I’ve had several people ask me recently about the screensaver image on my laptop: an image of James B. Jordan (the theologian, not the politician) holding a bowl of wine in one hand, a shovel of coals in the other, chanting loudly with a text superimposed which reads: “There are no donut trees in the Garden of Eden.” I’ve reproduced it below:
photo courtesy of the Theopolis Institute
“What is that?” Is often how the question is posed. It’s a good question.
The image itself would take too long to explain —it’s some deep “insider baseball” level humor at Theopolis. Suffice it to say, James B. Jordan loves the Bible with a passion, and he has spent his life bringing it to life —sometimes with demonstrable force.
But often people are more intrigued by the text than by the image. “What is that” often gets clarified as “What does he mean that there are no donut trees in the Garden of Eden?”
Simply, it means just that. There are no donut trees in the Garden of Eden, just as there will be no bourbon-bushes in heaven, nor jewelry-shrubs in the Resurrection. It points to the fact that God created a world with a potential for further creation. It points further to the fact that when God created Adam and Eve, He created them in His Image, and that a part of that Image is being a little creator —with a lower case “c”— like Him.
It means that mankind was always supposed to harvest grain, grind it down to flour, blend it with the wild yeasts of the air, and make well-kneaded dough; it means that humanity was always supposed to render oil from olives or animal fats, make fire, heat the oil, and fry the dough in the oil; it means that those who bear the Image of God were always called to collect honey from their friends the bees, or produce granulated crystals from the thick stalks of sugar cane, and glaze the fried dough with saccharine glory.
God did not create a world that was finalized. He created a world from which the children of Adam and Eve would craft and build and name and guard and refine and establish and delight as His under-craftsmen. J.R.R. Tolkien’s famous concept for this is “sub-creation” in which the Maker grants to his creatures the gift of making.
Much brokenness has come from our misuse of the gift of making, but it doesn’t change the fact that we were made to make.
Each day you sub-create with God’s world. My wife takes beans and grinds them down, boils water, transforming part of it into clouds, pours what remains of the bubbling waters below onto the grounds, strains them through a cotton-fiber filter (the work of someone else’s hands), and captures the elixir in an Erlenmeyer-bottomed glass flask. She pours some of this into a cup and brings it to the table. This is sub-creation.
Adam and Eve were always called to go out from the Garden into the yet-uninhabited wild places and to sub-create with God and then to return to the Garden sanctuary filled with thanksgiving and offerings of praise —offering to God the fruits of all their co-creating: “Here’s what we have made with what you first gave us.” Or, as Solomon prayed, “All things come from you O Lord, and of your own we give.” Sub-creation was always supposed to be liturgical.
Yesterday’s sermon text from Mark 1 fills-out a but of this picture: Jesus the Son is called from the sanctuary of private life with the Father into the wild places, into encounter with unnamed beasts, contending angels, barrenness, and the Devil. He goes out to re-create the world. He is the true and better Adam come to name, steward, and bring dominion.
After this the Son goes into an even wilder wilderness: Judea, Samaria, and Jerusalem —erstwhile sanctuaries grown feral in the long thrall of Sin and Curse. His ministry is also a sub-creation, working the Father’s Will and re-making the world.
We are called to this mission too. Lent wakes-us up to the wildernesses in our lives —the places where there are no donuts. Here in this season we are called to co-labor with the Spirit of God, to name, to steward, and to create. In all that you make with all that God has given you, create for the glory the Lord.