Bending over the Coleman lantern, the boy’s face twisted into a sick smile. He lifted the earthworm, twisting and struggling between his fingers, and lowered it toward the Coleman lantern’s hot metal cover. The worm, hanging from his fingers, felt the heat approaching and twisted away, pulling itself up into a knotted bundle against his fingers, but the boy shook it out, lowering the end of its dangling body against the hot metal. There was a faint hiss, and the worm redoubled its frantic twisting. The boy chuckled, his lips barely moving as he lowered more of the frail, moist body onto the scorching metal, half of his smiling face lit by the lamp’s glow, the other lost in shadow. He lowered it, scorching it inch by inch, then dropped it and watched it squirm, twisting desperately on the hot steel, until it lay, withered and still.
Why would a boy do something like this?
We are naturally repulsed by such actions.
We might even feel sorry for the worm, though we see them drowned in numbers at the bottom of mud puddles after every rainstorm.
The animal rights groups would be outraged, pointing out that the worm is suffering. They have a point about the worm suffering, but I think it misses a much deeper point.
What about the boy?
Who does he have to be to enjoy making something suffer and who is he becoming in the process?
That is the question. Who is he becoming in the process? Because everything we do leaves a mark on us. Everything we do becomes part of us. We become what we repeatedly do. Great evil does not spring fully formed out of a person. It is tolerated, fed, grown, and nurtured through a thousand small decisions.
And it comes closer home than we might think.
*****
A young couple was driving through a familiar community. Looking out the window at the plowed fields, the wife suddenly said, “I don’t think the fields are as black as they used to be.”
The land in that area is rich, dark peat soil, full of decomposing vegetation, healthy carbon, and moisture. It looks like potting soil. At least it used to.
Now it was taking on a more whitish appearance, a sandier look. Curious, the husband asked his uncle about his wife’s comment. “Is the dirt really less black now?”
“Of course,” he said. “They are farming all the organic matter right out of the soil. If you want to see what this area will look like in forty years, just go about ten miles north of here and look at the land there. They have been farming it for forty years longer and all the organic topsoil is gone. There’s only sand left.”
Only sand left!
“But why,” someone asked a farmer there years ago, “why do you have to farm this way? With tons of toxic chemicals? Don’t you realize it’s bad for the community?”
“Well, I can tell you this,” the farmer retorted. “We’re going to keep doing it. And do you know why? It’s because there is money in it.”
*****
A business owner is standing before his latest acquisition. A gigantic 4 axis CNC router machine. He walks around it smiling, pausing once or twice to take a cell phone photo of it. We think we hear him mutter, “It will allow us to do more work, faster, cheaper, and with fewer people than ever before, and,” he adds, almost as an afterthought, “it will also allow us to make a much better product.” He nods, rubbing his hands together. “A much better product,” he repeats as if to reassure himself that he made the wise choice.
Okay, maybe it is more technology than the church he’s in is comfortable with, but hey, it’s all good. After all, it will allow him to make a much better product.
But what is the end product really? Is it the chairs, tables, and custom entertainment cabinets he specializes in? What if . . . what if the real product is him? What if his being, his soul, is the real product he’s producing?
*****
The logger foreman shrugs. “It’s not the best, but it can’t be helped. It’s what it takes to get the wood out of here.”
The landowner, standing by his truck, rubs his hands together and looks worried. A skidder is slowly worming its way out of the woods, almost down to its belly pan in mud, its tall 30.5-inch forestry tires cutting deep ruts in the thick wet clay ground. It then bogs down even deeper, and the operator drops the skid to the ground and, using the hydraulic arches, pushes the machine forward a few feet. Pulling the grapple forward again, he drops it and pushes the machine forward a few more feet, the cleats of the rotating tires coming up smooth with clay.
“But can’t you just . . . just stop,” the landowner asked, his voice plaintive, “just wait until things dry out a bit?”
The foreman shrugs, “We could I guess, but don’t think we will. The boss has payments biting at him since he bought those two new pieces of equipment. I asked him about it this morning and he said if we can get the wood out, to get it out. We have to keep the trucks rolling. Equipment payments wait for no man.”
As the landowner leaves, the skidder driver gives one last push and the machine rolls up onto the deck area, created by packing truckloads of tree limbs into the ground from the loader mounted pull-through delimber.
A moment later, the skidder stopped on deck, and the operator popped open the door. “Was that the landowner?”
“Yup,” the foreman nodded.
“He didn’t look too happy.”
“He wasn’t,” the foreman chuckled. “I wouldn’t be either if this were my place. Those ruts in this clay ground will be here for years. They’ll bake hard in the sun and fill with rain in every storm and turn this whole place into a stagnant mosquito breeding ground.” He sighed. “Honestly, I don’t like it either but,” he flipped his hands out, “I don’t know what else to do. The boss said if we miss another equipment payment, the dealer is going to repossess our cutter[i] and loader. Then we’ll all be out of work. I mean, I’ve got a wife and children to support too.” He looked out over the butchered woods moodily. Finally, he shrugged, “Oh well, I guess it’s all going to burn anyway.”
*****
“I’m not comfortable doing it.”
“But . . . why not? Look, if this rainstorm hits, we’ll be knocked out of this field for days, and all this grain might start shelling out onto the ground.”
“I know,” Marcus nodded. “I know, believe me, I know. But I don’t feel right loading the trucks to that weight.”
“Look. I know you are supersensitive to your feelings and all, but what I’m wondering is if you are going to do it or not? I’m telling you to do it. So, are you going to sit here in my auger cart tractor and argue, or are you going to load those trucks?”
Marcus swallowed hard, staring up at the harvest crew boss leaning in the cab door, his face red behind his two days of beard stubble. How could he explain to him how he thought about this, in a way he’d understand? He had a feeling he couldn’t.
He swallowed hard again and said, “I . . . I just can’t. I don’t think it’s right.”
The crew boss’s face swelled red until it looked like he was going to erupt like a volcano. “Then get out of this machine and go to the truck. I’ll take over. You can go home now. I don’t know if you’ll have a job tomorrow or not. But for now . . . just get out.”
The young employee engaged the parking brake, stepped out the door, and let himself down the steps. As he started walking across the field, he heard the door slam shut. Turning, he watched the tractor lurch into gear, its powerful headlights cutting a swath across the field as it rushed to intercept the next semi.
Marcus, his boots crunching on the stubble, suddenly felt very small and alone.
How do I explain to him what I really meant? Certainly, it isn’t that I feel more holy or better than anyone else. It’s just that I know it’s not legal. We could get a ticket for it. I know the reason it’s not legal is because it breaks down the roads. They are not designed for that weight. And I suppose it’s not really all that safe to grossly overload a truck and put it out there with SUVs full of children and such.
The stubble crunched under his feet. He noticed that it was cold, he’d left his jacket in the heated tractor cab. He shivered, stumbling on through the dark, going back over the reasons why he didn’t feel comfortable with doing what he was ordered to do. Why did he feel like he had to make the decisions he did? He wished he could just “be normal” and go along with all the things “everybody is doing.”
He paused, staring up at the stars glittering coldly above him. It’s not really those things, is it? he realized. Not really. It’s not the fear of somebody getting a ticket. No. It’s something deeper. It’s that . . . if I knowingly break the law in egregious ways, I become a lawbreaker. If I knowingly do things to degrade the public roads, I become a destroyer of public property. If I intentionally endanger others’ lives, I become someone who values production over human life. He nodded slowly, hugging himself in the cold. That’s it, he realized. It’s not about the thing. It’s about who I become in doing the thing. I simply don’t want to be the type of person who does these things; therefore I cannot do them. It seemed so simple now when he thought about it, standing here in the cold field, the stars hanging brilliant and low overhead. “It’s who I’m becoming,” he whispered. “That’s what it’s all about. It’s who I’m becoming, and I get to make that choice.”
*****
And that is the crux of the matter. The greatest stewardship we face is the stewardship of our being. Who we really are as a person.
The being we really are when all our pretenses are stripped away. That inner being we are shaping one way or another with the 1,001 choices we make each day. The being that will stand before God with nothing but what it has chosen to become.
The boy scorching the worms was cruel. Cruel and becoming crueler through practicing cruelty.
It is who he was.
The farmers who were farming all the organic matter out of their soil were destroying the good land.
Why? Because at some level, they were destroyers. Some parts of their lives were given over to destruction.
This is not to promote the modern left-wing “green movement” or the various kinds of earth worship masquerading as “environmental concern.” It is much more fundamental than that. Our Anabaptist forefathers were known as healers of the land. Why? It was not because they were well educated on all the most recent college-farm breakthroughs, or had the best soil biologists on staff. They were poor, persecuted peasants. Granted, Swiss farmers of that era were known for their expertise in agriculture and horticulture as well as for good management in general,[ii] but I wonder if there is not another reason as well.
Could it be that the reason they healed the land is because they were healers? It was who they were, and they drew it from their connection to the great Healer and Restorer.
We must not fall prey to the heresy of separating our spiritual life from the rest of our life. Every part of our life is woven into every other part, and we cannot pull one thread without pulling all the others. We are, through constant diligence, growing our being into a life of healing, restoring, and life-giving Christlikeness.
Or into an evil existence that is, through exploitive practices, degrading, using up, and destroying.
The woodshop owner justified his questionable equipment purchase because it will make a better product. He should give some thought and ask if producing a stack of slightly more precise widgets here on earth really justifies what he’s producing in his being by lack of respect for his brotherhood and church authorities. Esau wasn’t the last to trade a priceless heritage for a bowl of soup.
Then there are the loggers who were destroying and degrading the woodlot, doing so because, at some level, they were comfortable being involved in destruction and degradation. They accepted it and did it. It didn’t have to be that way, but that is how they did it. It’s who they were.
In the same way, justifying exploitation because “it’s all going to burn anyway” misses the most fundamental of all points. Maybe this earth is just a temporary and disposable testing ground where the souls of man are tested. That’s scarcely a reason to treat the stewardship we’re being tested on as irrelevant. It’s every reason not to. In flippantly saying “it’s going to burn anyway,” we don’t want to inadvertently prophesy the fate of our own souls.
And the harvest crew boss who was comfortable running his grossly overloaded trucks on the road did so because he valued profits over public property, safety, and obedience to the law. The young man who refused to do so refused because doing it would inevitably make him into what he didn’t want to be . . . and it matters. What we do shows who our real father actually is.
The Bible says that the thief[iii] comes not but to kill, steal, and destroy.[iv] That is who he is. And that’s what his children do as well.
But Jesus came to heal, redeem, and restore. In all the time Jesus was here, He killed no one. Blinded no one. Made no one sick. Exploited no one.
No.
He healed the sick, made the blind see, fed the hungry, and raised the dead. He is the very antithesis of exploitation and destruction. He is Life. And He came so that we who are willing to follow Him might have life in abundance.
He came to allow us to become like Him—real, whole, and lifegiving. To allow us to convert our real being into His likeness. To give us the choice. Our real being is either growing more and more into a sick, dark, twisted thing or a warm, bright, radiant thing. It is our choice. It is our greatest stewardship. Our first and ultimate responsibility.
“And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect will of God.” (Romans 12:2)
Darryl Derstine lives in Holmes County Ohio with his wife and
7 children. If you have questions about stewardship and gifting,
or to request a copy of this article, you can reach Darryl or one
of the CAM Foundation team at bss@camoh.org or 330-893-4915.
Read more articles on our website at www.camf.org.
[i] Feller Buncher (commonly just called a “cutter” in the American south)
[ii] Unser Leit. Volume 1, page 15
[iii] The evil one or one of his followers
[iv] John 10:10
