Latest / Beyond Labels Premium / Episode #113: Does God Care What’s On Your Plate?

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Episode #113: Does God Care What’s On Your Plate? · Beyond Labels Premium

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: The tendency is for all of us to just bag the other side.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_01: And so the result is, in my experience, if I go into the church and say, hey, guy, you know, go to the a deacon or an elder, you know, or the pastor and say, hey, you know, when we have our potluck, how about we don't use styrofoam plates?
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_01: You know, let's use paper, or better yet, let's um, why don't we go down the Salvation Army and buy a bunch of misfit plates and we'll wash them and there won't even be a trash bag when we're done.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_01: In the average church, you know, they look at you like, what?
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_01: What are you some sort of earth muffin, commie pinko tree hugger?
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_01: You know, and and and and the problem is you can't even have a discussion.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: Hello, welcome to another episode of Beyond Labels.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Dr.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: Cena McKella, and I'm here with our favorite farmer, Joel Salatin.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm really excited about today's podcast because Joel recently gave a sermon and it resonated with me on so many different levels.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: He said so many things that I wanted to say, but kind of was afraid to say them.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: So I thought this would be a fantastic time to have this discussion on our podcast, you know, since it's behind the paywall.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: So hopefully we won't get all the trolls.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_00: And what I really wanted to start with was, you know, something that you hearkened on in your sermon was does God really care what we eat?
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: Does God care what's on our plate?
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: And you're speaking to a conservative, and it got me really thinking about this concept that food is very political.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you and I talk about the politics of the food supply, like in almost every episode, right?
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: Like the politics runs deep.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: But this has always been fascinating to me is that at least in my lifetime, it seems like the political left have been on the side of trying to create a clean food supply so much more than people on the right, right?
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, in my lifetime, we considered it an issue of the left.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_01: And I've never you know, when when I was growing up, I I grew up in a pretty, you know, conservative Christian home, and and all of our church friends made fun of of the environmental movement or or anybody that would dare to save a tree, save a whale, save anything.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_01: And uh, so you know, I I lived in this this in uh uh unbelievably um um whatever contradictory uh world uh uh as as as conservative Christians in our family, you know, um who who did compost piles.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um our church friends were these you know uh very conservative uh folks.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_01: And then our farm friends were all these, you know, uh hippies back to the landers, beaded bearded brawless, uh, you know, hippie folks who who at that time, you know, we're talking about late 60s, early 70s, um, you know, when I was a teenager, and and you know, these folks were, I mean, it was common to have them, you know, uh smoking uh marijuana joints and stuff at our house.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, but we loved them, you know.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that that's who energized us on the farm.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_01: They were interested in what we were doing, um, and all that.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_01: And our church friends were not.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_01: And um, you know, I didn't think a lot of it until I got a little older and realized the the you know the the the juxtaposition uh of these two things.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_01: And um, and yeah, uh and for those who are you know would like to see that sermon, um, you know, it all you have to do is Google up uh the Vineyard Church for Wheeling, West Virginia, uh the Vineyard, the Vineyard Church, and uh they've got it on there, the whole, the whole thing, and you can, you know, you can see it yourself and and hear it.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_01: And uh, and for me, for me, it was a uh it was just a wonderful opportunity.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, this church, you know, just a bit of a background, uh, Chris Figaretti, the senior pastor there, he and I have been friends now for several years.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_01: And um this this church, if you can imagine it, one of their one of their uh things that they did about three years ago, they installed, they paid for and did the labor to install um school gardens in every school district of their uh uh uh of their area.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know how many they put in, it was a bunch of them.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_01: And um, so you know, I have just come to really love uh Chris and and what he's trying to do there with the group.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_01: And um, and so it was a it was just a privilege and and an honor to be able to share with them, but um, but I know I I I know that it it's still even even in that kind of a group, this kind of thinking uh pushes, you know, it it pushes conservatives.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, yes.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, it's so interesting, and I'm thinking you probably feel somewhat similar.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: I feel like I'm stuck in between these two worlds, like not really fitting into either side, you know, because we've tried many, many churches in our journey, and of all of the churches that we've been to, the food was not on the forefront.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: This was not an issue for them.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we would like my children would go into the awana program and they would reward them with you know candy for memorizing Bible verses.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: And it wasn't even healthy candy, it's it was you know the junk candy, right?
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um at all of the ice cream parties for them with the junk ice cream, the potlets would all be junk, like you know, uh it but then on the flip side, all of my friends who are you know conservative, they find out that oh, you eat organic food, and they start cal calling me like this California tree hugging, granola eating, hippie.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, wow, look at all the labels being thrown at me, just because I'm trying to provide health for my family.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_00: So you're really stuck between these two worlds where you feel like I don't really fit in, which was another reason why I was so amazed and thrilled to find you, right?
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: Because we're because we both have similar experiences.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: But you know, I've never understood it because for me, food should be a unifying, a unifying topic, right?
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_00: We we all should want clean food.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: We we all want to have health for our families and for you know for our children.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_00: And I would think that it would bring us together under this common interest, right?
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: But it really doesn't.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_00: And when you dive into the history of our food supply in the US, you'll see that food actually did begin as a political issue.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: But what I think a lot of people may not be aware of is that it wasn't like the charge for an unadulterated food was not led by the left.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: It was actually led by Republicans.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_00: So just some quick examples, you know, we've talked on this program about Dr.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: Harvey Wiley, right?
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_00: He was the head of um the Bureau of Chemistry, which became the FDA.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: And this was back in the late 1800s, like 1883.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: And he was the one that created that infamous poison squad, right?
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_00: Where Congress gave him like$5,000 to study the adulteration of our food supply.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_00: And he tested different food ingredients that were currently in the food supply.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: He tested them on human subjects.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes those subjects got so sick they couldn't function anymore.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: But it was Dr.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_00: Wiley who laid the groundwork for the formation of our federal food and drug administration, the FDA.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: And he laid the groundwork for our food laws and regulations that we still have today.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_00: He was a Republican, right?
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_00: The Pure Food and Drug Act, which was pushed by Dr.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: Wiley, and the Meat Inspection Act, are considered the birth of the FDA.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_00: All right, those two bills permanently changed our food supply.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: It took the control from the people in the states and largely gave it to the federal government.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: It laid the groundwork for how our food supply operates today.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_00: And as I said, the Pure Food and Drug Act that was pushed by a Republican and the Meat Inspection Act that was proposed by a Republican.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: It was Senator Albert Beveridge.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_00: And they were both signed into law by a Republican president, Theodore Roosevelt.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_00: So the even the birth of our food supply and the uh regulations of the birth of the federal, you know, FDA, it came from Republicans.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't from the left.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: Like I don't think a lot of people are aware of that.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you know, uh part of part of this is because the the more conservative, um, the more conservative folks are I I I'm I'm not sure I want to use the right terminology here, but uh what, less, less romantic, um, you know, more more rudimentary, more linear, more reductionist in their thinking.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_01: Whereas the the liberals have always been uh um more about feelings, uh more about feelings and emotion, and so they can get into you know uh those sorts of things, and the conservatives tend to be more linear and reductionist, uh, you know, uh Greco-Roman kind of thinking.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um and and and so that that dichotomy uh you know uh comes out to where the the you know Shelley, Bish, and Keats, the romantic poets of Britain, you know, have you ever seen anything as lovely as a tree?
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_01: You know, Republicans don't get that, all right.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_01: You know, conservatives don't get that kind of language, whereas, whereas somebody who's a more liberal-minded, oh um let's all be in love, you know, uh, that kind of thing, uh, folks kind of can can can get into that.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_01: And so for sure, for sure, the the environmental movement as we know it grew out of uh a more um a more liberal, um, I would say creation worship uh uh mentality and and and and so so the temptation, the the the tendency is for all of us to just bag the other side.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_01: And so the result is, in my experience, if I go into the church and and say, hey guy, you know, go to the a deacon or an elder, you know, or the pastor and say, hey, you know, when we have our potluck, how about we don't use styrofoam plates, you know, let's use paper, or better yet, let's um, why don't we go down the Salvation Army and buy a bunch of misfit plates and we'll wash them and there won't even be a trash bag when we're done.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_01: In the average church, you know, they look at you like, what?
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_01: What are you some sort of earth muffin, commie pinko, tree hugger?
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_01: You know.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_01: And and the problem is you can't even have a discussion.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and I I'm the I'm the first to say I don't have it all figured out.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_01: And and all of us have our hypocrisies, we have our inconsistencies, and I'm as guilty, you know.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_01: But but for crying out loud, can't we even sit down and have a discussion, you know, um uh discussion about these issues and uh in in a in a respectful way and not just bag each other.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_01: And so so what's happened is the faith community has basically bagged the environmentalist community as a bunch of you know uh uh pagan uh uh pagans basically, and the environmental community has basically bagged the faith community uh as a bunch of uh conquistadors.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_01: And you when you look back and look at the conquistadors, look at what they did in the name of God.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I mean, a lot of atrocities have been committed in the name of God.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_01: And so so you can appreciate why there's this antagonism between the two.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_01: Each side has some truth, but the other side is so quick to bag the the entirety of the other side that you can't even, you know, you can't even have a discussion.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and what I find interesting too is that I was surprised with this.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_00: Like when I wrote my first book and I started giving talks, I thought that I would kind of be welcomed into like this food advocate movement, and you know, it was like a big tribe working together for this common goal of let's clean our food supply, you know, but that's not actually what happened.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_01: Right, right.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_00: You probably experienced similar things.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_00: Like I actually got pushback from a lot of food advocates simply because my means of getting to a clean food supply did not align with theirs.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_00: So most of them want more government regulation.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_00: They want more money thrown at the government, the government's the solution.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_00: And because I said, no, the people are the solution, right?
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_00: Give it back to the people and to the states, how it should be constitutionally, and let the people fix this with the free market.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_00: They turn their backs on me.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_00: Like a lot of them turn their backs on me.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, I don't understand.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_00: We have this common goal.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_00: Who cares how we actually get there?
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_00: Like you work on your your path to get there, I'll work on mine, and we'll all meet at the end under this big happy umbrella with rainbows and you know, and shooting stars because we all created this clean food supply together, you know, but that wasn't the case.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_00: And so this is what I did.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I I decided, you know what?
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna create some, I'm gonna find some common ground.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, and I want to read you my list, and then I would love for you to jump in and talk about some of the points that you made in your sermon because there's they're so very powerful.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_00: So this was in, I wrote this in my first book.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it's I said, when I when it comes to our food supply, I believe that we can rally together behind a common goal.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_00: So, for example, can we agree that Americans should not be unconsenting guinea pigs for chemical companies?
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_00: Can we agree that government should not decide what's on our dinner plate based on special interest groups and backdoor deals?
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_00: Can we agree that industry should be held accountable when they dump untested synthetic chemicals in our food supply?
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_00: And can we agree that we the people have the right to know what's in the food we eat, even though the industry and the FDA are working hard to keep us in the dark?
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_00: Four points that I feel like we could all agree on, right?
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_00: We don't want to be guinea pigs, we want to decide what we want to eat.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_00: We don't want special interest groups deciding this, we don't want chemicals dumped in our food.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_00: And we have the right to know what we're actually putting in our bodies, right?
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_00: I for me, this should be very simple, straightforward.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_00: Why can't we agree on this?
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_00: But we can't like I still get pushed back on that, like largely from conservatives.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_01: And and and Cena, not to be again, uh not to be partisan, but let's be very, very uh practical for what's going on right now today.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_01: Um, let's take the RFK G RFK Jr.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I love RFK Jr.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_01: for so many things, but the fact, you know, and look, how can you not love a guy that has sued the government 530 times?
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I mean that's pretty but but think what has he sued the government for?
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_01: He has sued the government agencies for not for not um doing their job.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_01: Um I mean, obviously, you know, they're they tend to make special concessions over big corporate uh outfits, and that's you know, so so what happens is they go after little guys and they let the big guys go away.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_01: And I love that he's suing them to create uh an equal, you know, an equal administration of the law.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_01: I get that, all right.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_01: But, but, but could we could we get uh farther faster if we simply eliminated uh the government intervention in the marketplace, period.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_01: In other words, take take away their authority, take away their interventive capacity in the marketplace, and and let you and I make our decisions and all of our friends, then we you and I can go head to head with Cargill.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_01: But it's hard to go head to head with Cargill when they've got the US DU, the F D, and all these other agencies in in their corner.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_01: And you can sue them until the cows come home, but those, but those agencies uh are still going to be in the fraternity and be in bed with the great big corporations.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_01: And and that that's just that's just the way government is.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_01: And and the liberals, you know, can't see it.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_01: And that that's what creates you know this politics of thing.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_01: So so the thing, the thing that I uh that uh the my kind of bottom line in the in the sermon that I did was um you know, I gave a little bit of our history.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_01: And and then I asked the question, and I have had I've had numerous, this is the one question that I have found among faith groups that makes them stop for a minute.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you know, they they jump up and down on you know all these, you know, these liberals and these commie pinko, you know, environmentalists and the global warming.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_01: And yeah, I I look, I you know, I've heard it all, I read it all, I know that the deal, okay, the drill.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_01: But when I ask, does God care?
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_01: Do you think God cares?
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_01: Do you think God cares how a pig is handled?
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_01: Do you think God cares what's on your plate?
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_01: Do you think God cares um you know uh what you're uh what you're feeding your body?
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_01: That Socratic method, Cena, that Socratic method works.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_01: You know, the Socratic method is you don't tell, you ask, you ask poignant questions and then let the you know let the other side deal with the question you best.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_01: And um and uh you know, I mean we we see we see Jesus using that uh routinely, you know.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um uh who is without sin?
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you can throw the first stone, whoever's without sin.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_01: And what happened?
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_01: They all just grabs you one by one, they left, right?
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_01: And and um um and and so uh uh I I'm always looking for me in in uh in argumentation, I'm always looking for that question that's so powerful that it kind of stops the rhetoric and stops everybody.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_01: And for me, and Mike's and and I have tried numerous things, but in me, the one that stops them is does God care?
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_01: Because as a you know, in the faith community, we do believe God, he God cares about everything.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_01: He says, I care if a sparrow falls, I care if you lose a hair on your head, you know.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that's that's caring about some pretty small stuff.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, who cares about a sparrow, you know?
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_01: And and if I lose a hair, well, big deal, you know.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um and some of us have you know lost way more than others.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but but but the the point is that um that God anyone in a faith community is gonna say, well, sure, God cares, God cares about everything.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_01: Of course he does.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_01: That's an obvious thing.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_01: Well, if he cares about everything, then what would he what would he choose?
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_01: Would it would you know, would he choose something that destroys our microbiome and gives us diabetes and um puts us in dependence to Pfizer and you know pharmaceuticals?
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_01: You know, uh uh where where do you go in this?
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_01: And so suddenly, when you ask that question, that's what stops them, and then you can then you can have a bit of a discussion.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and that's the exact question that stood out to me when I listened to the sermon, and that's why I emailed you back, and I was so excited because I thought that is such a profound question that even a child knows the answer to that question, you know, like you instinctively know when as soon as you ask the question, the person knows in their heart that God cares.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_00: So here's my question for you then.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_00: I would like for you to speak to the conservatives right now.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_00: You think that God does care, but can you walk us through some of the examples in the Bible?
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_00: You know, in your sermon, you get you gave so many examples, different biblical verses that you read out loud.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_00: Can you walk us through some of the examples to basically support your hypothesis that God does care what is on your plate?
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_00: And like talk to us in a way that I can go and share it with my kids, you know, like talk to me like I'm five.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_01: So, so um One is certainly in the Psalms where it says that you know the earth is the Lord's, the earth, all all that we have and see is God's.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_01: So establishing ownership, and all of us know the heavens declare the glory of God, the firmament shows his handiwork, and the earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_01: That's King James thereof.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_01: But but um but but the point is here, when we look around, all of us in the faith community, we say, yeah, it's all God's.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, it's all God's stuff.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_01: Well, if it's God's stuff, how do you think he would like it to be treated?
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_01: Do you think he wants a dead zone the size of Rhode Island in the Gulf of Mexico?
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_01: Do you think he wants eagle eggs that won't hatch?
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_01: Do you think he wants three-legged salamanders, infertile frogs?
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you you know, you can, you can, uh, you know, you can go to gullies, uh, rock piles where there was fertile soil.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um, if you owned it, if it were yours, you know, let's take a let's take a kid, you know, you got your backpack.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_01: Let's say, let's say that the earth is your backpack, okay?
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, are these things that you would if if somebody did that to your backpack, you know, uh uh tore it up and made it and made the buckles not work and the and made it dysfunctional, um, how would you like it?
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you wouldn't like it, right?
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_01: And and so uh so that's that's kind of for me that that establishes the right of God to expect stewardship and not expect us to to tear it up, throw it away.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_01: And in fact, the you know, the history, there's what 25 uh 25 empire civilizations recorded in in human history, and every one of them, every one of them collapsed not only through you know political issues, but collapsed as they went from fertile soil to infertile soil.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_01: Every one of them, they exploited their soil and went to an infertile, infertile soil.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_01: So uh, you know, so it's not just it's not just well, you know, I prefer to do it this way, you prefer to do it that way, you know, let's just no, no, no, no, no.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_01: It's God's stuff.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, it's God's stuff.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_01: And so no more than we would mistreat somebody else's backpack, let's not mistreat the earth.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_01: That that is just so simple.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um it it's it's it's that simple.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_01: Uh another one is simply the fact that uh that it's hard for us to wrap our heads around spiritual concepts.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_01: And every spiritual concept has some sort of object.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_01: In other words, you can't say love, well love, well love, I'm in love.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_01: Well in love with what?
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_01: You know, we and and and so um all these uh heavy spiritual concepts, the reason for a physical universe, I would suggest, uh, is so that uh we could uh that we could see viscerally an object lesson of spiritual truth so that so that we can see, for example, forgiveness, okay.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_01: Forgiveness.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_01: Well, again, forgiveness has an object.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_01: You you can't you can't just forgive without an object, okay?
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_01: You you gotta forgive someone or something or or whatever.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_01: And and so uh the the tendency is for us to take these heady spiritual concepts and uh you know uh forgiveness, redemption, abundance, uh um uh charity, and uh and put them in some sort of an academic focus group, which means then that we don't actually implement them in our daily lives because we've never we've never hung them on a on a framework.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_01: And so the question is, how do we build forgiveness into our plants?
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_01: How do we build forgiveness into our cows?
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, we don't build forgiveness in them by by raising them and producing them in a way that tends to make them sick or dependent on farming.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_01: We build forgiveness.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_01: Uh environmentalists would use the word resilience, okay?
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_01: Forgiveness, forgiveness is to the faith community what resilience is uh to you know to the non-faith community.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_01: Resilience means you can take shocks.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and in the faith community, we say forgiveness allows us to say an unfit word and ask forgiveness and it's okay.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_01: We can abuse something, ask forgiveness, and it's okay.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_01: And so forgiveness is our equivalent of the environmentalist resilience, okay?
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_01: We just, we just, you know, we're using kind of different uh terminology here.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_01: And uh, I mean it it's more than that, but but this will be good enough for our discussion right here.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_01: I hope the you know the real conservative faith people in the don't you know curse me for being this gentle on on forgiveness.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_01: It's you know, it's it's it's a it's a powerful thing.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_01: But here's the point.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_01: I want people, I want people to come to our farm then when they leave and drive away, saying, Oh, I oh, that's what forgiveness looks like.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, that's what um that's what abundance looks like.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, that's what provision works looks like, you know, those kinds of things.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_01: And and of course, my favorite one is glory, is the word glory.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and and I I went into this in the sermon a little bit, you know, glory.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_01: We don't use the word glory uh in our day-to-day discussion very much.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_01: You you won't hear that at the you know, at the at the grocery store uh cash register.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_01: Nobody's gonna come up and say, you know, how's your glory doing?
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_01: You know, no, no, but uh we we kind of we we kind of have uh what we call uh spiritual speak, you know, uh spiritual speak where okay, now we're in church and we can speak spiritually, and then we go, you know, and we we segregate our own uh we segregate our own lexicon.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but you know, and so so glory is one of those words.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_01: We don't use that anywhere except except in the church, you know.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but but the Bible doesn't.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_01: The Bible talks about the glory of nations, the glory of old men, the glory of young men, the glory of women, the glory of of kings, uh the glory of things terrestrial, the glory of things celestial.
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it attaches glory to all sorts of physical things, not you know, uh uh glory of God.
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_01: And so um, and so again, let's imagine, let's imagine that um you're sitting down to Sunday dinner and you're having pork chops and you get to have this discussion with your kids.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm gonna do a little bit of role play here, okay?
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_01: Hey kids, remember Farmer John that we went out to last week and saw his pigs out, you know, running in the pasture and and and uh and they were expressing their pignus.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um so so the glory of something is its distinctiveness, okay?
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_01: That's that that's the that's the essence of glory of something, is it's is its distinct essence.
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_01: What makes it different than anything else?
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_01: And so uh so we went out to Farmer Johnson's.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_01: We saw these pigs running around and they were rooting in the ground and they were, you know, they're expressing their pigness.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_01: That was the glory of the pig, you know, is all they're what what what's special about a pig?
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_01: And the kids go, well, you know, they've got this nose, they root, you know, and they um and they they they they snort and you know, all these uh different and and they make you know they have bacon, okay, and they have all right, and so so so you know, yeah, okay, those are distinctives of the pig.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_01: And and and farmer John was letting them, you know, root and eat eat bugs and eat grass and and express their full, and the kids say, Oh, yeah, those pigs, they were so cool.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_01: They're so different than chickens, they're so different than cows, they're so different than everything.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_01: It was really cool to go out, you know, and see these pigs.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_01: All right, kids.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_01: So the pork chops we're eating.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_01: We're we went there and bought that pork because those pigs were able to express their glory.
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_01: That's their their specialness.
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_01: And that's a way that we understand that everything, every being has an essence, a distinctive specialness.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_01: So, what do you what would be what's the glory of God if we wanted to talk about what's special about God that He can do that nobody else can do?
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, what would that be?
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_01: Well, then you have a discussion about omnipresence and omniscience and and all-loving and holiness and oh wow.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_01: And so now around the dinner table, you've actually created uh a physical uh object lesson framework to have a discussion about something that is normally relegated to nothing but you know academic theological focus groups.
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_01: And suddenly you can say, oh, okay, I get it.
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_01: So that's why a tomato, um a tomato, we we trellis the tomato because it's got a kind of a spindly backbone.
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_01: So we got to kind of give it its own backbone and let the glory of the tomato, you know, climb so the tomatoes can get sun and they can, you know, fully express their tomato-ness.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, those kind of things.
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_01: And and it's it's living, Cena, it's living in that kind of of um of awareness and state that we are viscerally participating in an object lesson of commun of God trying to communicate spiritual truth to us.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_01: And when you when you enter that place in your life, you suddenly ask questions like, does God care?
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_01: You know, is what I'm seeing on the is what I'm seeing on my menu what I believe when I'm sitting in the pew?
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_01: Or is the chicken I'm eating actually stinking, stinking up the neighborhood, polluting the water, um, giving people salmonella and camp alabacter, and not being loving my neighbor as myself.
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_01: Ooh, okay, maybe I need to change my chicken if it's not if it's not agreeing with what I give a cent to, you know, sitting in the pew.
• 32:33
  SPEAKER_01: Does the me does the menu and the pew line up?
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_01: You know, that's a it's a valid question.
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_00: I love this picture that you painted.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, because I talk about something similar, which standing for your principles, right?
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_00: Like don't don't be that sunshine patriot, right?
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_00: Like stand for your principles every day, like what you believe should, in my opinion, radiate out from everything that you do, you know.
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_00: And what I find, and we're we're about out of time, but as you were talking, there were so many similarities coming to mind of the examples you were given with the animals, so many similarities with humans in our own lives.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_00: You're talking about forgiveness, right?
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_00: And in like you said, um, other groups will call it resiliency.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what in the in the human life, we've talked a lot about forgiveness and how it helps us to become more resilient.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_00: It helps, it's a it's a critical component of reversing any type of disease or ailment.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_00: Right is forgiveness.
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_00: And what it does is it brings resiliency to the body when you have forgiven.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's the same thing you were talking about, like with the glory, the glory of you know, the pig, and meaning the they're gonna try to, you're gonna let them express themselves for who they are, the pigness of the pig, and they're all unique.
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_00: And what is it that a lot of humans are trying to do, right, is go on these quests, these like inner discoveries of who am I and like what is my purpose?
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_00: You know, there's so many similarities here.
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_00: And I thought, in some this is more of a philosophical thought, but if one of the roadblocks could potentially be, and this is a roadblock for people getting to the way that you perceive um, you know, your role in in the ecology, one potential robot could be that people don't know who they are.
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_00: So if you don't know who you are, how are you gonna know what a pig is?
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_00: Or you know, the the cowness of the cow?
• 34:49
  SPEAKER_00: Like, how would you actually see that?
• 34:51
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's like how we talk about you you love yourself.
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_00: If you don't love yourself, how are you truly gonna love somebody else?
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_00: It starts with the self.
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and and and you know, I would just even take that one step further, Cena.
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_01: I would say, I would say that if you if you can't bring yourself to care about the pigness of the pig, you probably can't bring yourself to care about the euness of you.
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_01: In other words, it it's it's you you don't start at the top, you start at the bottom, you start at the simple stuff.
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_01: And so and so if you if you don't start with caring about whether the pig can express its pignus, you probably don't care if your neighbor can express his uh you know their individual.
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_01: You don't you don't start um you don't start with the hard stuff, you start with the simple stuff.
• 35:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um uh uh the it's how we it's how we appreciate the least of these.
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's a biblical concept, the least of these that creates a pathway to appreciating the greatest of these, whether it's individuals, whether it's concepts, whether it, whether it's governance, whatever it is, it's you start with the least and you move to the greatest.
• 36:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and there's a lot of ramifications there, but I know we're out of time, but I hope that this has um uh encouraged folks and especially um given uh given our our conservative listeners um uh uh a a whatever uh a language, a language to use.
• 36:41
  SPEAKER_01: And for our liberal listeners, um you know, I hope that you're understanding that that the attribution of ecological degradation to the faith community, to the dominion, the conquistador community.
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_01: I hope you understand that is actually not biblical.
• 37:03
  SPEAKER_01: It is a it is a perversion, it is a perversion of our stewardship mandate that comes straight through um the Bible.
• 37:11
  SPEAKER_01: And maybe you'll want to uh dig into that a little bit uh for your own understanding.
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_00: That's awesome.
• 37:19
  SPEAKER_00: I I love your perspective.
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_00: I love your courage and your strength to say it how it is.
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_00: I admire that in you.
• 37:28
  SPEAKER_00: And for anybody who wants to watch the full sermon, we will have a link to it in the description of this show.
• 37:35
  SPEAKER_00: And Nolan, our editor, is trying to get the full um sermon itself so we can actually put it on our channel as well.
• 37:42
  SPEAKER_00: So thank you for joining us, and we look forward to seeing you next week.