Sharpening Plows

1 Sam 13:20

So whenever the Israelites needed to sharpen their plowshares, picks, axes, sickles, they had to take them to a Philistine blacksmith.

I was having a conversation with my brother Matt yesterday about gardening. His neighbor spent a good deal of the afternoon working in the prosperous garden in his yard to the left while my brother and I were on the porch drinking beer and shooting the breeze. To the right, was my brother's garden; a gnarled mess of tomatoe plants. Too many plants, too close, creates a ghetto garden. Some separation, fewer plants, actually empowers growth. I have learned that lesson. Quantity is great, but first focus on quality and be careful of compromise.

So, I was sharing this lesson with my brother as well as reflecting on how in America we have a lot of land that is basically uncapitalized and unproductive, unless one counts green grass as somehow valuable for anything more than impressing neighbors and wasting valuable time on yard cosmetics. Land should be used for the raising of food, plant and animal--or timber, etc. We Americans have lost control of our food supply. It is falling into a smaller and smaller number of big corporate players like Monsanto who are patenting their seeds and then suing the pants off of farmers whose fields are getting overrun unknowingly by these Frakenplants through no fault of their own. Organic agricultural is the only major countering force. Thank goodness that Europe and the rest of the world is not as brain dead as us.  Europeans still do some things a lot better than we do. We had better watch our arrogance and American Exceptionalism chest-thumping lest we become a byword to the Nations. I love my country but not as a Jingo.

Self-sufficiency is a good way to live as long as it doesn't generate into a bunker seige mentality. The reason for this is that any  time we are dependent on others to solve our problems, they will intrinsically less motivated to solve them than we are OR may actually want to foster dependence so that  they can fatten up their own coffers either from the public trough or ours. If we don't want our problems to be solved, then get ready to be treated like a helpless child despite our chronological age. Altruism does exist but in most cases, when we follow the money, what looks like altruism actually is aggrandizing. Generosity by its nature doesn't look to its own. It focuses on the other and acts sacrificially; an expense to self.

C.S. Lewis mentioned this verse in the Bible today in a discussion about culture.  He was more sanguine about the Israelites being dependent on their enemies, the Phillistines, in getting their farming and agricultural tools sharpened. I take a decidedly more skeptical view: The Israelites are a subjected people again within generations of the Exodus of Egypt. Just a different master. They cannot even make their plows sharp without their overlords giving the OK.  Not wanting to worship God, now they are at the mercy of their gods.

We should well contemplate what God might be conveying to us through our Chinese imports to feed our consumptive desires.