I’ve noted before that some of the most innovative, regenerative farmers and agriculturalists in the world are Christian.
Joel Salatin. Gabe Brown. Allen Williams. Ray Archuelata. John Kempf. The list goes on. It’s incredibly inspiring to see people of faith who are dynamic, inventive, entrepreneurial, generous, and full of passion for the beauty and complexity of God’s earth.
So why are they the exception?
I’ve decided there are three primary commonalities that lead Christians to live out faith-lives that include God’s earth as something that matters to God.
First, the theology people have includes the life of God’s earth in its story and fabric.
Second, people are committed to applying their faith principles to how they live individually or collectively in every single way.
The culture around us often makes it more comfortable for us to apply some values and to let other values gather dust in the “Sounds Good in Theory” room. We don’t differentiate enough between the values of the culture we’re in and the set of values that come from our faith.
Third, people’s hearts have been transformed by God’s Spirit.
This can be through the impact of other people, prayer, direct spiritual encounters, and encounters with Creation. However it happens, people’s hearts are filled and reshaped by God’s love.
The second and third factors tend derive in part from the first – theology.
I’ve highlighted (as have others) elements of the Bible narrative (like the first rule God gave, the cross, and what eschatology is all about) that clearly highlight that God’s earth is part of the whole story of God’s whole relationship with all God has created.
So why don’t more Christian theologies make God’s earth more than just a setting, more than just a treasure chest of resources for us to use, and more than just a setting from which to escape?
I believe it’s because we have failed to be ecological in the theological.
And we can actually learn something about reading the Bible from ecology, the study of the relationship between the parts of a whole and how the whole can be greater than the sum of the parts.
A great example in the natural world is fire. For a long time conservation orthodoxy taught that fires are bad. That was a simple, compelling message.
The reality is far more complex. Many ecosystems have been managed in highly nuanced ways by native peoples for centuries or more, creating vibrant, beautiful natural systems. Stopping fires out of a simplistic understanding has resulted in huge fuel loads that now erupt into horrible fires. Stopping fires has also harmed the wildlife who depended on fire-dependent vegetation.
What did it take for people to see the ecological truth?
It took humility. Lots of humility.
It also too a willingness to question dominant assumptions about how nature worked and look at things fresh.
It took listening to other people.
It took close observation.
It took attentiveness to the whole over time and space.
And it took an openness to paradox. Could a seemingly destructive force actually be positive?
Our approach to theology, the way we make sense of the Bible and God, needs those same qualities.
Our theology would be more whole and vibrant if we did.
More thoughts to come.
