Super Eco

Photo credit: sarah gilbert

Treat animals kindly. Rotate your crops. Honor the soil. Only kill animals for food. Do not genetically modify food crops. Never engage in agricultural practices that could hinder the survival of the species. And the ultimate paradisaical reward: clean, fresh water.

These are not the policies of sustainable agricultural organizations; they're exhortations taken from the Old Testament, which some interpret as a spiritual treatise on kinder, gentler practices of farming, eating and relating to the earth.

And Chief Seattle's speech is a moving reminder that for many indigenous peoples God/Creator is the land: "Our dead never forget the beautiful world that gave them being. They still love its winding rivers, its great mountains and its sequestered vales, and they ever yearn in tenderest affection over the lonely-hearted living, and often return to visit and comfort them... the very dust under your feet responds more lovingly to our footsteps than to yours, because it is the ashes of our ancestors, and our bare feet are conscious of the sympathetic touch, for the soil is rich with the life of our kindred."

Major religions address our treatment of the Earth in various ways, but the message remains clear: Take care of the Earth. Don't over-use resources. Respect the land.

In the Old Testament, specific exhortations look like Cliff's Notes for a national green coalition's annual conference (albeit written in ancient language):

• Avoid genetically modified plants (and, even, cross-breeding):  In Leviticus 19:19 the Israelites are told "do not sow a field of yours with two different kinds of seed." Taken literally, this passage might be a way to prevent cross-pollination; liberally interpreted and in the spirit of creation "according to their kinds," this could be a whole scale assault on GMOs.

• Crop rotation, fallow fields and organic methods. Exodus 23:10 and 11 describes practices incompatible with pesticide use, and orders Israelites to leave their fields every seventh year to the wild animals and for the poor to harvest whatever sprung up there. Using fallow fields is one of the central ways in which organic farmers maintain the nutrients in the fields.

• No CAFOs. Any number of Biblical passages set out rules for kind treatment and care of animals, including a law on removing newborns from their mothers too early. But the interpretation of the texts by Professor Gordon Wenham can be read as a strict anti-CAFO doctrine: "Proverbs 12:10 probably sums up the underlying philosophy of the Bible when it says: 'A righteous man has regard for the life of his beast, but the mercy of the wicked is cruel.'" He goes on to analyze the word used for "life" in this text, and says, "we could paraphrase it ‘a good man cares for the welfare of his animals.'" A good man wouldn't put his chickens in battery cages or his pigs in sow stalls.

• Keep the rivers clean. In at least two separate passages, prophets foretell of the ideal world in which the blessed will live eternally, and in paradise is sparkling clean water. Ezekial talks of a river that is so pure, it makes the ocean fresh when it flows into it. In Revelations 22: "Then the angel showed me the river of life-giving water, sparkling like crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb... Nothing accursed will be found there anymore." Pollutants seem pretty accursed in my book.

Jewish scholars don't seem to echo the controversy that exists in Christian circles; these same texts are interpreted as God's instruction to care for animals' welfare, preserve nature, conserve resources, and, in an interpretation I had not found in Christian texts, the "commandments are also founded on the view that the basic resource of human sustenance -- land -- is God-given and belongs to Him." 

Fans of sustainably-grown meat, rejoice!  Whatever your spiritual beliefs, I take comfort knowing that generations before us have pondered at the intersection of God and green.