We Are The Weeds

By: Chris Johnson

As we walked past the fields the other day, my wife and I were noticing how many dandelions there are this year. Our yards and the ditches along the roads are full of them, and even some of the fields which are sprayed with weed killer are dotted with the yellow heads which have already begun to turn white and go to seed for the first of many times this year.

Other years, there’s hardly been a dandelion to be found in our neighborhood, which I’ve credited to the farmers’ spraying, but as the Lord promised us in Genesis, we’ll never be completely rid of the weeds.

I thought of this even as my family prepared to plant a garden for the first time this spring. We’ve marked off the boundaries and sprayed it with Round Up before we rototill the grass under so that when our plants pop out of the soil, they’re not contending with the ground cover trying to reassert itself. Yet, when the rows of beans and peas and corn plants pop through the soil, don’t we all know despite our best efforts we’ll be pulling weeds that pop up right alongside of them.

As I said, this will be our first year planting a garden on our property – and, in doing so, we’re joining what appears to be something of a trend or even a movement in my generation.  Several friends of mine who are parents participate in a “1,000 hours outside” challenge with their kids. We keep chickens, make sourdough, and yes, plant gardens. Homesteading and bushcraft content detailing traditional survival methods rack up tens of millions of views on YouTube and social media sites. I’ve got people I grew up with keeping bees for honey and candle wax, selling dairy cow shares for raw milk, and growing flowers for homeopathic remedies. I’m not talking about just a few of them either, and not just the FFA (Future Farmers of America) types.

And isn’t it interesting that this movement is led by millennials; the last generation to experience an analog childhood and the first to welcome the digital revolution. We’ve had both in our formative years and many of us prefer the dials and switches – and the dirt – to the touch screens.

Man was created to tame nature, “to work and to keep,” to take dominion, and while this inherent purpose can be suppressed, it cannot be overwritten. While weeds are a part of sin’s curse, our inclination to struggle against them is part of our nature. Like the sprayed weed itself, our desire to bring order to the chaos will always find a way to come back.

In our place in history, this knowledge may provide us with a small amount of hope. There are real questions about the future of our nation, our people, and even humanity itself.

Will communism or Islam or some combination of both replace our political system? Will immigrants replace the American population? Will AI replace the work force?  We can’t know the answer to these questions, but what we can be sure of is that God’s purpose for man will not fizzle out. There will always be a “remnant” looking to bring order to the chaos, right the wrongs, and pull the weeds.

In Russell Kirk’s Roots of American Order, he describes how for a society to flourish, it requires both moral and social order.

“Order is the first need of the soul. It is not possible to love what one ought to love, unless we recognize some principles of order by which to govern ourselves.

“Order is the first need of commonwealth. It is not possible for us to live in peace with one another, unless we recognize some principle of order by which to do justice.”

The purpose of Kirk’s book is to explore the unique roots of American order. America learned its morality and its place in this world from the Old Testament, he explains: “all true law comes from God, and that God is the source of order and justice.”

Here’s how he closes the chapter on the Old Testament: “Faith and hope may endure when earthly cities are reduced to rubble: that, indeed, is a principal lesson from the experience of Israel under God.”

Still, at the end of his book, Kirk warns: “Moral and social order, or a vast part of it, may be destroyed by a few years of violence or a few decades of contemptuous neglect. Then hope is lost, for many generations, for order is a kind of organic growth, developing slowly over many centuries; it cannot be created by public proclamation.”

We are in the midst of the “few contemptuous decades” eroding moral and social order, and while hope is ultimately never lost, the hopefulness of “many generations” is at stake.

In the 100 Cupboards fantasy series by N.D. Wilson, the hero of the story is a young boy who discovers he has the magic of dandelions in his blood. At first, he thinks this is very lame magic, but as the story plays out, he realizes that the strength of the dandelion weed is in its sacrificial death: every time it dies it becomes more plentiful. So, as he fights evil, he discovers that his real power is in sacrificial love.

Here’s how the book Dandelion Fire, puts it: “Sometimes standing against evil is more important than defeating it. The greatest heroes stand because it is right to do so, not because they believe they will walk away with their lives. Such selfless courage is a victory in itself.”

In a world where modernity, technocracy, and communism is the Round Up to the field of moral and social order, we must be the weeds.

 

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