How Theology Brought Me to Homesteading

Under no circumstances did I ever intend to live a rural life. I lived in apartments in the
city from birth until I got married. And I was quite happy to never mow a lawn, never worry
about home repairs, and have an unending amount of air conditioning in case the temperature
made it to 70 degrees. Even camping recreationally was a rarity. Bugs all day, sweating through
the night, I’ll pass. I grew up just before “glamping” became a thing, but I imagine I would have
been a professional at it.

When I think critically about it, I enjoyed being disconnected from creation. Some spots
looked nice, and I enjoyed climbing trees as a kid or looking up at the stars, but I wanted a
modern industrial life. I wanted technology and convenience as a buffer between me and the
world God created. If the natural world didn’t suit my needs then I didn’t want to engage with it.

Apparently with the rise of industry, we began to romanticize the wilderness—which is to
say we began to institutionalize it within the concept of the “scenic.” Because of railroads
and improved highways, the wilderness was no longer an arduous passage for the
traveler, but something to be looked at as grand or beautiful from the high vantages of the
roadside. We became viewers of “views.” We forgot, indeed, that the civilized and the
domestic continued to depend upon wilderness—that is, upon natural forces within the
climate and within the soil that have never in any meaningful sense been controlled or
conquered. Modern civilization has been built largely in this forgetfulness.

Wendell Berry, The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays of Wendell Berry (The Body and the Earth), pg. 96.

The height of my city living was during seminary. We lived on campus on the tenth floor
of student housing, right in the heart of Dallas, Texas. Sometimes on the weekends I would meet
with other students in the Bishop Arts district where we would enjoy the best barbeque on earth,
listen to live music on every street corner, and discuss theology over cigars and whiskey. It was a
dream come true.

But I always had my family in the back of my head as I was enjoying those moments. We
had four kids with a fifth on the way. When they wanted to go out and have fun it basically
meant a small plot of land off the side of the apartments, fenced in for the safety of the children
and the adults, that was half grass and half paved walkway. The parents of infants could push
their strollers in circles for a while, avoiding the occasional toddler on a tricycle.

It occurred to me that this was not natural for children. They were desperate for more
space. We were always on the lookout for some new plot of open land where kids could run in
that was being developed into apartments, gas stations, or industrial parks. I knew I needed to
choose between the city life I enjoyed or the space my family needed. This got the ball rolling in
my mind.

Throughout my studies I was introduced to new theological concepts, as any seminarian
is. Ideas that the average person in the pew often doesn’t ever hear about unless they have a very
advanced adult Sunday School situation. Some of my previously held beliefs stayed the same,
some were compelled in a different direction, but it was the completely new things that were the
most interesting. One of those ideas was the concept of the temple.

Of course, any Bible reader is aware of the temple in the Old Testament. And hopefully
most Christians have some awareness of their very body as a temple of the Holy Spirit. But that
is probably as far as most people go with it. What I came to learn was that the temple is a theme
that runs from the first page of the Bible to the last, and within this concept entails God’s entire
purpose for reality itself. It’s kind of a big deal.

The temple isn’t simply a building that Solomon built, it’s a much broader concept. I
think of it like this: the temple is where God’s space and man’s space meet. It’s not always a
building, as even the Bible attests to, but it is a place where humanity and God meet with each
other. This happens all over the Bible and it appears to be God’s primary goal.

Believe it or not, the first temple is the garden in Eden. In Genesis 3 we see that God
walked with man; they existed alongside each other. Most of us know how that worked out.
Humanity chose to rebel against our creator, as we still do today. Eventually we see God and
man together again in the tabernacle. Inside the holy of holies in the Tabernacle the unique
presence of God existed. This was later created again in the temple built by Solomon. God’s
unique presence dwelt among men.

At the center of human history, we find the most significant example of the temple in the
incarnation of Jesus the Christ. He is the living embodiment of God’s space and man’s space
living together. Our salvation is powerfully intertwined with the concept of the temple. This is
followed by the holy spirit indwelling followers of Jesus, making us into temples.

Do you not know that you are a temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?
1 Corinthians 3:16 ESV

All of this culminates in the return of Christ when all things are put right, sin is judged,
and we see human history come full circle with the New Heavens and Earth. God is again among
his people but now there are no veils, no boundaries, humanity and all of creation live alongside
God as we move into eternity where new adventures await.

Seeing this theme played out in scripture really moved me. It made me see God in a much
more invested way. He has a goal of being with us, like a father desiring quality time with his
children. It’s a very loving picture. But it isn’t so narrowly focused on humanity as we might be
led to think. God doesn’t want to take us away to be with him in some spiritual realm, he wants
to be here in his creation, with all the physical grandeur that he made.

To put it bluntly, creation is to be redeemed; that is, space is to be redeemed, time is to be
redeemed, and matter is to be redeemed. God said “very good” over his space-time-and-
matter creation, and though the redeeming of this world from its present corruption and
decay will mean transformations we cannot imagine, the one thing we can be sure of is
that this redeeming of creation will not mean that God will say, of space, time and matter,

“Oh, well, nice try, good while it lasted but obviously gone bad, so let’s drop it and go for
a nonspaciotemporal, nonmaterial world instead.” But if God really does intend to
redeem rather than reject his created world of space, time, and matter, we are faced with
the question: what might it look like to celebrate that redemption, that healing and
transformation, in the present, and thereby appropriately to anticipate God’s final
intention?

N.T. Wright, Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church,
pg. 211-212.

It became more and more apparent to me that God has a serious interest in this world, it
isn’t just the thing he happened to put humanity in like some cosmic diorama. He wants to be
here among all of his creation, human and otherwise. Recognizing that made me see this world in
a new way. The Christian journey involves seeing things the way God sees them. I was
beginning to go down that road with nature.

I started to search for authors and speakers that might help me understand creation from
this new point of view. As I’m sure everyone in the homesteading world experiences, I
remember when I first read Wendell Berry. That certainly got the ball rolling! Paul Kingsnorth,
Jonathan Moo, Hugh Ross, Noah Sanders, Ellen Davis, Norman Wirzba, Sandra Richter, N.T.
Wright, Howard Snyder, Joel Salatin, the list goes on and on.

Historical Theology was my focus in seminary and I was shocked to find that Basil of
Caesarea has an incredible homily series on the days of creation. Apparently, I’ve been missing
out on what the Church actually taught about the natural world.

I want creation to penetrate you with so much admiration that everywhere, wherever you
may be, the least plant may bring to you the clear remembrance of the Creator. If you see
the grass of the fields, think of human nature, and remember the comparison of the wise
Isaiah. All flesh is grass, and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field. Truly
the rapid flow of life, the short gratification and pleasure that an instant
of happiness gives a man, all wonderfully suit the comparison of the prophet.

https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/32015.htm (section 2)

The more I dug into the subject the more I noticed that prior to the Industrial Revolution,
Christianity had a lot to say about God’s love for this world. Many early Christian prayers and
rituals invoked the natural world to a large degree. Fifth and Sixth century Celtic Christianity had
to win over the pagans of early Ireland and Scotland by demonstrating God’s love for creation as
well as his authority over it.

So my study of theology has pushed me into a place where I now see God’s love for this
world in a new light. But what next? Does this just mean it’s time to buy another bookshelf?
Praise God the answer is yes and no. There will be another bookshelf to fill with resources on the
subject, but that’s not all. My wife was on a journey as well. One that would bring our personal
interests into alignment and change the course of our family.

I’ll let Stephanie tell her side of the story if or when she feels like it, but I can say that we
were both being moved towards a homesteading lifestyle. For me, it was my exploration of
theology and seeing how God felt about this world and what he expects us to do with it. For her,
the reasons were health related. Our family has special needs, some more unique than others.
Paying close attention to what we eat and how it is made became vital.

After a few years going down this path, I see our work on the homestead as spiritually
motivated. If we can define liturgy broadly as “repeated acts of worship meant honor and praise
God,” then I truly view our homesteading practices as our family liturgy. We plant, we weed, we
feed our animals, we butcher and process our meat to the rhythm of the seasons in gratitude of
the Creator. “Then God said, ‘Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the
day from the night, and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years…’” All of
this is done to rely as heavily on God as we can and provide the basic needs for our family.

We continue to participate in the creation mandate until Christ returns and this world is
brought back to an Edenic-state, where God and his people fellowship together without sin and
death.

LORD, our Lord,

how majestic is your name in all the earth!
You have set your glory
    in the heavens.

Through the praise of children and infants
    you have established a stronghold against your enemies,

    to silence the foe and the avenger.
When I consider your heavens,
    the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars,
    which you have set in place,
what is mankind that you are mindful of them,
    human beings that you care for them?
You have made them a little lower than the angels
    and crowned them with glory and honor.

You made them rulers over the works of your hands;
    you put everything under their feet:
all flocks and herds,
    and the animals of the wild,
the birds in the sky,
    and the fish in the sea,
    all that swim the paths of the seas.
LORD, our Lord,

    how majestic is your name in all the earth!

Psalm 8 ESV