The Story of B opened my eyes to a linguistic problem that reveals some truth about the way we read and perceive history. We tell the story of history beginning with the rise of agriculture. Everything before the rise of agriculture is referred to as “prehistory.” That can be taken to mean simply that this was a time before history was recorded or written down. In another more subtle way it belies the way we think about the kind of life and people that existed before agriculture. In a sense this was non-history, non-life and they are therefore non-people.

This was certainly part of what allowed colonizers and religious imperialists to conquer in the name of civilization. Savages and barbarians were not real people. Their ways of life, thinking and relating could not possibly be anything more than animalistic instincts and perhaps demonic deception. They were primitive people who had not yet been blessed by the advances of civilization, progress and technology. There was nothing to learn from these people and everything to teach them.

I don’t mean to romanticize tribal civilizations by any means. There are harsh realities that come with another vision for the way the world works. But this is exactly what they offer in response to the failures of our technocratic society, another vision of the world.

In this other vision of the world, human beings are subject to the same rules and limitations as the rest of creation. The way we order our lives is based on living in harmony with the natural rhythms of the world. This includes the natural process of life and death. We are not as much in control of nature as we are subject to it. As mentioned in the previous post, this means there are tradeoffs concerning the population that the planet can sustain and how we move away from our current destructive practices. What this other vision offers is a refocusing and reorientation of the way we think about the problems we face, their sources and causes.

I don’t know that hunter-gatherer societies offer a viable solution for the near future. What they do offer is an alternative vision and a challenge to the modern myth of progress that has brought us to the brink of disaster. Perhaps they can help us find a path forward, if we have ears to hear and eyes to see.

This is the continuation of a series exploring basic assumptions about agriculture, history and our relationship to creation: The Original Sin of Agriculture Part I, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5.

Matthew 12:9-14 He left that place and entered their synagogue; a man was there with a withered hand, and they asked him, ‘Is it lawful to cure on the sabbath?’ so that they might accuse him. He said to them, ‘Suppose one of you has only one sheep and it falls into a pit on the sabbath; will you not lay hold of it and lift it out? How much more valuable is a human being than a sheep! So it is lawful to do good on the sabbath.’ Then he said to the man, ‘Stretch out your hand.’ He stretched it out, and it was restored, as sound as the other. But the Pharisees went out and conspired against him, how to destroy him.

Here again, as in the previous passage, Jesus is not doing away with Sabbath, but instead challenging our understanding of Sabbath. Personally I bristle at the statement Jesus makes, “How much more valuable is a human being than a sheep! ” That is so anthropocentric! Isn’t this part of what has brought us to this place? We think that we are the pinnacle of creation and that somehow makes exempt from the laws of nature. We don’t have to deal with the repercussions of the way we treat the earth because somehow we’re more important than sheep and animals.
Well, as always, it would serve us well to read the Bible in context. The original hearers would certainly not have read (or heard) that into the text. They were agrarian people who depended on the land. Jesus in fact points out that saving an animal on the Sabbath trumps the rules about resting precisely because the Sabbath is about life, not rules. So, this passage might actually be highlighting the dependence of human beings on creation. It’s our modern mind that reads such a technocratic elitist idea into the text.
Perhaps Jesus’ words about the value of human beings is also to point out the inhumane way in which people treated other people, the sick, the lame, the blind, etc. Jesus restores humanity to the man with the withered hand by rightly relating people to each other and to the Sabbath. Remember that the Sabbath commands are about economics and ecology, our relationship to the earth and to each other. In other words, Jesus says, “You would break Sabbath in order to be rightly related to that which you depend on for sustenance. Recognize that you depend equally on being rightly related to your fellow human being. This is the meaning of Sabbath.”

I’ve been interested in getting a tattoo for a while. I couldn’t tell you exactly why. Piercings and tattoos mark rites of passage for a lot of people my age. The main things holding me back have been the price and finding the right tattoo. Since my wife recently got her nose pierced, I’ve been thinking more seriously about it.

Tattoos are an interesting phenomenon. Some happen on a whim. Some are intensely thought out and designed. Some are just meant to be cool or project an image. Some have deep meaning and significance. Some are ridiculous and silly. Some are thought provoking and intense. Some will need modification later on. Some will stand the test of time.

That last one is the one that interests me. What would I be willing to permanently etch in my flesh? What would I not regret 30 years from now? What will stand the test of time?

For me I think I’ve settled on a tree. It combines the things that I try to combine here on this blog, a love for God, a love for the earth and a love of real food. The tree as a symbol has a long history in the Christian tradition. The editors of the Green Bible put a tree on the cover, explaining that this is actually an ancient tradition in the church. The tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil are central to the creation narrative. Psalm 1:3 says,

They are like trees
planted by streams of water,
which yield their fruit in season,
and their leaves do not wither.

I haven’t found the perfect tree yet or exactly where I want it. The one pictured is close, but I definitely want there to be color involved signifying life. I’ve never had any piercings or other tattoos and I’m not eager to get just anything. I do think that this is a mark I would always want and would never regret, a permanent reminder of my connection to the earth, to God and to my food.

Matthew 12:1-8 At that time Jesus went through the cornfields on the sabbath; his disciples were hungry, and they began to pluck heads of grain and to eat. When the Pharisees saw it, they said to him, ‘Look, your disciples are doing what is not lawful to do on the sabbath.’ He said to them, ‘Have you not read what David did when he and his companions were hungry? He entered the house of God and ate the bread of the Presence, which it was not lawful for him or his companions to eat, but only for the priests. Or have you not read in the law that on the sabbath the priests in the temple break the sabbath and yet are guiltless? I tell you, something greater than the temple is here. But if you had known what this means, “I desire mercy and not sacrifice”, you would not have condemned the guiltless. For the Son of Man is lord of the sabbath.’

Sabbath has been a pretty regular part of the conversation here about Food in the Bible. How do we read this passage in light of extending the sabbath to include the Sabbatical year (Deut 15) and Jubilee (Lev 25)? Or in light of the Sabbath being about remembering our place within the creation story?

I’ve read this passage in the past as another exchange between Jesus and the Pharisees (which it is) in which Jesus triumphs over those legalists showing them who’s boss. The sabbath is primarily about taking a day off and following the rules and Jesus is breaking the rules in order to show them how stupid their rules are. But this is not quite what’s happening is it?

Jesus is not getting rid of the sabbath. He’s reclaiming and redeeming it for its rightful purpose. He uses two examples from the Hebrew scripture (the only Bible around at the time) to show them that had missed the point of the sabbath. In fact, the disciples plucking heads of grain is reminiscent of the sabbatical command to allow the poor and wild animals to glean from the fields.

Jesus’ example of David taking the bread of the Presence when he was hungry reminds me of the way we treat the elements of communion. Denominations have different versions of the same thing. Basically the “bread” and “wine” are considered “holy” and off limits except during the particular ritual of the Eucharist. In some churches the bread and wine have to be finished off, poured down a particular drain or disposed of properly because of their sanctity.

In light of Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 11 about divisions at the agape meal and his warning about taking communion unworthily which follows, he seems to imply that taking Eucharist unworthily means not sharing your food with the hungry. If that is the case then every time the elements (especially if it’s a loaf of real bread) are disposed of or gorged on by someone in order to fulfill the letter of some traditional ritual, we may be partaking unworthily of the Lord’s Supper. (further discussion will be shelved until we get to 1 Corinthians sometime in 2050).

Finally, Jesus reorients the understanding of sabbath by putting the commandments in light of God’s desire for “mercy and not sacrifice.” This is a helpful guiding principle for following Jesus and interpreting the Bible. If mercy is not the driving force and guiding principle then we will end up with empty legalism and broken relationships. Jesus identifies himself as “lord of the sabbath,” meaning not only over the particular command to rest on the sabbath day, but also over the command to let fields rest, to free slaves and return land, in essence over the equality and justice of the created order as God intended.

In the initial series I summarized the argument in Ishmael by saying

The expansion of agriculture to feed the population serves to enlarge the population necessitating the continued expansion of agriculture to feed an ever-growing population. The result of the ongoing “progression” and evolution of agriculture has not actually resulted in fewer people going hungry.

The Story of B goes further in exploring some of the implications of this idea. He uses the analogy of mice in a cage. If you feed the mice a certain amount of food they will reproduce and grow in population size as long as the amount of food is able to sustain the number of mice. If you then increase the amount of food the population will continue to increase. If you stop increasing the food the population will level off and remain basically static. If you incrementally decrease the ration of food the population will decrease. When that idea is translated to human beings it sounds very unnerving, callous and disturbing.

The productivists argue that agricultural production has continued to increase and keep pace with world population. There is no real conversation about the relationship or correlation between production and population. We know that the world hunger problem is not a production problem, but a distribution problem. The world now produces enough food for every human being on the planet to have 3,500 calories per day, which is more than the recommended amount. So, why do we continue to push for higher production and greater yield to solve the population problem? Are we in fact fueling the population crisis by continually increasing our production?

Some will question how this can be true when population growth is correlated to other factors like income or education. The character B’s response in the book is over and over again to ask what people are made of if they are not made of food. If the population continues to increase, then the larger population must sustain itself somehow and the only way that is possible is by eating something. That certainly doesn’t mean the larger population is eating well, but they are eating enough to survive.

Whether production increases or decreases, distribution is the real problem. Either way inequality will continue as long as food is not distributed equitably. The underlying question concerning population growth is whether we can actually deal with the problem if we are continuing to fuel it by producing more and more food. When I mention the possibility of decreasing production as a way of dealing with the population problem, it sounds like I’m recommending starving the marginal brown people of the world. As the system currently stands that would certainly be the case if we simply decreased production overall. A decrease in production would have to go hand in hand with an overhaul of how our food system functions. This is a long term problem that requires long term thinking and solutions.

The planet we live on has a limit to the amount of life it can sustain. Like an elevator or bridge that is only built to handle a certain weight, the earth has certain limits built into the ecosystems. We can push those boundaries with technology and science, but eventually they will break. For many in the world they have already broken, and they suffer the consequences of our over extension of the planet’s resources.

We don’t like to think that we are responsible or in control of other people dying. The truth is we already are responsible for that. Our (American) culture has an uneasy and unnatural relationship with death. Death is a natural part of life. Decreasing food production (in concert with reorganizing our food system) may in fact be the most ethical and just choice given the trajectory of human society. This would, of course, be a long gradual process in which the reduction of food production and slowing of population growth would happen naturally over many decades, if not centuries.

Please share your thoughts and objections. I know this probably sounds scary and crazy to some, but a lot of it makes sense to me. I would appreciate thinking it through more thoroughly with your help.

This is the continuation of a series exploring basic assumptions about agriculture, history and our relationship to creation: The Original Sin of Agriculture Part I, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4.

I’ve already shared how enamored i am with the idea of guerrilla gardening (“gardening in public spaces with or without permission.”). I’m eager to start some projects, but I want to do it right so that my efforts will not just get mowed down or uprooted. Last week I was driving around east Waco to get to know the neighborhood better and scope out potential sites for some subversive planting. I was also looking for residents with a lot of well cared for plants who might be allies in greening up their area (sharing plants, knowledge of the neighborhood, etc.).

My boss had previously explained to me what “green tagged” and “red tagged” meant for buildings. If a building is “green tagged” it cannot be occupied until certain repairs are made to the structure. If a building is “red tagged” it is condemned. No one is allowed to live in it and it will be demolished. I did see one lady sitting on the front porch of a red tagged house. I’m sure people continue to live in condemned houses when they don’t have other options.

My boss pointed out a green tagged house that had a tree falling over with ripe persimmons. In my tour through the neighborhood I decided to see if I could harvest some of the fruit. I pulled over and walked up to the gate in front of the house. There was a chain around the gate. So, I decided to nonchalantly hop over the fence. As soon as my feet touched the ground I heard the deep bark of a large dog. There was at least one resident at this property and he was guarding those persimmons. I judged how long the leash was he was on and decided the persimmons were not worth rabies or loss of limb. I quickly hopped back over the fence and went on my merry way.

There are perils to urban foraging. I think many of those dangers are helped by getting to know your neighbors and building relationships. Just beware when scoping out places to harvest that when you hop a fence you should be ready for anything. In these parts that can include shotguns and pit bulls. On the other hand, what would life be without some adventure.

In our recent class on compost tea we looked at the benefits and the mystery of this microbial brew. Many claims are made about the benefits of compost tea. A while back our executive director had heard so much about it that he decided to look into it himself. He went to the library and did a thorough literature review to see which claims had merit and which were not backed by any evidence. What he found was that there was strong evidence for suppression and control of soil-borne and foliar fungal diseases, both when added to the soil and sprayed on the foliage of plants.

The Compost Tea Brewing Manual (which I have not read) makes claims about compost tea “adding biology” to the soil. Some people use compost tea by broadcasting it on a field to jump start the biology in the soil. Using the numbers in the book, it is clear that this claim is ridiculous. The amount of microbes in the compost tea is so miniscule that it is silly to claim it can boost the biology in an entire field. You’re better off using a broad range of holistic practices to improve your soil health and fertility overall. This is a slow process and anyone that tells you they can jump start is likely a card carrying member of the agricultural Amway. Run the other direction.

This same manual gives recipes for compost tea targeted at bacteria or fungal problems. This is where the gospel of compost tea rises to the surface. This way of thinking applies a modern scientific approach to agriculture while trying to use a holistic method. It’s new wine in old wineskins and you know what happens there right?

The whole point of compost tea is NOT that you are targeting a specific problem. In fact it should be a preventative measure applied before you have a problem. It can help with specific problems, but the benefit is the well-rounded additions to the soil that come from brewing up a mysterious batch of good bugs and microbes. The good microbes will out compete the bad ones, some of them actually parasitize the bad microbes. The brew also creates some compounds that have anti-microbial (antibiotic) properties.

Don’t we do the same thing in the church, for many of the same reasons? We target specific problems and think if we just apply the right complex of programming we will emerge victorious. Meanwhile, the whole system is deteriorating around us because we have not cared for the health of the soil and paid attention to the important things. The gospel of compost tea tells us that we should be brewing up people who look like Jesus, whose hearts beat for the things his does. Then those problems will resolve themselves. Healthy soil is made up of people who are being transformed into the likeness of Christ.

In the same way that the large scale of agricultural forces farmers to practice agriculture in ways that are fundamentally opposed to nature, mega churches and the large-scale thinking that goes on in churches forces people into practicing their faith in ways that are fundamentally opposed to the kingdom of God. The beauty is that we can take our decomposing methods and programs and pile them together until we get some good finished compost. Then we can brew up some sweet tea out of our old crappy ways.

photo from flickr user badalley.

In a recent class on compost tea some skepticism was expressed about people touting the benefits of compost tea in order to sell products. This led one skeptic to muse about ways they could market a product that would carefully insure that your compost tea was brewed at ambient temperature (in other words, do nothing and make you pay for it). I was also amazed to hear that compost tea is sold in bottles on the shelves of organic gardening stores. The benefits of compost tea come from the microbial organisms living in it. Bottling compost tea for any length at all destroys one of the primary benefits of the brew.

The list could go on of agricultural and gardening products that make all kinds of claims about controlling pests and weeds and make your tomatoes as big as your head, of which there is very little evidence to support such claims.

This is the agricultural Amway. Companies often try to get one or two farmers to buy into the benefits of their product and then they make those farmers into dealers of the product. You can see where this is going can’t you? I don’t how much this functions exactly like a pyramid scheme, but it’s the same idea. The guys on top get some people to buy into the idea and the more people they sell on it the more the guys at the top make. All the while nothing is really happening. No product is actually benefitting anyone and an entire market is created out of thin air.

This is exactly what has driven our species to the brink… promises that can never be fulfilled or kept. Ammonium nitrate can only get you so far before it destroys the very thing it promises to save.

I’m brewing up another post about compost tea that looks at what makes compost tea beneficial, but also confounds our modern ways of looking at agriculture.

So I skipped Philip Jenkins and my friend David Holcomb to hang out with my family this weekend, but I could not pass up a chance to hear one of my biggest influences, William Cavanaugh, speak. I mentioned before that he inspired my Eucharist as Eat-In post as well as the series on his book Being Consumed. His topic was “Violence and the Religious/Secular Distinction.” Let’s see if it eventually ties back into agriculture.

One of the things that draws me to Cavanaugh is his clarity. The to remain unnamed Baylor professor that presented a paper before him was eloquent and intellectual, but I could not get his point. It wasn’t that I didn’t understand what he was saying. All of the sentences coming out of his mouth were grammatically correct and coherent, but there was no real focus, no feeling of purpose. Cavanaugh on the other hand is like a laser that cuts through all the foggy intellectualism and brings a clarity of vision and purpose to bear on his subject. He is what intellectuals should be if they wish to serve any larger purpose in the world. Now that I’m done heaping praise…

His forthcoming book on which his talk was based seems to have three main theses:

1. The religious/secular distinction is neither real nor helpful
2. There was no recent resurgence of religion that proved the secularization thesis wrong. Religion just migrated from the church to the nation-state
3. The myth of religious violence is a tool that enables the state to legitimate violence by drawing a distinction between religious and secular violence

Cavanaugh deftly cuts through a lot of the arguments on both sides about violence and the religious/secular distinction, by pointing out how notoriously difficult it is to define religion. Many seek to create a distinction that points out the difference between state and religious violence, but their definition of religion is broad enough to include ideologies such as capitalism, marxism and nationalism.

Cavanaugh used a 1940s court case against Jehovah’s Witnesses as an example. The Jehovah’s Witnesses were charged with not participating in the Pledge of Allegiance in school. The court found that national cohesion and patriotism trumped the free exercise of religion in this case. The Supreme Court later overturned this case, but the language used in this case to make an artificial distinction between our national civil religion and all other forms of religion continues. The argument is still made that the use of God in our founding documents, patriotic songs and official government occasions and ceremonies as somehow fundamentally different from the use of the word God in religion.

So, it should be clear that Cavanaugh is arguing against the notion that the secularization thesis, that humanity would eventually evolve past religion and it would disappear completely, was somehow defeated because this amorphous thing called “religion” made a resurgence. The secularization thesis was defeated because it was always wrong and religion migrated from the church to the nation state as the church privatized religion and accommodated to the surrounding culture.

Finally, Cavanaugh argues that the religious/secular distinction is used to create a myth of religious violence that somehow legitimates state violence against religious extremists because the one is fundamentally different than the other. If his thesis is correct, this is nonsense. The truth is that we must use these constructs to continue to legitimate violence be dehumanizing and “othering” the people that threaten us in some way, whether its actual physical harm or more of an ideological threat.

I just finished The Story of B the sequel to Ishmael, which inspired The Original Sin of Agriculture series. The second book has more of a plot, but less in the way of new ideas. What it does is spin out the ideas in Ishmael. The further exploration is certainly worth the read. I’m still processing it.

Initially, I didn’t want to start another series on the ideas and implications of this book. However, it has stuck in my mental craw. It is haunting me wherever I go and posing questions to other ideas I hear (See Religion, Violence and Agriculture?). So, it appears that an old school Holy Ghost revival of the Original Sin of Agriculture series is imminent.

I don’t want to spoil the surprise, but here’s a sneak preview of what I’d like to think more about:

The Story of B covers more in depth the ideas that were most controversial last time around concerning population control and the relationship between increasing production and increasing population. The deeper explanation was helpfully thinking through the implications, objections and possible solutions to the relationship between production and population.

While Ishmael pointed out a lot of our modern assumptions, The Story of B sometimes sought to go behind those assumptions and ask what people were like before agriculture, their religion and their relationship to the earth and each other. If everything before the rise of agriculture is “prehistory,” then it is a vast unknown territory where people that we can barely understand live. Trying to understand them may help us overcome ourselves.

Finally, I’m fascinated with the sequel’s take on religion, because I both agree and disagree with it. I think the author vastly oversimplifies things and ends up dismissing the world religions entirely. At the same time I agree wholeheartedly with the critique of my own religion, Christianity. I just think that Christianity holds the possibility of embracing the truth that Quinn reveals in his book.

So… here we go again…