Archives For Christians to Know

Don’t Miss This Webinar on Biblical Stewardship – December 30

Nathan Aaberg —  December 19, 2021 — Leave a comment

Understanding Ag graphic for Allen Williams' bilbical stewardship webinar

I want to share news of an unusual and free webinar by Allen Williams, Ph.D. on what the Bible presents on earth stewardship next Thursday (December 30) at 7 p.m. CST. I’ve registered, and I hope you will, too.

The webinar is entitled Biblical Stewardship: What the scriptures tell us about our role as Earth’s caretakers. Go to this page, and you’ll find the link to click on to actually register.

I felt compelled to share news of this because of who Allen Williams is. As this profile details, he is a sixth generation family farmer and, as he says it, a “recovering academic.” He is one of the tireless, dedicated regenerative farmer pioneers who has been teaching other farmers how to achieve the same success and satsifaction while rejuvenating God’s earth. I’ve read articles of his. I’ve attended presentations and field walks. I’ve heard him on podcats (this is a great one, by the way). His faith and his convictions come through in all he does.

In short, Allen is a gifted and passionate teacher whose energy and insights are inspiring. If he is going to do something, it will be good and thoughtful. I am very interested to hear what he has to say about the Bible. Are there things he’ll share that you and I have not heard before? There may well be.

Allen Williams, seen here educating attendees of a field walk about adaptive grazing, is a Christian and former academic who has dedicated his life to helping farmers adopt regenerative practices.

Allen Williams, seen here educating attendees of a field walk about adaptive grazing, is a Christian and former academic who has dedicated his life to helping farmers adopt regenerative practices.

The webinar is being organized by Understanding Ag. Based in Alabama, Understanding Ag is a company that provides consulting and advising to farmers who want to move their operations in a regenerative direction. The company’s consultants include some of the most successful and pioneering regenerative farmers and experts in the country.

The vast majority of Understanding Ag’s webinar are on agricultural thinking and practices that, when used by farmers, can bring back life to their soils. So it’s intriguing that a company like that would offer a faith-focused webinar.

But it’s not completely surprising.

In fact, I think it’s brilliant.

Many of the best and most pioneering regenerative producers and experts are Christian. The way they farm is a reflection of their faith. And a large percentage of farmers around our country attend church and take the Bible seriously.

Changing how our country farms is more of a question of values than practices. Changing how our country farms will require that our country’s farmers rethink the values behind their farming.

They, like all of us, need to see that that we have a responsiblity and a creative calling to steward God’s earth in a way that honors God. And then we must all act.

When a fellow Christian farmer speaks that truth to them with conviction and knowledge, perhaps the hearts and minds of some will be turned.

And, of course, you and I are part of our country’s agriculture as well. What we buy tells farmers to produce more of. Our hearts and minds also need to be turned and kept turned in the right direction.

I urge you to join me.

 

P.S. Are you interested in an online discussion about the webinar right afterwards? if so, please email me at wholefaithlivingearth@gmail.com. If I have at least five people interested, I will send out a Zoom link to those who email me. We could have a great conversation.

 

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10 Thoughts from Giving Two Sermons

Nathan Aaberg —  October 31, 2021 — 2 Comments

Earlier this month I gave two sermons in joint services for two congregations on our Christian calling to be good shepherds of God’s Creation. What was that like? What did I learn? I share my thoughts below:

1. Sharing Whole Faith Ideas in Sermons and Discussions Was Great: I gave the first sermon in a hybrid service with some people present in the space North Suburban Mennonite Church rents out and with some people, including the Christ Community Mennonite Church of Schaumburg, attending by Zoom. I decided to speak in person. And I’m glad I did. Making eye contact as I spoke, I noticed that many people were engaged with the message. That did my heart good, especially in this time of covid. Those unspoken responses and the positive energy during the discussion that followed the service were immensely rewarding.

This blog has been an act of faith. The years of working on it, I realize, have enabled me to crystallize convictions and insights that I’ve hoped to be able to share. I am deeply grateful to both congregations for giving me the chance to do that. I’m especially grateful to North Suburban Mennonite Church, which has always warmly welcomed my family and me in the years that we have known them.

2. Importance of Rooting Principles and Ideas in the Bible: In the first sermon, which was the opening sermon for the Creation Care series, I shared a number of Scripture verses. In the second, I shared several more at the beginning and used an additional verse midway through. I did this to highlight one of my key points – if you are paying attention, you will find that the Bible makes clear that Creation matters to God.

That Creation matters is both very conservative and very radical. It is conservative because it takes the whole Bible seriously.

Believing that Creation matters and living out those convictions are, simultaneously, very radical. Most humans throughout history have taken Creation for granted and used it for their purposes without regard to Creation’s wellbeing. To live and advocate for a different worldview, a Biblical worldview, puts a Christian on a collision course with the human powers that be. Our economy and civilization are built on mining and extracting wealth from Creation without regard to Creation’s own prosperity. To live as if Creation matters to God also runs counter to centuries of Christian disregard for Creation in theology and church life. In short, the Christian advocate for Creation is a human monkey wrench in the secular economy and in traditional Christian culture.

Most radical of all, loving God and loving our neighbors by preserving Creation means a Christian approach to economic activity would involve restraint and limits. Our American culture celebrates freedom above all else. Calling for restraint and limits to protect and prosper the wellbeing of the whole Creation is, in our setting, supremely radical. It is radical even as it honors God and leads us on the path to true wealth.

Is God our treasure or is treasure our treasure? How we treat Creation answers that question.

3. Several Insights Seemed Especially to Resonate: I made a point to talk about what a Biblical perspective on human exceptionalism really is. I also called attention to the cross and the crucifixion. The cross, as I’ve written, was a tree. It now lives as a symbol for the Christian faith. And in its “symbolness” we no longer see that it was a tree. When we don’t see it as a tree, we don’t see the crucifixion as a pivotal moment involving God, Creation, and humanity. These insights seemed to resonate.

4. Speaking is Very Different from Writing: This is likely not news! While I certainly have developed ways of thinking and expressing the insights I’ve had (and been given), they have mostly been in written form. I did not want to just read a sermon so my brain and tongue needed to figure out how to articulate in spoken words what I had spent so much time writing in my blog posts. I need more practice doing this.

5. So Much More to Say: Two 25-minute sermons were not nearly enough (at least for me). There is so much to say about the Bible, Creation, and how we should be trying to live with it and prosper it. My major challenge in planning both was choosing what not to include in order to give a cohesive and focused talk. I’m ready to write a book and/or develop a podcast.

6. The Challenge of a Diverse Audience: I came to appreciate the challenge of speaking to a diverse group of people. From the discussions that followed the services, it was clear that members were at different places in their thinking about their lives and Creation. How does one introduce ideas and theology that are new to some and that are standard operating practice for others? I did not want to overwhelm the first group. Nor did I want to seem to be soft-pedaling the issues the second group is acutely aware of and has made significant life changes in response to.

7. Is There Hope?: The question of what kind of hope there is for God’s Creation is a fraught one. It comes up, directly and indirectly, in almost every conversation.

The truth is that the scale of the problems for Creation is immense, and many trends are negative. Just one example – I shared information in my second sermon from the Environmental Working Group about the metastizing of factory farms across the Iowa landscape. In 1990 there were 789 factory farms (Confined Animal Feeding Operations in industry parlance), where at least 1,000 animals are kept. In 2019, the figure was 3,963. Animal waste from these factory farms is now estimated to be 68 billion pounds per year. Human waste from the 3.15 million human residents of the state is estimated to be 1 billion pounds. Unlike the animal waste, the human waste is treated. Every new factory farm means more animal suffering, more misery for neighbors, more overuse of antibiotics, more degradation of the streams and rivers of Iowa, and poorer quality food.

This is just a small example of the forces at work in our world. I haven’t even mentioned climate change and how populations of unique species of Creation are shrinking and even winking out at a growing rate.

In my second sermon, I noted that the declining condition of God’s earth is a symptom of system problems. So restoring health to God’s earth will not come about just from families recycling and making more God-honoring food choices, although those are important.  It will take changes to systems. And system change is challenging at a whole different level.

Dr. Katharine Hayhoe, a Christian climate scientist, is a wonderful voice of hope, as you can hear in this interview. Yet, as appealing her positivity is, I believe she underestimates how structural, cultural, and even theological our issues are.

Where am I? I have ultimate hope most days. I am committed to doing what I can here and now. Simultaneously, on many days, I perceive what has been lost and what is on the verge of being lost. My heart sinks into lament and despair. Yet, I know God is a creative, surprisng God. And God’s earth can surprise us with its resilience. I don’t know how to tie up all those threads I feel and think. The neatness and tidiness of “hope” doesn’t seem to capture them all.

8. Food and Farming – The 20% of the 80/20 Rule?: The Pareto principle says that in most human endeavors approximately 80% of the results come from 20% of the activities or factors involved. As an example, for many non-profit organizations, a large percentage of donation incomes will come from a relatively small number of donors. So when we think about where to focus Christian commitment to living out a whole faith that includes Creation, it makes sense to figure out what is the pivotal 20%.

While decisions about energy, landscaping, and simplifying are also important, I would ultimately choose food and farming. This was why I chose to focus the second sermon on food and farming and invited Bryce and Jen Riemer to be part of the discussion after that service.

One reason is impact-related – approximately 50% of the world’s terrestrial surface is used for growing food. We eat multiple times a day. And each time we eat we are choosing the kind of farm system our brothers and sisters experience and how God’s earth is treated. What’s more – choosing to eat with love and consciousness for God, God’s Creation, and our neighbors is good for our health and a spiritual discipline.

The challenge, of course, is that in a community of farmers making judgements about what kind of food is congruent with the God of the Bible and what isn’t gets personal and controversial very quick. And, oftentimes, more God-honoring ways of raising food are more complex and time-consuming and are not subsidized by the U.S. government. So the foods become more expensive.

How to reconcile all of that is one of the challenges we all will need to wrestle with. But who said doing anything the right way with one’s values is easy? it’s not easy being a good parent. It’s not easy being a devoted spouse. it’s not easy being a good friend. It’s not easy being good at a challenging job (like being a health care worker the last two years).

It’s the same with shepherding Creation. I am hoping that North Suburban Mennonite Church (and Jesus followers in other churches) will not content themselves with platitudes. I am hoping they will focus their personal change energies on their eating decisions and find help in making the best food choice decisions.

9. A Need for More Expressed Anger: Perhaps it’s legacy of my Midwest Lutheran background. Perhaps it’s a legacy of my introverted nature. But I found myself speaking in a largely reasonable and calm and sometimes even light-hearted way. In retrospect, I wonder if I would have been better served to have added in more anger and urgency. What works better? Did the fury and despair of the Old Testament prophets bring about change in their time? But do we call 911 in a calm and deliberate voice when our child is in mortal danger?

I believe I need to be both full of grace and love while also authentically open about the full range of emotions I feel around these topics.

10. How Would My Message Go Over in a Different Kind of Church?: My wife was talking to a Christian friend recently and told her friend about my sermons. Her friend gave her a blank look. “What is Creation care?” she asked my wife.

That was a good reminder that there are many churches right now who would never dream of devoting a service, much less a month’s worth of services and discussions, to Creation.

So what would it be like to present the ideas behind this blog and my sermons to congregations where many of the members have not thought about the topic or might even see the topic as the intrusion of progressive politics into a spiritual setting? Would they be open at all? Would I even be the right person?

I don’t know. But I pray God will show me the path I should walk in the years that remain. I pray I will have opportunities to make a difference for how Christians walk in God’s world. Even if that brings challenges.

I pray, too, I pray will be able to bring together Christians who are doing their very best to creatively restore God’s earth for encouragement and community.

 

P.S. The sermons were recorded. I plan share them with people who are interested.

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What Would It Take?

Nathan Aaberg —  July 31, 2021 — Leave a comment

In this episode of the podcast How to Save a Planet, you hear of native peoples protesting against oil pipelines because the pipelines break their tribes’ treaty rights, threaten the water and land they rely on, and continue actvities that are propelling our planet towards climate change.

I encourage you to listen to it.

In addition to the sheer bravery and commtiment of the native peoples involved in the protests, two small details of the podcast were particularly striking me.

One was hearing a speaker share that not only did native peoples from around North America rally together at the protests, but there were even indigenous peoples from Ecuador and northern Scandinavia (the Sami) who had traveled to stand with the protesters.

The other was hearing of a group of Quakers from New England who blocked a fuel pumping station at a point along the Line 3 pipeline project route in Minnesota.

Tara Houska, a Native American who is a leader in the protests seeking to stop that pipeline, describes how the Quakers used a piano to block the station and to play beautiful songs together as well. “One of those moments you’ll never forget as long as you live,” she said.

So here’s my question.

What would it take for it to be part and parcel of being a follower of Jesus to defend God’s earth and to help others, whether they are Christians or not, who are doing the same thing?

In other words, what would it take for followers of Jesus to love God, to love people, and to love God’s earth that is full of God’s glory with all of their heart and strength? What would it take to give our highest allegiance to God and what is God’s?

I honestly would like to hear your answers and ideas.

I need to know because seeing that happen is my dream and my prayer.

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Salvation is Bigger Than You and Me

Nathan Aaberg —  May 3, 2021 — Leave a comment

There was much that surprised me in N.T. Wright’s book Surprised by Hope.

In the book, the New Testament Scholar and Anglican bishop explains what, in his view, the ultimate future of life will be from a Christian understanding. This includes what our futures will be after we each die. It also includes what God’s ultimate intentions are for this world. And, counterintuitively, he details what response that understanding should prompt in us in our daily lives and in our churches.

I was surprised by, among other things, how strong of a case Wright made for a literal bodily resurrection as our future destiny. This comes from Wright close reading of the Bible. Here, as in other cases, he finds threads that are both conservative and radical at the same time.

But nothing surprised me more than several paragraphs at the end of the chapter that concludes Part II (“Future Plan”). In these paragraphs, Wright forcefully questions our traditional understanding of what salvation is all about.

These paragraphs are so significant that I have shared them below and urge you to read them.

But the most important thing to say at the end of this discussion, and of this section of the book, is that heaven and hell are not, so to speak, what the whole game is about. This is one of the central surprises in the Christian hope. The whole point of my argument so far is that the question of what happens to me after death is not the major, central, framing questions that centuries of theological traditions have supposed. The New Testament, true to its Old Testament roots, regularly insists that the major, central, framing question is that of God’s purpose of rescue and recreation for the whole world, the entire cosmos. The destiny of individual human beings must be understood within that context – not simply in the sense that we are only part of a much larger picture but also in the sense that part of the whole point of being saved in the present is so that we can play a vital role (Paul speaks of this role in the shocking terms of being “fellow workers with God”) within that larger picture and purpose.

The paragraph does not actually end here but, in my humble opinion, it should have. So I encourage you to read that first section again before going on to the second half of the paragraph below.

And that in turn makes us realize that the question of our own destiny, in terms of the alterantives of joy or woe, is probably the wrong way of looking at the whole question. The question ought to be, How will God’s new creation come? and then, How will we humans contribute to that renewal of creation and to the fresh projects that the creator God will launch in his new world? The choice before humans would then be framed differently: are you going to worship the creator God and discover whereby what it means to become fully and gloriously human, reflecting his powerful, healing, transformative love into the world? Or are you going to worship the world as it is, boosting your corruptible humanness by gaining power or pleasure from forces within the world but merely contributing thereby to your own dehumanization and the further corruption of the world?

Below you will find most of the next paragraph. I end my quoting of the paragraph at a natural stopping point.

This reflection leads to a further, and sobering, thought. If what I have suggested is anywhere near the mark, then to insist on heaven and hell as the ultimate question – to insist, in other words, that what happens eventually to individual humans is the most important thing in the world – may be to make a mistake similar to the one made by Jewish people in the first century, the mistake that both Jesus and Paul addressed. Israel believed (so Paul tells us, and he should know) that the purposes of the creator God all came down to this question: how is God going to rescure Israel? What the gospel of Jesus revealed, however, was that the purposes of God were reaching out to a different question: how is God going to rescue the world through Israel and thereby rescue Israel itself as part of the process but not as the point of it all? Maybe what we are faced with in our own day is a similar challenge: to focus not on the question of which human beings God is going to take to heaven and how he is going to do it but on the question of how God is going to redeem and renew his creation through human beings and how he is going to rescue those humans themselves as part of the process but not as the point of it all. 

There is so much power in how we frame things.

If the point of Christianity is understood to be the preservation of our individual souls in a heaven that is beyond a earth that is just a temporary place that does not matter to God, then it’s not surprising that Christians ignore or even willingly deplete God’s earth.

But what if the point is, as Wright expressed it above, to be part of God’s desire and purpose to bring everythig God made into peace and harmony?

How different our treatment of God’s earth would be. How different our evangelism would be.

This also puts human exceptionalism into its proper perspective. As I wrote here, “The point of the God-given exceptional role (of humans) is serving God’s purposes.”

We are uniquely gifted in order to uniquely serve.

I find Wright’s framing to ring true in a compelling way.

How about you?

 

I consistently find N.T. Wright’s insights to be both affirming of the coherence of the Bible itself in ways that inspire me and challenging to the ways so many Christians have come to understand God and Jesus. I highly recommend that you read his books and listen to lectures by him. 

 

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The Fat of the Land is Real (and Good)

Nathan Aaberg —  March 31, 2021 — 2 Comments

There are several references to the “fat of the land” or “fatness of the land” in the Old Testament.

Genesis 27:28 Therefore God give thee of the dew of heaven, and the fatness of the earth, and plenty of corn and wine: (KJV)

Genesis 27:39: And Isaac his father answered and said unto him, Behold, thy dwelling shall be the fatness of the earth, and of the dew of heaven from above. (KJV)

Genesis 45:18: And take your father and your households, and come unto me: and I will give you the good of the land of Egypt, and ye shall eat the fat of the land. (KJV)

I don’t know about you, but I had long assumed the term was only metaphorical. In fact, many translations now have changed the phrase to “earth’s richness” or “richness of the earth.”

And then I listened to an interview with John Kempf by the hosts of the Back to the Roots podcast.

John, a great podcaster himself, is one of the leading voice of regenerative agriculture in the United States.  You can find the interview here, and I’d encourage you to listen to it. John is brilliant, humble, and gifted in all that he discusses.

Around the 13:00 minute mark you can hear John bring up the Biblical phrase “fat of the land.” This is not unusual. John frequently brings up Biblical references and concepts in his podcasts and interviews. You can tell he has been steeped in the Bible.

John proceeds to explain the literal truth of that phrase.

Here’s one key quote: “Stable organic matter (in the soil), stable humic substances, are about 40 percent lipids. (In other words) 40 percent fats. So I believe that when we talk about the fat of the land, we’re really having a conversation about carbon storage, organic matter building in soil as a result of microbial activity and accumulating fats in organic matter.”

In other words, land can literally have fat. And healthy land does have fats.

I was driving as I listened to the interview and feel fortunate to not have had an accident.

First, how fascinating is it that something we take as a metaphor in the Bible has actual agronomic truth?

Along these lines, check out this link to a description of a scientiifc finding from University of Colorado Boulder researchers. They’ve found a fatty acid in a soil-based bacterium that appears to have anti-inflammatory properties.

Second, let’s unpack the larger meaning behind what John says.

A farmer only has stable organic matter in the soil if the farming being done mimics the workings of God’s earth in nature. Nature, for example, almost always covers its ground with diverse plants that, through their living roots, feed carbon that feeds life in the soil. Nature also integrates animals into any natural system, and they also add nutrients to the living soil system. Nature does not disturb these processes through plowing and tillage. Nor fungicides and herbicides and insecticides.

Farmers can imitate those same principles and approaches. And some are, as you can see in the video below. Applying those principles and approaches to the specific context of a specific place is called regenerative agriculture.

And much of the focus of regenerative ariculture is building the biological life of the soil. That rich life, including diverse bacteria and fungi, provides the plants with easy-to-absorb nutrients and phytonutrients to the plant. In other words, plants feed the soil, and the soil feeds the plants.

That rich soil life also builds stable humic substances where we find the real fat of the land that John mentioned.

We shouldn’t be surprised then that when we eat plants and animals from land that has that abundant soil life, we get healthier food which gives us healthier bodies.

A number of years back, Jim, a Christian friend of mine, and his wife Joelle had gotten married and were hoping to have children. That wasn’t happening. They turned to doctors for ideas and help. Nothing they heard made sense. They were frustrated and not sure what to do.

Then Joelle’s sister asked about their diet. They described a standard diet of processed foods from conventionally-farmed plants and animals. Joelle’s sister urged them to look into more natural and organic options. They were desperate. So they went all in. They competely changed to a diet of natural and organic foods, largely home cooked.

And before long they became pregnant. In fact, they just had their third child earlier this year. This experience completely changed the direction of their lives (they are now homesteading, among other things). It’s even given them new insights into their Christian faith and what it means for us to be stewards of God’s earth.

Jim and Joelle shifted to a natural diet from a processed, conventional diet when they had trouble having children. They now have three children, including Eloise and Abram (Gus was just born recently) – abundant life from abundantly alive farms and foods.

We now know that we have stripped away that life-giving richness of the land with an industrial, extractive approach to farming. But people like John Kempf, many of whom are Christian, are showing how it is possible to restore and rejuvenate God’s good earth.

By having loving hearts, creative and dynamic minds, and attentiveness to the beautiful systems of God’s earth, we can honor God and provide life-giving food to our neighbors.

Maybe we’re supposed to take Jesus’ words in John 10:10 – “..I came that they have life and have it abundantly” – literally as well?

By making God’s life abundant on God’s earth and in God’s soil, we give others and ourselves abundant life.

Here and now.

 

P.S. Here’s a blog post by a regenerative farmer – Will Harris – about the fat of the land concept and artificial meats.

P.P.S. Here’s a blog post by Rabbi Daniel Lapin about the two different Hebrew words interpreted as “fat of the land” by English translators. While the rabbi explains both words can be translated as “fat” in a general way, one has the meaning of milk included in it, and the other can mean fat or oil. In his blog post, you can read Rabbi Lapin’s idea of what he believes the deeper difference is between the words and what larger message that has for us. It occurs to me, however, that he may be missing a more obvious difference betweent the two words – one word refers to animal-generated fat and the other refers to fat coming from plants. Both animals and plant life are needed for living soil. But I realize it’s more than a little presumptuous of me to question a rabbi about a Hebrew question! So I’ve sent a message to him asking for his feedback on my perspective.

 

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