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Make This Easter Holy and Whole

Nathan Aaberg —  April 4, 2015 — Leave a comment

I start this holy week blog post with an Easter buffet of quotations that express the joy of this holiday in ways that are meaningful to me and that I hope will be meaningful to you.

Then, because Easter was a day of questions for the disciples and others who loved Jesus, I will close with some questions for you and I to meditate on that relate to how we make our celebration of Easter holy and whole.

PAINTING OF ANGEL, WOMEN AT EMPTY TOMB OF CHRIST

God proved His love on the Cross. When Christ hung, and bled, and died, it was God saying to the world, ‘I love you.’ (Billy Graham)

 

“The point of the resurrection…is that the present bodily life is not valueless just because it will die…What you do with your body in the present matters because God has a great future in store for it…What you do in the present—by painting, preaching, singing, sewing, praying, teaching, building hospitals, digging wells, campaigning for justice, writing poems, caring for the needy, loving your neighbor as yourself—will last into God’s future. These activities are not simply ways of making the present life a little less beastly, a little more bearable, until the day when we leave it behind altogether (as the hymn so mistakenly puts it…). They are part of what we may call building for God’s kingdom.” (N.T. Wright, Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church)

 

The great gift of Easter is hope – Christian hope which makes us have that confidence in God, in his ultimate triumph, and in his goodness and love, which nothing can shake. (Basil Hume)

 

“Jesus’s resurrection is the beginning of God’s new project not to snatch people away from earth to heaven but to colonize earth with the life of heaven. That, after all, is what the Lord’s Prayer is about.” (N.T. Wright, Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church)

 

Christ the Lord is risen today, Alleluia!
Earth and heaven in chorus say, Alleluia!
Raise your joys and triumphs high, Alleluia!
Sing, ye heavens, and earth reply, Alleluia!

(first verse of “Christ the Lord is Risen Today,” a hymn by Charles Wesley from 1739)

 

 “Made for spirituality, we wallow in introspection. Made for joy, we settle for pleasure. Made for justice, we clamor for vengeance. Made for relationship, we insist on our own way. Made for beauty, we are satisfied with sentiment. But new creation has already begun. The sun has begun to rise. Christians are called to leave behind, in the tomb of Jesus Christ, all that belongs to the brokenness and incompleteness of the present world … That, quite simply, is what it means to be Christian: to follow Jesus Christ into the new world, God’s new world, which he has thrown open before us. (N.T. Wright, Simply Christian: Why Christianity Makes Sense)

 

And here are the questions. Read them at your own risk!  Living out God’s ways in this world can be disruptive.

Do you and I believe Christ’s resurrection is an epic moment that only has significance for people or does it also have meaning for all of Creation, the Creation that Paul writes is “groaning”?

What kind of people does God desire you and I to be? What does the holiness (what I could call “pure goodness”) that comes from being filled with God’s Spirit look like?

Can you and I as Christians be filled with holiness and the fruits of the spirit while simultaneously committing selfish violence against God’s earth and the living creatures of that earth?

Has the food you and I plan to consume on Easter Sunday been raised in ways that are in keeping with the fruits of the spirit and God’s abiding love?  Do we honor God by what you and I eat on this day?

In particular, if you and I plan eat meat, what do you and I know of how the people raised the animals from which the meat came? Did the farmer who raised that animal raise it kindly and with consideration to the unique needs and innate characteristics of that animal? Or did it live in deprivation and was it pumped full of chemicals and antibiotics and then slaughtered in a place that is inhumane to the animals and to the workers?

And if our answer to that last question was yes, how do you and I reconcile our choice with the loving, merciful God of Easter that we say we follow and love?

Will you and I open our hearts to the full meaning of Easter and the renewed eternal life God offers us, our neighbors, and all of Creation out of His love?

Will you and I choose to live out God’s love for the whole world on this most holy of days in the food that we choose to eat and the food we will say grace over?  Even if that means bucking tradition by not eating meat to make Easter a day of complete peace and grace? Or even if it means putting in the time to find a source of humanely raised meat and paying the true cost of it?

Will we, in other words, make what we eat harmonious with our worship of God and our love of Jesus?

And I end with this final quote from N.T. Wright (obviously a favorite Christian thinker of mine) from his book Simply Christian: Why Christianity Makes Sense.

“That is what worship is all about. It is the glad shout of praise that arises to God the creator and God the rescuer from the creation that recognizes its maker, the creation that acknowledges the triumph of Jesus the Lamb. That is the worship that is going on in heaven, in God’s dimension, all the time. The question we ought to be asking is how best we might join in.” 

To imagine all of Creation joining humanity and angels in praising God is an unreal image that I know may strain the credulity of some of my readers.  But the beauty and wholeness and holiness of that image is one of the reasons for my faith.

Let us worship God with special joy and fervor this weekend.  May you have a blessed Easter.

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A World Vision for Earth (Part 2)

Nathan Aaberg —  February 21, 2015 — 1 Comment

In the last post, I wrote that we need the equivalent of World Vision, the $2.67 billion Christian humanitarian and community development organization, to bring tremendous resources to bear on the effort to preserve and mend God’s earth. I promised to lay out some ideas of the work that new organization might do and how it would be funded.

I didn’t expect to be writing this and the last post. I actually have a spreadsheet chockfull of blog post ideas that I’ve been working through and adding to. This post and the last are not on that spreadsheet.

I had envisioned this blog being a place for me to share ideas, stories, and insights about the whole faith that includes Creation. I hoped it would inspire other Christians to hold onto a whole faith and act on it. Perhaps, I thought, it might let Christians who already care about God’s earth know that they are not alone. I desired, too, that it might show people outside of the Christian faith and who care about this living planet that a whole Christian faith shares their conviction that the world has reason and value for existence beyond serving humanity.

I still believe there is value in all of that and, God willing, I hope this blog will be of value in those ways.

But the more I read and learn, the more I’m convinced that my conception of the blog was too redolent of an ivory tower mentality – safe and theoretical but not incarnational. Getting the small (tiny? infinitesimally small?) number of folks who might read this to take small actions in their individual lives for God’s earth as part of a complete Christian life will hardly move the needle.

A friend of mine once made an offhand comment that has stuck with me. It was something like: “I wish Christians worried more about being effective than being correct about every detail of their doctrine.”

I realize I may well be guilty of that same sin.

Part of my motivation in writing this is that I want to be in the right theologically. I want people to come to realize a whole Christian faith necessarily includes a recognition that God’s Creation is part of God’s redemption plan.

But what does that matter if the truth of that theology is not lived out and does not become the reality we see around us?

Not much at all.

We must bear fruit.

So the test of what I am about to suggest for the activities of this international, large-scale organization is this – will they have a chance of having an impact at the scale of the problems God’s earth faces?

Let’s dive in:

Channel Christian philanthropy to conservation at an unprecedented scale: Giving to religious organizations is the number one category of giving in the U.S. Giving by churches and individuals in a concerted way would be a way in itself for churches and individuals to have powerful impact for the work to restore God’s earth. The organization I propose would need to create a fundraising network and system that would be dynamic, ubiquitous, and compelling. It would use those funds for the activities described below and for selectively funding existing organizations that are already doing key work.

Whole Kingdom projects: Land, water, and community skills are the true source of community wealth. This organization would invest resources and staffing in strategic conservation projects that combine nature conservation with sustainable economies and healthy communities. In some cases, these projects would be started fresh. In some cases, where something similar is already being done, we would invest and support the existing project so it could be done even better. Gorongosa Park in Mozambique is not necessarily a full example but it reveals what a difference investment can make in bringing stability for nature and for local communities. What if, for example, investment was made in working with local communities in Haiti to restore a large forest and to have around that forest core sustainable agriculture and community development that relies on sustainable energy so that people no longer needed to cut down trees for firewood? This would benefit people and Creation. I come from a long line of worst-case scenario worriers so trust me I realize that these kinds of ideas have many variable and many ways to fail and may even be naïve. But ultimately we need to create new economies and new ways to live with the land as communities. Let’s start with where people and God’s earth are suffering the most.

In 1923, over 60% of Haiti was forested. In 2006, less than 2% was. This is a calamity for people and wildlife in Haiti.

In 1923, over 60% of Haiti was forested. In 2006, less than 2% was. This is a calamity for people and wildlife in Haiti. There is an opportunity to integrate community development and ecological restoration there.

Leadership Project: This project will inspire, educate, and train Christian leaders in business, government, and communities to be whole faith leaders. Leaders have a singular and tremendous impact on our world. The potential return in investing in leaders’ hearts and minds might be greater than any other investment. Imagine if Christian leaders throughout the world led their organizations and communities in ways that reflected a whole faith, that valued God’s earth for being God’s, for being vital for the lives and health of our neighbors and especially for the poor? As much as possible, this project would be led by other Christian leaders and would create peer groups among Christian leaders who would support each other and hold each other accountable.

New stories and art: There is a tendency to pursue left-brained solutions to problems in our world, but the right-side of our culture’s brain must also be engaged. In other words, the sickness of our world is not just a question of wrong policies and systems. It is also about the state of our hearts. And what reaches the heart, in addition to God’s Spirit, is art. We need movies, books, graphic novels, television shows, plays, and music that integrate Creation and that celebrate people and communities who seek to mend Creation out of their faith in God. We also need art that challenges and that has a prophetic voice.

Shape Policy and Political Discourse: If you can shape the terrain of ideas and values that frame the terms of a debate, you are more than halfway to shaping what happens in the world. Think tanks like The Heritage Foundation have done just that but have done so, despite their “conservative” labels, with an emphasis on values and thinking that subtly tempt our hearts away from living out values originating in Jesus Christ. We need a think tank that, to build off of the Heritage Foundation’s mission statement, formulates and promotes public policies based on the Christian principles of compassion, justice, creativity, love for our neighbors and for ourselves, and caring for God’s earth. We must think through how those principles can be applied in a fallen world. We must battle, with truth and love, ideas that come cloaked in respectability and sometimes even in Christian rhetoric that are actually antithetical to the incarnational, loving God we find in the Bible.

New church network: As I wrote in the last post, investing efforts in persuading more churches to have and live out a whole faith is not, in my opinion, the most effective way to actually preserve and mend God’s earth at this crisis point. It should be done, of course. I want to help that happen. But there is too much inertia in the current structure of many churches that works against a whole faith in the short term. What if we formed a new type of church or a new type of missional order or a hybrid of both? What if this new form of Christian community integrated God’s earth into the life of the community and the way it worshipped? What if these new churches owned significant amounts of land and demonstrated in each of their particular locations good ways of producing food and creating habitat? What if these new churches also served their communities while also contributing resources to the larger organization? Christian youth could serve and learn at these places during summer vacations and as part of internships, thus incubating new Christian leaders. Christian business people could help make these places well-managed and effective. These would also be communities where people who have sacrificially decided not to have children of their own for the sake of God’s earth could be supported when they adopted and could be linked to other families in covenant relationships if they didn’t.

Prophet protection: When it comes to the borderlands where earth-consuming forces seek to extract every bit of wealth the can from the land and water, the community leaders who speak up against those forces are extremely vulnerable. This is where laws are rarely enforced, where prophets are easy to kill. Perhaps you heard of some of them when they were alive? Dorothy Stang, Edwin Chota, and Chico Mendes are examples. It’s more likely that you heard of them after thy were murdered. Christians should stand in solidarity with those vulnerable prophets. People, resources, economic support, social media attention, leaderships networks should be brought to bear by Christians to protect them. These prophets speak for the most vulnerable communities, the most vulnerable places. These prophets are nerve signals to their communities and to the world as a whole that precious peoples and places are in danger of being lost. We must respond.

Dorothy Stang was a Christian who spoke up for the poor and the forests of Brazil, angering loggers and ranchers. She was shotgunned to death 10 years ago.

Dorothy Stang was a Christian who spoke up for the poor and the forests of Brazil, angering loggers and ranchers. She was shot to death 10 years ago.

A theological think tank & seminary: Within the Church, there is a need for a compelling and tenacious voice that presses the Church in theological and prophetic ways to change its theology and its members’ way of life to reflect a whole faith. This would combine theological vigor with dynamic, challenging advocacy. It would even press for new practices of the faith. It would also be a new seminary that trains church and ministry leaders in an incarnational whole faith for the new church/missional order I described earlier.

Prayer & laments:  This organization would be a catalyst for unceasing waves for God’s earth and the people who are trying to protect it and the people and creatures that suffer due to its devastation. As Christians, we believe prayer opens us to God’s Spirit and changes our hearts. We also believe that God will respond to prayer, sometimes in miracles and interventions that we can see. It is also time to lament. The destruction of the land and water of a community devastates the spirits of those people. People who care about God’s earth, like many scientists and conservationists, and who have seen its destruction are psychologically devastated. They need places to go and laments to sing that will allow them to express their sorrow and loss. Christians should come alongside those people and share their pains with new rituals and songs and pieces of art. They should mourn with them.

* * * * *

For 14 years, I was involved in fundraising for nonprofit organizations and now I work for a private operating foundation. This has given me a full appreciation for how important funding is to enable organizations to carry out activities and have an impact. With that in mind, I have some thoughts about where funding would come from for the organization.

Christian philanthropy: A fullcourt press would be applied to gathering financial support from Christians, their foundations, and their businesses. The reality, of course, is that many Christians don’t see the preservation and restoration of Creation as important as many other elements of the work of the kingdom. This could be very hard and challenging work. The fundraising would need to be imaginative and compelling in making the case for the importance of this organization’s work.

Non-Christian philanthropy: If this organization is uniquely effective, philanthropists of all sorts will be good prospects for joining in the effort.

Social enterprises: An emerging form of nonprofit funding and nonprofit charitable activityis the social enterprise, a business that advances the nonprofit organization through its actual activities and by generating money. A great example is Goodwill, which helps people with barriers to employment by employing them in their retail operations. The profits made in the stores then help fund other job training and education activities Goodwill carries out. Let’s turn loose the creative entrepreneurial talents of Christians into new social enterprises that are good for God’s earth and generate funding. Examples might include sustainable farming operations (think Newman’s Own but more vertical, from farming to processing), ecotourism, and even art and culture production.

Support of new churches and existing churches: If a new network of churches was developed, these churches would, as part of their establishment, commit to funding the larger organization on an ongoing and significant basis. Extensive efforts would be made, too, to reach out to existing churches and seek out support commitments over time.

Volunteer corps: Having enough resources to do what needs to be done is not just about raising funds. It is also attracting people and resources at no cost or low cost so your dollars can be stretched further. Habitat for Humanity and other organizations understand how to harness the power of volunteers. An army of volunteers and interns would be an important component of this work. Whereever possible, youth from around the world would be engaged in projects that advance the movement as well while giving them skills and experiences they can carry into the rest of their lives.

Endowment: Colleges are big believers in endowments – gifts pooled into funds that generate income for the college in, theoretically, perpetuity. Right from the start, this organization would seek out gifts, especially bequests, that would build this endowment so that the organization would have an assured stream of income to augment other fundraising efforts. The endowment funds would, of course, be invested in Creation-friendly and community-friendly ways, thereby advancing God’s kingdom as well.

* * * * *

I have two last thoughts. One is that the traditional organizational trajectory of starting at a very small level may not be wise at all in this case. The challenges and needs we face are at a tremendous scale. And the long-term success and impact of such an organization would depend in part on starting big and having an immediate impact on a large scale that would attract additional large-scale funding. I know that sounds crazy.  But that is the reality of the situation.

Second, I’ve been reading The One Thing, and it’s made me realize that trying to do all of the things I’ve just proposed all at once might mean scattered, meager progress on a very small scale. Priority should be given to one of those efforts starting out. Frankly, I’ll need to give more thought to which one that would be. I would need wise counsel from other to helps figure that out. What do you think would be the wisest initiative to begin with?

Writing this has made me realize the daunting scale of the challenge in front of us. Can we actually stop the inertia of millennia that has drained and diminished the vitality of God’s earth?

I don’t know. I don’t believe in false hope.

But I do know It’s time for the hearts and faiths of Christians to be fully and energetically committed to bearing fruit in the form of green, verdant, life-filled, justice-permeated communities.

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Needed Now: A World Vision for Earth

Nathan Aaberg —  February 7, 2015 — Leave a comment

If you want to read a challenging and inspiring book, pick up The Hole in the Gospel by Richard Stearns.

In the book, Stearns shares how he was enjoying a successful corporate career when a number of things happened that led him to believe that God was calling him to step out of his comfort zone to become the president of World Vision, the Christian humanitarian aid organization.

And he wasn’t sure he wanted to answer that call.

This brought to a head two pressing questions in his life. What was the Christian faith all about? And was he willing to accept a call from God that would require him to accept God’s will and purpose even if they differed from his own?

The “hole” in the Gospel that the book’s title refers to is the tendency among Christians to make Jesus’ message all about getting our bus ticket punched for the right destination in the next life and to ignore God’s desire to advance his kingdom in this world.

hole-in-gospel book cover image

This is well worth reading.

Here’s how Stearns puts it:

“In our evangelistic efforts to make the good news accessible and simple to understand, we seem to have boiled it down to a kind of “fire insurance” that one can buy. Then, once the policy is in place, the sinner can go back to whatever life he was living – of wealth and success, or of poverty and suffering. As long as the policy is in the drawer, the other things don’t matter much. We’ve got our “ticket” to the next life.”

A few lines later, Stearns talks more of the whole gospel.

“The kingdom of God, which Christ said is “within you” (Luke 17:21 NKJV), was intended to change and challenge everything in our fallen world in the here and now. It was not meant to be a way to leave the world but rather the means to actually redeem it. Yes, it first requires that we repent of our own sinfulness and totally surrender our individual lives to follow Christ, but then we are also commanded to go into the world – to bear fruit by lifting up the poor and marginalized, challenging injustice wherever we find it, rejecting the worldly values found within every culture, and loving our neighbors as ourselves.”

And he ultimately did accept what he perceived to be the call of God to pursue the redemption of the world by becoming the President of World Vision. He did this despite the fact that he was enjoying a stable, satisfying, well-compensated professional life as the CEO of Lenox and despite the fact that he felt unqualified. He took a leap of faith.

I call attention to Stearns and his story because his articulation of the Gospel is powerful and connects with the ideas of a whole faith that this blog is exploring. The Gospel is a dynamic, life-changing force that begins our eternal and blessed life right now and in this world.

I also call attention to Stearns because I’m convinced that we need to create an international Christian organization as broad and large as World Vision dedicated to preserving and mending God’s earth which we have stood by and alllowed to be defaced and destroyed for too long.

You might know World Vision through its child sponsorship system, which allows people to sponsor children in poor communities around the world. That sponsorship funding then helps World Vision serve the communities in which those children live.

It serves communities in a wide variety of ways – from offering medical services and emergency aid to helping train community members in agriculture and protecting children from child trafficking, abuse, and neglect.

The scale of World Vision International is astonishing. World Vision International serves nearly 100 countries. It has 45,000 staff. Its revenues in 2013 reached $2.67 billion.

By contrast, the largest Christian international organization that I know of is A Rocha, which carries out education, research, and conservation projects. Its income in 2013 was $5.4 million.

How can we as Christians not be responding to problems of global environmental degradation at the scale of those problems?

World Vision is an inspiration. It brings together the resources and energies of thousands of churches and millions of Christians into one organization that can tackle poverty at a wide scale while working collaboratively at the local community level.

It’s time for a Christian organization to do the same thing for God’s earth. We need to bring our resources to bear on the forces depleting and disrupting God’s world at the scale of those forces.

And in light of the scale and moral urgency of the calamity unfolding in front of us, that organization needs to be as large as World Vision. Maybe larger.

This leads me to the painful conviction that right now the best use of the majority of our energies and resources is not in efforts to awaken local churches to a whole faith.

I suspect I’ve not been alone in long assuming a bottom-up approach was the way to go. I’ve dreamed that if enough churches came to care about God’s earth as part of a whole faith that this would lead eventually to changes in the lives and actions of individuals Christians. This, in turn, would them to bring about changes in their local communities. And this would eventually, gradually lead to changes to the culture and policies of their nations.

But the reality of the situation has come home to me. Even if that sequence would be assured of happening, it won’t happen fast enough nor at the right scale nor with the urgency and effectiveness that is needed.

Certainly, churches should preach and teach a whole faith that includes God’s Creation. I long to see a whole faith flourish at the local church level. I want to help that happen.

What I have seen, however, is that a whole faith typically faces considerable resistance, polite disinterest, or downright apathy. And that’s in the churches where the accepted doctrine would even allow you to have a conversation about the intrinsic value of the earth to God.

Those who do care tend to find themselves in Creation Care committees that do praiseworthy activities but have a hard time inspiring the whole congregation to act in concerted, coordinated ways and to create new habits of living. There are gatekeepers. There is cultural resistance. It’s perceived to be too radical and too costly.

And even if some churches began to move in those directions, individual churches just aren’t be able to deal systematically with the systematic ways God’s Creation is being violently diminished.

Rivers and coral reefs are dying. Creatures are going extinct. Too often the way we raise food mines the wealth of God’s world and doesn’t regenerate it. The world’s climate is changing. People, our neighbors in God’s eyes, are suffering and losing much because of these trends.  It will only get worse if these trends continue unabated.

Aralship2 photo

A ship left high and dry in the former Aral Sea (near Aral, Kazakhstan) that used to be the fourth largest freshwater lake in the world. Read about its slow death and see striking aerial images of the shrinkage since 2000 here.

Patient work at the level of local church is just not enough. Being content with recycling and using more energy-efficient light bulbs (all good things, of course) is like having a satisfied feeling in your heart after throwing a glass of cool water on a roaring fire that is engulfing a neighbor’s house.

And the limited number of Christians who care about God’s earth need to be strategic in where they use their limited time and resources.

It’s time for Christians to push themselves to be leaders in preserving and mending God’s world for God’s sake, for our neighbors’ sake, and for the sake of the diversity of life around us.

It’s time for Christians to bring all of their dynamism, compassion, innovation, and willingness to sacrifice for what is good to bear.

It’s time for the Church as a unified body of Spirit-filled communities to pool its resources in a new organizational arm that focuses on one thing – protecting and mending God’s earth – and to do so with all of the urgency, creativity, and prophetic passion God’s spirit can provide.

What exactly would this international organization do? What would make it uniquely Christian and uniquely valuable? And where would the money come from?

With fear and trembling, I’ll give my best answers to those questions in my next post.

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Food, Farming, and the Whole Faith (Part 1)

Nathan Aaberg —  December 13, 2014 — Leave a comment

How should we live out a whole faith?

How should Christians and Christian communities live out their lives in light of our calling to care for God’s earth?

There are many ways, but we should begin with food.

We should strive to raise food and make food choices in ways that will honor God, be consistent with God’s desire for the kind of people we will be, and enable God’s world to thrive.

This, I understand, is a challenging statement, a challenging ideal.

We are more comfortable talking about recycling, energy efficiency, and other conservation activities that are safer, more discrete parts of living. Food, by contrast, is far more woven into our cultural and social lives.

And we are tempted to believe that food choices are not related to a whole and holy Christian life. Don’t we have the freedom to eat whatever we want? And isn’t good food just a question of food that tastes good and is offered at a reasonable price?

But remember that through our food choices we interact with our neighbors and God’s land, water, and living beings every single day. Wendell Berry, Kentucky farmer and writer-prophet, puts it best when he says, “… eating is an agricultural act. Eating ends the annual drama of the food economy that begins with planting and birth.” What food you and I choose to buy makes us participants in the form of farming that gave us the food we bring home.

Remember that agriculture has a powerful impact on the condition of God’s earth. Nearly 40% of the earth’s surface not covered by ice is used for the raising of food. How we grow crops and raise animals shapes the health of the land and water of God’s earth to a remarkable extent. Does the food you and I eat helping the soil and water of our world flourish or is it depleting and damaging them?

Remember that in the case of meat and dairy agriculture, we are interacting with billions of living animals through the farmers and others in the food system who act on our behalf. Choosing to purchase the flesh or milk of an animal of God’s that has not been treated with compassion and care sends our economy this simple message: “I approve and reward you for what you’ve done to this animal and I heartily wish for you to raise more animals like this.”

The message of Proverbs 12:10 (“The righteous care for the needs of their animals, but the kindest acts of the wicked are cruel.”) applies to you and me even if we are not farmers. The animals that meat and milk come from are ours because our food purchase decisions make us part of the food system from which that meat and drink came. We need to ask: are we and everyone in that food system doing their very best to meet the animals’ needs?

Remember, too, that what we eat defines in large part our culture and what we stand for. What do you and I stand for? Who is our Master? Who is our God? Ourselves? Convenience, enjoyment, and low prices? Or our loving God who wants what is best for us and for the entire world?

And remember that what we eat shapes our health and the health of our loved ones. I have become convinced that eating with grace and mercy for God’s world will translate into better health.

So what is the food that Christians should buy and eat for every meal?

I’m not going to tell you.

At least I’m not going to give you detailed lists of what you should eat and what you shouldn’t eat. Food is complicated. Our modern food system is even more complicated. Our lives are complicated. Our social lives are complicated. I’ll be diving into those complications in future posts.

What I will offer at this beginning point, however, is a filter from the Bible that you might find surprising. Here it is:

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.  (Galatians 5:22-23 NIV)

To the degree possible, the fruit of the Spirit listed here should guide not only how we interact with people but also how we interact with the world and with the particular conditions of land and water and non-human life we find in each particular place.

In short, we should, as part of a whole Christian faith, seek out food that has been raised with love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self control toward living creatures as well as the land and water on which all life depends.

An even simpler way of stating this would be: would God consider the way this food was raised compatible with the ethics of a good shepherd?

Let’s test this filter on several examples of food production practices.

The first is the injection of rBGH (Recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone) into dairy cows by some farmers in order to increase milk production. First approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 1993, rBGH has been found to cause the following health impacts on cows: increased rates of mastitis (inflammation of their udders), ulcers, arthritis, kidney and heart abnormalities, fertility issues, birth deformities in calves, and increased rates of lameness. Their productive lives are also significantly shortened (not a surprise when you’re forcing more milk production from other than what their bodies are meant to produce), which means they are slaughtered far sooner than untreated cows. There appears to be some evidence that there is an impact on the milk that comes from those cows as well.

Are love, patience, self-control, and the other fruits of the spirit part of this system at all? Are the needs of the cows being considered in this system at all? Should Christians drink milk from cows treated like this? Should Christian farmers use it?

The second example is turkey. Like broiler chickens, turkeys in the conventional food industry have been bred to grow far more rapidly than natural (sometimes more than double the natural rate) and more rapidly than the body systems of many of the birds can handle. The result is that some turkeys suffer from leg disorders, fatal cardiovascular problems (like ruptured aortas), and diseases, including sudden death syndrome. They are also likely to have weaker immune systems, which are stressed when they are subjected to continuous lighting and in close proximity to thousands of other birds. Finally, the breeding of turkeys for maximum breast meat production has made it impossible for them to breed naturally. Instead, they must be artificially inseminated. This is the polite way of saying male turkeys must be forced to produce semen and then that semen must be forcibly implanted into a female turkey. This is done to millions of turkeys.

The third example regards how many poultry, including turkeys, are slaughtered. You should read this article about how the speed of industrial-scale slaughterhouses results in hundreds of thousands of chickens and turkeys being scalded to death because workers on the line just didn’t have the ability to slaughter them properly. And the recent book – The Chain – makes clear that high-speed slaughtering and butchering facilities are awful for the workers, our neighbors, as well as for the animals.

Can we say this treatment of God’s creatures comes out of love, joy, patience, self-control, and the other fruits of the spirit detailed in the fifth chapter of Galatians?

Would a good shepherd allow those things to be done to his animals?

In Luke 15:3-6, Jesus tells the parable of a good shepherd seeking out the one sheep that was lost even as 99 were already safe and sound. That good shepherd does not live by the idea of acceptable levels of losses and collateral damage when raising animals. Should we?

Of course not.

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So what stands between our Spirit-inspired values and acting on those values?

First, we don’t know how food is raised. Our complex food system generally is not transparent about whether the food item you buy at a grocery store has been raised in a way that is good for the earth, animals, and people. The food system also exerts tremendous pressure on farmers to farm in ways that are antithetical to being good shepherds. I have tremendous sympathy for the position many farmers find themselves in.

Second, we are tempted and even taught to think of our faith as strictly a spiritual pursuit and getting our doctrines right.  We are tempted and even taught to think that our faith has no real implications for our practical life in this world or at least not in terms of our interaction with God’s earth. As a result, making whole faith food choices means we have to go against the grain of the dominant food system and the dominant theology around us at the same time.

Third, it can be more expensive and time-consuming to find food that is closer to the ideal. There are farmers who pour their heart and soil into building soil life, keeping local streams healthy and clean, and caring for their animals with loving concern. But are we willing to make the extra effort to find them and support them and to do right by God’s Creation?

Fourth, we are afraid of standing up for our faith. Eating is the most fundamental way we interact with God’s earth. It is also one of the most fundamental elements of our culture and social life. We fear standing up and standing out for our faith in social settings. And we fear that living out a whole Christian faith in terms of food choices and food ethics will cause fellow Christians to think we’ve become “political” or “liberal” or “New Age.”

Fifth, it is just far easier and comfortable to ignore the gaping contradiction between what we eat and our Christian values. Aren’t there already many challenges for us in our everyday lives?

Make no mistake. The core of our faith is ultimately our unity in love and life with God through our faith in Jesus.

But there is no question that once we believe and place all of the weight of our life upon God and God’s wisdom, that our lives will be transformed. Jesus spoke often of faith bearing fruit. If the condition of our world is a fruit of our choices and values that are generated by our faith, what does that conviction tell God and us about our faith? If the condition of our home place is a fruit of our faith being applied in every day decisions as people and a community, what does it tell God and us about our faith? Food is in the middle of all of this.

You and I should not be blind to the complexities of food and to the difficulties of producing food in a world of weeds, weather, and intense economic pressures. Eating in a way that completely and fully reflects Galatians 5:22 in every detail for every meal is very difficult today.

Yet, we do not give up on God’s other ideals for us just because we can’t do them perfectly. We throw ourselves on God’s mercy when we fall short. We ask for God’s Spirit to fill us and renew us. And we try again.

In that same way, we as Christians should be tenaciously and stubbornly pushing for the food system to be closer to that ideal and doing the best we can everyday within our sphere of influence to be part of that effort.

Stephen Webb has written an excellent book called Good Eating, which is part of the series called The Christian Practice of Everyday Life. In it he writes these words:

“Our diet should be holy if we want all aspects of our lives to reflect God’s grace. If we say grace over our meals, we should have grace in our meals…”

Yes.

When we make food and eat it, let us truly be truly be mindful and grateful for the food we eat and for the earth from which that food comes and for the people who work so hard to produce it.

When we choose food (and if we have the ability to choose what we eat, we should feel blessed), let us be mindful of God’s concern and care for the earth, animals, and the people who act on our behalf in producing food.

And let us commit ourselves as individuals, as families, and as communities of faith to bringing grace to God’s world through the meals we say grace over everyday.

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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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