The Original Sin of Agriculture: Religion

I actually just finished My Ishmael, the third book in the trilogy. So, I am far behind in reflecting on my thoughts on The Story of B, the second book, particularly as the ideas and themes come up again and again from other sources. Two recent connections were 1) an interview with Adele Diamond on Speaking of Faith that had a lot of similarities with Quinn’s thoughts on education and 2) Bill Moyers’ interview with Jane Goodall about her work with gorillas and trying to change the way we relate to the natural world.

What can I say? I will try to do better. Here is one attempt.

Of the three books, The Story of B has the most to say about religion. I previously talked about Quinn’s fascinating interpretation of Genesis and the idea of original sin. Quinn sees religion as a complement to totalitarian agriculture. Totalitarian agriculture is a destructive force that creates tremendous suffering and need. Quinn’s thesis is that salvationist religion, religion that is based on the idea that we need to be saved (primarily from ourselves), arose out of the need created by totalitarian agriculture. People look around and say, “Wow! We have totally screwed up the world. There is definitely something wrong with human beings. We need saving. Help!” Therefore we have religions that save us from ourselves.

Narrowly construed I would have to pretty much agree with the author’s take on the matter. When we narrowly define sin only as having to do with the individual human being, then we are responding to a flawed understanding of the world. I see how this thesis fits very neatly with his understanding of the rise of agriculture and civilization. However, when something is tied up so neatly with a pretty red ribbon, it is almost certainly not so simple (I think that could be said for a lot of his ideas). It’s also true that making simplifications and generalizations can help us see things that we miss on the confusion and complexity of reality.

Is Religion Part of the Problem?

Quinn certainly believes that salvationist religion, as he calls it, is part of perpetuating the myth that the problem is something inherent with human beings instead of looking at the destructive ways we have ordered our lives, particularly around agriculture and civilization. I have no beef with anything he says about agriculture or religion’s role in perpetuating myths. I do have a problem with the idea that this is grounds for dismissing religion (or salvationist religion) outright. I find my own Christian tradition robust enough to embrace what he is saying even as some of it undermines many of our traditional and historical ways of thinking about history, sin and salvation. I think he gives religion short shrift in order to prove a point and that’s unfair.

We, Christians and others, must own the ways our tradition has failed and been used destructively. We also must realize that it is a long history full of many ups and downs. The Bible itself is full of violence and mercy, texts of terror and texts of grace, love and hate, disturbing and comforting passages. To try and box this diverse collection of sacred writings into one simple message is reductionistic.

I continue to believe that my tradition, the one I know best, has the seeds within it of offering answers and hope to our deepest questions and longings… including the questions raised by Quinn.

Food in the Bible: Exodus 23:14-19

Exodus 23:14-19 Three times in the year you shall hold a festival for me. You shall observe the festival of unleavened bread; as I commanded you, you shall eat unleavened bread for seven days at the appointed time in the month of Abib, for in it you came out of Egypt.

No one shall appear before me empty-handed.

16 You shall observe the festival of harvest, of the first fruits of your labour, of what you sow in the field. You shall observe the festival of ingathering at the end of the year, when you gather in from the field the fruit of your labour. ¹⁷Three times in the year all your males shall appear before the Lord God.

18 You shall not offer the blood of my sacrifice with anything leavened, or let the fat of my festival remain until the morning.

19 The choicest of the first fruits of your ground you shall bring into the house of the Lord your God.

You shall not boil a kid in its mother’s milk.

Setting aside the weirdo who made sure to cook a baby goat in the milk from its own mother for a second, let’s consider the appointed festivals. This passage appoints three main festivals that the Israelites should celebrate. The feast of unleavened bread, or Passover, commemorated their liberation from slavery in Egypt. This was a springtime feast. The feast of first fruits celebrates the first of the harvest, around August sometime I would guess. The feast of ingathering would then be some time in October when the growing season ended.

I could look up more information on these festivals and their meaning in Jewish ritual religion, but you can use Google as well as I can. What I’m more interested in is how in tune to nature and agriculture the rhythms of these festivals are. They occur at natural times when you would celebrate the first harvest, the end of the growing season and the first planting. If those are already good occasions to celebrate (and they are) why not include God in them? It’s easy for us to miss how close to the land, natural rhythms and agriculture the readers and writers of the Bible were because our lives are so far removed from that connection.

It is often mentioned that the first fruits and sacrifices were to be the best of the harvest and best of the livestock. I’ve often heard this used to say that we shouldn’t hold anything back from God, but give our very best. What we seem to miss is a more agrarian reading. What does it mean for a farmer to give a lamb without blemish or choicest fruits? Since the discovery of evolutionary biology, we know that this is a crazy sacrifice. This means giving up the very best genetics in your herd or crop. Farmers have practiced breeding and seed-saving for centuries and they know how important it is to select the best genetics to save.

By asking for the “choicest first fruits,” God is not trying to keep the farmer down. Instead God reminds us that we are not the authors and creators of those choicest genes. We can trust the Creator of those genetics to continue to provide. Just as in the Sabbath commands, we are reminded that it does not all depend on us.

Food in the Bible: Matthew 12:9-14

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.”

Food in the Bible: Matthew 12:1-8

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.

The Gospel of Compost Tea

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.