The husbandry of plants and animals has always included (and always will) the management and conservation of resources. "To till the ground," implied guarding it from waste and destruction and cultivating its fertility. Yet, these activities could not be responsibly enjoined outside the context of a covenant with God -- a covenant founded on faith and requiring a measure of agrarian restraint. When that faith-covenant was breached, man's ability to fulfill his agrarian responsibilities was also compromised. He could not see God's natural economy of resources because he no longer saw with the eyes of faith. He viewed things with the eyes of consumption -- seeing what could be gained instead of what could be sown and shared.

 

"So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree desirable to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate. She also gave it to her husband with her, and he ate." When the eyes of both were opened and they knew they were naked, they sewed fig leaves together to make themselves coverings, and industry was born. Ever since, mankind has employed himself in industry to cover his own sin. But industry is a poor replacement for responsible obedience.

 

This is not to say that we should dispense with industry and revert to nudity and public indiscretion. Rather, I am saying that our industrial efforts are often feeble attempts to redeem by human ingenuity what can ultimately only be redeemed by the hand of God. By His own hand, God made tunics of skin to clothe Adam and Eve. In this, mankind first saw that God must work out our redemption and that it would be costly. We may apprehend such redemption by our faith but we ought not presume to be its author or executor. In the same way that engaging in industry failed to redeem Adam and Eve's sin neither will abandoning industry have any redemptive value unless it is inspired by faith-filled, covenantal obedience.

 

Industry was not God's original plan for mankind -- agriculture was! Industry was man's response to a covenantal agrarian failure. He was not supposed to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. When he did, the covenant-breaking, consumptive culture of death and unbelief was planted in his heart. From that moment forward, mankind became a consumer who, with rare exceptions, having questioned the love and therefore the wisdom of God, could not see with the eyes of faith. Until mankind's view of God's love could be redeemed, he would live in a consumer's world that was subject to his faith-deprived perspective and agrarian failure.

 

Even after Eden, God sent man out of the garden "to till the ground" (Genesis 3:23). His plan has never changed. But for millennia mankind has often attempted to regain his rightful role as steward over the earth and failed. He has failed not because this desire was inconsistent with God's original plan, but because mankind thought he could regain his mastery over the earth without having to submit to the mastery of God over his own heart and nature. Tilling the ground without recognizing the covenant that gives it meaning is like planting stones. Nothing grows because there is no life in it.

 

Tilling the ground is more about recognizing our covenant with God than it is about fulfilling our environmental responsibility. If the covenant is right, the ground will bear fruit. But if the covenant is wrong, all our agrarian industry will only eventually strip the land of its life. The life is in the covenant, not in the ground. That which is God-breathed inherently lives. It is only in the context of cultivating a relationship with God that the garden of our lives bears any good fruit. Beyond this covenantal context, every effort, every idea, eventually brings forth only greater turmoil.

 

So what is the value in tilling the ground? In the act of cultivation we are forced to recognize the fragile nature of all life and its vital dependence on God. But we are also reminded of the covenant relationship that God desires to share with us personally and with the community in which we live. Tilling the ground reminds us of our need for God and for one another. Tilling the ground celebrates life and the Author of it and humbly recognizes the role we have been graciously granted in tending God's garden. Tilling the ground reminds us of the God-breathed miracle that brings dirt to life and gives it a will and a purpose. Ground tilling cultivation, at its best, is covenant-inspired intercession -- an act of worship toward both the Creator and toward the Redeemer of our lives.

 

Michael Hennen