve people who want to worship and be in communion with other people who share a whole faith vision of what the Christian faith is all about. It will be easier for new churches to establish a new culture since they are starting from scratch.

Of course, ideally, whole faith churches would spring up in rural areas, too. If they do, will farmers whose farming methods wouldn’t meet the whole faith church’s threshold for how a good and loving shepherd would farm feel welcome or harshly judged? Sadly, I think some farmers would feel harshly judged even if that was not the intent.

In light of the sensitivity of this topic for the relationship with farmers, I also wrote Farmers and the Whole Faith Church. Some key points from that piece are: (1) it’s important to recognize what a difficult and challenging calling it is to be a farmer of any kind, (2) paying attention to farming and the impact that our mainstream farming system has on farmers and their communities is actually a pro-farmer orientation, and (3) Proverbs 27:23-27 is a reminder that it is all too easy for all of us to be obsessed with wealth and power and to forget that the foundation of a healthy, prosperous, resilient society and community is an agriculture that is rooted in careful stewardship care of each square foot of land and of each individual animal being raised.

Here’s a paragraph that I believe bears repeating:

We should empathize with farmers who have to live and work here at the tension point between a civilization’s riches and a farmer’s calling to treat God’s earth well and to produce good, healthy food. They are caught in a system. Doctors who cannot give their patients the time and care they need because of our current health care system are also stuck in a similar situation. That is a difficult, stressful place to be.

The whole faith church would in no way judge the character of any farmer but would in fact be warm and welcoming to all people. The whole faith church will have, in fact, special empathy for farmers. By living out its principles, the whole faith church will actually be more pro-farmer and more supportive of rural community life than churches that ignore the values that undergird our current agricultural system.

 

Will the whole faith church not care what members eat outside of the common meals of the church community?

That’s a good question. I’ve been grappling with that point for a while. The whole faith church will care. I’m convinced that one of the ways the whole faith church will be distinctive is that membership will truly mean something.  People who become members in a whole faith church will not only commit themselves to certain beliefs but also commit themselves to certain ways of living and be accountable in some way. A central tenet of this way of living couldn’t help but be attentiveness to how one’s life habits reflect the God-focused, God-shaped heart one now has.

Will the whole faith church expect members to eat every meal to the level of ethical discernment as the common meals of the church? Probably not, although that would be a good goal for any family. But I would be convinced that members would commit themselves to filtering their food buying and eating choices through their faith.

The whole faith church would need to support their member families in that commitment. What would that look like? I’m thinking of something like David Ramsey’s Financial Peace University. My wife and I have begun taking this class on money management through a local church. It’s a powerful, carefully thought-through curriculum that is having a big impact on how Christians and other people manage their money. It’s already impacting how we think about and manage our money.

Why isn’t there something like this to help Christians think carefully about how they steward God’s earth? Because eating is so important for health, for God’s Creation, and for the kind of agriculture that shapes the lives of farmers and rural communities, Christians should put as much thought into their eating as their use of money. The whole faith church should create a curriculum similar to Financial Peace University that would help Christians live out their values in their food choices. The curriculum would not only provide the thought foundation behind thinking carefully about food and guidance about how to determine whether food is compatible with whole Christian faith values, but also provide practical help. Meal plans. Cooking lessons. Visits to farms (or at least virtual visits through a video presentation). Perhaps even special buying relationships with local and sustainable food farmers that make good, healthy food available to members at a reduced cost?

Dave Ramsey asks in one of his video presentations what would happen to God’s Kingdom if millions of Christians applied good principles of money management (including generous giving) in their daily lives. That’s a powerful question.

An equally powerful question is this – “What would happen if millions of Christians applied good principles of shepherding God’s earth in their daily lives with a special focus on their eating and farming choices?”

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Would You Work for Ahab-Jezebel, Inc.?

Nathan Aaberg —  December 24, 2016 — Leave a comment

I’ve been trying to write this piece for more than two weeks. But no matter how I revised and reworked it, it didn’t feel right.

I’m beginning to understand why.

I’ve wanted to write a sweeping, harsh, black-and-white piece. I’ve wanted to assert that Christians with whole, living faiths would avoid being part of organizations that consistently use power wrongly and to resist wrong things being done by organizations of which they are part. And I’ve even wanted to spell that all out in pretty detailed terms.

What is giving me mental static is that things are not always black and white. In this fallen world, people and organizations can be contradictory mixes of good and bad. There is complexity and nuance. Our government system allows for many conflicting voices. The free market allows for both wonderful creativity and destructive inventions. And discernment becomes even more difficult when organizations and systems are large and longstanding and produce both good and bad.

What also pulls me back is that Jesus taught us to be careful in judging and accusing others. In fact, Jesus didn’t seem to criticize the Roman centurions he dealt with for being part of an empire built on cruelty.

So I’ve realized I was trying to create a definitive statement that didn’t match the complexity and nuance of the world and of the Bible itself.

Yet, I am 100% convinced that Christians whose hearts are filled with God will not stand passively by when wrong is being done.

The story of Ahab and Jezebel that is told in 1 Kings 21 still has, I believe, something important to teach us.

Ahab was the king of Israel at this time and served as king for 22 years somewhere between 880 and 850 BC. Israel then was not the Israel of today. It was the northern of the two kingdoms that had persisted after King David’s and King Solomon’s unified kingdom had broken up. Ahab had married the king of Phoenicia’s daughter – Jezebel – who brought with her the Baal-worshipping tradition of her people and, we’ll see, a dominating spirit.

King Ahab noticed a vineyard owned by Naboth, a resident of Jezreel, next to his palace in the same town. King Ahab offered Naboth what seemed, on the face of it, a reasonable offer – let me give you a better vineyard in exchange for yours or name the price and I’ll pay it.

Naboth refused. He didn’t do so out of spite. He did so because of the framework through which he saw the world. This framework was based on a God-focused understanding that the land was actually God’s. As a result, each Israelite family understood that they had received only a lease for the land, which was to be their permanent inheritance. It was also understood that God’s people were not to sell or lose this inheritance. It was a law and an orientation towards life that King Ahab didn’t understand and wanted to disregard. He wanted to deal only in terms of real estate, finance, and commerce. (For this insight and others about the context of this situation, this article was helpful.)

Ahab pouted and sulked about Naboth’s refusal to sell until Jezebel found out what the matter was. She upbraided him for not acting like a king. (In the NIV she actually calls him the “king over Israel” which subtly asserts her view that kingship is about domination of one’s subjects rather than serving them and their overall interests before God). She told him not to worry. She would take care of it.

Ahab didn’t ask any questions about how she’ll do that.

Jezebel worked out an elaborate scheme in which Naboth was falsely accused by elders and nobles who lived in Jezreel of cursing God and King Ahab. Those elders and nobles then stoned him to death. They were Naboth’s neighbors.

The Stoning of Naboth (Dirck Coornhert)

The Stoning of Naboth (Dirck Coornhert). 

When King Ahab heard that Naboth was dead (again, no questions), he rushed off to take possession. God consequently commanded Elijah to confront Ahab and to tell him that he will die. (Oddly, Ahab confessed, and God delayed the day when King Ahab and Jezebel did die in brutal fashion.)

This story helps us see key characteristics of people with power who are acting badly. The characteristics of Ahab-Jezebel, Inc. we see are:

Possessed by greed, power, and prestige.

Not seeing people and God’s earth through God’s eyes

Not loving one’s neighbors 

Not accepting limits on the use of power 

Using power and law to get what is illegitimately desired.

Blind to violence inflicted on the vulnerable 

The rule of Ahab-Jezebel, Inc. in this world and even in our country is not new. It has actually been the norm of this fallen world for millennia.

We’ve seen this most recently at the Standing Rock Indian Reservation with Energy Transfer Partners and the Army Corps of Engineers ready to threaten the Standing Rock Reservation’s water supply and to destroy sites sacred to the tribe. Balancing human creativity and enterprise with humility and love appears more challenging to humanity than devising a perpetual motion machine.

So how would a person who is a follower of Jesus in this life, especially in a democracy and in a country in which we can choose who to work for, choose to act when faced with an order from Ahab-Jezebel, Inc.?

It’s unsettling to me that God ultimately calls Ahab and Jezebel to account for what they’ve done but God doesn’t seem to do so with the elders and nobles. Nothing seems to happen them for doing something so clearly wrong. Does God not care if we are like the elders and nobles who take part in using official power and twisted legal strategies?

I believe, however, that God does care. We are morally responsible before God for how we act in this world as individuals.

So this raises the question of whether we can go along when we work for a company or agency that is systematically following the values of Ahab-Jezebel, Inc. rather than the values of the god we know through Jesus and the Bible?

We’d probably all agree that a Christian couldn’t rightly work for a company making pornographic films. How about a factory farm? From what I’ve read and heard, the factory farm is pretty close on the moral scale. How about a company carrying out mountaintop mining?

Things can get dicier when a company or government agency fills some legitimate roles but also, in particular cases, is right in line with Ahab and Jezebel. Could a Christian work for Energy Transfer Partners? Or Monsanto?

Again, I believe we face nuance. Picking and choosing who to work for is not a luxury many people have. And it’s so easy to point out the speck in one’s neighbor’s eye and ignore the timber in one’s own.

Yet, if Christians don’t wrestle with these questions, Christianity ends up standing for nothing.

Our tendency is to put our faith in the religion/doctrine silo and to only let it influence other elements of our life where it is safe to do so and where that won’t cost us comfort, convenience, and security.

I believe Jesus wants our whole life dedicated to him and wholly filled with his love, joy, and peace that are expressed with strength and conviction. A good church would encourage each of its members to live out a whole faith in all aspects of life and would help its members make tough decisions about when to resist, when to try to change, and when to accept. A living church would even ask hard questions of each other in truth and love and passionately support those who who do not go along with Ahab-Jezebel, Inc.

And following Jesus would be far more appealing if people saw Christians living out values of love and a hunger for virtue and justice in every part of their lives.

It’s time, more than ever, for that to become the norm.

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Whole Faith Makes Creation Care Natural

Nathan Aaberg —  November 30, 2016 — Leave a comment

Many of my posts over the last two years have been asserting that God’s Creation is an essential element in the ethical and theological considerations of a whole Christian faith.

I am now convinced that a primary reason that mainstream Christianity doesn’t naturally integrate thoughtful, perpetual concern for Creation into what a Christan life means is that the typical presentation of what Christianity is about is in itself incomplete. And it is this incompleteness that is behind so much of the blindness of professing Christians to not only the natural world but also to injustice and evil.

What you hear at most Christiain churches — that Christ’s death is an atoning sacrifice for our sins — is indeed a core element of the faith. To modern ears, it sounds odd and perhaps even clunkily superstitious. But I believe there is deep truth in it.

Yet there is more.

You see, you encounter much more when you read the 66 books of the Bible with an open mind. And you encounter much more when you spend time with devoted Christians and when you encounter God through prayer or spiritual experience.

But when Christians extract sacrificial atonement as the sole good news from the Bible, so much is  lost.

What you get is epitomized by the sign I saw while driving home today from Missouri. It read, “When you die, are you going to heaven or hell?”

Christianity in this boiled-down version becomes a question of one’s status before the courts of God in regards to one’s eternal destination after one has lived life on this earth. It becomes solely a matter of one’s spiritual-legal standing. It ignores the actions and words and meaning of Jesus’ life before he was crucified and after his resurrection.

In Renovation of the Heart, a book I’m now reading for the second time, Dallas Willards writes of the larger meaning of the Bible, “This present life is to be caught up now in the eternal life of God”

In other words, we can live, truly live, by allowing God to reshape our hearts and minds and souls by accepting Jesus. Salvation is about having the life God offers us and having it now.

This is the abundant life Jesus offered.

Here are more words from Dallas Willard, also from Renovation of the Heart, that resonate with me:

“Our soul is like an inner stream of water, which gives strength, direction, and harmony to every other element of our life. When that soul is as it should be, we are constantly refreshed and exuberant in all we do, because our soul itself is then profusely rooted in the vastness of God and his kingdom, including nature; and all within us is enlivened and directed by that stream. Therefore we are in harmony with God, reality, and the rest of human nature and nature at large.”

Church life should consciously be about promoting that profuse rooting of our souls in God. How different Christians’ relationship with Creation would be if that was the norm. That is the kind of church I’d like to be part of. That is the kind of church I’d like to help build.

 

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The Cosmic Significance of the Cubs

Nathan Aaberg —  November 12, 2016 — Leave a comment

The title of this blog is, admittedly, a shameless attempt to grab your attention and, perhaps, cause you to smile at a time when the country’s mood is in turmoil. I believe there are lessons to be gained from the Cubs’ first World Series championship in 108 years that bear on our effort to live out a whole Christian faith as communities of believers. You’ll find ten below.

A vision and a plan are needed: The Cubs’ World Series victory did not happen by accident. Theo Epstein was hired as president of baseball operations for the Chicago Cubs in 2011. In 2012, the Cubs lost 101 games out of 162. In 2013, they were barely better as they lost 96 while winning just 66. But Epstein had a plan for getting the Cubs to the championship level just as he had taken the Boston Red Sox to two World Series victories. It unfolded over time. It involved change in almost every aspect of the Cubs’ organization. And it worked. What vision and plan are you part of for God’s desires for this world? Do you know what your gifts are? Have you figured out how to use them for maximum impact?

Recognize needs and seize opportunities: Plans can only go so far. There are times when you must adapt, recognize critical moments, and act decisively to pursue opportunities you didn’t expect. Recognizing their need for better relief pitching in middle of this season, the Cubs acquired pitcher Mike Montgomery (and another pitcher) from Seattle on July 20 this year. Five days later the Cubs traded four good prospects to the Yankees for the hardest throwing pitcher in baseball – relief pitcher Aroldis Chapman. Both Montgomery and Chapman played key roles in their regular season and playoff success. In fact, Montgomery secured the final out in Game 7. God gives us agency and free will to make smart choices and to adjust to changes in life. We should be on our toes and not on autopilot with the assumption that God will take care of everything.

Work collaboratively and joyfully: Epstein is brilliant. But he hired people into the organization who were also smart and good at their particular functions, whether that be scouting or marketing. And from all accounts, he let them do their jobs, working with them in collaborative ways. One of the reasons the Cubs were so fun to watch, too, was the genuine fun and friendly bonds the players seemed to enjoy together. Maddon encouraged them to keep loose. You and I need each other and other Christians in whatever circumstances we’re in to be most effective for God. These should be relationships of mutual respect and cooperation. And there should be some lightness and joy.

Expect a crooked path to success: The Cubs didn’t go 162-0 in the regular season this year. At one point in the season, they actually began to sputter. During the National League Championship Series, they fell behind the Dodgers. They were down 3-1 in the World Series to the Indians. They lost their 6-3 lead in Game 7 in the bottom of the eighth inning. Their spirits were nearly crushed. Some players were even crying during the rain delay before the 10th inning bregan. Life dishes out pain and exposes one’s failings. Expect it. Persevere through it.

Failure both teaches and must be forgotten: By the time Cubs’ second baseman Javier Baez came up in the 5th inning of Game 7, my son and I were sure he was going to make another out swinging at pitches miles from the strike zone. He had been 4-for-26 at that point and was, uncharacteristically, making errors in the field. He was facing Corey Kluber, the Indians’ best pitcher. What did he do? He rocked a pitch to center field for a home run. Kluber was then removed from the game. From what the broadcasters said, Cubs coaches had been working with Baez on hitting technique and encouraging him to not try to pull every pitch. It worked. Baez evidently listened. And he had the strength of mind to put his failures behind him, stay composed, and perform at the peak of his abilities in the moment he was in.

Use strengths, work around weaknesses: From about 2012, John Lester, the Cubs’ premier starting pitcher, for some psychological reason, began to lose all ability to throw the ball to any of the bases whether to hold a runner on or to throw a runner out on a ground ball or bunt. This is a fundamental part of being a pitcher, much less a baseball player, and yet he couldn’t do it. Jason Heyward was signed to a huge $184 million, eight-year contract with the expectation that he would be a foundational, complete player for the Cubs. But during the regular season, he ended up batting an anemic .230. And when crunch time came in the World Series he managed only a miserable .150. Yet, both Lester and Heyward made huge impacts as the Cubs found ways to use them. Lester pitched crucial innings. Heyward played great defense in the outfield and gave a talk during the rain delay after the ninth inning that calmed his teammates and helped them come out and win in the seventh game in the 10th inning under tremendous pressure. People around you don’t have to be perfect to be valuable in their role. Neither do you.

Leaders will make mistakes: By the seventh game of the World Series, Joe Maddon’s calm demeanor and relaxed approach to his leadership that we had seen throughout the season had frayed. You could see him grimacing when players made mistakes. He made some pitching moves that were questioned at the time they were made and proved to be bad ones. But in baseball and in the life of a church, even the best of leaders are not perfect. And we shouldn’t expect them to be.

Money helps: According to Spotrac, the Cubs had the fifth highest payroll in Major League Baseball at just over $186 million. Cleveland was at 21st with almost $115 million. Adequate and even generous funding of a church or ministry by people or organizations which have been blessed financially is, similarly, very important.

Cherish shared bonds over time: A friend of mine passed away far too early in his life a few years ago. He was a huge Cubs fan, even when he moved to New Mexico. I remember us having heated (but friendly) arguments about the relative strengths of the Cubs versus the White Sox when we were kids on the sidewalk of our Chicago neighborhood sidewalk on summer days. I found myself thinking often of him during the World Series. I know his family cried upon the Cubs’ victory in large part because they wished they could have shared it with him. I heard of a Cubs’ fan listening to Game 7 at the side of his father’s grave to honor their common connection to the Cubs. All of this is a small taste of what bonds between Christian family members and even between just members should be and can be. Does your church have that shared bond? Do you and others you know have that shared excitement and passion around your mission that is in continuity with past centuries of disciples?

Being lovable isn’t the point: For decades there was an aura of security and comfort around the Cubs. Wrigley Field was a great place to go and enjoy the sunshine and the company of friends. The baseball being played was like background music and was, to many, of no real consequence. People still showed up. There was even a certain comfort in their perennial problems. But playing baseball, like any sport, is ultimately about striving to win. Only if you’re doing everything possible to do so are you really playing the game. Likewise, a Christian life shouldn’t be defined only by being lovable and comforting and looking forward to peace and heaven when we die. Our eternal lives are already under way. The way of life we are part of is about taking on challenges in this world. There is a call to action inherent in being a follower of Jesus. Like the Cubs of 2016, we should be a goodhearted group of people who also are committed down to our very bones to win at the game we’re in. For Christians that means using our energy and abilities to live out God’s goodness and to struggle against evil in this world.

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Farmers and the Whole Faith Church

Nathan Aaberg —  October 29, 2016 — Leave a comment

So you’re a farm family with corn and soybean fields stretching in all directions to the horizon away from your house on a rural road.

You’re farming the way everyone else in your community has farmed for decades. You work hard at it every day. You believe you are helping to feed the world.

Suddenly, you hear of a group of people who have begun gathering together in a nearby town for worship and for the restoration of their hearts, minds, and lives to what God offers through Jesus. They call themselves a whole faith church. They seem unusually kind, sincere, thoughtful, and good-natured. You hear, too, that the people of this church teach, among many other things, that there are certain principles for how God’s land and water should be treated. You hear that this group of people is mindful of what kind of food they choose to eat together as a church.

And when you dig further, you realize your farming methods don’t seem to jibe with their principles.

How will you react?

Quite possibly with defensiveness and resentment.

Putting ourselves in the shoes of a farm family is a reminder that the way the whole faith church communicates about farming should be thoughtfully done. Farmers are in a tough spot as they have one of the most difficult callings there is. The practical challenges of raising food and making a living in a technologically-intense, market-driven world that is now experiencing intensifying climate change are immense.

It’s critical to remember, too, that farmers and rural communities have often had little voice in how agricultural economies are shaped. In Empires of Food: Feast, Famine, and the Rise and Fall of Civilizations, authors Evan Fraser and Andrew Rimas highlight how civilizations tend to create agricultural systems that work well for the interests of the civilization and its urban elites. There is a recurring pattern of civilizations creating large-scale, nature-depleting farming systems in the hinterlands that are dependent on advanced technology, complex logistics, sophisticated trading systems, and stable, pleasant climate conditions.

Sound familiar?

The United States has built exactly this kind of system. And we are now part of an increasingly global farm system that individual farmers and their communities did not choose at a time when the climate is becoming less friendly.

I talked to a diversified farmer recently in central Illinois who remembers when Earl Butz, Secretary of Agriculture under Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, killed the supply management policies of the New Deal while promoting big new export deals for American commodity farm products (for a great overview, read this article from Grist). The New Deal policies, based on the lessons of the Depression and the Dust Bowl, had been designed to protect farmers from market swings in commodity prices while also protecting the land.

Under Butz, the new goal was for American farmers to produce as much as possible as cheaply as possible and to let the market sort out the winners and losers. Butz encouraged farmers to plant from fence row to fence row. He often said, “Get big or get out.”

That central Illinois farmer I talked to remembers how neighbors who used to be friends in his area began competing fiercely against each other to acquire the land they needed for their farms to survive. Fistfights broke out.

When this intense production fever led to lower prices even as interest rates on loans went up, there was an epidemic of farm failures in the 1980s. Fewer farmers remained. Natural areas were plowed up across the country. The social life that used to define small towns withered away. The interests of the local and small places in America’s countryside were sacrificed for the interests of the national economy and big companies.

It’s clear from the Bible that wealth and power are not what God called people to pursue.

In fact, it’s quite the opposite. People of the Christian faith should be instinctively allergic to any philosophy or policy that drives us to maximize wealth and power while simultaneously minimizing our commitment to other virtues and to the health of the commonwealth.

Proverbs 27: 23-27 provides some interesting food for thought:

Be sure you know the condition of your flocks,
give careful attention to your herds;
for riches do not endure forever,
and a crown is not secure for all generations.
When the hay is removed and new growth appears
and the grass from the hills is gathered in,
the lambs will provide you with clothing,
and the goats with the price of a field.
You will have plenty of goats’ milk to feed your family
and to nourish your female servants.

Riches and crowns, as I read it, are shorthand for economic wealth and political power. The writer is saying wealth and power can seem so important and pressing but are actually fleeting and can cause us to take our eyes away from what matters most. It also suggests that the foundation of stable family life, the basic building block of any community, is careful attention to the on-the-ground conditions of the land and animals we raise for food.

These ancient verses from Proverbs remind us that careful, attentive husbandry of land, water, and livestock is not some new fad. It is the old, old school of farming.

Really knowing the condition of your herds and paying careful attention to your flocks takes time and patience. It means creating the conditions for your animals to thrive in ways that are natural for them. When Proverbs was written, the audience would also have understood that you can’t have healthy flocks and herds without healthy pastures. Pastures also need attention and careful observation.

Insightful people like Wes Jackson say that for that kind of attention to be given to the land you need a high enough ratio of eyes per acre. In other words, you have to have enough people looking at any property’s acreage to know how the land is really responding to how it is being used.

Wendell Berry writes of this concept:

We can suppose that the eyes-to-acres ratio is approximately correct when a place is thriving in human use and care. The sign of its thriving would be the evident good health and diversity, not just of its crops and livestock but also of its population of native and noncommercial creatures, including the community of creatures living in the soil. Equally indicative and necessary would be the signs of a thriving local and locally adapted human economy.

On the other hand, the more land that is being farmed by the same number of people (the lower the ratio of eyes-to-acres) the less attention can be given to the health of the land and water of a particular farm field. The bottom line is that farming, like any enterprise, can grow beyond the limits of the natural capacities of people, nature, and community life. In many places, as a result of policies and national and industrial imperatives, our farms are too big for the kind of care that Proverbs speaks of. But farmers have felt pressured to move to that scale and to rely heavily on technology to do so.

We should empathize with farmers who have to live and work here at the tension point between a civilization’s riches and a farmer’s calling to treat God’s earth well and to produce good, healthy food. They are caught in a system. Doctors who cannot give their patients the time and care they need because of our current health care system are also stuck in a similar situation. That is a difficult, stressful place to be.

The whole faith church will recognize the challenging position farmers are in and show great love to them.

Conversely, farmers of all kinds will, I hope, eventually recognize why whole faith churches will choose food that has been raised in keeping with the fruits of the spirit. The why is that eating compassionately and with God’s love for people and all Creation is a natural expression of hearts that have been transformed by God.

Hopefully, farmers will see, too, that this counter-cultural approach to food is actually profoundly supportive of the long-term interests of farmers and their rural communities.

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