Archives For How Shall We Live?

Dust to Dust: Burial & the Whole Faith Church

Nathan Aaberg —  February 27, 2017 — Leave a comment

Christians will not consistently reveal the abundant life God offers nor act as if God’s Creation mattered unless churches weave a whole faith into their worship, theology, and culture. I’m exploring what that would look like in what I call the “whole faith church.” This is another post in that series.

Few things communicate as much about a church body’s faith and how that faith defines our relationship with God’s earth as the manner in which a church buries its loved ones who have passed away.

This is a defining moment in a church’s common life. It is a defining moment in the culture of one’s faith. And culture, of course, is typically something that is invisible to us. We do things within a culture just because that’s the way they are done.

So in the comforting rituals of our visitations, funerals, and internments it is easy to miss elements that are not in synch with a whole Christian faith. The elements that revolve around how the body is treated and how we treat the land in which the body is buried are particularly out of synch.

For that reason, the whole faith church will handle funerals and burials in some ways that are different from mainstream practices.

These ways, I believe, are actually more consistent with key messages of the Bible. These ways would also contribute to a church culture that more fully commits itself to stewarding the physical elements of God’s earth (including our bodies) with respect and honor.

These would be the key burial practice principles of a whole faith church:

Unless there are unusual circumstances, the loved one’s body will not be embalmed.

The loved one’s body will be buried in such a way that the return of the body to dust will not be hindered. Coffins, if necessary, will be biodegradable and vaults will not be used.

The land in which loved ones are buried will be stewarded in ways that make it possible for as much natural life to prosper as possible and will, simultaneously, have creative human design and art that set those places apart for special meaning.

The whole faith church will minimally gather once a year as a community at that place to remember the dead, to celebrate their eventual resurrection, and to tend to the landscape there.

What will these practices affirm?

That indeed we are made of dust and to dust we will return.

That the death of a loved one is a momentous event for which the rest of our lives should stop.

That we come into this world with nothing and leave it with nothing.

That we are all equal before God.

That we are both made in the image of God and also part of Creation.

That it is right to treat every place on God’s earth, especially those with deep spiritual meaning, with deep respect and with the intention of promoting the life of God’s earth as much as possible.

That we as a community are committed to remembering our dead and the land in which they have been buried actively and incarnationally with times of togetherness, remembrance, and hands-on work.

That the resurrection will be miraculous beyond all measure.

For some readers this will all sound whacked-out radical and completely impractical.

Ironically, this approach to funerals and burial is actually far more the norm historically. And it’s being done in increasing numbers of places today.

It is called green burial.

Green burial has its own certification organization – the Green Burial Council – that defines what counts as green burial (and there are a spectrum of types) and what doesn’t. There are also examples of green burial grounds that demonstrate how green burial can be done in combination with the ongoing stewardship of a beautiful natural area. Here are a few examples: Honey Creek Woodlands in Georgia, Ramsey Creek Preserve in South Carolina, Green Meadow in Pennsylvania, and at Kokosing Nature Preserve at Kenyon College in Ohio.

My favorite story about this kind of burial comes from Dr. Billy Campbell, the founder of Memorial Ecosystems which launched the green burial movement here in the United States by opening Ramsey Creek Preserve.

Some of the rural neighbors of the property that became Ramsey Creek Preserve weren’t initially thrilled about having this “new” approach to burial close by. And one of the most vociferous opponents was a cantankerous older man known for his red suspenders. But as the years went by, he saw how Ramsey Creek Preserve’s approach to burial preserved the woods he loved and was a deeply meaningful way for people to bury their dead. He was won over.

A number of years later when his health was declining, he dictated that he wanted to be buried at the Ramsey Creek Preserve. And he was, wearing his signature red suspenders.

I’ll be writing more about this in posts to come. If you’re looking for one book to read to better understand how embalming works and to introduce you to diverse green burial options being practiced, then check out Grave Matters by Mark Harris. He also has a good website of the same name that includes this excerpt from the book describing a burial at the Ramsey Creek Preserve.

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Abimilech’s Appeal

Nathan Aaberg —  February 15, 2017 — Leave a comment

You will find encouragement for believing that God’s earth is part of the arc of the whole Bible story in surprising places.

Genesis 21 is known best for its story of Abraham and Sarah being given their long-awaited child at a very old age. Their son Isaac, whose name has such a rich and ironic meaning (“he laughs” or “laughter”), is a great miracle, Our attention tends to stop right there. Or it might stop after we read next of Abraham being forced to drive Hagar and Ishmael out of the family.

But look closely at the story that takes place at the end of the chapter. In it, the abimilech of that time (“abimilech” was a title for Philistine kings, like “pharaoh” was for Egyptian rulers) visits Abraham to make a peace pact wth him. The fact that Abilimilech visited Abraham, rather than the other way around, is an implicit indication of respect. Clearly, Abimilech has been observing Abraham closely. He believes Abraham will be in the land there for some time and has Divine support.

In Genesis 21: 22-23 Abimilech makes his appeal:

“Now therefore swear to me here by God that you will not deal falsely with me or with my descendants or with my posterity, but as I have dealt kindly with you, so you will deal with me and with the land where you have sojourned.” (English Standard Version)

As this helpful blog post and this one as well remind us, the appeal to Abraham to not deal falsely brings up a painful memory from their relationship. Earlier, Abraham, out of fear the Abimilech might kill him if he admitted he was Sarah’s husband, had claimed that Sarah was his sister as he had also done when they were in Egypt. Before Abilimilech could unknowlingly act badly with Sarah, God had appeared to Abimilech and revealed the truth of the situation. Abimilech, horrified, had rebuked Abraham.

The reader comes away with two strong impressions. The first is that Abraham, despite God’s promises and support, does not always live out a strong faith in his life. In fact, fear seems to wrestle with his faith and sometimes wins. (And this seems to have been imprinted upon Isaac as well as he does a similar thing in Genesis 26).

The second impression is that this abimilech in some ways has a more noble heart than Abraham.

In Genesis 21:22-23 Abimilech reveals his heart’s quality again. And there are three words in his appeal that can slip right by our consciousness.

“With the land.”

Abimilech’s concern extend to both his family’s descendants and to the land.

How is one kind to the land? What kind of heart does one have to have to consider the land as needing kindness? What kind of heart does a person or a nation have to have to be kind to the land over years and decades and centuries?

It all starts with paying attention. If you love your spouse or your child, you pay attention to them. Close attention. You know what they like and don’t like. You know what is troubling them and what they hope for. You know intuitively whether they are doing well physically and in their hearts. This same sort of relationship is essential for our relationship with the land as well. Abraham and Abimilech would have known how to pay attention to the land far better than we do today. Their lives and livelihoods depended on it.

The video below is an example of an Australian rancher paying attention to a piece of land’s poor condition when he and his wife first acquire it. With help and perseverence, they begin to turn into a healthier and yet productive place. I believe it illustrates the kind of attentiveness and responsibility that Abimilech was calling for Abraham to have.

In our efforts to live the life God wants for us, we can learn from Abimilech’s appeal. His appeal speaks of a vulnerable affection not only for his family but for the land in which they have dwelled. It also is an appeal that focuses on what Abraham’s actions will be.

In a similar way, we as Christians are called to love our neighbors and to keep and tend this world. It is a calling to be fully and wholly human. It is a calling that must be expressed in actions.

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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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Learning from Robert Marchand

Nathan Aaberg —  January 16, 2017 — Leave a comment

We have more to learn from Robert Marchand than just about the power of will and the importance of exercise to a long life.

Frenchman Robert Marchand, as you can read in this article, recently set the a world record for his age class – 105-plus years – by riding 14.010 miles in one hour. Ironically, as the video below also relates, a coach had told him many decades ago that “he should give up cycling because he would never achieve anything on a bike.”

 

The story within the story that caught my attention is a quote from his physiologist, Veronique Billat. She said, according to the article, “He could have been faster but he made a big mistake. He has stopped eating meat over the past month after being shocked by recent reports on how animals are subjected to cruel treatment.”

For the physiologist, the mistake was that Marchand had forfeited the chance to achieve even better performance by listening to his conscience. Without intending to do so, Billat has provided us with a metaphor for the myopic way of thinking and living that characterizes many of us today.

What matters most, she is asserting, is our personal performance. Or, taken more broadly, our personal benefit. Performance. Profit. Convenience. Power. Information. Pleasure. What we want and desire is primary. The other beyond ourselves does not matter and has no ethical standing.

Billat is not some French aberration to humanity. She is actually just a mouthpiece for what the dominant values and culture of our world, even of too many Christian circles, have long been. The possibility, for example, that there might be a moral dimension to how animals are raised for our consumption clearly doesn’t enter her mind. What matters is whether our needs are being met and whether we are achieving glory.

By contrast, Robert Marchand is remarkable for the condition of his heart.

Of course, I don’t mean just his physical heart that enabled him to put on another inspiring bicycle performance at an advanced age. I also use “heart” in the way the Bible often does – the center from which our will, emotions, desires, and thoughts are generated.

As we grow older, layers of rationalizations and justifications tend to build up on our hearts like barnacles on a ship. In the process, we lose the ability to respond to people and life around us out of simple love and kindness that is, in God’s original framework, what life is all about.

At 105 years, Marchand is still able to respond with a pure heart to new information about the impact of his choices on life around him. We don’t know how he learned about how farm animals are being routinely treated. But we do know that once the information entered his mind, his heart would not let him ignore the ethical implications. He changed a habit of his long life to maintain the integrity of his values.

What is interesting, too, is how Marchand’s character is both strong in its matter-of-fact compassion and its matter-of-fact determination to do great things with fearless tenacity and pluck. We see that in his performance, which clearly came out of a commitment to daily habits of exercise, good diet, and sleep. We also hear it when he says, “I’m now waiting for a rival.”

We tend to assume that a good-hearted, whole-hearted person will be a gentle, never-hurt-a-fly wallflower. This isn’t necessarily so. Vigor, sense of purpose, and energy are part and parcel of hearts that are fully alive.

We are meant to have strength-filled love and love-filled strength.

Robert Marchand gives us a sense of what that looks like. May we, with God’s help, come to have hearts like that, too.

 

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What rivers will you unleash in 2017?

Nathan Aaberg —  December 31, 2016 — Leave a comment

I’ve noticed that several people I know who are all about making an impact in the world with their work have been thinking ahead to 2017 for some time. They’re meditating on what ways they want to do what they do better. They’re also thinking of how they can grow in their skills and knowledge.

Are you thinking that way?

Here’s a question I’m posing to myself: when I come to December 31, 2017, what would make me feel like I made the most of the year?

How would you answer that question? Can you create a top five or top ten list of those things? It would be well worth the effort.

When a year comes to an end as it is about to do in a few hours, it’s sad to see how the flow of daily and weekly chores and tasks and obligations have so consumed our attention that the change we wanted to make happen has not happened.

So what will you do for your family, at work, in your community, or just for yourself?

I urge you to write it down. Then, and this is the most important part, figure out how to make the steps necessary to make that change habits of your everyday life. Habits do indeed shape who you really are.

Along those lines, I wanted to share some rough ideas about what I would like to move forward in 2017 with my whole faith pursuit.

First, I want to continue to create two blog posts a month at minimum as a way to continue to explore my thinking about what a whole faith church  would look like with particular focus on the natural imperative to be as good as possible to God’s creation. I have a request for you in this regard. If there’s a related topic you’d like me to cover or address I would love to hear it.

Second, I plan to work on a simple, allegorical novel to explore those same things in a way that is integrated into art and life. This will necessitate simpler and more concise blog posts. I can hear the applause now. 🙂

Third, I have a plan to start a simple campaign with a very simple focus for Christians to begin applying their faith in their life in a way that will benefit people and God’s creation. Look for that in early 2017. I hope you’ll join me.

Fourth, I want to hold a gathering of Christians like yourself to worship, share, and commit to living out a whole Christian faith in how we treat God’s earth.  I don’t know exactly what this will look like nor what exactly I hope to see come out of it.  But I believe it’s something vital to make happen.

Finally, as the  year comes to a close I want to share a bit of good news regarding this earth we are called upon to keep and care for.

The latest issue of The Nature Conservancy’s magazine had an inspiring story (Unleashing Rivers) about the ongoing removal of dams in the Northeast. The Connecticut River, which runs through four states, is just an example of the challenge. It has more than 2,700 documented dams which translates into a dam every 10 miles. These dams prevent fish and other species of life from moving about. They are the ecological equivalent of putting multiple tourniquets on each of your arms and legs.

Non-profits, public agencies, and private landowners are working together to begin removing dams so that the Connecticut River and other waterways in New England can begin flowing freely again. Coordinated efforts to remove dams on the Penobscot River have already dramatically changed that river. Before the strategically focused dam removals began, fish migrating from the ocean to the river system to spawn could only go upstream about 30 miles before being blocked. Thanks to the removal of dams, fish can now access almost 2,000 miles of continuous waterways, including tributaries.

Ironically, the best video on dam removal I could find was not from New England but from Washington where National Geographic did this nice, brief story on the dismantling a huge dam on the Elwha River, the largest project of this type in the U.S.

This, I believe, is a metaphor for what humanity is called to do – to not only repent of the damage we’ve done to God’s earth, but to use all of our creativity and ingenuity to restore the earth’s vitality and beauty.

What rivers will you unleash in 2017? What impact will you make?

Ephesians 2:10 has a something urgent for us to think about: “For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”

What are the good works waiting for you?

How will God fill your heart with a love so deep and pure that you will find yourself hungry to take imaginative steps, whether nearby or on a big scale, to help people and God’s earth?

May 2017 be a year of many blessings and rewarding work for you.

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