Archives For Agitations

Food & the Whole Faith Church (Part 2)

Nathan Aaberg —  January 29, 2017 — Leave a comment

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

No. And an emphatic double no.

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

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

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

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

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

 

Won’t this turn away potential members?

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

 

Won’t this be expensive?

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

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

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

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

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

 

Would this mean whole faith churches would be vegetarian?

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

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

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

 

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

Here’s a paragraph that I believe bears repeating:

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Would You Work for Ahab-Jezebel, Inc.?

Nathan Aaberg —  December 24, 2016 — Leave a comment

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

I’m beginning to understand why.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Stoning of Naboth (Dirck Coornhert)

The Stoning of Naboth (Dirck Coornhert). 

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

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

Possessed by greed, power, and prestige.

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

Not loving one’s neighbors 

Not accepting limits on the use of power 

Using power and law to get what is illegitimately desired.

Blind to violence inflicted on the vulnerable 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Whole Faith Makes Creation Care Natural

Nathan Aaberg —  November 30, 2016 — Leave a comment

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

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

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

Yet there is more.

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

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

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

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

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

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

This is the abundant life Jesus offered.

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

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

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

 

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Pence and Kaine Struggle with Faith, Power

Nathan Aaberg —  October 12, 2016 — Leave a comment

One of the greatest temptations for a Christian is to give up one’s integrity as a Christian in the service or pursuit of power.

Sad to say, we saw two Christians do just during the vice presidential debate last week.

And the irony could not be deeper because both Indiana Governor Mike Pence and Virginia Senator Tim Kaine gave eloquent expressions of how their Christian faiths have formed their lives and character.

While Kaine incessantly interrupted Pence at every possible moment with criticisms of Donald Trump, Pence actually had no defense for Donald Trump’s character or behavior.

For all of Pence’s calm, reasoned, and sincere statements, you can’t read the Bible without coming to the conclusion that Donald Trump epitomizes an incredibly long list of attributes that are the exact opposite of those Christians are called to have. They are fruit of a heart turned away from a humble relationship with God.

To support a person like Trump in something minor would be problematic but to faithfully and energetically partner with a person like Trump who desires to be the leader of the United States is a whole different matter. I can only explain Pence’s decision this way – like any of us, he has his weaknesses and one of his is a commitment to the success and power of the Republican Party and its interests that enables him to rationalize his full partnership with Trump. I believe there is also a hypnotic quality to Trump’s comfort and confidence with power to which Pence and many others around the country unconsciously respond.

It would have said much more about Pence’s faith and about Christianity itself, however, if he had declined the invitation just as Daniel declined to bend his knee to the power of Nebuchadnezzar.

The worst thing is that the more Pence wears his Christian faith on his sleeve as he campaigns with Donald Trump, the more he taints Christianity for people who are not believers. If a Christian can ally himself with Trump and all that he stands for, then why would any rational person want to become a Christian? What exactly does the Christian faith stand for?

Kaine has some issues, too.

He has accepted the nomination with Hillary Clinton who cannot help herself from lying,untruths, and half truths. She also has a troubled relationship with power that can be seen in her history, her policies, and her tight Wall Street connections. While her issues may not be on the level of Trump and she’s clearly far more professional in her service and civic-minded in her policies, her failings are still serious.

Then there was Kaine’s response to Pence’s comments about partial-birth abortion.

For most of the debate Kaine used clear and concrete language, especially when criticizing Donald Trump. But you could hear the rhetorical shift when he began speaking about abortion.

Here is an excerpt of what he said:

“This is pretty important. Before Roe v. Wade, states could pass criminal laws to do just that, to punish women if they made the choice to terminate a pregnancy. I think you should live your moral values. But the last thing, the very last thing that government should do is have laws that would punish women who make reproductive choices.”

Do you hear the sudden shift to rationalization through abstraction?

“Terminate” is a Latin word that suggests something you do with a contract in its cool, antiseptic, abstract tone. “Pregnancy,” also Latin in origin, is pleasantly and rationally removed from the reality of what the word refers to – a developing human living inside the mother’s body in a world of intimacy, warmth, and shared fluids. When you use words like “terminate” and “pregnancy,” the actual violence of an abortion sounds so clinical and reasonable. Like the removal of a wart.

And there’s some rhetorical chicanery going on. The term “reproductive choices” is a contradiction. When there is an embryo/baby in the womb, reproduction is already an accomplished fact. Abortion has nothing to do with reproduction. Life, both human and nonhuman, is not a choice. It’s something we must seek to live with and make nuanced choices about.

Kaine should have had the guts to speak plainly.

In this context, reading Windows to the Womb by David Chamberlain is a revelation. Chamberlain shares findings of recent science that reveal how rapidly babies develop in the womb and how much evidence there is for their emotion and engagement with their environment

window-to-the-womb-image

Audible crying can be detected in the womb as early as 21 to 24 weeks gestational age. Evidence indicates babies in the womb can hear things outside of the mother’s body as early as 14 weeks. Spontaneous movements by the embryos, as opposed to reflexive movements, are happening before ten weeks.

This passage about the movements of young embryos was particularly paradigm-shifiting for me:

“Observers saw little embryos stretching in exactly the way people of other ages stretch – always at a slow speed, beginning with the head moving backward followed by trunk arching and arms lifting! One reclining ten-week fetus, legs semiflexed and body quite still for a few minutes, brought hands up and placed them behind the head as if relaxing in a hammock. Can you imagine these gestures with a sign of satisfaction following the explosive growth and mastery of new movements?”

I want to be clear. I am not saying there are not situations in which abortion is tragically justifiable.

Abortion can, like capital punishment, be the purposeful and nuanced use of power to do something that is normally abhorrent because there is a larger societal good at stake. Are there be situations where the tragic necessity of ending a baby’s life in the womb might be the relatively least awful thing to do? Yes. But the tragedy and awfulness of what must be done should not be ignored or evaded.

But absolute freedom to have an abortion at almost any phase of fetal development has become an issue where the Democrats have been seduced by the sirens of freedom and power.

In fact, both Republicans and Democrats have incoherent, contradictory positions around the question of abortion when you look at the larger framework of their thinking. Democrats have a long tradition of speaking up for the oppressed and those exploited by those with power. But when it comes to the baby in the womb who is the ultimate example of powerlessness and vulnerability, they suddenly embrace the Republican rhetoric of freedom and individual choice as absolutes.

Republicans, on other hand, passionately advocate for freedom, choice, property rights, and the power of corporations to do what prospers them without the hindrance of regulation. They do so, at their most extreme, no matter how profound and violent the impact of freedom, power, and corporate rights on the vulnerable, including the unborn, local communities, and the living things of which God has made us shepherds.

And yet the Republican Party selectively finds concern for the powerless and vulnerable when it comes to a baby in the womb and selectively wants to deny freedom and property rights to the people within which the babies exist – women.

I believe the world hungers for coherence, integrity, and goodness. This is why the choice between Trump and Clinton is so galling. This is why Pence and Kaine were also disappointing. As ambassadors for their Christian faiths they should be able to speak and act with whole truth, consistent love, and wise caution about power.

My sense is that people are ultimately hungry for a whole faith that will truly transform their hearts so that every fruit they bear is good and full of light. People are looking hard, too, for a whole faith whose followers hold onto it with integrity and coherence even when doing so puts them at odds with the powers and principalities of this world.

Why aren’t there more Christians whose lives point to the way that offers all that?

 

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Food for Thought from Joel Salatin

Nathan Aaberg —  August 30, 2016 — Leave a comment

You need to know about Joel Salatin and his new book The Marvelous Pigness of Pigs. If you aren’t already familiar with Joel, here’s how the book jacket describes him:

“Joel Salatin is a third generation farmer who works with his family on their farm in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley.  The Salatin Polyface Farm is internationally known for innovative pastured livestock and services more than 5,000 families, 10 retail outlets and 50 restaurants through on-farm sales and metropolitan buying clubs.”

That’s the farming side of Joel. Joel was, in fact, the featured sustainable farmer in Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma which has helped shape a new consciousness of what of our food system is and what it should be.

Here’s how the website of his new book’s publisher describes him and the message of his tenth book:

“Joel Salatin is perhaps the nation’s best known farmer, whose environmentally friendly, sustainable Polyface Farms has been featured in Food, Inc. and Time magazine. Now in his first book written for a faith audience, Salatin offers a deeply personal argument for earth stewardship, and calls for fellow Christians to join him in looking to the Bible for a foodscape in line with spiritual truth. Salatin urges Christians to rethink America’s allegiance to cheap corporate food that destroys creation in its production, impoverishes third world countries, and supports oligarchical interests. He wonders why Christians ignore and even revel in unhealthy eating habits and factory farming that runs counter to God’s design. With scripture and Biblical stories, Salatin presents an alternative and shows readers that in appreciating the pigness of pigs, we celebrate the Glory of God.”

The shortest and best way to think about Joel is in his own terms. He calls himself a Christian libertarian environmentalist capitalist lunatic farmer.

He’s someone you should know. He’s a Christian changing God’s world for the better.

Pigness-Cover jpg

The following are a sampling of his words from his book. You’ll be struck by his unique voice and earthy, faith-centered perspective on food and our food system.

When we’re more interested in dysfunctional Hollywood celebrity culture or the Little League program than we are about what is going to become flesh of our flesh and bone of our bone, we voluntarily place ourselves into the corporate food agenda. That agenda is decidedly nutrient deficient, price inappropriate, and anti-community based. It promotes centralization, customer ignorance, and a mechanical view of life.

Things that the religious right would abhor if they were promoted by churches are embraced warmly in the food system. While preachers rail against bringing junk into our homes via TV, the Internet, and pornographic literature, few bat an eye at a home stashed with high fructose corn syrup, potato chips, and Pop-Tarts, indeed, some even suggest that the cheaper we eat, the more money we’ll have to put in the offering plate. And to top it off, they denigrate anyone who would suggest part of caring for children is caring about what they eat. (pp. 80-81)

And..

The problem is we Christians do not trust God’s plan. We don’t. Oh, we trust it when it comes to matters of spirituality. But we think God’s plan is broken – along with mainstream scientists of our day – when it comes to physical things. The result is that we Christians marching off to sanctity-of-life rallies send our kids off to college to get a good enough education to go work for a multinational corporation dedicated to adulterating God’s creation.

I would suggest that a God-honoring farm is one that shows strength rather than weakness. It’s one that has no veterinary bills. It’s one that has healthy plants and animals. It’s one that produces food that develops healthier people. This is not a health-and-wealth message.  It is ultimately a humility-and-dependence message. God’s designs work. (p. 68)

And..

The whole idea of pornography, which of course the Christian community universally condemns, is instant and expedient gratification of a sacred act sanctified by marriage. Where is the Christian who dares to identify the pornographic food system that revels in death-inducing, sickness-encouraging, and creation-destroying orgies of self-indulgence? Strong language? Have you walked into a confinement factory chicken house lately? How about a confinement hog factory? Just like pornography disrespects and cheapens God-given and -sanctioned specialness in sex, factory-farmed hog houses disrespect and cheapen the God-sculpted specialness of pigs. (p. 133)

 

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