Plucking Berry's Fruit

Dear Professor Berry:

Years ago in the pages of this very magazine I tried my best to describe agrarianism to our readers. The best I could come up with was this, "It smells like a fresh peach." I know this because as I read your writings that's the dominant smell. Your writing makes me homesick. That in itself is rather a profound trick, given my rationalistic bent. But that's where you get even better. You do not merely provide nostalgia for Erehwon, but actually provide a roadmap. You are not given to flights of fancy, but give us some direction so that we can fly too. You are the most practical of dreamers, and for that we thank you.

We, on the other hand, are merely impractical dreamers. Of all the things we want to exhibit in our lives here, perhaps none is harder than being agrarian. Our readers know how miserably I fail as a chicken farmer. My freezer is stuffed with processed foods that require only heating, but provide no sustenance. My accomplishments consist in some very small things, most of which my dear wife has accomplished. She grinds her own wheat, and bakes our bread. She makes our granola. She can actually sew a dress. I, on the other hand, feed chickens that do not produce, make homebrew out of kits, and only help to heat my home with the wood that I cut, split and stack. I'm not even homey enough to fell my own trees. Though I don't wannabe, I am an agrarian wannabe.

It was in part the seeming tension that motivated us to do this particular theme. We who seek to emphasize our calling to be set apart, distinct from the world, separate, find so much sustenance on being simple from reading your works. If we are to be separate, why are we reading you? If we are to be simple, to whom should we turn? Of course there are those who profess Christ who likewise teach the importance of simplicity. Both of you, I fear, however, think your simplicity will save. And such is simply false.

What we find with both you and the anabaptists, along with the smell of peaches is the smell of sulfur. You both move from bewailing the influence of corporate America to calling the government to do something. That's a mistake. The bigness of the state isn't measured merely by whether it comes from Washington, or the local county courthouse. It is measured also by the amount of intrusion into our lives. Perhaps that's something you haven't been sufficiently deliberate about.

Our conclusion is that God has been good to you, and you have messed it up. Through the light of His creation you have come to see what so many of our enlightenment inspired brothers missed, the beauty of the local. You have helped us to see how the incessant division of labor eventually leads us not to a billion experts on a billion tiny things, but a billion ants with no sense of why they are doing what they are doing. You have pointed us back to the dust from which we are formed, and told us to work it to better understand ourselves. Those are gifts and insights that God has not seen fit to give to His church in these days. But we know where they come from.

Which brings me to the real purpose of writing. I write not so much to praise you, but to warn you. Our sacred book, which is the only true sacred book, warns us that to whom much has been given, much will be required. The world is full of fools who embrace the inanity of their own lives. They too will be judged. But you have seen the folly of the fools, and merely substituted less folly.

God has shown you the importance of exercising dominion over His creation. Yet you have denied that it is His creation. God has shown you the importance of living in community. Yet you have rejected the only true community there is, the covenant community. God has given you the wisdom to see something of the good life. Yet you have rejected eternal life, and Him through whom it comes. It is not your blindness that amazes me, but that you see so well despite it. And from that will come judgment, unless you repent and believe the gospel.

A day is coming Professor Berry, when those who work will no longer be alienated from that work, when community will not just be found in pockets here and there, but will be everywhere. A day is coming when men and women together will bring forth the fruit of the land, and steward it well. A day is coming when there will not only be no more thorns and thistles of the cubicle life, but no more thorns and thistles in the agrarian life. A day is coming when chickens will give eggs, and the harvest will break forth from the ground. That day, however, is not reserved for those who longed for it. You will not gain entrance into this paradise for having seen it to be such. There will be millions there who will have thought you were nothing but a crank. Because the only way in will be through the Good Shepherd. He alone is the door.

What you are looking for can be found. But it comes with a great cost. To get there you must die to self. To get there you must kiss the King. To get there the rock that is your heart must be tilled and turned over. To get there you must not turn the crank one more time, but pick up your cross. The Great Shepherd does not invite you; He commands you. If you will surrender yourself, you will find that what you love is His already. Die, and you will live. Keep building your idyllic Babel, and you will die. We thank you for your labor in His vineyard. We pray you'll confess that the vineyard is His.

In the King's Service,

R.C. Sproul Jr.