Why Farming is Worship...and GM is Sin

It probably isn't a shock that Tumbledown reads his Bible. Or that he has finally discovered the verse that says "The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it." (He didn't have to read that far, just to Genesis 2:15, NRSV.) But it may surprise you to find out that Tumbledown is something of a Hebrew scholar. The Hebrew words for "till" and "keep" in Genesis 2 are "`abad" (often translated "to worship" as in Exodus 3:12) and "shamar" ("keep" as in "keep the 10 Commandments, Exodus 20:6). In other words, the Lord's first plan for humankind was that we fulfill our religious duty by farming!

When Tumbledown read that "the LORD God planted a garden in Eden," he figured that God would surely understand his recent prayers about pesky rabbits, voracious bugs, and bouts of blight. ...but I digress.

As everyone knows, the first couple sinned by crossing willy nilly into God's domain. They crossed another gardener's fence, so to speak, and stole some of his fruit. They did it to "be like God, knowing good from bad." (Or maybe because God's tomatoes were looking better than theirs.) And, as a result, they had to leave the garden.

And that brings me to genetically modified (GM) seeds. I have two reasons for thinking that GM is sin, and the first is perhaps the most significant: 1) GM results in fewer farmers and 2) GM substitutes human wisdom for divine. The first concern is known to GM supporters like Deroy Murdock ("Down on the biotech farm," Indianapolis Star, January 21, 2005): this technology "likely will displace superfluous agricultural laborers." Perhaps worship is superfluous and perhaps we are content to continue driving ourselves out of Eden, but for much of human history we have understood this state of affairs as tragic and sinful. Even the Greeks understood the second point: GM is hubris. Again, GM supporters sometimes recognize the human potential to err (our inability to "be like God," always knowing "good from bad"), but their counsel is like that of the serpent, "you ssssshall not cccccccertainly die." (Murdock, quoting one African approvingly, "If it creates problems, we can stop using it.) If? Try when. We do all know by now that we will die, right? (The headline above the article printed on the verso page from Murdock's reads: "Human error botches experiment on Saturn mission." The AP article begins, "David Atkinson spent 18 years designing an experiment for the unmanned space mission to Saturn. Now some pieces of it are lost in space.")

Tumbledown knows that there is no magical boundary beyond which, when we step, will result diabolical "Frankenfoods" that "unleash unimaginable horrors." But he also knows the human propensity for self deception, error, and...well, sin. In other words, he sees the irony of an opinion piece advocating the renewed use of nuclear power (Jack Corpuz, "Boost state's energy supply with nuclear power," July 23, 2006) in the same paper that runs a story about massive "structural flaws" in the design and construction of a library. Better a library than a nuclear power plant. ("Blueprint for Failure: $153 Million Mess") Better local, low tech mistakes with a horse and plow or a shovel and hoe, than the escape of air born pollen from GM food. That's all Tumbledown is saying.

So, let's stay in the garden a little longer and find a way to tell Monsanto that we prefer to worship another Lord. ("Lord of the seeds," The Economist, January 29, 2005; "Monsanto Co. to Pay $1 Billion For Produce-Seed Firm Seminis," Wall Street Journal)