Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5 Page 6 Page 7 Page 8 Page 9 Page 10 Page 11 Page 12 Page 13 Page 14 Page 15 Page 16 Page 17 Page 18 Page 19 Page 20 Page 21 Page 22 Page 23 Page 24 Page 25 Page 26 Page 27 Page 28 Page 29 Page 30 Page 31 Page 32 Page 33 Page 34 Page 35 Page 36 Page 37 Page 38 Page 39 Page 40 Page 41 Page 42 Page 43 Page 44 Page 45 Page 46 Page 47 Page 48 Page 49 Page 50 Page 51 Page 52 Page 53 Page 54 Page 55 Page 56 Page 57 Page 58 Page 59 Page 60 Page 61 Page 62 Page 63 Page 64 Page 65 Page 66 Page 67 Page 68 Page 69 Page 70 Page 71 Page 72 Page 73 Page 74 Page 75 Page 76 Page 77 Page 78 Page 79 Page 80 Page 81 Page 82 Page 83 Page 84Plough Quarterly • Autumn 2016 63 choreography? Or is our attitude one that says food and farming are just mechanistic parts of amoral enterprises? Most pastors and church leaders will not touch this issue because to do so would mean dropping their hostility to environmentalism, and in many cases it would jeop- ardize their own political reality. What does a pastor do when, after a sermon on sustainability, his lead elder, who happens to grow Mon- santo genetically modified corn and soybeans or who has a Tyson factory farm, becomes miserly at putting money in the offering plate? What about Christians who work for outfits dedicated to nutrient deficiency, junk food, and a mechanistic view toward DNA and life? This is a real tension, but it is the tension of truth breaking into spiritual consciousness. Repentance is not a one-shot deal; it’s ongoing spiritual disturbance, which creates fertile soil to germinate new seeds of understanding. The parallels between creation care and spiritual faithfulness are both profound and myriad. The sooner the Christian community dares to converse about how belief permeates food and farming, the sooner its credibility in the culture will increase. Without that conversa- tion, and without that conversion, the creation worshippers will retain the high road, and the creator worshippers will retain their image as conquistadors. Dear God, help me to honor and steward your stuff not because I worship it, but because in doing so I express worship toward the One who owns it all.  Christians preach about the importance of finding and using our God-given talents and gifts. What are the talents of a pig? Unlike any other animal, the pig has a plow on its nose. Denying the pig a habitat that allows it to dig, to gambol in sunshine, and to have enough space and stim- ulation around to express its innate curiosity violates the very essence of its being – its glory. What kind of Christian witness is it to choose food that inherently demonstrates an anti-glory way of thinking and acting? Imagine parents telling their children that the reason they were eating humanely raised pork instead of indus- trial meat was because they wanted to honor the pigness of the pig. These are the ways we can put ourselves in a frame of mind in which we give God all his due. If we can’t even respect the parts of creation we see, how will we be able to respect what we don’t see? The sun shines on the earth to grow plants that inhale carbon dioxide and exhale oxygen, splitting off the carbon to form their vegetative bodies. Much of it gets sequestered in the soil. Chemical fertilizer destroys the wondrous community of microbial beings and larger critters (like earthworms) that inhabit the soil, trading in an amazing underground café of nutrients. To assault this community of beings with simplistic chemicals and harmful tillage is to spoil God’s stuff. And all of it is God’s stuff. Are we leaving the soil richer, the water purer, and the air cleaner, as a result of our food and farming system? Are we respecting and honoring the distinctiveness, gifts, and talents of the plants and animals in this divine By learning to appreciate the pigness of the pig we will understand how to appreciate the Godness of God. Photograph by Matt Eich