FAITH vs. FEAR
whatsoever is not of faith is sin. Romans 14.23
* 146 how do we increase our faith? So then faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God (Romans 10.17 AKJV) any believer knows that to increase faith, we must participate or exercise our faith by spending time in the Word. as we live what we call a life of faith, where we practice stepping out of our comfort zones and ministering or starting a difficult conversation, we enjoy God's intervention and caring.
Jesus promised His followers that the Holy Spirit would instruct them in the words to use and bring His sayings to remembrance when they were brought before judges and magistrates. he admonished them to not worry or fear, these otherwise intimidating circumstances because He would support them. the parables are filled with instructions about fear: 'and why take you (anxious thought fro raiment? consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin and yet I say to you, that even Solomon in all
* 147 his glory was not arrayed like one of theses. why, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which today is and tomorrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?
therefore take no thought, saying, what shall we eat? of what shall we drink? or, wherewithal shall we be clothed? (for after all these things do the gentiles seek) for your heavenly Father knows that you have need of all these things. but seek you first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things shall be added to you. take therefore no (anxious) thought for the morrow, for the morrow shall take thought for the thins of itself. (Matt. 6.28-34)
as believers, don't we find these promises comforting, especially when we look at the Old Testament stories of God's constant and overriding provision for His people? whether it was an ark, a ram lamb in the bushes, a cattail boat carrying Moses - the wonder and inspiration of the Old Testament is largely the story of God's interventive provision. indeed, Hebrews 12 hearkens back to the historical record to make the case for faith by making it clear that God provides for us.
part of developing faith is simply practicing in things God wants us to do. we can practice a soft answer to see if it turns away wrath. well, my goodness, it works. Amazing. we can practice giving a gift to an enemy. well, by goodness, it works. we can practice being grateful. well, my goodness, it works. we can practice being grateful. well, my goodness, it works. it is in practicing, participating, immersing ourselves in a life of faith that we see our fears gradually diminish.
now let's turn this lesson over to food. Americans fear food. a lot of Christians fear food. Why? because too many of us don't know anything about it. the official policy of the government food police at the FDA and USDA is to fear food. Why? because industrial food is a scary thing.
*148 Campylobacter, listeria, salmonella, E. coli, bovine spongiform encephalopathy.this is a brand-new lexicon that has only come into common use in the last couple of decades.
likewise, I never knew anybody who had food allergies. now we have gluten problems, leaky gut syndrome, type 2 diabetes and a runaway obesity epidemic. we're overfed and undernourished. the USDA began telling us what to eat after World War II: hydrogenated fat, carbohydrates, margarine. meanwhile, big food manufacturers loved that we were exiting the kitchen and giving them proxy status over our menus.
with the kitchen sufficiently demonized as a place where losers, where underachieving non-career women served, a broad food ignorance spread across the landscape. economic wealth with rising incomes enabled the annual special meal out to morph into daily fast food and processed food service. devoid of culinary artistry, the kitchen became simply a place to heat up TV dinners . indeed, no society has ever had the luxury of abdicating a relationship with food this profoundly.
gone were the nuances about taste, texture and odor. neat microwavable packaging with additives to stablize, sterilize and sanitize replaced the whole potato, the oven-cooked pot roast and scratch baking. in food processing, chlorine became the chemical of choice as produce and meat became filthier coming from industrial farms with faster harvesting and growing techniques. fecal contamination could be sterilized with enough chlorine and it is used liberally today. pink slime in ground beef, along with cheap fillers, created a whole new type of food.
soft drinks replaced whole raw milk. twinkies replaced fried eggs and bacon. packaged whole meals in Styro foam clamshells replaced domestic culinary arts. food was no longer prepared, processed, packaged and preserved in the home. those domestic skills were farmed out to professional food manufactuers with laboratories, high fructose corn syrup, monosodium glutamate and a host of
unpronouncables. as American culture unleashed itself from an ecological umbilical, we became profoundly ignorant. and we began fearing the unknown.
I would argue that food more perfectly represents God's sustaining power than any other physical substance. more than money. more than clothes or housing. more than employment. every biblical celebration uses food and feasting as its most significant centerpiece. do you fear food or do you know enough about it to enjoy a deep food faith? do you know what's in season? do you know what farmers in your area have plenty of this year or are scarce on? do you care?
because food is so closely linked with biblical signposts and remembrances, it would behoove us not to fear food, how do we get over our food fears? the answer is the same as acquiring spiritual faith: we practice. yes, we practice food craft. yes, we get in our kitchens. we get in our gardens. we visit farmers and buy directly from local purveyors. we touch it, smell it, examine it. read about it, prepare it, pickle it, slice it, dice it. we quit buying a nameless, faceless disconnected pseudo-proof-like substance of dubious extraction prepared by people with dubious agendas. we embrace a physical partnership with our food.
I think how we view food and our relationship to it sets up the depth and breadth of our desire to know God's provision - really appreciate it. that's the difference between simply ingesting food-like substances until huger is assuaged and actually partaking of a sacred provision that we know. we talk about knowing God, personally, as a a way to measure spiritual growth. how about knowing food as a way to measure our appreciation of the mystery and awesomeness of God's sufficiency?
isn't it amazing that from our pulpits we have no problem demanding that people practice and participate in hearing, seeing, and exercising their faith, but we don't exhort people to create a framework for that spiritual understanding by doing the same thing
*150 with something much easier: food. food is not just something we ingest on a pit stop. it's sacred provision, as requested by the Lord's Prayer: 'Give us day by day our daily bread'. Luke 11.3
do you know the food in your pantry? perhaps not all of it, but at least some of it? do you have a memory, a knowledge base, an experience with it? this creates a framework to truly understand God's providential care. when you've worked at your food, you appreciate its power and meaning. you don't take it for granted. and you don't fear it because you know where it came from, how it was produced, who grew it. it's as safe and sufficient as your spiritual faith, which grows in your life the same way.
when we patronize an opaque food system and pop munchies, it creates an unhealthy physical body. (note- not to say anything of a toxic system of food supply.) by the same token, when we quit seeking, quit seeing and quit discovering biblical truths for ourselves and just depend on munchies from the pulpit or a 'saying of the Day', we become spiritually weak and sick. isn't it fascinating that our churches routinely conduct youth seminars on the dangers of the Internet and websites, but we don't conduct any seminars on the dangers of soft drinks and pretzels?
just for the record, I don't think it's a sin to drink a soft drink once in a while. indulgences are allowed. but drinking one a day is a different story. the cumulative effect of what is now known as the modern american diet, where virtually everything is highly processed, laden with sugar and grown from chemicalized deficient soil, is a seriously sick population. america now leads the world in the 5 leading chronic diseases. that's not a good place to be number one.
make no mistake about it, the overriding view in our culture toward food is fear. it's a product of ignorance. you can't trust what you don't know. the less we know about something, the more we fear it. the less we know about god, the less faith we have in Him. I know we're to fear God, but that's a reverence, not a worry. godly fear is healthy because it drives us to want to please Him.
*151 if food faith (what we see) is metaphor for spiritual faith (what we don't see) then we should embrace a food system that demonstrates knowledge and participation. if the current supermarket industrial food system demonstrates one thing, it's ignorance and lack of participation. if the current supermarket industrial food system demonstrates one thing, it's ignorance and lack of participation. what happens when we fear food is that we ask for government protection. fear creates insecurity and insecurity makes us paranoid. Paranoia is a wonderful tool used by regulators to increase their power.
conservative Christians who want less government intervention must realize that every time we patronize a food system predicated (def -'indicate'; logic - that which is affirmed or denied concerning the subject of the proposition) on ignorance, opaqueness and fear, we unwittingly and subconsciously encourage fear t creep into our lives. if we can't trust our food without government intervention, can we trust education without government intervention? can we trust doctors without government intervention? can we trust doctors without government intervention? can we trust bakers without government intervention? can we trust deacons and elders without government intervention?
the food system that thrives on fear is not healthy for us...in many ways. why we can't appreciate that it's as unhealthy as a pornographic website or an alcoholic binge? why, indeed. because we pray for our little Christian kiddos to get a good job with a well-paying company, to show they are good Americans, patriotic citizens, contributors to society. so we encourage them to apply for jobs at laboratories and food manufacturing associations that create a destructive food system. and we're proud of their achievements when they become number one Twinkie salesmen.
were proud of them when their engineering ability designs a machine that more efficiently injects carcinogenic phenols into hot dogs. come on people wake up. would Jesus eat this stuff? Really? we'd counsel our Christian children to leave an unscrupulous accounting firm in a heart beat if financial irregularities were suspected. 'It'll taint your reputation, we admonish.
'you don't want to be party to those shenaigans', we pontificate. 'don't stay in the devil's workshop'. we preach.
*152 well, what kind of a workshop do you think it is whose chemicals make infertile frogs and 3 legged salamanders? what kind of irregularities might you find in a place that releases genetically modified organisms into the environment to practice promiscuous orgies in crops on land where a farmer doesn't want them to be? what kind of shenanigans are they when the industry and government experts tell cattle farmers to feed dead cows to cows? are these not irregularities, are these not shenanigans are these not the devil's workshop?
since to say anything is to identify with liberal whacko environmental tree-hugger anti-capitalists who go so far as to say the military industrial complex is too big, we Christians can't speak about these things. they're taboo in our circles. these things cause divisions. they make us squirm. and after all, we really don't know enough to have faith in a more natural system. I mean, look at the government reports. look at what the scientists at the most prestigious Fortune 500 corporations in america say.
do you know how silly that sounds? would you measure the credibility of any other conviction by the fact that it was endorsed by government reports or corporate white papers? not at all. we measure things by the Word of God. we ask if it is of faith. I submit that the entire industrial mechanical food system is predicated on fear - it thrives on fearful consumers who want government to prop it up, subsidize it, insure it, protect it. justify it. and it thrives on the fear that natural biological system, God's design for a beautiful synergy of complex relationships from bacteria to bovines, really can't work. that we can't rely on seeds that either don't bear at all or bear after unpredictable kinds. we can't rely on whole foods we have to rely on extruded irradiated amalgamated reconstituted chlorinated adulterated food-like substances.
I submit that a God who can't be trusted to feed us His way can't be trusted to save us His way. a God whom man's cleverness must correct is a God whom theologians must correct. if Sunday school
*153 teachers believe God's agrarianism needs to be corrected, they'll soon believe the Genesis records need to be corrected.
once we begin cavorting with fear rather than faith , we progress as surely as day follows night into a place of anemic spiritual existence.
now that we've explored the faith and food issue, let's move into the farming arena. what does a farm of faith look like, as opposed to farm of fear? does a farm of faith have a refrigerator full of vaccines and pharmaceuticals or does it rely on something else? at this point in the book, if you don't realize that's a rhetorical question, you'd better quit now and start over because you haven't been paying attention.
the average farmer wakes up every morning fearful. what is sick? how many animals died during the night? a farm of faith says this : if I follow the Creator's patterns, immunity and wellness will follow. yes, that's simple faith. but the alternative is an expensively stocked arsenal of crutches that signify that health can't be achieved without drug companies.
how about faith in compost and biomass rather than fear that a carbon-centric system might not work so we'd better apply chemical fertilizers? how about faith that our animals' immune systems will work so we can have visitors and let them walk about freely without fear?
goodness, I challenge you to go to any industrial farm. you'll see anti-microbial shoe dips, shower in shower out, plastic suits. whenever we get scientists visiting our farm, they invariably remark about how seemingly nonchalant we are about bio-security. the industry is paranoid about bio-security. the industry is paranoid about bio-security because their animals and plants are fragile. if our farm plants and animals had as dysfunctional an immune system as that found in industrial facilities, I'd be paranoid, too. I don't blame them for being paranoid. they're wise to be paranoid. but is it faith? no, it's abject fear.
*154 one of my favorite stories about my son Daniel growing up was when he was 13 and took his first 4-H illustrated talk to the senior contest at Virginia Tech. the title was 'Symbiosis and Synergism in the Rabbitry'. he had already been raising rabbits for 5 years at the time and had become quite a little guru on the rabbit enterprise. as we're wont to do on our farm, rather than a mono=species rabbitry like you see in all the production books, we built a Raken house. the rabbits were in roomy wire cages suspended at eye level and chickens roamed freely underneath.
hence, Rabbit plus Chicken equals Raken. Bet it? a deep bedding of carbon underneath provided plenty of litter to absorb rabbit urine. the chickens scratched in the litter, which mixed the urine in, which decomposed the carbon, which create a bug-growing medium, which grew bugs, which induced the chickens to scratch, with infected oxygen and mixed-in urine...you get the picture. it's kind of like the nursery rhyme 'The House That Jack Built'.
of course, it wouldn't be honest to the story to neglect the fact that Daniel had an excellent communications coach. he practiced in front of the mirror like I told him and had it down cold. the only scary thing about the competition was that it would be judged by 3 veterinarians in the Virginia Tech School of Veterinary Science. not only that, but after the presentation they could ask him any question they wanted. in fact, they were supposed to ask every competitor a question in order to deduce if the child actually knew anything about the topic or had just memorized something he kne3w little about.
we practiced some softball questions and figured we had him well prepared. after all, both Teresa and I had won state 4-H illustrated talk competitions in our teen years, so we knew what to expect. with our 13 year old prodigy and his indulgent little sister in tow, we drove down to the great school of minds on the appointed day of competition. he performed flawlessly and from our vantage point across the room, we could see the judges smiling and completely taken with his charisma. as the completely objective parent in this
*155 case, I knew he was by far the best one in the whole competition. Family was proud.
he finished and first came a softball question: 'How long have you been raising rabbits? ..5 years, sir. we had coached him ...by the way, we think 8 is about the right time in life to start a business.
second judge threw a softball: how do you sell your rabbits? easy. I dress them and sell them directly to customers in the area, sir'.
Third judge threw the hardball: 'Aren't you concerned about disease with the chickens being right there next to the rabbits?" you could hear a pin drop. I caught my breath. the question was accusatory and out of character for this friendly competition where even the last place finisher gest some kind of ribbon..
Daniel didn't bat an eye. He didn't hesitate. He didn't flinch. he looked squarely at the doctor of veterinary medicine and replied firmly: 'We've learned that most pathogens don't cross-speciate, so it's not a problem'. the judges literally threw back their heads and laughed and ave him first place. the room would have mutinied if they hadn't...the vets were fearful about the Raken house.
they could not believe that a place of diversity could carry its own checks and balances. a farm with enough faith in various gits and talents, in the self-correcting and self-policing characteristics of multi-speciated relational production, sets a visible object lesson for the same functionality in a body of believers who exhibit differences. different fits, different talents. these are no supposed to divide and destroy a fellowship group; they are there to sharpen, correct, challenge, encourage. they are pieces of a whole that work
*156 beautifully when all the parts exhibit their distinctiveness and agree to participate.
For as we have many members in one body and all members have not the same office: so we, being many, are one body in Christ and every one members one of another. having then gifts differing according to the grace that is given to us whether prophecy, let us prophesy according to the proportion of faith or ministry, let us wait on our ministering or he that teaches, on teaching or he that exhorts on exhortation; he that gives, let him do it with simplicity; he that rules, with diligence; he that shows mercy, with cheerfulness. Romans 12.4-8 AKJV
have you ever wondered why in the world God made so many different kinds of critters? fungi, mold, bacteria, nematodes. wild animals, domestic animals, plants, fish, coral it really is amazing isn't it? even Christians tend to enjoy this variety because intuitively it's overwhelmingly beautiful. we know that each of these beings (no, I'm not going squirrelly on you, but i like to use it just to honor the distinctiveness of these critters) occupies a certain niche in the environment. we also know that their specificity is far beyond a self-organizing fatalism and required a Creator to design them with horns and lips and scales and mitochondria.
in a big sense, life diversity teaches faith in differences. I think humans are prone to prejudice. we certainly love to segregate ourselves into tribes that look alike, think alike and talk alike. I'm not sure that's wrong. what's wrong is fearing those who are not in our inner sanctum. what's wrong is not embracing people who aren't in our tribe. (def - a class or set of persons, especially one with strong common traits of interests).
when we patronize a farming system predicated on monospeciation as being the most efficient, it encourages this idea that surrounding ourselves only with people exactly like us is the most efficient. it's safe, but I don't think it gets anything done. I'm not
*157 talking about singleness of purpose. I'm talking about background color, verbal vs. mechanical, leader vs. follower, extrovert vs. introvert kind of stuff. we fear innovation. we fear having our assumptions questioned. I know I do.
did God really have to create such variety? I mean, really? did we really need a wombat? a kangaroo? a possum? a skunk? really? part of the wonder of God is that He is a Creator on overdrive. I mean, when God say's He's going to do something, He goes after it. He doesn't piddle around. when He made the earth,k it was so much more than Venus and Mars. it's incomprehensibly blessed. when He made plants, look at the variety! animals, look at the variety! God went all out. he wants to go all out. if you say you're going to do something, do it with gusto.
when God wants to illustrate human variety and how big He is to welcome any of these weird costumes, skin colors and backgrounds into His arms, that's an incredible expression of whosoever will. farmers who fear variety exhibit a small trust system. a farm of faith has lots of variety and exhibits a small trust system. a farm of faith has lots of variety and exhibits lots of innovation. if you come away from a farm saying: 'Wow. that's creative . that's a lot of cool stuff going on', then you'll know you've been t a farm that exercises faith.
may I speak briefly to church properties on this point? who about that nice kitchen downstairs? what if somebody with dreadlocks from the neighborhood urban farm asks you if he can use the kitchen to make vegetarian pot pies? Vegetarian pot pies? Oh my, that would push me. Ha!
but really, what would you day? are you afraid of the kitchen being used by somebody else? that's legitimate, but be creative and embracive and figure out how with some proper oversight it could be used. I think one of the biggest travesties in our churches is refusing to leverage all that stainless steel and kitchen infrastructure around the clock to augment the local integrity food system. how about you being the one to let everyone know: 'Have kitchen for local food use. Fully equipped. let's quit patronizing industrial mechanical.
*158 food and start eating sacred food'. can you imagine the conversations such a come-on would create? You'd have evangelistic and outreach opportunities you couldn't imagine.
how about church lawns? big, spacious, expansive monocultures. energy guzzling show of elitism and royalty. I'm not saying you can't have a little area for children to play or a volleyball court, or a play set. but do we really need 2 acres of golf green equivalence? to fertilize with chemical fertilizer so we can use more petroleum to mow it more? really?
how about community gardens? section it off for people who want to use it to grow their won vegetables. you can park the mower, forget the fertilizer and weed killer and instead spend that time conversing with the most outrageous variety of people you can imagine. I mean, the pace might start looking like the characters in a Dr. Suess book. wouldn't that be a hoot? you'd probably get written up on the front page of he local newspaper. it'd be a big hairy different deal. wouldn't it? and that, my friends, is what Jesus would do.
Goodness, next thing you know you'd be talking to a loan shark (Zacchaeus) and a prostitute (woman at the well). you might be entertaining neighborhood brats and foreign dignitaries. who knows what relationship might develop?
think of the conversations. think of the community emotional equity. rather than bringing industrial canned food to a box in the church foyer for the food bank to distribute to 'those people'. we'd be participating, interacting, exercising our faith that God's humor and abundance are the coolest thing yet. is your faith big enough to carry you through this disturbance of innovative activity? could the elders and trustees handle it or would this drop a couple with heart attacks? what does our faith mean? if it means that we have to segregate ourselves into an elitist structure with our industrial cans of food for the needy because deep down we fear touching them, smelling them interacting with them, then we're running away from faith, not pushing ourselves into it.
how about putting a solarium on the side of that massive stone
*159 church building? whack a hole in the wall of that cathedral and let the sunlight and passive solar heat in. let the super-oxygenated air from lettuce leaves in January fill nostrils and lungs with freshness during the morning song. Goodness, if Sister Sue hyperventilates it'll be the most exciting thing to happen in a long time. feed Big Belly Bob some salad straight out of that soil and you might get him weaned from at least one can of Dr Pepper a day. wouldn't that be a conversion?
Okay, we've had a good time with this and I hope I haven't gone over the edge of decorum. but for crying out loud, folks, we Christians are blessed with infrastructure, money, ability. why don't we show physical faith to our neighbors as directly and clearly as we do with the youth group trip to Mexico to build a house for an orphanage? before anybody jumps me on that, I'm not suggesting we stop missionary trips. but i'm quite concerned that too often we expediently show our faith at the end of a jet airplane trip because we fear being that visceral in our own neighborhoods. that's not the order in which we should express our faith.
it should be visible most apparently where we live, where we worship, where we play, where we eat, where we entertain. that's where the rubber hits the road. it's easy to be good for a week, with groups just like us, in a place far, far away. it's hard, inconvenient and a work of significant faith exercise to exhibit it to the people who see us get out of our cars every day. Yes, that's a whole different deal.
what if your fellowship group, along with sanctity-of-life month and missions-giving month, created a farm-of-faith month? organized field trips to farms of faith? bought from farms of faith for the month? we have hunger lock-ins for youth groups to identify with the hungry. do we not identify with the cancer-stricken pesticide patients? the vomiting animal factory neighbors?
isn't it easy to be shallow? it's like the greenies saying buy a Prius and put in LED lightbulbs: shazam, now you're taking care of the earth. we love shallow; we don't like deep. but if we are going to walk a life of genuine faith, we're going to have to wrestle with these
*160 issues. I have no problem if you think I'm too out there. that's okay. but can we at least wrestle with these issues?
the whole notion that a food system can illustrate fear or faith and a farm system can illustrate fear or faith may be an entirely new concept. I get that. but could we appreciate that such illumination from a lunatic finger could be as valuable and neat as a new evangelistic technique or a new communication technique to help you rediscover honeymoon love? dear Christian brothers and sisters, I really believe that if the faith community could push through this faith of fear food and farm understanding, it would be perhaps the most powerful force for eclectic good our country has seen for a long, long time.
it would sure turn the creation worshippers on their heads. they'd sit there stuttering and stammering, unable to know where to go or what to say. we'd break their stereotypes. we wouldn't fit their pigeonholes anymore. they'd be dumbfounded and that would be a powerful work of faith. God would smile.
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