Conditions Are Right For What Grows There

By Dennis Rowan

A lot of thistles were in pasture fields in this area during the 1992 growing season following the worst drought in many years during the 1991 growing season The sod in some areas could have been swept away with a leaf rake because the dry weather had caused roots to die. I don't know for certain, but these conditions with the dead sod probably helped create an ideal seedbed for thistles to grow in the season to follow.

Thistles on the left in this photo, and clean sheep pasture on the right because conditions were different on each side of the fence.

Grassland farmers are continually challenged, because they have so few controls over the many variables that affect plant growth. Unlike the grain farmer who drives machinery over the field to prepare the soil, apply seed, fertilizer and herbicides to control conditions, the grassland farmer is often trying to manage pastures with many circumstances beyond his control, such as rocks, trees, ravines, streams and steep grades.

Thistles, as well as many other plants, are undesirable in a pasture. Yet there are also many good plant species found in pastures. As a starting point to obtain the desirable species, we must determine why we have the ones that are in a field, be they good or bad. The first thing we must understand is that no matter what is growing in a pasture at any point in time, desirable or undesirable, the conditions are right for what is growing there.

Christians should grasp that principle. Far too often Christians attempt to go forward with a limited knowledge of the conditions that have brought us to the place where we are now. For example, right now America stands in a tremendous patch of thistles. I understand why our educational institutions, our governmental agencies and the secular media react the way they do. They attempt to analyze our situation with "worldly eyes". They may see the thistles and attempt to be rid of them. However cutting a thistle down is striking out at a manifestation, whereas we need to change the conditions that lead to the growth in the beginning. The truth is that cutting the thistle may do little in the long run. We must know more about the conditions that started the growth.

In our society there has been much talk for several years about deliberate abortion of unborn babies. Even Christians fail to agree if a woman should have a right to have such an abortion. In truth, the problem centers around sexual activity outside the bounds of marriage vows. Pregnancy out of wedlock is simply a manifestation. There are many, many variables in our culture that prepared "the seedbed" for this particular circumstance. However, for practical purposes, most people who want women to have a choice to abort a child in reality are actually condoning sexual intercourse between unmarried people. In other words, freedom from restraints of sexual activity is a condition that has lead to an issue of what I shall call "life" versus "anti-life" of children before they are born.

The same condition, sexual freedom has grown such idiotic "trash in the pasture" as teaching teens to practice safe sex, and schooling elementary students on the merits of homosexuality, as if these are normal alternatives. When I began teaching college students over 20 years ago I saw some disturbing seeds being planted in our young people. Now the people in our schools are being taught by the generation I saw 20 years ago. I'm suggesting that most of the problems we have come from the seeds of earlier generations. God's sowing and reaping principle works. I see a very direct relationship, cause/effect, sowing/reaping, between the two generations.

I heard a political candidate say family values were not an important issue during this presidential election year, and that the economy is our most important issue. I can understand why a man might say that and believe it. The Bible says, "The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of god, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned." (1 Cor 2:14, NIV) The poor economy is merely the manifestation of an ungodly people; it's a thistle that has helped bring the pasture to ruin. We need to ask the question, "What conditions lead to the growth of this problem?"

Why is it safe to say a poor economy has grown because of ungodliness? There is simply no way a people can lie, steal and cheat, and expect the economy to prosper. It matters not whether we look at something as large as the scandals that have occurred in the savings and loan companies, or something s small as the employee who pads his expense account or takes a "sick day" to go shopping. It should be obvious to us that it will take more than an election to change things….we need to focus on the conditions that prepared the seedbed for the crop we are now harvesting. Furthermore that is distinctly a responsibility of the church (all Christians), and not the government.

To a large extent, we Christians have been as much of the problem as others have in providing improper conditions for growth. It's a little like spending a lot of time in a smoke filled room and walking out not realizing you know smell like smoke. But as you get around those who have not been in the smoke, they smell the smoke on your clothing, while you o longer smell it because it has become a part of you. The Bible says, "But among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality, or of any kind of immorality, or of any kind of impurity, or of greed, because these are improper for God's holy people." Eph 5:3, NIV emphasis added) Sexual immorality gets a lot of attention from pulpits and publications, such as this one, but take note that God's Word puts greed right along beside sexual immorality as being improper for God's holy people. What makes that bit of Scripture more striking is the phrase "even a hint". Does that mean that "even a hint of greed" is improper for God's holy people?

Let's be honest. Yes, Americans, including Christians, in the past few decades have had "even a hint of greed". Could that be one of the primary conditions for growth that caused us to be, at this point, standing among the thistles?

A farmer can't change the crop that's already matured. Neither can Christians. However, we can do something about the next crop. Let us be wise enough to understand where to begin…the Bible: "This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit,.." (1 Cor 2:13, NIV)

Dennis Rowan
Shepherd-In-Training