Those readers of this blog know that recently my wife and I spent some time in the Dolomites in Italy. The mountains there are world renown. It is Italian, yet German. The architecture is German/Austrian alpine and the area is bilingual. Everyone speaks both Italian and German.
We did a lot of hiking to mountain peaks and through meadows and forests along the way. It was a “throw-back” to simpler times where farming was a family occupation and cows wandered between meadows and forests where their location was easily determined by the bells hung from their necks.
We were there in June when the meadows were in full bloom. To my surprise, I saw a lot of wild flowers and plants I hadn’t seen since I was a kid. I took a picture of an Indian Paintbrush, a common “weed” that was in everyone’s lawn when I was a kid growing up.
I’ve not seen an Indian Paintbrush since I was eight years old. It’s not such an impressive wild flower but it’s hard to believe that I’ve not seen one in decades! It got me thinking. What happened that they were so ubiquitous when I was a kid but now have vanished.
The Arrogance of Thinking we can Escape God’s Judgment
The reason we no longer see these weeds is we’ve applied weed killers everywhere. Weed killers have become so widely used we don’t realize what’s happened. Yes, we’ve gotten rid of those pesky weeds but with them, we’ve eliminated all their spring and summer blooms. Most don’t mind. We’re not fans of weeds in our lawns.
But weeds and briers were a curse-judgment that resulted from Adam’s sin (Genesis 3:18) – at least that’s the way the Ancients explained their origin. It begs the question: Should we be seeking to eliminate weeds and briers? Are such efforts an attempt to circumvent God’s judgment?
Lawns are One Thing, the Food Supply is Another
The question is not so simple. It’s not just that we’ve wiped out most common weeds from our lawns and golf courses. We’ve eliminated them from our farms as well. My grandfather had a farm and as a kid I learned early what the expression “long row to hoe” meant. It was work to keep the weeds from competing with the vegetables in the fields.
Today if you look close – particularly where corn is planted, the rows are way to close together to accommodate a hoe. Yet you never see any weeds. At the edge of the field, weeds are everywhere and within six inches of the corn stocks. But where the rows of corn are, there’s no weeds.
Fields are routinely sprayed with weed killers, in some cases to actually speed the harvest by drying out the plants! That seems like a really bad idea. Spraying weed killer at harvest risks weed killer in the food supply.
Please don’t try to convince me these weed killers are harmless to our health. The U.S. uses over 85 pesticides banned or being phased out in other countries! Guaranteed these can impact our health. It’s arrogant to think we can use technology to get out from under God’s judgment. There’s price to pay for it.
The Arrogance of Playing God
We’ve also introduced new genetically modified crops, some to withstand pesticides. It’s to maximize harvests but pesticide-proofing food doesn’t pesticide-proof those who eat it. It’s a dangerous game. If you wonder why so many governments allow it, follow the money. These companies have tens of billions of dollars of market value. It gives them huge lobbying power over you and I.
But it’s not simply about pesticides. Genetically modified crops are now everywhere. It’s nothing new. Crops and herds have been manipulated for centuries in pursuit of bigger harvests, bigger fruits, better taste or extended shelf life. Tomatoes have long been bred so that they can be more easily transported. The problem is, often these new breeds don’t have the vitamin or mineral value and improving shelf life degrades taste.
We’ve also employed various grafting techniques to get the best of two different families of fruits by creating a new type. Hardly any of modern fruits don’t involve some type of grafting or genetic modifications. The problem with this approach is that we’re deciding which genetic qualities are the important ones rather than God the creator. What drives which qualities are important? Money, of course. Nothing personal but I don’t trust men to assure our food supply by manipulating the genetic code of life. Our judgment is too flawed and too easily purchased. I’ll leave that to our heavenly Father.
Do we Really Know What We’re Doing?
Blog readers know we do a fair amount of gardening. We’ve got wild strawberries, raspberries, wild blackberries, cultured strawberries and blackberries, cherries, purple and red plums, pears, figs, apples, gooseberries and a couple varieties of wine grapes. I earlier commented about how the wild varieties often taste better.
It’s not just the taste. The wild are much heartier against hot, dry weather. When the heat soared in June, our cultured blackberries burned on the vines and then many of the vines died. But the wild ones did just fine, pushing out tons of fruit despite the record heat and drought . Over the centuries, they’ve adapted.
I also noticed that the wild plants don’t produce near as many berries nor are the berries typically as big. Best of all, the cultured are easy to pick, being bred (modified) to be thornless (another attempt to thwart God’s judgment?) Picking wild ones is difficult and often painful! But here’s the thing, the wild ones put out new shoots every year and the seeds from the berries also produce new plants.
That’s not true for the cultured vines. They never produce new shoots and the seeds are sterile. That should set off alarm bells. When God created life, He made sure it was capable of bringing forth new life in abundance (Genesis 1:11, 22). It makes the species of His creation self-sustaining. Isn’t it amazing the cultured ones don’t? When the vines die, you have to buy new ones from a greenhouse. The supply is controlled by a few firms!
Monopolistic Mono-Culture Farming Assures Monolithic Collapse of our Food System
Look around you. There’s only a few types of corn globally. Everyone’s eating the same, few varieties of apples, grapes, pears, tomatoes, grains, you name it. It’s the same with our herds. Virtually all our livestock comes from a few species globally. Ninety percent of all cattle in industrialized nations come from six controlled breeds. It’s true for pigs, chickens, fish – any commonly grown livestock. The natural breeds are going into extinction at an estimated rate of one per month and there are calls to build gene banks so that these unique species are not totally lost. I don’t think I need to tell you who controls the few big breeds.
Our farms are enormous corporate ventures growing a single variety of fruits, vegetables, livestock – often covering countless square miles. It makes the entire food chain susceptible to common threats, whether viruses, fungus, blight or drought – and who knows what these new breeds are susceptbile to?
No wonder we’re using so much pesticide and jacking our livestock with so many antibiotics. Every day we’re one step closer to monolithic collapse of our monopolistic mono-culture farming. It’s never a good idea to play God. Thinking ourselves wise, we prove ourselves fools (Romans 1:22).
Mapping Out a Better Path
We Should Oppose Genetic Engineering and Return to Naturally Occurring Breeds
Whatever God creates, He does without constraint. He blessed all life-forms with life, empowering them to reproduce abundantly saying, “multiply and fill the earth”. He has provided everything we need. More importantly, He has prohibited man from cross-breeding (Leviticus 19:19).
It was part of Israel’s holiness code. They were not to intermarry with the nations – meaning intermarry with those outside the covenant-community. Likewise animals were not to be cross-bred but maintained as God had created them – each according to its kind (Genesis 1:21, 24; 7:14). Israelites were not allowed to sow two different seed (mixed seed) in their fields (Deuteronomy 22:9) nor were they to have two different breeds pulling a plow (22:10) or to wear clothing made of two different materials (22:11). The holiness code points to the reality that Israel was not to mix with pagans (the nations).
Messing with the genetic code is playing God. We’re telling God we know better than He does what types of life are best and what characteristics of life are important. That’s arrogant and crazy. But no one in the church is outraged despite that virtually all our crops, herds – even our commercial flowers, are all engineered to one degree or another. It’s time for Christians to vocally oppose this practice, especially in our foods.
We Should Eliminate Mono-culture Farming and Pesticides
Many Christians won’t like it but it’s time to sensibly and responsibly farm. That means ending mono-culture farming methods and eliminate pesticides. God will not allow us to succeed in efforts to try to get around his curse-judgments initiated at the Fall. Anyone who thinks so is naïve.
Christians should only purchase bio-products even though the prices can be higher. Pesticides, hormone injections and antibiotic practices need to end. It means changing the way we manage our fields and herds. Doing so should be part of our witness to unbelievers – that we love God’s creation and value it enough where we oppose practices and techniques that destroy it. We must also value the diversity God has given us.
We Must Learn Obedience to All of God’s Laws
Obedience to God’s laws has always been the path to life (Deuteronomy 30:19). Moses said it to Israel right after they consummated the covenant at entry to the land. Disobedience brings curse-judgments that lead to death (28:15-68) but obedience always brings the blessing of life (28:1-14).
Obedience brings abundant harvests (28:4-5, 8, 11-12). For those who think we cannot supply the world’s population without pesticides, fertilizers and genetically modified crops and herds, the Bible teaches otherwise. God promises to bless us with life beyond measure if we will just be obedient to His laws. And that’s the point. Do we trust God enough to prove His word?
That was why the God’s people were to leave the ground fallow every seventh year. It was not a form of ancient crop rotation and fertilization method through fallowing the fields, it was so that Israel would learn to trust God. Note Leviticus 25:
18 “ ‘Follow my decrees and be careful to obey my laws, and you will live safely in the land. 19 Then the land will yield its fruit, and you will eat your fill and live there in safety. 20 You may ask, “What will we eat in the seventh year if we do not plant or harvest our crops?” 21 I will send you such a blessing in the sixth year that the land will yield enough for three years. 22 While you plant during the eighth year, you will eat from the old crop and will continue to eat from it until the harvest of the ninth year comes in.
Leviticus 25 makes it pretty simple. We only need to obey God’s laws and we will have more than enough. Do you trust God . . . or do you arrogantly think you know better than Him?