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Man's Biggest Temptation & Gardening
By Richard Fahey
Gardening is God's invention for men. Men need to garden to keep them sane, peaceful and humble.
Men are big thinkers. Usually too big. They easily get lured into national and world politics. The "News" of Newspaper World and TV World may surpass sexual allurement
as the chief temptation of men in North America. Satan's third temptation of Jesus – presumably his most powerful one – was about world politics. He showed Jesus all the
kingdoms of the world…"All this power I will give you…" Power…lots of power…is the big temptation of men, and even more so in the biggest military power on earth.
What gardening does is take away the power vision and gives to a man the tiny view of one lettuce that needs the soil cultivated around it and the tiny weeds pulled. One
lettuce at a time. This is the real world he is in control of. "Inch by inch, row by row, gonna make this garden grow" says the old song. Pretty humbling, huh?
The miracle of Jesus becoming the Son of Man is about God putting off His world view that theologians call "omniscient" (all knowing) and "omnipotent" (all powerful) and
becoming a baby with insignificant parents, in an insignificant town in an insignificant country.
Look for big news stories in the Gospels. You won't find the four Evangelists relating any world events even though Rome is at the height of world power. What you find
instead is a lot about gardening! Mustard seeds, sowers, weeds and wheat, manuring a fig tree, tending grapevines are some things mentioned. It is evident Jesus not only became a man of earth but worked the earth Himself. Even after the Resurrection, the first person He showed Himself to, Mary Magdalene, thought He was the gardener. Could His first act after the Resurrection be to take a hoe and cultivate the soil? That is not as unlikely as it seems since it is recorded He did a similar humble act of baking bread over a charcoal fire later on. How fitting, too, the new Adam should start His (and our) restored life tilling the soil as Adam started his life.
A man humbles himself when he gardens. Especially when he gets away from the power tools. The narrow focus of mind, heart and hand to one square foot of land with a
cabbage on it opens the eternal in his soul in the timeless absorbing work. God is the I AM and the gardener IS. We can only live in the present, a second at a time.
In power and politics men look to dominate other men, especially men of different national origin. Gardeners are different. Their interest in the soil brings unity of
men. A common bond to the soil brings understanding and equality. Gardeners all over are aggressive peace makers; they share seeds, plants and gardening ideas for mutual
prosperity. Robert Frost catches that spirit in his poem Tuft of Flowers:
"Men work together" I told him from my heart,
"Whether they work together of apart."
It is overwhelming to me when I meditate on how our homestead is built on plants from all over the world…apple trees from the Japanese, soy beans from the Chinese,
raspberries from the New Zealanders, peas from the Dutch and the list goes on. And it is rewarding for me that I have sent out to remote places our own developments in
apples, edible burdock, mulberry and peony.
Gardening remains for men what it was in Paradise: a way of humility, a path of inner peace that leads to the Creator. It is also a bridge building alternative to power
politics between men throughout the world.
Richard is the founder of The Christian Homesteading Movement. For over 35 years he and his family have been experimenting with easy-to-grow,
disease and insect resistant fruit trees, garden vegetables and herbs for self-sufficiency.
