Government And Farming, God's Way?

A headline says the government wants to “advance regenerative agriculture” and suddenly every farmer has to decide what to celebrate, what to question, and what to refuse. I’m Noah Sanders, and I’m opening a new thread on a topic that sits right at the crossroads of faith, farming, and power: the proper role of civil government in agriculture, from grants and subsidies to food regulations and meat processing rules. 

We start where Christians have to start, with Scripture. I read Romans 13 in context and talk through what it means to honor governing authorities as something God institutes to restrain evil and keep order, while remembering that submission is not the same thing as obeying every command when it conflicts with God’s word. That framework keeps us out of the easy ditches, whether that’s “all government is bad” or “if our side wins, everything will be fixed.” 

From there, we zoom out to the big picture of sphere sovereignty: family, church, and state each have real responsibilities and real limits. When families and churches abdicate formation, charity, education, and community accountability, the state expands and local food systems get weaker. I also share why Christians should take local service seriously and how humility, careful listening, and learning from others can sharpen our thinking as we pursue God’s ways in regenerative farming and public life. 

If this sparks questions for you, share the episode with a friend, subscribe so you don’t miss the follow-ups, and leave a review so more farmers and families can find the conversation.

Transcript

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Speaker 0:02

Welcome And Summer Farm Rhythms

Speaker 0:05

Welcome to the Redeeming the Dirt Podcast. This is Noah Sanders, and so glad you could join me today. We've been having a great summer, and this week it's been a little bit cooler than it has in the past weeks. We've enjoyed splitting some firewood, putting up some hay, which thankfully the little bit warmer weather helped it to cure quickly. We've had a lot of fun. We just we don't put up a ton of hay, but we like to cut hay on a few little fields that we don't have fence that are on different parts of our farm. And it's really fun to work together with the kids because we put it up loose since we don't have a hay baler. And we use rakes and pitchforks to put it onto a trailer and then we take it and stuff it up in our barn. We do use a tractor for cutting it, and we have a side delivery rake that can rake it into all big long windrows. And but the kids love uh yeah, working with the loose hay, and it's really fun to do that together, and we still buy some from some local neighbors. But we also use some of the grass that we cut at times for mulching our gardens and for making compost because we know it doesn't have any chemicals in it, we can cut it before it goes to seed as well. So we've been enjoying that, and my wife and I just got back from a trip this last week, um, going away for a week together, which has been a very long time since we've done that, and uh just to be together and to rest and to read and to uh do some planning. So this week we've been trying to implement some new schedule and new things for the kids to just help us be a better team in terms of coordination and trying to think through the systems of our home and our farm so that we are being faithful stewards and not just doing busy work chasing kind of the inefficiencies of either our home layout or setup or our parenting or even our systems on our farm that we're using for, you know, taking care of our animals and uh doing our gardens. It's just great to always be improving. You know, the faithful manager is one who leaves it better than he got it. You know, he increases uh his talents. You know, Jesus told the parable of the talents where the servants who were given a bit of money by the master to take care of, he kind of judged them on whether they were faithful by whether they increased it or not. So one of the convicting things I always think about is, you know, it's sometimes I can say, well, I think I'm doing okay, you know, as good as last year, maybe on my marriage or my relationship with the Lord, or um, you know, I'm trying not to go downhill on any of those things. But it's more convicting to think, you know, is my relationship with the Lord closer this year than it was last year? Is my relationship with my wife? Um, am I more selfless? Am I more of a strong leader? Um, do I listen better? Do I lead? Uh am I um casting vision? You know, those are it's that growth element

Stewardship That Keeps Growing

Speaker 3:10

that is a sign that there's a living relationship with God that is helping us to walk more in line with his ways than uh than our ways. So we need that redeeming of the dirt, the redeeming of the practical parts of our life, which is not an event that happens one time, but it's ongoing. And so I'm always trying to think about, you know, how God wants me to think as a Christian about different topics and ideas and as a farmer, um, especially in the past having worked with uh running a farming business, especially when we're we've dealt with animal products, the involvement of the government, um, both uh with regulations and with the all the funding that's offered as well, um, and the help through extension and all that. The relationship of government with agriculture and especially helping farmers has been a topic that I've thought about. Obviously, I'm a fan of Joel Salatin, and he's written several books on the role of government and its impact primarily negatively uh in recent history on agriculture. But at the same time, uh government does have a role, and it's important for us as Christians to really wrest through and think through and be pursuing what are God's ways, what is his perspective on things like this. Um yeah, a few recent headlines have kind of reminded me of this. A few months ago, it came out that President Trump signed a an executive order to promote and advance regenerative agriculture within the U.S. And uh so regenerative agriculture is is something that um a lot of the things within that fall under a lot of the principles we've used over the years, minimal tillage, maximum soil coverage, and integrating animals. It's it's it's just all the classic farming techniques that work with nature versus against it. Um and so that was you know encouraging to hear that there was uh favor towards those kind of practices, uh, how exactly, you know, the what the impact of that is when you know the government's saying they want to promote that, it's always uh a bit of a challenge to know, well, what does that mean exactly? What's that going to look like? What should we be excited about? What should we, you know, uh be cautious about as Christians thinking about the role and really what government actually has to offer in solving certain problems that we face in society and in which ways do they they actually make it worse? Because really God's created this order that works and that He honors if we honor it. You know, within the family, you've got the husband who's responsible for leading, and the wife is the help meet, and uh that design and that order that goes all the way back to creation uh order, if when you go against that, there's always consequences. Um same thing with any kind of authority structure and design that God has created within creation order. Um, you know, when you try to plug a chicken into a factory, uh, it's uh and you disregard the design of a chicken normally functioning with sunlight and a diverse forage of feed and the ability to move around and all those kind of things, you know, maybe it's allowable, but uh how much are we missing when we deviate from God's intended design? And so as we think about government and the and how to have the relationship between government and uh setting the stage for successful agriculture, it's something that I definitely want to think about and wrestle with a bit because we don't want to fall into the ditches of, oh, the government-

Regenerative Agriculture Meets Government Power

Speaker 6:55

all government's bad, and you kind of have this anti-government perspective, or, you know, oh, yay, you know, people that I like, I just need to get people that I like or that like God in power, and then they can force, you know, the nation to be good. We see that doesn't really work throughout history, and uh and that can be blessing when there are godly leaders, but even in the Old Testament we see, you know, when the nation, the nation of Israel itself had turned away from the Lord, even you had godly leaders like Hezekiah, uh definitely had some blessing come on the nation. But at the end of the day, without the heart turning back to the Lord, there's not a whole lot of long-term impact. Um but I think this just this idea of uh before we can really evaluate well, you know, okay, so if there's money being offered to uh farmers or farmers that are doing regenerative agriculture, or if there's certain, you know, proposals for regulation or lack of regulation, deregulation. We have Tommy's Thomas Massey's Prime Act that uh is people are trying to pass. Um, and then just today President Trump announced he wanted to to deregulate some of the uh restrictions on meat processing, specifically for beef, uh, to make that uh more accessible for farmers. And some people are saying, yay, that's a great thing. And some people are saying, oh, no, that's gonna be, you know, the government should be involved in that because our food wouldn't be safe otherwise. And I think as Christians, we just have to step back and and, you know, we don't I don't have all the answers. I'm just thinking through this, but it's just feel like it would be helpful to talk through some of this, get some of your guys' feedback and in a few different episodes. This first one, I'm just kind of introducing the topic a little bit, and then we'll uh go into some of these more specific topics related to, you know, handouts or subsidies or or grants, and how we should think about those opportunities and then regulations and really just how we can be faithful stewards to reflect God well as farmers as we interact with the government, or if we're in the government um or if we're participating in local government, how do we um establish what that should

Romans 13 In Full Context

Speaker 9:00

look like? So let's just start by reading um today in this episode, we're just gonna read one of the famous passages about government from Romans chapter 13, um and we'll read it and talk about it just briefly. So, Romans 13, this is the uh 1984 AIB, says, everyone must submit himself to the governing authority. Well, let me just back up. I love context. So uh before this is Romans 12, which is just a great passage about living in view of God's mercy, offering our bodies as living sacrifices, and then all these really practical things like blessing those who persecute you, showing hospitality, honoring one another above yourself, um, don't repay anyone evil for evil, do what is right in the eyes of everybody if it's all possible, um, live at peace with everyone, don't take revenge, don't be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. And from then it's really, you know, setting this kingdom of the heart that God really has established through Christ, and then going into, okay, so now we live in this world where there are governments. So what how do we think about that? Is that something now that has nothing to do with God, or is God still involved in that a bit? And so then we go into Romans 13 says, Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The govern the authorities that exist have been established by God. Consequently, he who rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves. For rulers hold no terror for those who do right, but for those who do wrong. Do you want to be free from the one in authority, free from fear of the one in authority? Then do it is right and he will commend you. For he is God's servant to do you good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword for nothing. He is God's servant, an agent of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer. Therefore it is necessary to submit to the authorities, and not only because of possible punishment, but also because of conscience. This is also why you pay taxes, for the authorities are God's servants who give their full time to governing. So give to everyone what you owe him. If you owe taxes, pay taxes, if revenue, then revenue, if respect, then respect, if honor, then honor. So when I look at this passage, I really just see that it's reaffirming, it's affirming this idea that government is not just man's idea. Uh it is something that is instituted by God, not only for order, but also to subdue evil and the sin that is uh so prevalent. And it really does reflect eventually not only, you know, the need for uh governance, but also foreshadows the fact that someday, even when there is no sin, God will come and Christ will come and establish his government uh and and his rule over all creation. And that will just be an amazingly positive, wonderful thing. Until then, um, there are human governments, and it says here that they are God's servants. Um they play a role, part of his design in order to punish evil, to promote what's good, and that we should not only submit to that uh that position of authority that God has established because of just the punishment that we might get if we disobey, but also because of conscience. Like it's part of honoring God, to honor these, the order

Submission With Limits Under God

Speaker 12:28

of government that He's put in place. Now, that doesn't mean submission, in my, as I've kind of wrestled with it, um it's not to me the same as obedience every time. You could submit and say, I am submitting to uh the authority and the position, but when that uh authority or position steps outside of their authority, in a sense, their limited authority delegated by God to them, then we're always submitting, but we must first of all submit to God. And it's actually through submitting to legitimate authority, um, government or church or family, that we're submitting to God. And so there are examples like an Acts, where when the religious leaders that have authority within Israel and that they uh should be respected, and that Paul respects, you know, he's the high priest, uh, when they were told not to preach in the name of Christ, Peter and um I think it was James or yeah, but so several of the apostles, they said, you know, we must you judge, is it right to obey God or man? And so they were saying, yeah, so Peter and John, that's what it was in in Acts 4. But they commanded them not to teach it all in the name of Jesus. But Peter and John replied, Judge for yourselves whether it is right in God's sight to obey you rather than God. So, yes, submission, they were submitting to those authorities in one sense, in terms of the fact that they were the religious leaders of God's nation at the time. But that didn't mean that they disobeyed God to disobey them. So that's that's one element here is we do want to understand, though, that it's um something that God created, that it has a role of setting really a context where freedom can exist, because if there is no order, there are, you know, if somebody can come down the road and take whatever belongs to you, steal all your farm pools, uh, kill your animals for themselves, kill your family, and nobody's gonna do anything about it, then it really is hard to have a stable society. Um so this is kind of that that uh that role that we should appreciate, even when they are not necessarily God-honoring. It's always best to have a godly, we should pray for godly leaders. We're told to pray for our leaders, um, and none of them are going to be perfect because they are fallen people. So we don't need to blindly follow um a person, uh, but we do want to honor what God does through even fallen people. I mean, God boasts about boasted in the Old Testament about using Nebuchadnezzar and using all these uh, you know, authorities at different times to accomplish his will, even when they didn't know that that's what they were doing. So it's it's I always am trying to look at not what are people doing as much as what is God doing through people. And I think as we look at government, that's something we should look at as well.

Family Church State And Authority

Speaker 15:46

So, you know, it's helpful also to think about the context of all the different spheres of really government that God has established, one of which is the civil government, um, but then there's also the church uh within the body of Christ, and there's the family, and all those have been established by God, and all of us belong, you know, to or are participants in different ones of those, you know, the church if we are a believer. But the family goes all the way back to Genesis when God established the first family, and the family has a big impact on culture and on setting this stage for self-government through the training of children that enables people to freely govern themselves. Because if you aren't self-controlled, if you haven't been trained from a young age, both to, you know, just uh even if you aren't saved, how to be a person of character and integrity and taught the principles of scripture, we all, you know, obviously there's going to be a a limit to the cultural morals that you have uh if you don't have many people following Jesus. But even people that live out a Christian morality culturally, even if they don't know Jesus personally, um, that creates a more stable society. And that starts with the family, you know, teaching uh kids how to be honest. That's the basics of the Ten Commandments. Don't steal, don't lie, you know, protect the family, don't commit adultery, uh, and honor your father and mother. All these are very, very basic things that the family has a really more of an impact in kind of governance and the stability and impact on even things like our ability to farm, if we don't have uh young people coming up who value work, who value family, who value the Lord, who appreciate nature, who aren't just stuck to a screen all the time, uh, who haven't just been brainwashed. Uh if we don't, if the family is not raising children like that, then you know, agriculture is going to be very limited in how much it can thrive, regardless of how much the civil government helps it. And then the church, you know, obviously helps with that formation as well, the Christian community, the larger body of Christ, sewing into not only ch children, but uh individual growing believers and the accountability that should come with that. And, you know, the church is kind of the provides accountability when the family fails. And uh, and then you have the civil government, which is kind of the safety net when both of them fail. You know, if you end up having somebody that steals and murders and and is violent and deceives and lies and uh destroys family, then the civil government is kind of the safety net of uh, you know, when I've gone and worked and volunteered at a local jail, you see a lot of the people there. Uh I I kind of see my own uh kids as they're young reflected in those older men who you can just tell they did not have uh people invest in them. They don't have the family or the church invest in them when they were younger, and so they grew up. And unfortunately, the civil government has to provide that safety net. But just as we think about the role of government and the problems that we face in agriculture, uh government is kind of like the outer, the civil government, it's like the outermost layer, um, not the first responder of um problems that we face. So if we're probably facing problems in agriculture, uh if the government is the only person that we view as having the solution, then it's you know going to be stepping in to do things that not only should the family and the church be the only ones that uh are the ones that should do it, but they're really the only ones that can do it at the end of the day. It's uh, you know, just one of the problems is that when we abdicate responsibility to the civil government, uh the spheres of authority like the family and the church that should be doing things like formation of the children, uh care of the poor, um and education, all those things, uh even provision

When We Abdicate Responsibility

Speaker 20:15

and and taking care of, you know, uh economics and business and those kind of things. If if we abdicate that to the civil realm, then the realms like the family and the church that are supposed to be doing it stop and learn stop. They they learn, they they forget how to do it and they stop doing it altogether. And so now we have like a welfare state, we have um a lot of a uh government handouts, we have a lot of government education, all these things um that are taking the place of the institutions that should be doing those things. And there are consequences as a result because when you consolidate power, what happens is that the sinfulness of man is amplified. So people are always sinful, but when you have that decentralized, it keeps it from having as big an impact as it would otherwise if you centralized it into one powerful body that had all of the authority and then the sin that they have, which in this case we're talking about when you consolidate power in the civil government, it happens in the church, it happens as you know, it could happen to other the family as well. But when you don't keep those balanced in the different responsibilities that they have, which is kind of with this idea of sphere sovereignty, then um you end up having really a breakdown of the way that God's order is supposed to be set up. And in this case, you know, you have the government with farming is taking a lot of responsibility for making farmers succeed, for you know, helping farmers when they're struggling, for um providing Providing safety for the consumers from the farmers. And as a result, uh it it has really we've kind of lost as a community these things that normally we'd be providing the accountability, we'd be providing the help for each other and as farmers. And when the government does that, then the f the communities not only, oh yeah, we don't have that responsibility to that, we don't, but we then don't have the authority anymore. And we don't have local food systems like we used to. We don't have families producing, neighbors trading, local accountability. When somebody sold you something that was bad, um, now it's just like, oh, well, food safety is a federal question. Food prices are a federal question. Um, whether a small farm survives is responsibility to civil government. And that's just like an upside-down view, really, of the roles here that um God's kind of put in place. So we have to understand, I guess, God's sovereignty in all of this because I think our faithfulness as Christians is not just trying to figure out the exact way that stuff is supposed to work and demanding it be like that. God works through brokenness throughout history, throughout scripture. And I think it's just helpful to understand that, like with government, as we view government, the sinfulness or the corruption of an office holder, um, the person that's in office, does not dissolve the influence of the office that God has created. Um, you know, whether it's the same thing with like a husband or an elder, like definitely people are held to account, but it's that position and the value of that role that we want to honor. And we do want godly people in there. We want to pray for that as well, but it doesn't evaporate that position or nullify it just because there are corrupt people there or imperfect people.

Honoring Offices In Broken Systems

Speaker 23:52

You know, when Romans 13 was written here, this was a pagan government. Pagan Rome was not a Christian state. They were actively persecuting the church, but it did provide the security, the roads, the common language, and connected the this empire that allowed that God used to expand the church faster than it ever had. I mean, it was this combination of the ability to travel and to have stability across the empire with the persecution that made people flee to different places that God used to kind of expand the early church really quickly. And we couldn't say, oh, I'd recommend that, but it's something to say, well, you know, but God's using that, and the church was able to um, you know, to grow through that. And even as we're in our day and age today, we want to look at the same thing, just how can we be faithful with where we're at, um, not just compliant say we can't be faithful because things are not perfect because they're never going to be. But I think it is a an important um topic to think about because I think as the church, one of the things that we don't do very well is pursue God's ways. We don't seek his ways in a way that allows us to be able to articulate, okay, thing, what is God's way? What should we be shooting for? What should we be striving for? What does God call us to? And especially in this area of civil government and the idea of um, especially in the US, statesmanship and understanding how to serve your community through participating in what it takes to govern and um provide the services that a community needs. If we don't understand that the responsibility that is, the duty that we have, especially within America, to do that, and really what a good leader would look like, um, and we don't train the next generation in that, then it's going to be really hard to expect there to be ever be anything other than just power-hungry people in office. I was in uh an African country and taking an Uber, and they were talking about uh we were talking about, you know, some of the corruption and challenges they were having with their government there. And I asked the driver, I said, you know, so, you know, he was a Christian, and we were just lamenting the fact that there were few pol, you know, few people in political office that um had any integrity at all in their country. And I said, Well, as far as the church goes, you know, is the church uh doing anything to train its young people in what, you know, statesmanship should look like or what it would look like to, you know, biblically participate in serving, like it says here in Romans 13, um, where you know they are God's servants, devoting their full time to governing. You know, is that do we are we training people in what that should look like, or are we just letting corrupt politicians define what governing is? And his answer was, uh no, I don't think we are uh, you know, equipping our youth at all to think about that.

Training Christians For Local Service

Speaker 26:50

It was, I think it shocked him as kind of a genuinely new idea that he had never heard anyone suggest. Um but I think that's something that is why these discussions need to be had about God's ways, just like God's ways of taking care of the soil. What is God's way that he wants us not just to establish the perfect government or pick the perfect candidate, but just how to be faithful as a Christian to pursue what he calls us to in this area? And I think it starts with our own communities. I've been involved in our local fire department in this rural part because if we don't have a if if our neighbors don't um participate in being the fire department, we have no fire department. So I serve as the secretary um currently in our local fire department. One of my other neighbors serves as a county commissioner. Um I've also served as a local count uh constable. And these are all, you know, unpaid and all very glamorous um ways to serve into our community. But as the church, we need to be um making sure that we're the ones taking the step to step up and um show what it looks like to really um reflect God's intention in the office of government that he set up and to reflect Christ through that. One day, Christ's kingdom will come. We will participate in his kingdom. Um if you believe there's gonna be a millennium, I believe that there will be, then you will see uh Christ physically ruling and reigning on the earth and us helping him with that to bring his peace that we've never experienced before with any other government over the whole world. And so it's something that we as Christians should be leading in, trying to show what it looks like to serve in positions of leadership, not for power, but in order to sort to make an impact in our community for Christ, um, not you know, beating the gospel over the head of people, but just reflecting and representing who he is through that. And, you know, if some of us one day are in a position to uh be in government that impacts food and agriculture, can we define what we should be doing, what that should look like? Um, or will we kind of be uh, well, I haven't really thought about it much before, or we just go with the flow of what everybody else thinks we should do. So I think this is something that uh I would encourage you as a family to talk about with your kids. Um, talk not just bashing the government, not just um promoting, you know, one side or the other, but really saying what is God doing and how can we really stick to what's true. I understand that there are really black and white um ways that God's being represented or not being represented in the political sphere today, but specifically we're just talking about the institution of government and its proper roles. That's something that I think we should be um not arguing about, but definitely discussing and letting God be the source of what's defining that for us. And I think that can be very valuable. I think a big part of all this is really making sure that we're building on that heart of humility, understanding that we don't know it all, and that humility is expressed through being uh thankful for what other people bring and listening to them, also being open to correction according to God's word, and also uh showing that we and communicating that we need other people, we need other people's input. And I think that's a way that we can unify around understanding we need each other to pursue a Christ. I've always uh thought more recently about uh over the last couple of years about this idea of triangulation

Humility Triangulation And Final Charge

Speaker 30:35

uh as we try to pursue growth in Christ. And you know, triangular is where you you take two directions to find a particular point in the distance. Um an example of this would be if you were trying to find a beehive and you captured and flagged to mark the direction of two different bees that were foraging in the field from two separate places, then where their lines intersected going into the distance would probably be where the beehive is. Well, I think as Christians, it's important to understand that uh we're very far from where Christ wants any of us to be in terms of our maturity or even perspective on God's ways. And if we just surround ourselves with people that are in the same kind of place as us, we maybe have a good idea of the direction Christ is, but we don't necessarily know how far we still are from him. But if you can uh find somebody else who is pursuing Christ that maybe is quite a bit different than you and quite far from where you currently sit, and you see in their heart and in their growth, they're headed towards Christ. They're not just standing on some state of position that they are being arrogant about, but they're pursuing Christ and trying to chase him, then you can see kind of the direction they're headed is also towards Christ. And when you look along both your line and their line, you see actually how far both of you are still from what Christ has called you to, and it really motivates growth to pursue um not just being okay with where you are, but pursuing you know, growing in your a better understanding and application of God's truth. So we do need to find like-minded people. We also need to um encourage good discussion centered around Christ with people that are have different opinions than we do. So we you may have uh Christians that have more of a uh perspective of uh theonomy, and others that are more uh, you know, we need a republic or we need um, you know, there's different different forms of of how we might say would be the best form of government. Um, but I think we need to all approach where we are and where we live today with a grateful heart and also a um desire to to understand and know Christ better through pursuing his perspective of all of life farming, government, um money, family, uh, all these different things. One of my mentors, he says he likes to think that vision is kind of, you know, what we're really pursuing is is climbing up into the seat of into the lap of Jesus and then turning around and looking at the world from the way he sees it. And uh, and that's what I really want to pursue myself. Well, that's uh enough for this first episode, just kind of introducing the topic. We'll be touching on some more specifics in weeks to come, but I hope this is helpful to get your um mental and spiritual juices flowing. And thank you so much for listening today. Uh, we are gonna have our um Friday night family feast this evening, kind of an end of the week celebration um with some fun food and some music and stuff. So I can hear them getting ready for that downstairs. But uh thanks so much for tuning in. And till next time, I encourage you to be faithful, to be humble, and to keep redeeming the dirt. God bless.