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The Redeeming the Dirt Podcast
The Redeeming the Dirt Podcast
Developing a Christian Worldview for Agriculture with Micah Humphreys
In this episode of the Redeeming the Dirt Podcast, we explore the important connection between agriculture and a Christian worldview, discussing how biblical principles can inform and transform farming practices. You will hear insights from Micah Humphreys, a professor at the College of the Ozarks, emphasizing stewardship and the role of faith in nurturing God's creation while encouraging listeners to engage in agriculture with hearts of humility and obedience to God.
In our conversation we cover topics like:
• Understanding the necessity of a Christian worldview in agriculture
• The role of stewardship in reflecting our faith in farming practices
• Insights from Micah Humphreys on education in agricultural perspectives
• The relationship between daily farming tasks and worshipful living
• Encouraging biblical thinking about different farming methods
• The importance of storytelling in shaping our agricultural worldview
• Navigating the tension of farming in a post-fall world with hope and humility
• Practical ways to integrate faith into agriculture and decision-making
• The significance of prayer and seeking God's guidance in farming practices
A powerful reminder from this episode is the importance of storytelling in shaping our worldview. Just as the world narrates its version of history, we, as Christians, have a narrative of creation, fall, redemption, and restoration—one that is distinctly crafted by the gospel. This overarching story provides context and purpose to our lives, fostering a deeper appreciation for the land that we cultivate.
Links:
College of the Ozarks
https://www.cofo.edu/
Affiliate Book Links:
Born-Again Dirt, Farming to the Glory of God by Noah Sanders
Well-Watered Garden Handbook by Noah Sanders
Pollution and the Death of Man by Francis Schaeffer
Where Garden Meets Wilderness by Calvin Beisner
Welcome to the Redeeming the Dirt podcast. I'm Noah Sanders and really excited to be back with you this year, in 2025, and excited to talk about our topic today. Today I really want to talk about just this idea of developing a Christian worldview of agriculture. You know, the neat thing about biblical Christianity and what God calls us to through the story of the Bible is that the story of God's creation, our man's fall, the redemption story, and then, you know, our transformation because of what Jesus does in our hearts is something that should produce a changed life. It's not just, you know, a philosophy we adhere to, but it's something that God is really looking to show the world what he can do through people and really display himself through our lives. So I was reading today in Romans 12, where it says you know, do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by. I was reading today in Romans 12, where it says the world today kind of wants us to keep our religion in the church and not really bring it out into the rest of life. But this idea of really conforming to the will of God and being different from the world is very much an aspect of not only what the Bible teaches, but historical, true Christianity as well. And what we want to talk about today is, you know, how do we apply this principle of pursuing God's will in something as practical as agriculture how we garden, how we farm, how we raise animals? Um, how do we evaluate solutions? How do we talk about what should be or what shouldn't be, or is that even a question? Um, you know is, is there really even something like that that we should be uh, connecting or applying, or is agriculture not really related to faith, which, of course, if you've been listening to this podcast, that's a whole aspect of what we've been, you know, we're trying to present is that there is. So, but in order to be able to answer those questions of you know, should you, you know, should I plow or should I not plow, or should I use chemicals or not chemicals, and should I raise animals or should I kill animals or not? All those are really worldview questions that relate back to our perspective and even though, you know, when we're saved we get a new heart, Oftentimes we as Christians still have a unbiblical worldview about a lot of things in life, and it takes work and study and like growing in order to think accurately about the different areas of life, whether it's marriage and relationships or something like farming, and so it's something we want to.
Speaker 1:It's a conversation that is somewhat lacking in the church today and we really want to not just say, oh, I know all the answers of how this should look, but it's a conversation that we need to be challenging each other, to grow in. How can we reflect who you know, the change of heart that we have and the truth of the story, of what God has shared through the Bible in the way we approach agriculture and the land? And today I'm really excited because I have a new friend and guest to be able to discuss some of these topics with me, who's Micah Humphreys? I'm assuming that's the get your last name correctly. You can correct me if I'm wrong, but Micah is a professor, a teacher at the College of the Ozarks and really grateful to have you. Micah, thanks for joining us today.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a real pleasure.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So would you mind just giving us a quick introduction to yourself? I've been to College of the Ozarks twice over the years, visiting Once when I was out west with my family one time because a beekeeper friend of mine that I mentored under growing up thought it was the coolest thing ever and was like you should go by. So we went by there and then my wife and I were out in that area several years later and stopped by again. So tell us just a bit about the College of the Ozarks, and a bit about yourself as well, before we get into our discussion today.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so College of the Ozarks is a Christian college. We're small, we're probably 1,300 students or so, and we're what's known as a work college, so all the students have a job that they do on campus 15 hours a week, and then a little bit, a few extra weeks of work during the year, and that pays for their tuition. So that's. There's maybe a handful of these kinds of colleges in the nation. None that I'm aware of are actually Christian, so that's pretty unique.
Speaker 2:We also have a department of agriculture, and that itself, again at a Christian college, to have an agriculture program is unique, there's a handful of them and we are actually just now trying to put together a list of those colleges, maybe make a work group so that we know who each other are Like. We're still in that phase. So we have kind of a full-scale ag department here, several faculty and staff. We have work stations in the ag department, like a dairy, we have a feed mill, we have a hog operation, a beef cattle operation, hay making, we have greenhouses, we so those are some of the places that we have students that are working. So that's where we are here at College of the Ozarks.
Speaker 2:I've been here four years. Originally I'm from Oklahoma. I have a wife, three kids. I've taught my whole career. So I started in Wyoming teaching in Northwest part of Wyoming and then moved back to the St Louis area, st Charles Community College where there was a need for an ag program to get started. So I helped start that and then things were getting difficult to be in a institution of higher education that wasn't Christian and so that got me looking around. I knew about College of the Ozarks and God's opened a door for us to be here. So I'm really grateful because this has given all the stuff that we're going to talk about which I've been thinking about for a while. This is the place that I'm actually able to say to teach all of it is the place that I'm actually able to say to teach all of them Teach. What I say is agriculture as it should be taught.
Speaker 1:So that is awesome. That is awesome. Well, would you mind sharing just a bit about you know how you kind of came to thinking about this, this idea of you know the intersection of faith and farming, worldview and farming and, like you said, agriculture, how it should be taught. You know it is not a common thing today.
Speaker 1:There are a lot of professing Christians in agriculture and they're not really being, I guess you would say, epistemologically self-conscious. No, we're not really evaluating. You know why we're doing what we're doing and those kinds of things. And then there's a lot of epistemologically self-conscious or like people asking how should we do things or all that in agriculture that are not Christian and tend to be very godless and but they're better at like I can talk about how should we farm with my hippie farmer friends, sometimes easier than I can talk about how should we farm with my hippie farmer friends, sometimes easier than I can with my Southern Baptist truck farmer friend, you know. So for you you need like you're, you're brazing up and starting discussions about this topic when very few other people are. So what is a bit of the journey that kind of got you to to this point?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I grew up in the church, Southern Baptist Church, which I loved, because in a Southern Baptist Church you know what the gospel is about. You never leave without being invited into the gospel, and so that's how I grew up. College years I was challenged by, let's say, the reformformed version of Christianity Reformed view of Christianity, and a big deal in the Reformed world is all about your.
Speaker 2:You know how you're, what you're thinking about how you're thinking all the categories and stuff, and so that was a bit of an influence. Influence. Um, I I really don't know how this happened, but somehow I got a copy of francis schaefer's pollution and the death of man a christian view of ecology, and I was in, I was in graduate school, um, at, I think, oklahoma state university and I had read it and I was like that's interesting because I was in the environmental sort of environmental science, ecological world. I had a minor in agro ecosystem, so I was over in the biology department and kind of being faced with, you know, the atheistic biological worldview, biological worldview. So I read that and I was like here's a Christian who is having a thought about the environment. It has a way to see how a Christian should think about creation. And that was really.
Speaker 2:I felt like I got a map of my, my area of study. Like I didn't have a map, I was kind of wandering around. I knew it was a Christian but I didn't know how to deal with all this stuff that was coming at me, particularly in terms of how how we should care for the environment and how agriculture fit into that. So it gave me like a map and I could trace some of the roads and if I had a professor that was saying this thing, I could take that and I could be like, oh, that is here on the worldview map. So that was a big, big deal.
Speaker 2:And so I hung out with Schaefer for a long time but I couldn't. I was like somebody's got to take Schaefer and move it forward into agriculture, sort of push it into the edges of agriculture, and so that's really the area that I've been living in is, I know there's a Christian view of agriculture. I know there should be Christian principles of agriculture based on the scriptures and then sort of based on Schaefer's way of, I think, biblically seeing things. So right now I'm just I feel like I'm like I'm waking up to how to think well about agriculture, and you can call it whatever, uh, christian worldview agriculture, biblical agriculture, whatever. If we're talking about the Bible and we're talking about the creation, I'm like I'm in, right. So just gathering to myself all the books that I can, talking to people who will listen to me for more than four minutes what do you think about this? My friends, family, whoever and just kind of getting getting my thoughts ordered is really been from from the time of Schaefer.
Speaker 2:Now I think, and we'll probably talk about Joel Salatin, but I think Salatin is one of the ones who's in in a big way trying to wrestle with these issues. So that's been a pretty, a pretty key moment, I think, for the church as well.
Speaker 1:So yeah, well, that is. It's neat, because I think it's. It's always neat to hear the journeys that God takes us on. And you know, one of the things that excites me is just because I've been in this space, a bit of talking about this, for just a few years. I get to hear from a lot of different people and it just excites me because I think, hearing so many stories similar to yours and people that are practitioners and all that, where they really feel this passion for agriculture Maybe they've been in it, maybe they haven't, you know, maybe they're getting into it, but they're like, but it's not about that, you know, it's really about what God wants to do through that in in our family, in our life as farmers.
Speaker 1:You know, missions or just community stuff or whatever it is, or just in their own family, and everybody's like I don't know how to do it, I don't, and I and a lot of them be like I have this really weird, you know, like vision for some kind of farm that like really impacts people and I'm just like it's okay, like everybody else, you know is doing the same thing, join the, join the club here, yeah, um, but it's not because everybody is has, like, heard the same thing or read the same book.
Speaker 1:You know it. There's definitely been common denominators, but it really seems seems to be something that God's just doing in the church and that's. You know. I think you have people like David Platt and others that are like it's about how do we join what God's with what God's doing? You know, it's not just how do we bless, have him bless what we're doing, but how do we really just say where are you at, where are you working, god? That's where we want to be and that's what I feel like. I don't know what it's all going to look like or where it's going to end up, but I feel like that's something that God is just sparking and waking up and that's what encourages me, because we don't have to know where it's going, we just have to know, like he's here, and we just want to be a part of it and go with it.
Speaker 1:But from some of your perspective and I can share some of mine as well you know, agriculture hasn't been something addressed by the church at large today. It's something that is a bit of a divisive topic. Sometimes it's hard to know how to talk about it in a healthy way. Same thing with like food and health and those kinds of things. But what are you so? What are you saying from your perspective? That are some of the common views today on by Christians on how their faith relates to agriculture um, I can think of maybe three big ways that the church could.
Speaker 2:You could ask an average person in the church and they might respond to one of three ways. I think one would be like why would you? This is a phrase that gets thrown around why would you polish? Polish the brass on a sinking ship. It's going to burn, what's the deal, so don't get so worked up about it. That would be a weak.
Speaker 1:Another view would be agriculture as a tool almost exclusively for gospel expansion.
Speaker 2:It's a segue to the gospel. A segue, gospel, an open door for the, for the gospel, and that's, you know, to that extent, is the extent that we pay attention. Um, I think the people who are a little more brainiacs and they would say, well, here, oh, here's a new subject area that we can flesh out what, what the scripture has to say and what it means, and, um, I think here's a new subject area that we can flesh out what the Scripture has to say and what it means. I think that's a view. In that view, I think there's room for a biblical view of calling and then really having that being a weighty thing to deal with.
Speaker 2:And so, if it's a calling, how do I, how, how do I excel at that, at this particular calling, in a godly way, just like I would if I was a widget maker. I would want to glorify God in the. And what does the Bible have to say about widget? You know. So, you, we, we should expect it in all areas. So I think those to me, that's what I'm seeing. Do you have?
Speaker 2:other thoughts on that, in terms of what the church is, how the church reacts to.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, I just think of um, you know, you have, we have different starting points, different people, but I think there's, there's, you know, more of the a lot of the people that are really doing farming and more of the the you know existing farming generations and people that are that have been doing it. Um, a lot of them that I've talked to, um, that I really respect is like farmers and older farmers and what to learn from, but I um, they've just never few of them have ever connected, uh, farming with that. I remember talking at the Fellowship of Christian Farmers International Conference and that's actually out in Branson. That's where we went by the Ozarks after then and one of the guys came up afterwards and he was an older farmer and he was like you know. He said I tried doing cover crops the other year in this one field and he said I guess that would be kind of like, you know, trying to maybe honor God and like trying to give back to the land, like it was just a revelatory thought that something that he was doing in the field could actually be related to, you know, his, his faith, cause he was. You know, the fellowship of Christian farmers really does a great job of gospel sharing and disaster relief. It's like a community of farmers that you know work together to go do those things. But the idea of like how that's affecting the way you farm was just not something that they really thought about before.
Speaker 1:And then, I think in the church in particular, a lot of if you start asking, you know, how should we care for creation? You have some people you know that are coming in the other, the kind of like the new generation of farmers. Many of them, you know, are kind of back to the land, homesteaders or they a lot of them got into it because of health issues or other stuff. So they're much more aware because they've they're getting into it, they're thinking about it more. And a lot of times the reaction from the church is oh, that's environmental stuff. Like you're environmental, which I kind of you feel like we should be past that by now. But I keep you, which I kind of you feel like we should be past that by now, but I keep you know like people will be like they. Just you know like it's still there. It's very much a roadblock. You start talking about how should we care for creation in general and people in the church just like yeah.
Speaker 2:They're looking for your Birkenstocks. They're like do you have Birkenstocks?
Speaker 1:Exactly, and sometimes you're wearing them and that's what it, and it and I think that's the challenge is farming. I don't know about you, but it's, I think, this idea of food and farming. They're very personal things that that are you're very invested in. And you know, one of my discipleship mentors is saying, like, for there to be change, you've got to be, you've got to have a combination of a discontent with the status quo, knowledge of a better way and a practical pathway to get there. But those three have to outweigh the inertia of the status quo. Well, the inertia of status quo in agriculture is is great, you know. That's why I'm like I love what you're working with students, cause once you've got some farmer that's already 30 years in, they're not like, well, what kind of techniques do I want to use next year? Like they just they can't really ask that question. But those are some of the things.
Speaker 1:I see is like people are uncomfortable talking about the worldview because it smacks of environmentalism and a lot of the older farmers have never even thought about it and how that is.
Speaker 1:And then a lot of the younger generation, you know, some people can get really passionate about it and I can understand, especially when people have had serious health issues related to chemicals and stuff. But it's just then, all of a sudden, you start having this older farmer who's just trying to make a living and trying to keep the family farm in the family and is up to his eyeballs in debt and somebody else is like you know, if you grow GMOs you're sinning, you know, and it just doesn't create a healthy conversation. So that's the that's. My biggest grief is just that there there's, uh, there hasn't been an ability to have very healthy conversations because of the disparate starting points in the church of most people that are involved in agriculture at all, which is like the new homestead, organic people, and then the existing, you know, large scale farmers, that, um, so I don't know, have you seen kind of some of that as well?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think so. You touched on something there, um. So I don't know, have you seen kind of some of that as well? Yeah, I think so you touched on something there. Um, in terms of you know, if somebody has a health issue, and especially if it's it's really causing some significant pain or suffering, like that becomes, I mean it's just right, it's right. And you, you, that's the thing you have to deal with, and so you know why they're, why they're passionate about that, for sure.
Speaker 1:It's hard to be hard to show a bit of grace. You know, like to people, that you're like this. My daughter just has you know, whatever, and it's. It's a little more easy to be pretty prophetic in the way you approach the topic, you know.
Speaker 2:I wonder, as we're talking about this, I wonder what the influence one of the reasons, maybe, why we're talking about this. I wonder what the influence. One of the reasons, maybe why we're talking about this is because the influence of the world's perspective on food and the environment is so strong, and I don't know what the word is striking like. They're dogmatic you gotta, you have to produce this way. This is the health, this is health, and so forth, and maybe God's used that and leveraging that in the church to try to help us even have these conversations right.
Speaker 1:Because, some of that in what you're saying.
Speaker 2:Like the old farmer sees the crazy things that the world's saying about food and farming and the you know, the the younger generation is like, hey, there's some, there's some pretty significant truth to that Right, which is true. But Francis Schaeffer, in his book, he has this passage where he was like hey, we are doing a worse job as the church. The hippies are doing what we should be doing. Now, not in the same way, not an earth worship, but they have a respect that we don't have. And so I think we're still. We're still there, we're still in that frame of mind.
Speaker 1:Right, and I think I really like what you said, because that that idea of you know the way God tends to create growth in the church is more often through conflict than through, you know, anything else. And it's like when we get comfortable, there's very little ability to grow. I was thinking about recently, uh, uh, the idea of triangulation. You know it's. It's really nice when you can agree with people, um, and you know. But the challenge is when you agree with somebody else, uh, you could both be right or you could both be wrong, and if you're both wrong, then you're comfortable in your wrongness, and so maybe you're right, like there's this idea of trajectory, right, but also you know your direction, and so when I'm with a like-minded person, we can be like encouraging it.
Speaker 1:Look, we're pointing to Jesus, isn't that awesome? You know, we can just like encourage each other in that, try to keep each other pointed at Jesus. But then we find somebody you know, let's say you have somebody that's that's not on the same page with you in terms of your starting point or maybe your perspective and experience, and they may be over here. But then you talk to them and you're like, oh, actually they're pointed Jesus too. That's really odd. And then you all of a sudden look at the trajectory, the triangulation, you're like wow, that means I am a really long way from Jesus still, yeah you're like oh great.
Speaker 1:But I'm just saying that's where, like in the church, we need to appreciate that when God gives us somebody that's at a different starting point than we are but is also seeking, like trying to grow towards Christ, we have more like ability to be challenged with how far we still are from Christ, like even if we're maybe pointing towards him. You know, we can kind of sit on the road and being glad we're on the road with a like-minded person, but until you have that other point of triangulation, then you don't realize how far you are. And I think that's with a lot of this we need to. It needs to be a humility to say none of us are where we really need to be in terms of what God calls us to, and we need to be unifying around the fact that we need to be pursuing that, being faithful to where we are and and allowing God to produce the growth that he can look at later and say well done with what I gave you.
Speaker 1:You know whether you were like a 3000 acre multi-generational corn and soybean farmer. You know that has multimillion dollars like what do you do with that? How did he? How was he faithful with that? Or a backyard homestead, or like what, how were they faithful with what they had been convicted of, and those kinds of things, so that we're both able to, you know, grow more towards um and acknowledge just that idea. That it's not about are you right or am I right, but humbly acknowledging what God calls us to is something that we're never going to attain, and we need each other actually to challenge each other, to stay humble and pursue that and not just grow apathetic.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's. I kept thinking as you were talking. I was like, oh, this is just, this is just humility, this is just discipleship. Humility to be able to have a conversation with somebody that you don't, maybe you don't see eye to eye with, but, yeah, if you, if you approach it with humility, that's you can. Yeah, I think there's progress and godliness to be had there, you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and there's three things somebody like over the years I've been trying to say what are those evidences of pride in my own life and other people's lives, when a lot of times we can seem humble but sometimes we're not? And one of them is um, teachability Like, if you're not teachable, that's an element like pride can come out and uh, or that's, that's a root of pride. Another is um, lack of gratitude, um, and another one, and then another one that one of my mentors mentioned to me earlier last year um, which was really convicting to me because I feel like this is really prevalent in my life. As he said, uh, prideful people don't ask for help, um, or they don't think they need other people, and I was like, well, that is definitely me a lot of times. So you think about, like if we were actually humble, we would be seeking to learn from each other, like that teachability we were receiving and, you know, input we would be grateful for for others, even if they're completely like at a different place than we are, and we would be wanting their help.
Speaker 1:It's like I may have like a large scale. It's like I was growing up, like I had beekeeper friends. I love them and I learned so much from them, even though you know they were like on me every day to try to treat my hives with some newest, latest, greatest chemical. You know that came out that I was trying to be like yeah, you know, but I'm like there was so much to learn from that, you know so grateful for every bit that I was able to learn from that. I think God blessed that. But I think that's where one of our biggest hindrances in this kind of place is the lurking pride that you know, in mannerisms. In our own perspective, we can be very like not prideful but we always have the right answer. We really don't appreciate what other people are bringing. We don't need anybody else's help and so we seem sweet and kind, but we're just. We're just like. God is like. I cannot use you because this big plug called pride is getting in the way of you know you growing?
Speaker 2:Yeah, you're waiting. I mean, I see it in my life like, yeah, I'm super chill, whatever. But in the back of my mind I'm kind of waiting until I get a space to say what I really think. Just tell everybody what the right answer is. Just ask me and I'll tell you.
Speaker 1:you know yes yes, it is God. Have mercy on us for that.
Speaker 2:Please please.
Speaker 1:Well, talking about like being in that place of humility and recognize that none of us are where we need to be, I think is again an element of reflecting the gospel. But let's just talk a bit about, you know, as we look at the scriptures. If we're trying to just go back to the 30,000 foot view and just let's say, okay, god, we probably gotten it wrong. Let's wipe the slate clean for our perspective of agriculture. What did like where? What is agriculture even? And what did you know? What did you intend for it to be originally? What is our role in agriculture? What should be based on some of the things that we can see? You know, going all the way back to Genesis and what would you say? I mean again, it's a big topic, but in just in terms of what are some of those things that are in Genesis, in the original? You know, account of creation and the garden and all that that could or should inform you know God's original design for agriculture that should inform our view and identity as stewards?
Speaker 2:yeah, you think yeah, that's a good, that's a really good question. That, yeah, helps us. Helps us see or put in the context why we want to think about agriculture in it because if it's not part of what god's called us to do, like let's, who cares?
Speaker 1:forget about it. We're just going to go. Let's just go share the gospel, right, let's not? We don't time to waste in. But if it is, how is it a part of what God wants?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, of course, camping on Genesis is absolutely key. Some, some points that I've, some things that I've been influenced by other people like that they've brought out to me that I've taken hold of, maybe first that that we were, we were made for work like that's not a bad thing um, not a dirty four-letter word?
Speaker 2:for a little word. He, god, plants a garden in the beginning and then he puts mankind, whom he had formed, there to do a thing right, and that doing of the thing to work and keep shows us that it's we were built. We were built for it. So that's a big thing for me and my students that I try to keep center that also. I mean in that story we've also got the necessity of fellowship, the necessity of communion with God, the gift of dominion, the gift and the requirement, the responsibility that's there as well.
Speaker 2:You know there's a fellow named Calvin Beisner who some of the ways that he has seen have even recently really impacted me and I think it plays into sort of our view of a Christian agriculture. He points out that in the garden you have mankind told to work and keep, so guard, work and guard, and then outward of the garden, in quote, as other things happening. So he has fruitful, multiply, fill, subdue, have dominion out there, and he says there's, you know, the plants yielding seed on the face of all the earth. So there's almost this sort of garden context and then earth context and all that happens even even in Genesis, prior to the fall, such that there's something to do outside the garden, that's maybe different than what was inside the garden, and so for me that those kinds of things, when I think about what was God's design, original design for agriculture, I have that's what floats around in my mind.
Speaker 1:So yeah, and especially as we talk today about how, what is you know, if you are trying to identify and evaluate how you know, a godless perspective of you know, especially if you have an evolutionary kind of slant to it, where it's, you know, man is nothing special on on the earth. That really does shape the way that you view things. Nature can be idealistic, it's the ultimate, supreme thing. But I, you know, I've always thought about reading that, that passage at the beginning, when god tells you man, you know, basically here I've, because again you talk about work, god worked first, so it obviously must not be a bad thing. Um, but then he, he was like to include us in that work, to then like, have us come in as his image bearers to reflect him in the way we manage it and, and quote, take dominion of it and rule and rule over it. Is, is like such a such an amazing thing that he would involve us in that, rule over it is, uh, is like such a such an amazing thing that he would involve us in that. But I always think about Adam, like here's the guy's, like it's good, it's good, it's good, everything's good, except for me not having you know, help me. And then you know we fixed that problem, so then everything's good. And then you'd be like, all right, go forth, multiply, you know, rule over, subdue the nature. I'd be like, dude, it looks awesome. What am I supposed to do? Let's just take a walk. There's probably plenty of stuff we can go harvest.
Speaker 1:But then when you look at where God put man, god planted the first garden. So in my mind, I kind of view that, as this was like, when you have the discipleship, you model, assist, watch and leave, kind of thing. This is God modeling for Adam and this is kind of what, like, this is what it's supposed to look like. And he puts them there. And it was God's creation. It wasn't something. It was reordered for an increase of beauty. You know, all kind of fruit trees are pleasing to the eye, good for food. It was more productive, specifically designed for man, to benefit man, and it was a place, like you said, for relationships. It was a place to live and have, you know, and and be inhabited. It's like my garden. I can plant a garden where, uh, the plants are happy and it's more beautiful and productive, but if I have no um access rows to get in there and pick this stuff. It is not very like habitable, like you know. It can. It can be, but it's got to be designed to interact with, with people, and so then, kind of like, go and do that in the rest of the creation is a very uniquely biblical thing.
Speaker 1:That really, uh, goes against a lot of the you know kind of man is the curse on the face of the earth. Creation is best when man doesn't. I think we've yet to see the productive capacity that good stewardship can do. We've never. We have not yet seen that, even in its fallen state. We haven't. But there's this verse in isaiah that I love as well um, it says for this is what this is on 40 isaiah, 45, 18 says for this is what the lord says, he who created the heavens, he is god, he who fashioned and made the earth, he founded it. He did not create it to be empty but formed it to be inhabited. So when you view, creation is like, instead of it's like it's perfect, and then we kind of mess it up and and inhibit it from doing what it's supposed to. It's waiting with like unlocked, like uh, unrealized potential for the, the people to show up. Yeah, yeah, which is such a total.
Speaker 2:It's like such an inspiring perspective yes to have you know, because we and we have to deal with. We have to deal with the fact that god created that outward, outside of the garden world, good period, the end, right to, as it were, to be made better, right, right. So, and I think you're exactly right, even in the context of the fall, there's productivity that we I mean we haven't, even we haven't filled the earth yet.
Speaker 1:I mean people act like we have. But we have not.
Speaker 2:So we, there's a ton of work to and I think there's in in our day. It's really interesting. There's some, there's a ton of work and I think there's in our day. It's really interesting. There's a few folks sort of outside of the church who are starting to see, not starting. I think they're doing a good job. There's a book called that I haven't read, called Super Abundance right Up the Earth. That he's doing on fossil fuels. It's kind of like, you know, in order to flourish, if that's a goal, which is human flourishing, which I'm like, that's a Christian, that's a Christian to flourish. But you're seeing it up there.
Speaker 1:So yeah, so I think there's, you know, again, we've just barely scratched the surface of this idea of God's original intent, you know, and our roles as his stewards. But it's such an important aspect because I remember reading it's actually I was reading one of my um, uh books.
Speaker 1:Um, I won't name it but it's a permaculture homestead book, and the guy at the beginning was like we have to get away from this idea of stewardship, because this is such a domineering kind of perspective we need to go back to. We're just one of creation. So how we view stewardship, though, is we were not here just to. Here's the earth, take it, enjoy it, do whatever you want to with it, like when you're gardening for the king, you know, then you have responsibility. It's not yours to do with whatever you want to, and so, rather than true dominion, produce you know it's not going to produce, uh, destruction of the earth.
Speaker 1:If you, if we, as as the church, understand what true stewardship responsibility is, we should, in fear and trembling, be, you know, uh, much more motivated to, like you said, create abundance and leave the earth better than we did before. Um, because of the one that we are caring for it for. Yeah, it's still his, and we're going to have to give an account one day. And I don't know what it means, but in Revelation it talks about and he'll come back to destroy those who destroy the earth. That's a bit of a terrifying verse, like whoo.
Speaker 2:It is. It is, I mean God has a view of his creation and I would say God has a view of his creation and I would say God has a view of his creation arguably apart from mankind. So I think there's evidence that God in some cases makes promises to and covenants with creation apart from man, or at least adjacent to man. So what you're saying about stewardship it's it gives some weight to this stewardship, like there is authority in stewardship, but there's also a weight that you are a responsible party.
Speaker 1:Yeah, israel got kicked out a few times. You know, like, for, yeah, there was very related to like, yeah, the land needs whatever all that rest that you didn't give it, that I told you to in this particular you know application and so you know it's it's like you'll you would kick and out the entire people group and for the land to have a break. That's pretty wow, that's pretty crazy. But the other thing I think that relates to some of this is just this idea of um, of life. When god created life, you know, from a christian perspective, life is something very special, it's very god like.
Speaker 1:Uh, you know, it's not something science has been able to mimic or even define really, and so whenever we deal with anything that's living, there seems to be biblically a moral, ethical dimension of ought to and ought not to. That isn't there. When you're dealing with just, you know, material science or something like that, like you have the character and and some ethics of how you do that. But, um, you know it's anything living in. You know the scriptures there's, like you, this is how you should treat it. There's a right. You know you should let the land rest, you should let your animals rest, you should. You know there's commands about that that your worldview, I guess, impacts more. It's like is the chicken something special?
Speaker 1:Was it or is it just whatever? It's just another you know, random accident by evolution that you know you can plug it into whatever system you want and if you can do it, then do it. Yeah.
Speaker 1:And so that's where farming. I think when I was blacksmithing there was not. I used to have a blacksmithing business there was not the controversy you know, around making knives, that there is around growing tomatoes and and I realized it's really because you're dealing with life, living things, your ethical framework really has much more of an impact than in some of those other fields.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think it's derivable from from the scriptures. I mean, what's the proverb? I can't, it's not with me right now, but the one about how the person treats their animals. I mean, this matters to God and I think you're right over. I do think that the let's just say the geological, the abiotic world has importance to God, but I do think there's this elevation of what you're saying the biological and we've, I think the theologians have really tried to deal with this.
Speaker 1:I think about CS Lewis wanting to really being against testing on animals because because of that space, that biological life means something more right yeah, I mean, it was one of the whole, one of the only commands from judaism that the early church encourages, like let's not drink the blood. Yeah, and that was really related to honoring the, the life of that animal, in a way that was special and different than other things.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we have to ask. When we see scriptures like that, we have to say to ourselves what in the world has happened? What in the world is this here for? Exactly? Not a detail, not a jot or two.
Speaker 1:What is this telling us about God and how he views the world and how he wants us to view the world? Not just let's add it to our to-do list okay whatever that means exactly.
Speaker 1:So let's go on to like uh, you know, we have obviously God's original design. What are some of the ways that you know this? I you know? The story of the gospel is God created everything. He's a holy, just and creator. You know, gracious creator, he created us with this mission, this all purpose and everything. But then you know, you have the, you know man said no, thank you, we're gonna do it like, we'd rather do it, this, our own way. And so there's this rebellion and this curse that came as a result of that. Um, how do you think that should impact or inform our perspective of agriculture and our and our role in it today?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so, so, obviously, the introduction of basically pest management, the big things that I talk about in.
Speaker 2:So I'm teaching an integrated pest management class right now and one of the first things I did was set the stage from a, from a biblical perspective, like as to the why right, why, why do we have to do this? So, so I think, I think about pest management, I think of the, the hardship of of work now, um, I think of both mankind and or and the earth being under us, under a bondage, right? So romans 8 says that creation is groaning and is under bondage. Um, so we have to, we have to say that, we have to wrestle with that. We, when we see, uh, when we see a tomato plant, we need to think two things that's incredible and awesome and complex, and I could take my whole life to study it. And also, it somehow it's not the full tomato plant that it was, that it's supposed to be right. So, having the ability to see that bondage and that groaning, and this romans 8 is really weird to me because it's saying that creation wants something like, like, like the tomato.
Speaker 2:Longing for something longing these objects that are alive, and maybe the ones that aren't alive have a longing somehow to be made set free or to be set free, um. So holding all that in your mind at once, right, um, I think, by virtue of the fall, some people associate our responsibility like maybe we have less responsibility now because because of the fall, maybe we're not, maybe we don't have dominion anymore. Uh, maybe we're not supposed to be doing.
Speaker 1:It's a sinking ship, so who cares now?
Speaker 2:yeah, so, unless, unless we can show and we can that, that the dominion mandate, that the stewardship mandate is repeated in the scriptures, then then they're right, but we can't right right, and he was.
Speaker 1:And adam was banished from the garden to work the ground from which he was taken.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, exactly. So I think that we, um, we, we need to be able to show uh, you know passages like after noah gets off the boat, we have the dominion mandate repeated the be fruitful, multiply and fill the earth to mankind and also to the animals, and maybe actually the. The scandal of that is that in genesis 9, it looks like god talks more to the livestock than he does really to us. He's saying and you be fruitful, multiply and fill the earth. And this covenant is to you and your children and every living thing and every living thing.
Speaker 1:So and he's like and, by the way, you can eat some of them now.
Speaker 2:Yes, yeah, also hamburgers Right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, man's rebellion and the curse is so important because you know, I'm part of, you know, work with Foundations for Farming. We have Farming God's Way. We have, you know, the whole Back to Eden documentary by Paul Gauci. All these, really these great things that really do showcase, hey look, god has. If we just if we appreciate to even a small degree some of the way that the original designer made stuff, then it works better. It's like when you try to chop down a tree with a butter knife, it just works better if you use that to slice butter, and it works better to slice, you know, to slice butter if you use a butter knife instead of an ax. I mean, it's just, you know, but some of the danger is we're like, and so, therefore, if we could just shift our perspective and our approach, enough we should have no problems. We should, you know, be back to where it was before the fall. And I feel like that is not something that we should expect yet, because I think the you know the effects of our rebellion and the curse. There's kind of two well, it created a broken relationship with creation, that's what you know some people in. Kind of two, well, it created a broken relationship with creation. That's what you know. Some people in kind of the I think it's in multiple books, but the idea of the relationship gospel, where it's not just sin separated us from God and Jesus gets us back. But it's this idea of God created man with his spiritual relationship to God, his relationship to himself, his relationship to others and to creation. And when we rejected God self, his relationship to others and to creation and when we rejected God, it broke. All those relationships resulted in shame, blame and pain. And so when Jesus comes back, like he's coming to help provide opportunities for growth and healing and restoration in all of those areas, he gives us new identity, gives us ability to love people like that don't love us back. But he also he's here to fix that broken relationship with creation, which is why I think the gospel does have to apply to this.
Speaker 1:But there's kind of the natural brokenness that is the result of that creation groaning when I go out and work in my garden, like I am face to face with death, disease, decay, destruction, disorder, you know, like it is not wanting to flourish even when I'm working with it. Really, you know well, there's just, and I think some of that is what is our expectation and that's where you know the world will look at. Oh my goodness, species are extinct, you know becoming extinct, and all these, like everything feels like it's kind of degenerating. It's probably all our fault and you know what? The next thing I would say is the other aspect of it.
Speaker 1:There's the natural brokenness, and then there's their sinful brokenness, where most of the starvation in the world is not due to the fact that the climate is an ideal and there's no resources. It's because of selfishness, pridefulness, unfaithfulness, wars, theft, you know, like ignorance, all, like it's mostly our own heart's fault that we're suffering in relation to our relationship with creation, like I, and so understanding that uh, that's why jesus is is actually relative. Or you know an important aspect to farming it's not just like, okay, so I'm gonna put the bumper sticker on my farm truck. Like I, I do want to acknowledge jesus, but what is? What does it really have to do with it?
Speaker 1:When you recognize, like, our broken relationship with creation? Yes, it's partly inherent in creation, but actually the way that we don't make it worse and we actually can overcome those negative aspects is when we have a humble heart, is when we approach our, our resources with an attitude of faithfulness, with little and those kind of things, and when we approach it unselfishly, wanting to give back to the land and use that to give to others, and that's where Jesus really is needed. And if you don't feel like, again, it's just like if there's no bad news, there's no good news. So we have to be able to define what the bad news is, why there are so many problems in agriculture and why this Jesus and in the story of the gospel is really good news for being able to approach and solve these solutions, and why godless solutions are not always ones that we should just be like. That sounds awesome because there's a lot of side effects sometimes to those things.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it takes real skill. I mean, it takes wisdom. I'm learning more. It takes wisdom with scripture, with experience and relationship to other and creation. I think maybe that's the best entry point into a discussion for people who aren't, who are haven't thought about what does the bible have to do with agriculture? Right, I think that is the the way that it makes sense, like, okay, I can buy into that Broken between us and creation. So, yeah, I really appreciate that for sure.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's the biggest. It's not necessarily the best gospel sharing tool with an unbeliever, but it's one that I equip most people, like a lot of the people that we work with. I'm like this is what you need to use to talk to other Christians about this topic and to help you understand it as well. So any other. So I've kind of talked about it a second, but just in terms of thinking about what you know Jesus's victory on the cross, how that impacts agriculture. Did you have any thoughts on that particular topic?
Speaker 2:I mean, the thing that I think about number one is for agriculture is that his resurrection from the dead was the beginning of the rewinding of death. I don't know what that means exactly, but we have to deal with it. I think those effects of the resurrection must reverberate throughout creation. So so that's one thing I try to keep at the forefront of my mind is that this has to be, it is and and must be, even for agriculture, the landmark occurrence. So so, so, maybe so that what I like to tell students when we're pulling weeds, we are somehow enacting that rewinding and the future, or like we're working forward, we know that in the end of all things it will be like this, and so we enact that, however small now. So that's what I see when I think of Christ's resurrection and what things have actually begun to change. Again, I love Schaeffer.
Speaker 2:Schaeffer has a chapter in this book called A Substantial Healing. Encouragement is okay. So if all these things are true and we are to have dominion and to love creation and to begin to act that way, then we should start to see, in his view, through the church and through the gospel, a substantial healing of the relationship between humans and the earth in the context of dominion and production and so forth, and fruitful and multiply, but we should begin to see that healing by virtue of the gospel and by virtue of Christ's resurrection. So these are things that I think about, but the technicals, and often students, are like okay, what is it? Are we going to have like less weeds? Or I mean, as time goes, we have less weeds, less diseases, whatever, and um, I don't know. There's probably a case to be made that overall health or longevity of people has increased since the resurrection, and so I don't know what yeah then, and yeah, I think there's this again, you know that theological term of already but not yet we're starting to see it.
Speaker 1:But then you know, but then it's kind of like you. Then you encounter the patch of Bermuda grass and you're like, yes, come Lord Jesus. We, you know, like this is this is not what I'm really like looking forward to, like this is we're not there yet. We are not there yet. And I think that's an element of what we, you know, even as we grow as Christians, you keep like you see, you see the victories, and then you see the like okay, yeah, I'm just like, yeah, I am ready for Jesus to come back. At the same time and I think there's an element of that that we, we display, you know, that hope. So that even when I try to do my best and I'm trying to honor the Lord and my milk cow dies, my garden, you know, gets eaten by the deer.
Speaker 1:My, you know, whatever happens that, I'm like not wrecked. Does it make sense? I'm not like, oh, my goodness God, what did I do wrong? It's like that actually is the reality that I live in. It's part of how God grows me, how he keeps my mind focused on eternity and not just happy to stay here and be like whenever you want to come back, jesus, that's fine, but I'm kind of like I worked really hard on my homestead, so could you wait a little bit.
Speaker 1:You know, there, there, there's an element of we where we are still groaning a bit with creation, but we're seeing, um, like you said, that foretaste, we're being, we're being kind of ambassadors of that healing, uh, that's foreshadowing the ultimate redemption that's going to come. Because it gives hope and people are like oh, my goodness, wow, like I can, like start my marriage. I'm communicating in a healthy way with my husband now because of the like, the love Jesus is. It doesn't mean that now marriage is easy, but it gives this taste of that hope of what Christ offers and what he's going to ultimately fulfill one day. That, I think, is the way that we kind of let that light shine through what we're doing to the world around us, and sometimes it's because it's in a broken world and is not being perfectly fixed and we're still working in that context. That testifies to the fact that our hope is in something more than just right now.
Speaker 2:Yes, More, more, more than in the physical thing that's in, that's in front of us. But you're right. This is the story, this is, this is the possibility, the hope of life from death. Yes. That's where we are. The word, pictures that are in front of us all day long. I think in agriculture, are so numerous. I mean, the idea of the fall is with us, right. The idea, yes, the idea of life from death, like all these word pictures are just they're. They're right, there, they are.
Speaker 1:They are and, uh, I I love that. So, as far as you know, we, we obviously have this rebellion. We have christ, like in. What do you think are some practical ways that we uh't just say, oh, it's a cool way to think about it, but like we reflect that submission to God and that we follow him in our farming journey? What is that? How do we do that practically? How do we put boots on this? Theoretical concepts we're talking about.
Speaker 2:You, um, we love him, so we keep his commandments. If we love him, then we love the things that he loves and love the things that he says, and we love the ways that God, the ways that he sees things. So we do as who was it Augustine or whatever? We want to think God's thoughts after him, and I would want to say we want to think God's agricultural thoughts after him. So it can be looking at the scripture and saying, okay, are there rules here for us? Which ones, and what do they look like? There's that, but there's also a way of seeing, if you well, like we've been talking about, there's a way of seeing that there is a specialness to the biological, to life. I think you can derive it from scriptures, but it doesn't say Abraham 3.16,. All biological Life is important, so you better respect it, right, but we can derive it from.
Speaker 1:Well, and we have to trust that the way God's revealed his heart about agriculture through scripture is exactly what we need. Yes, yeah, and, and it's not just sufficient, but like is sufficient in terms of perfectly sufficient. We don't, it's not like we're missing something.
Speaker 2:Yes, yeah, yeah. So having having a centrality of love for God, that drives us, because we could be just being counters and say, well, let's just list out all the commandments and whatever they are, just do them all and then we'll be good, right? So so, from from a heart of of submissive love to him, we keep his commandments and we follow that up with. I've tell my students that they need to be agri theologians. Tell my students that they need to be agri-theologians agri-theologians so that you have to want to listen to or read the scriptures, so you know who is this God and what does he think about the earth. So that's what. When I think about submission and following commands, that's what I think. Where he says not to do something, we better pay attention and say, okay, is this for us or was it for the Israelites, and why?
Speaker 1:What's behind it? What's behind it that we can still apply like that? We still need to be learning from today. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And I think there's good work out there, that there's a, let's say, the the puritan. The part that I'm familiar with is sort of the reformed world, you know he said the mind thing.
Speaker 2:but there's, there is some some pretty good theologians who are like, look, um, while you may not agree that the old testament law is is directly, you know, line by line, applicable to us today. There should be a what they call general equity right so that so that Paul can pick up an old Testament law saying don't muzzle the ox, and he doesn't say, don't, you know, that's old Testament law, don't worry about it. He picks it up and it says, well, of course, don't muzzle the ox. Like literally, don't do that. But also here's what it means for pastors right so like that's.
Speaker 2:I mean that should kind of blow our mind like what is what is he doing? What is the rule that he's using to understand the old, the old testament? Um, and I think there's a lot of work that needs to happen there. That's uh, that's like on my 13th list of the things that I want to do is like to think about what is it that the scripture says and how do we obey his, his commands and his desires in in agriculture, because I don't think we get out of it by saying we don't have to do it, just whatever we think of is the thing that we should do. I don't think that's an option.
Speaker 1:No, and and ultimately, you know, there's that terrifying verse where it talks about, you know, men will come to me on that day say, lord, lord, didn't we, you know, eat healthy? And, you know, rotate our field every seven years and do all these things in your, you know, in your name, in the name of jesus? And he's like I didn't know, you, you know, and there was times where I'm like I want to apply, learn how to apply, some of those principles. I, at one point, was like letting know every seven beds rest in my garden and rotating around with like cover crop and I thought it was really cool. But then, you know, there's the technical, logistical, uh, and like I was really trying to, you know, figure out how to do it. Well, and I feel like one day God was like tap me on the shoulder. He's like, um, excuse me, this is, is this really the point? Yeah, is this this really the point? Yeah, is this the point? Yeah, this is the point. I'm like you know, you're right. I'm just trying to check that box at the moment. He's like what is the heart behind this rest idea? You know, like it's a trust of me, it's a generosity, it's a. You know it's a not you know, just working. You know so he's like you know. And all these examples, I mean it's like you see, in old testament, you know, they, they, that was something specifically given to the field. I don't know if it applied the gardens or you know, it's just like he's he. We don't want to just check out by applying them or check out by saying we don't have to apply them.
Speaker 1:Yes, the real goal here is to be trusting that god not only has those general instructions of how we love him through obeying his commands, loving others, you know, fulfilling the first two great commandments, which I feel like farming very much, is a great way to do that it's, it's he wants us to be seeking him through that and he wants, you know if I make the decisions I'm making about whether I get a cow or whether I, you know, cut hay this week or not. He really wants me to be saying, trusting that he can give me specific, like direction and guidance for those very minute details as I'm walking with him throughout the day. He doesn't want me to come up with what's the formula that I should do. And thank you very much, god, I'll take the manual and run with it now and, you know, check in with you after I die and see how well I did. That's not what he's looking for.
Speaker 1:And so I think they're the faith element, like why are we doing what we're doing? Is it out of faith, which really should really be rooted in humility, or is it in an arrogance of you know? You know again, I, I'm more from a reformed Baptist background, so I appreciate that element too. But you have, you know, we can explain it all and figure it all out and then be able to I've got the manual, it's right here. And then you have others that are like just whatever you feel, you know, and and so legalism nor license, neither one requires a relationship, and I think that's the tension we have to maintain in this, and I think that's where, where, um, that humility I think is the big.
Speaker 1:One of the things I always tell our students is to become the greatest farmer requires the greatest humility. And you can trace so many farmers journeys, whether it's's Brian Oldreave with like farming, God's way, foundations for farming, where it's master Cho who just passed away with the, with the Korean natural farming, or it's, you know, Joel Salatin, all of them had that like they got to where they were. You know they didn't. They acknowledged they didn't really know what they were doing and then they were. They're willing, they're able to hear what god could tell them. Um, and I think that's what I tell people. I said like we should be, like part of the way we follow jesus and farming is not be able to defend our methodology necessarily, but to have continual, ongoing testimony of the work god is doing in our heart and therefore in what we do in our hands, which is ongoing, not just something I learned a long time ago and now I do, and I'm cool with it Because that's what he wants.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a central thing, such that that is what drives us our ability to say for an environmental to come onto our places and say why are you doing it in this way? Things, hopefully, are more healthy and more well cared for. What's the motivation? And we say ah, let me introduce you to the creator, exactly.
Speaker 1:Exactly, and I think that's some of the. There was a neat story I had of a good friend, you know, a friend of mine that brought somebody he had a friendship with that was from a middle eastern country, uh, who was here as an exchange student. He came, brought him by the farm one day when I was out there working in the garden and uh, I don't even remember the conversation you know we just chatted about, but I but I was intentionally cultivating my own perspective of why I was doing what I was doing at this point, so that's how it was used to explaining it. And I remember, remember, a few years later this guy came and he was like I think it was maybe a year later. He said the way that like your farming and God and all that it's like connected. He said it's just amazing.
Speaker 1:I was back with my family and you know, this Middle Eastern country, he's like, and I was telling them, my dad was like, what is this? You know, tell us like there was just this impact of of. I don't again. I, you know I didn't even I wasn't intentionally sharing anything necessarily with him other than just trying to be honest about how I was doing stuff, and this guy was a muslim, you know, and he was just. That was just so amazing. But it wasn't. It was because it came out of who I was and my ongoing walk with the lord. It was authentic. It was just like open my mouth and it's here. So it it's coming out. I'm not like, well, what should I say when I have that kind of situation? It's like who are you?
Speaker 1:in that situation and, therefore, what's going to come out when that and that's what we need to be to be cultivating Cause that's how we really shine as a light, not just saying I'm a practitioner of this particular uh, defendable from scripture approach you know Our temptation is to kind of be bean counters and have glory in the list in the manual.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I don't think we're ever going to get past that. So just understanding that battle I think that's the next kind of thing that is that I feel like is important to understand is that what we see in agriculture today. You know, either Jesus is going to be ruling and reigning in an area or Satan's going to come in and he's going to bring his kingdom, which is he comes to kill, steal and destroy. And the challenge for me is when I see agriculture worldwide and in the US, like kill, steal and destroy are words that ring much more of a bell than like life and abundance and, you know, prosperity kind of thing. And so this, just this, is I'm.
Speaker 1:I'm seeing this, this battle, rather than just saying, ah well, you know what should we get right? Cause we have this debt, we have dependency, we have all these old farmers, we have, you know, patented seeds where people can't save them, and then, basically, farmers are. You know, if you want to be a good farmer, you have to be an expert at death. You know herbicide, pesticides, fungicides, like that's what you do for a living, is you kill stuff and when you figure out when you're going to kill them and that kind of thing, and then you know it's, and then it's more like less and less people in there, less and less.
Speaker 1:It's all going to be more inside solutions you, you know blockchain driven, you know high tech, everything which is not really community building and so then you're like, how should we view that? You know what are the source of the problems with that, and understanding that there is a actual bat, like there's a battle, like there is the glory of God at stake in this, and understanding that we there's resistance you know that we're, that we're going to face and that we have a responsibility to engage in is also, I think, really informative. But what are some of the ways that you see that battle? Again, the underlying battle between truth, light, darkness you know those things manifesting itself in agriculture today that we should be aware of as Christians.
Speaker 2:Yeah, one of the first things I thought of was just a question of whether or not the church was aware. Are Christians aware, that the way of seeing creation from the world's perspective is indeed a whole different story, like it's a different story, and so I think if and I think the world has been really good at telling the story, they don't, they are yeah so that you can grab a person off the street and say tell us the story of where we came from.
Speaker 2:And they'd be like well, I think a billion years ago, 14 billion years ago, this happened, and then this happened, and then this, this, this, and so here's it, right. So like there's a story and an assumption, sort of in the in the non-christian, in the secular world, that that there's a story. So I think we need to like be about the story.
Speaker 1:I think because their story parallels the gospel. It's like here is the, here's the initial initial thing, here's the problem, here's the solutions and here's the utopia that we're working towards.
Speaker 2:You know, but it's not what the Bible teaches at all yeah, and so I think maybe it comes down to to the, the telling of the story to ourselves, to our kids, to our communities in such a passionate way Because, as CS Lewis, we get bonus points here at College of the Ozarks.
Speaker 1:if we work CS Lewis into something, does Tolkien count too? Tolkien absolutely counts. Okay, good.
Speaker 2:Tolkien was instrumental in leading CS Lewis, so that we have this story that has the only difference, which is it's true, right. And it's the true myth and that it's too glad to be true. It's like almost we can't believe it, right? So it does originate with us taking hold of the gospel and then continuing to tell this. Know what? You could say oh, this is just the world view that we have to have, but I think it's. We have to have story, because story is the thing that drive us right right it's cool, but it doesn't drive us to do a thing a
Speaker 1:story right and when you recognize your aspect of that story, you know you're part of your story and that's that's. You know we have this very you, you know, very, very kind of like a perspective, particular perspective, of what it looks like to share the gospel, and you know there's elements of that gospel presentation that a lot of people do. That is, you know, god can definitely use when we recognize it really is just sharing the story, that you believe, your part in it and how that's impacted you and inviting others to be part of that story as well. It's so natural, it's what we do all the time with. So anything else in life, you know, it's like I used to drive a gasoline car and then I heard about these teslas and so I researched. You know, whatever it is that you're passionate about, you tell the story and then you invite people into the story.
Speaker 1:And I think that's where, when we, when we've lost the story and we don't realize that, that well, let's just say this this idea of if god is, you know, jesus is the way, the truth and the life and satan is the way, the truth and the life and Satan is the father of lies, we have to recognize that the default the status quo of the world's perspective on things and what they're saying about something like agriculture is going to be deception, yes, and when we just think well, but everybody's on the same page. Everybody just wants people to eat and it's not that they're necessarily knowingly deceiving people, but we all are deceived in a way. You know, like we've got that truth mixed with lies element, which is the best kind of deception that we have to unravel and understand that we're not all on the same team. We're all part of God's, we're all part of who God wants to redeem and there's a common enemy we have. We're all part of who God wants to redeem and there's a common enemy we have.
Speaker 1:But you know, if somebody is still under that and has not yet been freed from that by Christ, then we're not. You know, yoke fellows at that point in time, you know, and and we love them, we want to work towards that, but we can't just partner with them in solutions and expect that we're going to be able to necessarily produce ones that reflect who God is in a way that we're not conscious Like. I love working with non-believers in agriculture and stuff, but I'm very conscious of of encouraging where I believe that they, their perspective, is true, and understanding and trying, you know, and and being conscious of where we aren't yet what is the trajectory of our story and the trajectory of an evolutionary story, right, we have hope there that we can.
Speaker 1:So so let's see, we're kind of I want us to kind of get to, uh, get through these last few questions um here, because I know we're kind of going long, but it's just, this is such an important discussion, I think. Another question I got challenged one time by a young man. He was like so how can you justify weeding your garlic patch when there are people on the other side of the world that are dying, going to hell needing to hear jesus or you know patch, when there are people on the other side of the world that are dying, going to hell needing to hear Jesus, or when there's real quote ministry opportunities that need to be, how can you justify using your time to go out there and be weeding your garlic in your garden? And this guy was not asking in a facetious way, he was honest because he was wrestling with the question himself.
Speaker 1:But when we talk about the eternal impact of doing something like planting a garden, raising a chicken, what does that have to like do with the kingdom of God? How can we justify like we were talking about before the show, you know spending time in agriculture when we're doing mission work, why shouldn't we just do church planting and share the gospel with more people. You know, why shouldn't we just do church planting and share the gospel with more people? You know, what kind of eternal impact does our faithfulness have for good or bad as farmers or just in our interaction with agriculture as christians?
Speaker 2:yeah, you would have to say, I would think, in answer to his, his question you, you would need to show from the scripture that the idea of being a farmer, the idea of being a person who sews clothes, the idea of any calling that you can have, has a stamp of approval by God, a stamp of approval by God, and that the picture that we're given in the New Testament is not necessarily one, is not one, of God's 100% mobilizing everybody that's in the church to go, that's not what.
Speaker 2:Paul does. Paul says you're, in this context, do the thing that you are supposed to do. Be obedient to God. Pray that you can live quiet and peaceable lives. Provide for your family. If you don't, that's a bad deal.
Speaker 2:So, like specific things that he lines up, and maybe we've overemphasized the necessity of quote lawful callings, whether that's a teacher or a gardener or a policeman or whatever it all has calling, it all has God's stamp of approval as long as it's in the bounds of being lawful. So I think that helps us answer that question. What kind of eternal impact does our faithfulness in agriculture have us answer that question? What kind of eternal impact does our faithfulness in agriculture have? Yeah, so our faithfulness in agriculture looks like our faithfulness in raising kids, in worshiping God and being a good husband.
Speaker 2:The question as to what makes it through to the new heavens and new earth what makes it through? Does anything make it through? Do our artifacts, does our field, does the healthiness of our soil make it through? There's one side that says be faithful to what God has called you to and what that looks like in our specific calling. And yes, you can bring sort of Ecclesiastes on top of that and say you know what. There is an aspect where you're going to dig a hole and the other guy's going to come and fill it. Right.
Speaker 2:And so you need to be happy in God, you need to take your joy in God. So there is that aspect and there's the aspect that says no, we do have a calling and we must fulfill that calling in an excellent way, because that's God has given us ways to think about that. So, all this to say, I don't know, other than being faithful in those ways and letting all of these ways of seeing you're calling the gospel, needing to go out to all the nations so that God can be more glorified, like we have to hold all that stuff in our souls in front of God and begin to start to answer those questions that this young guy had right, because maybe he's been told like the most important thing in a person's life is their interaction with the gospel, and I think that's true. I think there's something to be argued for, sort of like the sovereignty of God's. You know God being sovereign enough to orchestrate and be over all of those things, and so we trust in his sovereignty in the midst of having this calling and so forth.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, those are some thoughts that I had. No, not really any big answers, but just thoughts. Back to the agri-theologians, just this trust that I can have nothing, no impact whatsoever, like I can't lead somebody to the Lord, I can't do anything, but I just have. If I'm playing, if I'm obeying, then he can use that. You know, and how he uses it. I may be the Noah that preaches to my generation and nobody comes to the Lord except my family. Or I may be the Peter who preaches for a few minutes of Pentecost and 3,000 people come to the Lord. Like he can do what he wants to with my obedience. Like success is really dependent is is partly like what he, how he defines it and wants to bring glory to himself. But understanding that, um, if I'm just obeying, even in the simplest things, he can do something with that.
Speaker 1:You know, and I felt like that one story of that friend of mine that brought that guy from the middle east. I mean he was coming telling me later that he was telling his family all about what we were like this amazing how like our religion and like faith in god was, was part of our life, and I'm like this is a nation you could not go as a missionary and, like my faithfulness, in my garden, god's like I felt like he was saying you just obey, you just obey. But I do think it is an element I feel like of it doesn't need to be something we're just doing for God because we want to do it, Because that's that kind of warning of like you're doing all these things, but it wasn't a relationship. It does need to be. Is this a call? Is this something you've sought the Lord, you're submitting to him and you just trust whether or not, like it succeeds or fails. You're just going, just gonna, you're pursuing what he's told you to do and letting him do whatever he wants to through, or do you want to just like be the best farmer in the world and beat everybody at their own game in the name of christ? You know there's there. It really is, uh, letting god use us how he wants to, and really I think he's. It's about being faithful with what he's given us.
Speaker 1:You know and and understand that, like you said, I love the idea of thinking about the new heavens and new earth. How does that correlate? You know and and understand that, like you said, I love the idea of thinking about the new heavens and new earth. How does that correlate? You know, what kind of? How far does the like Randy Alcorn talking about resurrection? How far does that extend?
Speaker 1:And you know, will I see the real version of this farm that I'm trying to build, you know, someday on the new earth? That's kind of cool, but I'm like God's got. I mean, I just trust that bumbling efforts to to try to follow him, but it does not need to be something that I'm doing for him. You know, in my own strength kind of thing, whether it's ministry stuff or it's not ministry, you know like. But understand that that's what's really going to have the eternal um impact of him being able to add to me many more in the in in this age and the age to come, uh, from the faithfulness that I'm going to do now you know, which is helpful because I even like from have friends in Africa.
Speaker 1:You know where they've literally lost their farms.
Speaker 1:You know, and it's like, well, what was so? Did you fail? Did you say, you know, and if there wasn't the eternal element of, like your faithfulness, whether your farm succeeds or fails, or you lose it or not, like there's eternal, you know ramifications to that, I think is is is important. So, yeah, so, as we wrap up here any other, as you talk to your students and stuff and you're, you're helping them think through, you know, okay, how do we view hydroponics versus soil-based growing, how do we view till versus no-till, organic versus conventional?
Speaker 1:You know, as we engage in those conversations and even if we were talking about, you know, people there's, there's today so many conversations where it's, oh, you know, organic is just like we totally need to sacrifice. You know, just whole hog, go eliminate the old system and just do this new thing. And other people are like, you know, it just doesn't matter, we just need to be all scientific. You know there's just doesn't matter, we just need to be all scientists. You know there's so many like the discussion, how do we engage to understand, you know, is there a right or wrong way? Like, how, how do we make decisions about what we should do and what we shouldn't do as as people going into farming. Maybe you're already there, you're already in farming, maybe you're a young person just getting started out. You know practically how do we put boots on growing in this area.
Speaker 2:Yeah, this is where the rubber meets. The road Back to that question by what standard? So, and really that can be part of that is what. What are the assumptions in the view that says organic is the way? What are the assumptions in the conventional system? If you can say the goal of a conventional system is to make money at all costs, right, make money no matter what.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a super biblical Christian principle there, right. Yeah what?
Speaker 2:yeah, this is super biblical prince christian principle there, right, yeah, yeah, so, so there's that. If you for the organic side, if you say, okay, well, what's the what's the standard? Well, the standard organic side is nature is the measure, natural is the measure, and then you can take that, you can start to say, okay, well, what does the scripture say? Does the scripture give us the ability, does the scripture give us the calling to say nature is the way we should make everything? If so, then that viewpoint might be tenable. That's what you need to start working with, right? So, everything through the lens of scripture. But the most helpful thing is saying that particular view of agriculture. What is it assuming? What is it assuming?
Speaker 2:The way the world is, the way who we are, what we're supposed to be doing here. So it all goes back to that story that we've been telling what is our job here and does that particular way of doing agriculture line up with what the scripture the vision that the scripture gives us of what humans are how are we to use the creation or not gives us of what humans are how are we to use the creation or not? And then that was for us, for me and my students in our principles of sustainable ag class. That was the whole semester. It took a semester for us to sort of come to grips with what does it mean to be all natural? How do we fit that into our Christian worldview and the things that we've understood and read? And so it really it takes a. It takes a. It takes a while, right?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it takes years to to ask the right questions and to see what a particular way of doing agriculture really is saying about who we are and what creation is. So, yeah, take, take your time, ask the question what are the assumptions in this particular way of raising crops or way of treating animals? And then see if that squares with the scripture. If it doesn't, then you need to say this doesn't. I don't think it does, because Bible verse, bible verse, bible verse. Right, not I feel, I feel or I want this particular thing or I can't.
Speaker 2:I can't or I can't, yeah, yeah, I can't.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I think that's really good. I think there's um, you know I'm a big like always going back to what is our heart in this, because I feel like that's just the practical is easy Not easy, but like it flows from the heart. And so I think in my own life, just trying to say OK, do I really believe, if God's called me to farm, that he will show me the way to do it? Like profitability, wise, make a living doing it. You know, like. Can he show me that? I think he can, you know. Can he show me how to work with what I've got? Like how he will hold me accountable? Like I don't want to buy non-GMO chicken feed, for instance, but that I don't have that option. So what am I going to do? I'm providing better product than I could have before, but am I just content with that or am I trying to grow? Am I wrestling with those things, and I think a big part of it?
Speaker 1:For me, it comes down to whether you're teaching stewardship of money or you're teaching stewardship of anything. The first foundational principle is am I giving God ownership of this or not, or am I acting as if I'm the owner Because we could debate about. You know, like what's required, what's not, all those things in different situations. But the question is if I ask myself, am I willing to let God do whatever he wants to with my farm? If he told me to shut it down tomorrow, would I do that?
Speaker 1:If he told me to radically change, if he told me to keep doing what I'm doing when I'd rather change, you know, would I do? Basically, is there anything that I'm saying? You know you can input in this way, god, but you can't in other ways, then I really can't expect growth. But once we're saying, look, god, whatever, if you tell me to sell it all tomorrow, as crazy as that would, whatever, the most radical thing that would be for me at the moment, if I'm like you, it's yours, my life is yours, like, if you want me to go do anything like something else, I'm totally available to that. Then I can trust he'll show me, you know, saying like he wants me to hear him more than I do.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I want to hear him.
Speaker 1:It's not like okay, no, guess which hand, and you know like you missed it right. You chose poorly. I feel like you, really he does. He's able to lead me step by step down it, but my biggest hindrance is if I'm telling him what he can and can't do, what he, you know, trying to like define what box he can be in, um, rather than say no, like my wife and I've been doing planning more recently, like how do we plan? You know, with our homeschooling and all that it's we realized it's not about getting the perfect plan, it's about like working on it every week. Yeah, because knowing that it's not there's no, we're just working on it. We're just working on it because we know we we haven't gotten it, we're not going to get it. We got to keep tweaking it, we got to keep letting god inform. But it it just helps me to say is there anything right now that I would not be willing to do? You know, not be willing to get input from him, and it really shows me whether or not I've really invited him fully into this space to let him transform it in a way that I trust he can show me and and know that he can't, so I'm not saying anymore he can't or I don't, or, or those kind of things, and instead it becomes exciting at that point, like you may be doing something normal, but it's pretty radical, yeah, because you're like I do whatever you know, like it doesn't matter how crazy it is, I'm, I'm game for it, you know, and, and I think he loves that kind of fate, um, especially by somebody that says you know, just doing farming, and and that's the kind of thing, especially by somebody that's you know, just doing farming, and that's the kind of thing that I want to, that he wants us to experience with him, because then it's much more of a. You know, he's always like I think that there's that Proverbs you know, trust in the Lord with all your heart and all your ways, acknowledge him and he'll direct your path.
Speaker 1:Some people have, like I don't understand all the Hebrew exactly, but my understanding is that word acknowledge could be mean to like, to seek to know, almost like as a husband knows his wife, like it's not just like, okay, god, you're there, you know, I acknowledge you, but like, in all your ways, seek him like, seek to know him, like when I'm going, I want to experience god through my garden. I want to. I want to see how you know like he can transform the health of my animal livestock practice or whatever it is. It's not really about the animals, it's about experiencing more of him through that. Then he's going to meet us Like. He's like yeah, I'll deliver on that one, because that's the whole point of this.
Speaker 3:Anyways, if it's distracting us from him a lot of times he'll just be like yeah you know, and he'll like you know, let me take that out of your way so that you can get your focus back right here, and I think that's of course.
Speaker 1:I think what we want to, I really want to. Hopefully people can take away from this is that a lot of really, this idea of worldview in agriculture is just about inviting God back in understanding. The default is not for us to factor him in even once. We're trying to. You've got to wake up each morning and invite him back in again and to just trust that, regardless of our starting points, he can help us be faithful with what we have.
Speaker 1:We may wish we were somewhere else, I wish I had 100 acres, because I only have a backyard. Or I wish I wasn't doing it this way. I wish I was starting over Any of the excuses we say. You know, doing it this way, that way, I wish I was starting over you know any of the things excuses we say. But no, if we're just faithful with what he's given us today, he can shine the light of the gospel through our stewardship in ways that are more than any of us could imagine.
Speaker 1:But we have to be bringing it. You know what I'm saying. We have to be active in that, motivated by that humility and motivated by that understanding of the story we live in. I think that's another thing I would just say as a takeaway, I think, from this is learn to tell that story, learn that the worldview of this, like the way that we operate on a day-to-day basis, really does go back to what is the story you believe you live in. I mean, like prosperity gospel is wrong because it's not the story we live in, you know you do everything right and then everything's going to go good.
Speaker 1:It's like that's a different story, and you know a lot of my permaculture books. They spend the first several chapters crafting a narrative, telling a story, before they get into any of the practical stuff. So are we doing the same things? Because those writers did it for themselves, you know, to inform the way that they're thinking about it. And are we doing that for for our own self? Not that, oh, we'll just get it right. But no, are we pursuing that, crafting that, learning it, letting god shape that and being willing to have conversations around that, not just um, is it a sin or not to grow gmos? Or, you know, is it a waste of time to do pasture chickens because you can't feed the world? Or, you know, if we haven't gotten the story right, we can't discuss those other topics, you know.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the hope would be, once you, once our story is aligned with the scripture and once we begin to have years of that happen, the idea would be, and your planning example would be let's say you're planning homeschool, you're planning farm, whatever, and your kids grow up in that and they see what it is to do that Hopefully they're going to be just a little further in that aspect. Right, they're still going to have to have the heart, humility, all that stuff. But maybe we can push a little bit further. I think that's where you and I are in this Christian ag thing. Can we push a little bit further, knowing the story? We've got to keep the story central, We've got to keep humble. But can we push this story, push these activities a little further from where we came from?
Speaker 1:Right, right, that's awesome. Well, as we wrap up here, are there any particular resources, books? I know you said you're a collector of resources and books that you would encourage people to check out for some further research or study on this topic.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely so. Yeah, if you haven't read Francis Schaeffer's Pollution and the Death of man, that one is number one. There's a book called when Garden Meets Wilderness by Calvin Beisner, B-E-I-S-N-E-R.
Speaker 1:It's out of print.
Speaker 2:You'll have to get it used, but that one is, just for my money, phenomenal. It's not really ag-related, it's again story-related. It's how should we be seeing the world? Big fan of Salatin, I have both a great deal of love for him and his marvelous bigness of pigs. That's sort of one of the first sort of big publicly available. What does it mean to be a Christian farmer? So I have a lot of respect for that. I have a lot of problems with some of the ways he's seeing things, but that's fine. That's one of those sort of discussions you can have, right, yeah.
Speaker 1:It makes us evaluate our own like. Well, what do I think then?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. So those are some that. And then, as I tell my students, your job is to read the Bible and start at the beginning and go to the end, and when? You're done the Bible and start at the beginning, and go to the end and when you're done, back to the beginning and go through again and don't stop till you die. Yeah, if you do that, you have the context, you have the stories, that you're infused with the story.
Speaker 1:So yeah, that's awesome. That's awesome. Well, I'm a yeah as far as some of the resources we're putting out guys. Um, my initial book, born again dirt was, was a book to challenge Christians to think about the worldview of agriculture. So if you haven't read Born Again Dirt, I encourage you to check that out. It doesn't have all the answers, but it is sometimes a helpful tool for raising questions with people that haven't thought about this before.
Speaker 1:And then we also, if you go on our website, you can kind of see some of the stuff we're doing with the well water garden project, which is really, um, a a practical teaching garden for churches or families to use to to practice building a garden from scratch on specifically intentional biblical principles. So when you you talk about it, you're talking about the way you thought about planting that, not as the only way that you can do it, but just as a uh, as a tool to learn to put boots on the gospel in these kinds of ways a little bit more practically. So encourage you guys to check this out. And and yeah, some of those college of the Ozarks really a cool place If anybody's looking for some some really interesting, unique educational opportunities. I love their model there and what they're doing, and obviously Micah sounds like he has a really great class going there, so is there a particular website? Go ahead.
Speaker 2:Oh, I was going to say you can just Google College of the Ozarks and find the department. But really the way to see it is to visit. We regularly have people come visit campus and we love to show people around our farms.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and you have a really cool museum too.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we do. We call it the Smithsonian of the Ozarks Ralph Foster Museum. The claim to fame there is that we've got the original Beverly Hillbillies car, so come see us at College of the Ozarks.
Speaker 1:That's awesome. Well, micah, would you mind? I just always love our guests to just finish Awesome. Well, micah, would you mind? I just always love our guests to just finish, close out, with you praying for our audience. You know, and just as people are finishing listening to this, that God would just, you know, speak to them, show them what their next steps are, so that he can really, you know, continue them on this journey that he has them on. So, if you wouldn't mind praying, and then I'll wrap up.
Speaker 2:Let me pray, father. You hear our prayers and we're thankful that you hear them through the work that Christ has done for us. Lord, all of this that we've said has been laid out before you. We humbly acknowledge that you are the one who originated all of these thoughts and even our ability to ask questions. We acknowledge you as the creator. We do pray for Noah, for his family. We pray your blessing on them, the work that they're doing to promote the way of seeing the world, the way of doing work that honors you. And we ask for the folks who will be listening to this. We ask for a special blessing in their, the folks who will be listening to this. We ask for a special blessing in their life, in particular, that they would be drawn nearer to you by virtue of our conversation. We humbly ask that. We ask for your blessing on each individual detail in their life, that you would be honored in that and that you would give abundance of grace to each of them. And we ask these things in Jesus' name, amen.
Speaker 1:Amen, Amen. Thanks, Micah. Well, everybody, you've been listening to the Redeeming the Dirt podcast and so glad that you joined us today, and until next time, I encourage you to be faithful, be humble and to keep redeeming the dirt. God bless.