Tending My Garden

 Scot McKnight

Most people are shocked when they realize God didn’t give Adam the whole world, he only gave Adam the garden. In fact, God never gave Adam ownership of the garden. Adam is placed in the garden to work the garden and tend to it. Humanity is introduced into God’s story as stewards, God never deeded the garden to Adam. The garden and everything in it always belonged to God. Adam was accountable to God for the health of the garden. Adam and Eve were never responsible for everything; they were to take care of the garden where God had placed them. Humanity was never responsible for the whole world.

I had to remind myself of this a few nights ago as I shut down the evening news and counted how many ways I had just been told the world is ending. Let me see if I can remember all the ways I was told the world was going under. First, there was AI. People smarter than me were telling reporters that AI had developed its own understanding of things and if we weren’t careful, AI would kill us all. Of course, these are the same people who are lobbying against any kind of regulation that would hinder the release of AI into every area of our world. We’re doomed.

You’ll pardon me if I don’t jump on the AI band wagon, but I’m still waiting for my flying car. In the late sixties and early seventies, we were told we’d be flying around in our cars by 2025. We’d leave our homes in the morning, run our errands and go to the office jetting around in our flying cars. Futurists were debating on what we would be doing with all of our leisure since machines would be doing all the work. I can remember when computers were being hyped as “time savers.”

To be sure, there have been some good things to come from our digital progress, but definitely not what was promised and not without a demonic dark and destructive side. Remember when the internet was going to change the world? We were told business and education would never be the same. What we mostly got was porn. Pornography makes more money on the internet than anything else – and it’s not close. So, I hope you understand my reluctance to join the hype on how great our world is going to be. How many times can we build the Tower of Babel?

The Democrats say the Republicans are killing democracy. The Republicans say the Democrats are destroying the moral fiber of our nation. Then there’s the debt crisis, the climate crisis, the addiction crisis, the housing crisis, the border crisis, the crime crisis… on and on the list goes.

And I can’t do anything about any of these.

I try to be a responsible citizen. I keep up with the issues and vote, but I’m naive enough to think my one vote isn’t going to be drowned out under the millions of dollars spent on lobbying. Money talks in politics and it talks loudly.

I try to live responsibly with my stuff and cut down clutter so I don’t add to my carbon footprint, but after I’ve de-cluttered my life, I’m not sure I do much that matters. It’s just the reality of our world. If we fix something in one place, it breaks somewhere else.

It’s enough to drive a person to despair. I guess it would drive me there as well if I didn’t remember that God never gave me the whole world. He gave me my garden and that’s all I’m responsible for. For all of the problems in the world, I can’t do anything about most of them. The President isn’t going to call and ask what I think. The governor won’t call me and neither will any member of any legislative body – federal or state. I can make a few phone calls. I write some letters, but I don’t think either will make a dent in any real problem.

So, what can I do? What can we do?

First, we can love our families well. How many of our social problems are caused by absent dads? So, maybe by loving my wife, my sons, and my grandchildren well (which is a lot easier than loving your own children!) I can take care of my garden. Maybe by being present in their lives I can make my garden a little more beautiful.

Second, I can take care of my friends. Many experts have written about our epidemic of loneliness. According to these experts, a lot of people wouldn’t know who to call if they had some kind of emergency. Maybe if my friends knew they could call me in the middle of the night it would make my garden a little more pleasing to God. Maybe the world is a little less lonely if my friends know I’ve got their back.

Maybe I can do good where I am. I can volunteer to tutor at a local school. I can work with young adults trying to chart their course in life. I can pick up litter when I’m doing my walk through my neighborhood. Maybe if enough of us do little things where we are, it’ll add up to some big things.

No, it won’t bring down the national debt, but I’m not on that job. It’s not in my garden. For most things wrong in the world, I can’t do anything at all. But I can do something. All of us can. Maybe if we all tended to gardens we’ve been given, the whole world might be better off. No, we can't do everything, but we were never supposed to. I can’t do a lot of things I want to do in the world. I have no way of impacting most of the problems in the world.

That doesn’t mean I can do nothing at all. I can do something. I can bring a few fish and a few loaves of bread. I can bring a jar or two of something expensive. I can do something. We all can.

So, do what you can where you can with whom you can and trust God with the rest.