Back to the Roots (Radical) - Worked Soil Is Fertile Soil -

Everyone likes butterflies and hummingbirds,
but who plants for them? I do.
The bees appreciate the food,
and so do the adult beneficial insects.

"Nature's Template - The Creator's Design" - Joel Salatin

One of Salatin's tapes features the sunbeam and the miraculous work of photosynthesis. I have neglected that, so here is a brief definition. The intense energy of the sun allows plants to form chemical energy in the form of sugars. What we love about corn is the sweet energy it pulls out of the air from the sun, drawing minerals and hydration through its roots.

Sweet corn basks in the sun. The seed is unwilling  to germinate until the sun's energy is radiating back into the air, creating hot, muggy days. The corn creates oxygen from photosynthesis, which begins with solar energy, water, and carbon dioxide. Thus, this one spectacular creation from the Creator maintains and produces earth's oxygen.

 Drop a Buckwheat seed or a few hundred in empty areas.
Delicate flowers will soon bloom and be tended by pollinators.
The roots are working the soil.

Borrowing from Gabe Brown, every living plant and its roots will generate energy and create organic material to build the soil. The dandelion growing next to the rose is fueling the bush, not choking it. Of course, I do not appreciate the giant thistle next to another rose, energy or not.

I like the word energy because it became the basis in Greek for studying the efficacy of the Word in the New Testament. One example from the past came ancient Greece - worked soil is more productive. That insight is being stressed by Creation growers of today, fallow ground  does not do much. A place owned by a gardener or farmer will improve steadily with the right methods.

John 6:28 ειπον ουν προς αυτον τι ποιουμεν ινα εργαζωμεθα τα εργα του θεου

29 απεκριθη ο ιησους και ειπεν αυτοις τουτο εστιν το εργον του θεου ινα πιστευσητε εις ον απεστειλεν εκεινος

John 6:28 Then said they unto him, What shall we do, that we might work the works of God?

29 Jesus answered and said unto them, This is the work of God, that ye believe on him whom he hath sent. KJV

I used this passage on someone who sternly warned me that "We should not make faith a work." This passage stymied him, because he could not handle the irony. Jesus is not saying that faith is the only good work that earns favor with God, but turns around Pharisaical works-righteousness by teaching - The only work is to believe in Me. And He connects this with His work and His Father's in chapter 5 -

John 5:17 But Jesus answered them, My Father worketh hitherto, and I work. KJV

John 5 and 6 are deeply disruptive of the UOJ claims. All their petite pirouettes on the Word - ignoring its true meaning - are tripped up and made foolish, like a hippos in their tutus pretending to be a ballerinas. They glory in unfaith, but Jesus teaches the Holy Spirit convicts them of this, because believing on Him is righteousness.

Studying this basic efficacy word group in the New Testament is foundational for the Scriptures, since reading in plain English teaches us about the concept itself. For example, the Bible teaches the Holy Trinity hundreds of times, without using the later term Trinity, and without always saying "The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit." To say the Trinity is not Biblical, as Knapp did, is laughable, showing how Pietism at Halle University rotted into rationalism. 

Note that a Calvinist translation of a Pietist
was the major work of Protestant theology in the 19th century.
A Calvinist translator with a big reputation gave Lutherans their beloved terms - Objective and Subjective Justification.
Woods describes OJ as "universal pardon." Universalism.

1 Thessalonians 2:13King James Version (KJV)

13 For this cause also thank we God without ceasing, because, when ye received the word of God which ye heard of us, ye received it not as the word of men, but as it is in truth, the word of God, which effectually worketh also in you that believe.

13 δια τουτο και ημεις ευχαριστουμεν τω θεω αδιαλειπτως οτι παραλαβοντες λογον ακοης παρ ημων του θεου εδεξασθε ου λογον ανθρωπων αλλα καθως εστιν αληθως λογον θεου ος και ενεργειται εν υμιν τοις πιστευουσιν

What works in this passage from Paul? The Word of God works, but the word of Fuller (the word of men) does not. People not only know this intellectually but also from their own experience of conversion.  Notice that Paul uses "the Word of hearing," more precisely - the preached Word. Check the meaning of akou in Romans 10. Isaiah 53 - Who has heard our τη ακοη ημων report? 

Greek class - I see acoustics in the Greek word akou, no? The effect of God's Word comes from hearing the Gospel, not from the theft of coaching sessions from Fuller, Willowcrick, and Tony Robbins. How ironic to rob Robbins, who stole so much from others.

So, while Paul and Luther emphasized hearing the preached Word as effective, the genius leaders of Missouri, WELS, and ELCA imagine that the word of man is effective, as long as their synods have the latest statistical reports and the analysis thereof.

The chattering class of Church Shrinkers, who never stop to look at the ugly foundation of their dogma, want to tell us what is effective. They are only effective in destruction, filled with zeal to battle against Christian doctrine and all believers. Like Houdini, they know it is easier to break out of an armored safe than to break into one. Therefore, they burrow into their various declining sects, more difficult to eject than blood-sucking ticks. Their armor is the classmate network, the Fuller network, the love of one drunk for another, and their common loathing of faith. 

Let Us Get Radical - Back to the Roots

Everyone in the media wants to be radical, until the FBI arrives. The real meaning comes from the Latin word for root, and we name a funny little plant radish, because we eat the bright, red roots. 

We cannot have a healthy garden or nation by robbing the soil with anti-Creation methods. Creation Gardening is three dimensional. We have to look in the air for birds and flying insects, in the soil for microbes and earthworms, in the garden for the final results. Focusing on the garden alone is a big mistake.

 My English roots - Howard was British.

I recall seeing one of his descendants in The Lutheran magazine,
where he posed in a state of glee
with anti-smoking celeb Brook Shields. LCA roots. 

Some things I have learned more recently, after reading about the subject for over 30 years are:

• Plant roots build the soil and improve the infiltration of rain, so a fully covered garden is better than narrow rows of little soldiers lined up on a bare (even a mulched) parade ground.
• Some advocates of cover crops simply drill through the lower growing plants to raise the money crop, with tremendous results. Ergo, crowding is not necessarily bad.
• Annual grains sap the soil, while perennials build the soil.
• Many farmers and gardeners are catching onto the singular goal of getting forms of carbon into the soil. because they know the fungus network depends on it to grow.
• The grandfather of these changes took his money from other ventures and put it into reclaiming ruined agricultural land - J. I. Rodale, who looked like an angry Old Testament prophet. The great grandfather is British - Sir Albert Howard, and the Queen of England follows these principles in her own private gardens.

Tiny insects pour from Clethra when disturbed.

Creation by the Word, Conversion by the Word

Gardening and theology are based upon God's Six-Day Creation by the Word. We know the Son of God is the Creating Word, from John 1:3. To engage in anti-Creation methods in His own world is utter foolishness, whether in growing plants or - as they love to say - growing the Christian Church.