As stated previously: Being in a rural area significantly hedges against the risks of the above. This however for most of us means a complete shift in the way we think and operate, a complete break with many of our current securities and comfort zones. Incidentally this happens to be more in line with the way of life God had originally purposed man to live, than what we see around us today…
How did God originally determine man should live?
Where did God put man after He created him?
God put man in a garden. God created the man to work in the outdoors, in a garden environment. Man’s created nature and role is to subdue his environment and rule over it. Each man needs his own independent domain to conquer and dress. Male aggression is that part of his make-up that drives a man to conquer and subdue. This difference between male and female is visible from an early stage in life. Girls are more sedate and reserved, whereas boys are rowdy, aggressive and ready to take up a challenge. Men are far more inclined to take risks than women. There are obviously men whose natures and passions run riot and find expression in evil ways, and society is the worse for it, because they have not been disciplined, nor acquired the virtue of self-control.
And the LORD God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed. And out of the ground made the LORD God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also…And the LORD God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it…And the LORD God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him.
(Gen 2:8-9, 15, 18)
From the above scripture it is clear that the idea of a garden originated with God, not man.
Secondly, it is evident that God’s idea of garden served at least three purposes:
1. What grew in it was “pleasant to the sight” – in other words it was a place of aesthetic beauty.
2. What grew in it was good for food” – in other words it was to provide man with nourishment.
3. It was the place where God put man “to dress and to keep it” – in other words it provided man with purpose, work and responsibility.
Forthcoming from this last purpose, God gave man a helper to assist him in his work.
This is how God defined and purposed a garden. God walked with man in this garden…until man sinned.
What has modern man made of “garden”?
“The country garden of my childhood was a mixture of vegetables, flowers, soft fruit, tree fruit, and very often tame rabbits, almost certainly a hen run, often pigeons, and often ferrets. It was a very beautiful place indeed. Now alas, it has disappeared under a useless velvety lawn and a lot of silly bedding plants and hardy perennials, but of course the owner feels compelled to keep up with the people next door” - John Seymour
I think the above lament – and that from a secular source - sums up the current state of most gardens of our time (that is, of those who still have a garden)…sadly, the garden of today largely strives to meet the first purpose only – to be aesthetically pleasing. The motivation behind that may often be pride…the comparison with, and the impression of others. No more is man nourished from his garden, and often he pays someone else to dress and keep it…it has mostly become little more than a showpiece.
Was a garden that we should eat of only a concept before the fall? Or did God intend for man to continue having such a garden of his own?
Even whilst they were in captivity the LORD said to His people:
Build ye houses, and dwell in them; and plant gardens, and eat the fruit of them (Jer 29:5)
Clearly the concept was continued after the fall.
I do not wish to imply that having a garden that does not feed us, is by any means wrong; but is God not wanting to convey something to us through His Word? Does what we call “garden”, measure up to God’s definition of thereof?
How did God originally determine man should live?
Where did God put man after He created him?
God put man in a garden. God created the man to work in the outdoors, in a garden environment. Man’s created nature and role is to subdue his environment and rule over it. Each man needs his own independent domain to conquer and dress. Male aggression is that part of his make-up that drives a man to conquer and subdue. This difference between male and female is visible from an early stage in life. Girls are more sedate and reserved, whereas boys are rowdy, aggressive and ready to take up a challenge. Men are far more inclined to take risks than women. There are obviously men whose natures and passions run riot and find expression in evil ways, and society is the worse for it, because they have not been disciplined, nor acquired the virtue of self-control.
And the LORD God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed. And out of the ground made the LORD God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also…And the LORD God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it…And the LORD God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him.
(Gen 2:8-9, 15, 18)
From the above scripture it is clear that the idea of a garden originated with God, not man.
Secondly, it is evident that God’s idea of garden served at least three purposes:
1. What grew in it was “pleasant to the sight” – in other words it was a place of aesthetic beauty.
2. What grew in it was good for food” – in other words it was to provide man with nourishment.
3. It was the place where God put man “to dress and to keep it” – in other words it provided man with purpose, work and responsibility.
Forthcoming from this last purpose, God gave man a helper to assist him in his work.
This is how God defined and purposed a garden. God walked with man in this garden…until man sinned.
What has modern man made of “garden”?
“The country garden of my childhood was a mixture of vegetables, flowers, soft fruit, tree fruit, and very often tame rabbits, almost certainly a hen run, often pigeons, and often ferrets. It was a very beautiful place indeed. Now alas, it has disappeared under a useless velvety lawn and a lot of silly bedding plants and hardy perennials, but of course the owner feels compelled to keep up with the people next door” - John Seymour
I think the above lament – and that from a secular source - sums up the current state of most gardens of our time (that is, of those who still have a garden)…sadly, the garden of today largely strives to meet the first purpose only – to be aesthetically pleasing. The motivation behind that may often be pride…the comparison with, and the impression of others. No more is man nourished from his garden, and often he pays someone else to dress and keep it…it has mostly become little more than a showpiece.
Was a garden that we should eat of only a concept before the fall? Or did God intend for man to continue having such a garden of his own?
Even whilst they were in captivity the LORD said to His people:
Build ye houses, and dwell in them; and plant gardens, and eat the fruit of them (Jer 29:5)
Clearly the concept was continued after the fall.
I do not wish to imply that having a garden that does not feed us, is by any means wrong; but is God not wanting to convey something to us through His Word? Does what we call “garden”, measure up to God’s definition of thereof?
Are we not maybe forfeiting some blessing because the true concept is lost to us? Are certain spiritual concepts that God wishes to impress upon us through the physical process of gardening, and enjoying the fruits thereof, not lost because of it? Consider how many times Jesus and the apostles used such examples to illuminate spiritual understanding: the tree that bore no fruit, the wheat and the tares, the sower and the seed, the principle of multiplication and bringing forth fruit in abundance, the vine, the corn of wheat, pruning, thorns and thistles, plowing, sowing and reaping, planting and watering but God gives the increase; shepherding and herding, or about the influence of seasons on our lives.
Seasons:
To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven - Ecc 3:1
God has made man with a need to experience change, but He has also made man with a love of permanence. He has thus balanced the love of change with a love of permanence. The way God has provided to bless man in fulfilling these two seemingly incompatible needs is through the union of change and permanence called rhythm. God gave us seasons, each season different, yet every year the same. So spring is always experienced as a novelty, while yet being a recurrence of the same theme.
As man has coccooned himself in his modern day inventions, he has erected an effective barrier between himself and the influence of seasons upon his life. We can have summer fruit in winter, winter fruit in summer (thanks to cold storage and preservation), if it is cold we turn on the heater, if it is hot we switch on the air conditioner. We can make it rain by shooting clouds. We even create our own climate – some manufacturers even call it “climate control”. The seasons do not influence us as much as they used to, and to many city dwellers the only influence they are concerned with is that the rain must not spoil their fun over the weekend.
Is it any wonder that mankind is getting bored with life? And the more bored we become, the more the desire for change eats at us. People try to gratify this desire with an endless stream of novelties, fashions, ideas and inventions; all which further fortifies the barrier between themselves and the way God intended them to experience change.
Today we find in mankind an insatiable demand for novelty, and a livid horror of “the same old thing”. This demand for novelty is creating an infinite, unrhythmical state of change – the opposite of the way God designed man to experience change. It also makes man his own “change agent”. This demand for novelty, and the horror of “the same old thing” is the driving force behind fashions and vogues, the high divorce rate, political unrest and many other social evils of our day.
I think it is partly because times and seasons have lost their relevance to us that mankind is losing the ability to connect cause and effect: Scripture says there is a clear link between cause and effect:
Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. For he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting. (Gal 6:7-8)
There is a time to sow and there is a time to reap.
These concepts have often at best become abstract theory to man; most of us have not seen, nor experienced the real wonders and mysteries thereof. Can we really relate to much of Christ’s teaching today? Was this work that God gave man (to eat his bread in the sweat of his brow, to till and cultivate the earth) not for his own good?…maybe to enable him to relate to the spiritual concepts?
Cities
Such has become our dependence on the artificial life support systems, that should they collapse, most of us will not survive. Is it surprising that people in the most densely populated areas of the world are hardest hit by natural disasters? It seems as if densely populated areas are the main focus of God’s warnings and judgments on man’s sinfulness…
There is an interesting warning in scripture in Isaiah 5:8 Woe unto them that join house to house, that lay field to field, till there be no place, that they may be placed alone in the midst of the earth! …This is exactly what they did at Babel…Genesis 11:4 …let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.
You see, God’s command to man was to multiply and fill the earth Gen 1:28, and again after the flood in Gen 9:1. At Babel man chose to deliberately go against this command and chose to consolidate into a city under a single name so that they do not scatter over the earth and populate it as God commanded. This is why God then scattered them from Babel. At Babel we find the first man-made attempt at religion, the first unification under a name, and the first city. Today mankind is yet again converging in cities…”joining house to house…till there be no place…”
But there are also “good” cities in the Bible?
In scripture there are direct indications that biblical “cities” existed for the purpose of agriculture: Nehemiah 10:37 speaks of “the cities of our tillage”. The term “tillage” refers to what God made Adam to do – working the soil. Traditionally these cities were walled to provide residential safety, but during the day most of the people worked the land and tended their herds outside the city walls. The “city dwellers” were mostly still farmers. Ezekiel 48:18 also speaks about the food grown on the outskirts of the city that was to feed those who served the city. Such a city, if it was very large, would perhaps have 5000 residents. Most cities contained but a few hundred people. A village typically would have been just a cluster of some houses, surrounded by livestock and agriculture, and was usually not walled. Many of today’s farm homesteads that have a couple of houses and some labourers’ cottages would have been classified as villages in biblical times. What we call “cities” today have little resemblance to the biblical concept of cities. They have a much closer, macro scale resemblance to Babel, and what is warned against in Isaiah 5:8.
The life of living close to the land, and in more rural or “village life” - like tribal relationships, has been the normative lifestyle for millenia. Before the industrial revolution about 9 out of every 10 people used to work the land or keep livestock to sustain themselves. In 1930 it still was 5 out of every 10. Even in bigger villages most families still had their own vegetable patch, some fruit trees, a milk cow, chickens etc.
Commercial modern agriculture has made it possible for us to arrive at a current ratio of 1 food producer for every 60 people. This has only been made possible by technology, a high dependence on chemical and mechanical means, and the availability of large quantities of relatively cheap fuel and oil. A disruption in any of these will have disastrous effects on the world’s food supplies. The way our society densely populates big cities, receive their food transported from hundreds of miles, and create their own sub-reality, removed from the land which God commanded man to till and keep, and earn his living from, is a very recent phenomenon.
Relatively few people today still know how to earn a living from the soil; commercial farming has alienated even most farmers from that…
1. A typical grain farmer today buys genetically manipulated seed (at a premium price) which can only produce one year’s crop, but cannot reproduce more seed for next year’s crop. He thus remains dependent on a corporate seed supplier. The principle of multiplication and abundance from one seed, as taught in Scripture has thus lost relevance. This farmer is dependent on others to supply him, and he has to purchase that which God intended to be free.
Relatively few people today still know how to earn a living from the soil; commercial farming has alienated even most farmers from that…
1. A typical grain farmer today buys genetically manipulated seed (at a premium price) which can only produce one year’s crop, but cannot reproduce more seed for next year’s crop. He thus remains dependent on a corporate seed supplier. The principle of multiplication and abundance from one seed, as taught in Scripture has thus lost relevance. This farmer is dependent on others to supply him, and he has to purchase that which God intended to be free.
2. Secondly, it involves high specialization, and in certain fields only, and mass production… everything is turned into money, not into sustenance. If you can only produce milk, but do not grow, harvest and prepare other products, you are still totally dependent on others to do it for you. One cannot make a living from the land this way, one merely exploits the land in order to gain enough money to buy a living. It has become primarily a money driven enterprise. Thus we have erected a massive system of inter-dependence, where even famines can be man-made…in modern times we can find famines in some countries where there is no drought or shortage of natural resources, but where there is a monetary demise, and a collapse of infrastucture. Such a famine is not the result of a natural disaster, but that of a man-made disaster. Add a natural disaster to this mix and you have a catastrophe. Scripture speaks on this topic (Mark 13:8 For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be earthquakes in divers places, and there shall be famines and troubles: these are the beginnings of sorrows.)
When cataclysmic events start impacting this fragile system of inter-dependence…what logical outcome can we expect but famines and troubles…imagine what will happen in a city with millions of inhabitants when the taken for granted supply mechanism to supermarkets gets disrupted. Many people, especially the poorer communities of city dwellers live from “one day to the next” where the family eats what was earned that day, there’s no reserve supply, and if the breadwinner falls ill, they starve or steal. It does not require much imagination to construe the chaos when supermarkets run empty, and the day’s earnings cannot buy bread, or worse, the day’s earnings do not cover the cost of bread.
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