Extremists

"I want to start eating less meat," Jane announced a few days ago.

I looked up at her, stunned and defensive, because what I heard implied was, "We are going to start eating less meat." We do all almost all our grocery shopping together, and I would give up chocolate before I gave up meat.

"But you hardly eat food to begin with," I protested.

She disagreed and told me she eats all the time, and the times I remember her skipping meals because she forgot to pack a lunch are the exception, not the rule. "Most of the farms that raise cattle sold in stores are unsustainable," she explained. "And besides, nobody needs to eat as much meat as Americans do."

Even though we're both busy college students, Jane wants to live a more sustainable lifestyle. Already, we don't buy prepackaged food like frozen burritos or canned ravioli. Also, because Jane wants to reduce trash, we buy most of our food in bulk from Winco and refill our plastic containers. And of course we use reusable shopping bags, which I found are more comfortable to carry around anyways. These steps all seem pretty extreme by themselves to me, but it isn't enough for Jane. Her dream is to buy whatever she can't grow directly from local farmers and can the excess - basically never go to the grocery store and never buy anything that can't be grown locally, like citrus. It makes me weep inwardly just thinking about it.

I don't think she knows how weird it is for me to think this way. The culture I grew up in painted environmentalists as either paranoid lunatics who screamed the sky was falling, or as malicious communist

I couldn't find a picture of Promise, but here's how I remember it.

scum who wanted to take away our land. I deeply loved our 300 acres of almost unused land, located on the top of a mountain in Oregon. The settlers named it Promise, because it was like the promised land "flowing with milk and honey." Did these environmentalists think they cared more about this land than I did? It couldn't be possible. Did they know under which stump there was a veritable kingdom of ladybugs - thousands milling in and around the curves in the wood? Did they know when to be at the pond to see the exhausted Monarchs rest in fluttering clumps on the sand? Did they know where to find the lair of the water scorpion, or even what it was? If they met a bear on the road by the garage, would they know to drop their gaze and nonchalantly walk a different direction?

I knew very little about these mysterious scheming environmentalists, who must all live in some faraway nexus of evil, like Portland.

Once, an activist came and lived in my area and started telling the people of Wallowa County what they were doing wrong. When the people discovered the environmentalist had built a new log cabin for himself on Alder Slope, they lost it. I think they were more angry that he was a hypocrite than anything else. It's hard to respect someone who has no integrity. So some people made an effigy of him and tarred and feathered it, which they got in trouble for because apparently that hasn't been an acceptable practice for about a hundred years. But if you ever visit Wallowa County, this won't surprise you. It's like traveling back in time.

My heart became a little softer to environmentalists over the years as I realized many of them just love the land like I do. But it was still a culture shock when University of Idaho housing threw a Protestant logger's daughter in the same room with a Catholic member of the Environmental Club, who if given a rifle and a plane ticket, would ruthlessly hunt down elephant poachers until they were extinct, thank you very much. We spent many hours arguing about everything. We argued about evolution, conservation, global warming, the justice system, politics in general and where the horse blankets she washed for the polo club should be hung up to dry.

Jane and me, freshmen year

So maybe on the outside it's a little puzzling that we chose to room together again for our junior year. But for us, it makes sense. We love arguing, for one thing, and it's not a trait many people share. By arguing with each other, we've sharpened each other like iron and softened one another like sanded wood. I've learned how to better frame my argument because she always finds a place to poke holes through it, and we've both learned how to step outside the argument and realize no matter how ridiculously outlandish we think the other's argument is, we still love the person behind it and need to show it.

Jane and me becoming more mature

Through her integrity and clear reasoning, she's shown me that she's the real deal, so not only do I respect her thoughts about the environment, I'm beginning to embrace them. After all, she isn't the only extremist in our friendship. I've also been misrepresented by nut jobs who claim to believe in the same thing as me. I've also been misunderstood and viewed as evil, mostly out of ignorance. I also don't always live like I believe what I believe, but I'm becoming both sharper and softer as I pursue God's vision to restore the world to a kingdom of peace, joy and beauty.

And then when I think about it, he's a bit of an environmentalist too. He told Adam and Eve to take care of the land - not squander it. After all, if we don't like it when someone takes apart our Lego spaceship or jumps right in the middle of our sandcastle, God probably doesn't like it when we destroy the world he created. I liked the way G.K. Chesterton put it: “The main point of Christianity was this: that Nature is not our mother: Nature is our sister.” In the laws the Hebrews were given in the wilderness, rules were included like if you come across a bird's nest, you may take the eggs but don't take the mother. It also had some ideas about crop rotation and letting the land rest. Sometimes I forget the Bible doesn't always agree with my preconceived notions.


When you come right down to it, any passion to make the world a better place aligns with God's own plans. Of course we all get it wrong, sometimes. We use bad methods, get discouraged, think it all depends on us...But when you deliberately tell God, "Ok, I'm in, I want to work with you," everything changes.

And I think that's why us two extremists get along so well. We both want to work with him, and not out of fear of what could happen, but out of joy and appreciation for what we have. It's a funny way of looking at things, but I think George MacDonald struck on some truth when he said, "attitudes are more important than facts."