Tree?!? I am no Tree!!!

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Tree?!? I am no Tree!!!

April 17, 2024

The LOTR trilogy has some amazing principles on how we think about the enchantment of nature. We hope you are edified during this discussion!

Key Text: Proverbs 12:10

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Transcript

Hello, For The King listeners. I am not your host, Rocky Ramsey. My name is Will Drzymski, a brother in Christ and friend of Rocky's, whom he has generously invited onto the show in order to verbally showcase my artwork to you in 50 seconds.

As an artist, I strive to accurately reflect the glory of God and everything that I paint, and through that process I hope to flood as much of the earth as possible with paintings which accurately proclaim the undeniable fact that Jesus is Lord and the creation which he made commands us to worship him. So if you would like to join with me in distributing clean, refreshing artwork showcasing the creativity of the God who made us, I would be overjoyed to have your help. I run my own website called Reflected Works, where I showcase the artwork I've done in the past, sell original paintings and prints, and take requests for unique commissions.

Once again, that's ReflectedWorks.com, all one word, and I'm looking forward to helping you further the Kingdom of God right now here on this earth by putting some of your free wall space to productive use. Thank you very much for your kind attention, and now enjoy the show. Friends, welcome to the 4th King podcast, where we proclaim the Edict's of the King, namely and chiefly that Yahweh reigns.

This is a long awaited wonky Wednesday episode where we're going to get a little wonky. That's why I named it that. So this is not your usual Sunday episode with Bryce Lee.

This is an episode with my guest, Noah. How are you doing, Noah? Howdy. I'm doing well.

Thank you for asking. Howdy partner. You did the wonky.

You can't, you told me that initially when I started the podcast. I was like, what should I name my Wednesday episodes where I just talk about super random stuff. And you said, you said wonky Wednesday.

I was like, all right, I'll go for the, the alliteration. So we're going to get a little wonky that this episode is going to be centered on, um, like re-enchantment kind of a thinking of re-enchanting the world, looking at the world in a magical way. Um, so I had that episode a while back with Josh Robinson.

Um, me Noah and Carter talked about, um, the medieval holiday and kind of what was going on historically with, um, Halloween as a medieval holiday. Um, so that was kind of more re-enchanting the world. Um, so I want to enter into that conversation more on the podcast and talk, talk about things more in that light.

So for, for today's episode, I want to highlight what I, one of the main lessons I learned in JRR Tolkien's, the Lord of the rings. And it would be, it would be this. If you attack or cut down or harm trees, they will attack you and undo you.

One of the main lessons. That's one of the main lessons, moral lessons that I took away that I walked away with that I hope to disciple my children, you know, that kind of stuff. You don't want to free angry.

You don't want to get on a tree's bad side, but, but literally though, like, Oh, he's joking. Uh, no, I'm being serious. Yeah.

And in a way that I guess we'll unpack and nuance a little bit. So I love that Tolkien in, in the story, um, presents nature or a creation as somewhat sentient, I guess, or, um, kind of a, well, knows, knows what's going on and not just like receives, but can, uh, it goes two ways with middle earth and those that live in it. It goes both ways.

Does that make sense? I'm saying it's not like, like we kind of think of nature as like, Oh, I just plant some seeds and I harvest this plant. Um, so basically I'm the only actor in the, in the relationship and, uh, there's no, there's no two way, uh, relationship if that makes sense. Like they're just, so what do you observe? Yeah.

Or observed or just like kind of, uh, the tree harvested. Right. So, okay.

That, that's kind of, I guess what, where we'll start. What are, what are your thoughts before we get any further? Um, I just have one and I forget it. It's going to be serious.

It'll come back. So I keep going and maybe it'll come back. Uh huh.

Okay. Um, so I guess what, what I mean by that is I need to look at it into it more biblically. I doubt there's a category in the scriptures of a, uh, like a tree nymph or a spirit like tree beard in the Lord of the rings has his own personality.

He's his own like each tree. Is that what you were going to want? Did you get it? I did. Okay.

Well, then go, well then go for it. Just interrupt me and just, it's gone. It's gone again.

Well, it's just that in Tolkien, there is kind of a force behind nature. Like there are the, there's a Valar that's kind of in control of the sun and one and control of the moon. Yeah.

And then Yavanna made the, it's I think it was Yavanna. She's kind of like all of the vegetation and then, um, what man, I forgot their names. It's been so long since I've read this all the different Vala.

Yeah. Yeah. It's like, oh, there's plenty.

Oh, Oom, Oomo, Oomo, Oomo. I think it's Oomo is the water. He's like the Vala over the water.

Yeah. Um, but I guess man weaves over the wind, right? The element of the wind. And then it seems like there are subservient Valar, Maiar.

I think they're called Maiar in Tolkien that are less powerful, but they're under the dominion of like what you might consider. I guess the point is there is a hierarchy and unseen realm and it, it very well could extend to nature. Yeah.

I totally agree. I would probably take a line more similar to what we learned in Through New Eyes by James Jordan, how there's, there's an angel or an animating force behind the elements, behind animals, behind plants, that kind of thing. So he, one of his like, um, proof texts, I guess, or one easy one, I think he had others in Through New Eyes.

Um, James Jordan, if you guys are interested, pick up that book. It's really interesting. Um, but he, he was kind of getting into that, like reenchanting your eyes that you look at the world through new eyes and what is that an actual biblical lens or an enchanted lens.

And what that might look like is in Job chapters one and two, when Satan moves through the wind to blow down Job's house that falls on his children and kills them. Okay. So that's kind of what I'm getting at is, um, we should never view a plant as like a neutral, indifferent thing.

There's probably an angel behind it that's animating it or as God's servant, like obviously, uh, well, okay, we'll back up a little bit. Psalm 65, God brings the rains and showers the world and it brings forth its crane. Okay.

So the tree is growing or the plant is growing. Why is it growing? Why is it growing though? Because God has provided for it that it would grow. He clothes the fields, the lilies and feeds the sparrow.

So he's the ultimate reason why, but he works through means and the means by which that happened, isn't necessarily this kind of deistic, uh, God just like unravels these secondary causes like the hydrological cycle. Like when it rains, we should probably view it less as a modern materialist deist might where it's just like there's these laws of nature and they're impersonal and they just happen. We should probably view it more as like God upholds the world by the mouth of His power and He has servants that go about and like accomplish that, which would be the angels.

Okay. So I kind of like that more and I think it's biblical. I need to look into it more.

I probably wouldn't say something like a wood nymph animating the forest or like the forest has its own spirit, but I would probably say spirit in the sense of maybe there is an angel that oversees. We know there are rules and dominions, principalities that oversee geography. Why wouldn't we want to extend that to like within the geography that head principality or whatever has this certain, um, angel underneath the hierarchy, like you said, that's overseeing this stand of trees, this forest and its growth.

And God has like sent this or apportioned this angel to manage it. Right. Does that kind of make sense? Yeah.

Something sure. Everything runs as it's ought to. Yeah.

Like I think it was Chesterton, um, describing this kind of the enchanted worldview and saying it's a perfectly reasonable explanation of gravity to say that it's just magic. Yeah. It still works.

It's still an explanation that works. Right. Yeah.

Yeah. You can explain rain as water evaporating, uh, going up in the sky, compensating whatever. Yeah.

But it could be just as reasonable to say like a fairy is causing the water to evaporate and like making the water something else is map. Yeah. There's a water.

There's a water fairy that's grabbing the H2L molecule and ripping it apart. And that's how it operations happening. Yeah.

You know, some, I guess it doesn't rip it apart, but it changes it. It changes. It's heating it up, heating it up or, you know, turning it to a gas.

Chesterton's example was with gravity. Um, it's like Isaac Newton, like why does apple fall? Oh, it's gravity. That doesn't really mean anything.

Really. Nobody really knows what gravity is regardless. It's perfectly reasonable to say that a fairy is dragging the apple now.

Um, yeah, I think that's pretty interesting. Yeah. It's still an explanation that does work.

It just might be a different layer of reality. And yeah, we, I mean, scientists still cannot, they can, um, describe the effects of gravity, but they can't, they don't know what it is. What is it? Right? There's no, it doesn't seem like there's, it's almost like there's no material cost for it, but it impacts material, which is, it's just, it's fascinating.

So yeah, okay. Hopefully that gets you guys up to speed on like kind of where Noah and I are entering into the conversation in terms of looking at the world more like that, which is why I like what Tolkien did with the ants. So we kind of want to start transitioning to think more about specifically nature.

Okay. Um, I do think when we, there, there are consequences for mismanagement of resources and the nature or sorry, and nature. Okay.

But not, I'm not saying that in like a liberal climate change kind of way. Um, I'm saying it in just a common sense. Um, don't, don't, um, if you see an ant colony, don't run up and kick it and destroy it.

Or if you see, you know, if you sit ever in a sadistic way, want to destroy nature or harm nature. And if you do, if you like that, um, there's probably something wrong with you. One of my favorite texts to depict this is at the end of the book of Jonah.

I don't know if you remember this or not. Um, he causes that plant to grow to shade him and Jonah's thankful for it and happy for it. And then he starts crumbling again and God takes that away.

And then Jonah continues to grumble after that. He's being scorched by this, uh, by the sun. And, um, what God says to him to basically help him understand why he's being a fool is, okay, Jonah, you don't want me to bless the Ninevites.

You don't want me to come to them that they would repent and that I would be their God. You don't want that. What do you want me to do? Destroy the cattle as well.

That's the last verse in the book is you want me to destroy the cattle as well. Insinuating, um, God has set us like salt eight over the creation. So we're higher up on the hierarchy, but he also is ascribing value and worth to the cattle.

What do you want me to do? You start destroying everything that is beautiful in this land. You want me to start killing all the cattle. What do you want me to do? You know, like, um, so basically God is insinuating the cattle are worthwhile and, um, God cares for them.

And we can get that many other texts, but when you, when you basically, the whole book of Jonah seems like it's kind of picking out when you met, when you mess with God, if you mess with this creation, things that bear his name. So it could be us. Like, for instance, when the righteous are persecuted, God will eventually, maybe not in their timing, but will eventually come and vindicate the righteous.

Like we see all over the Psalms. I think that also is true of nature. God will vindicate himself because one of the curses of us not following God's law is, um, cursing the, uh, the land is cursed.

But also there's laws of, there's laws of, um, the nature in the, uh, mosaic, um, civil law. For instance, the law that you're not to, when you're waging war, destroy all the fruit trees. If you do that, if you sit against nature in that sense, right? You see what I'm saying here? You see how I'm going and I'm framing it.

Does it make sense to you listening to it? So I want to make sure the listener makes sense. If you go against nature, God, you don't have to necessarily just persecute a human or like, um, not love your neighbors yourself. There's also, you need to care for and steward creation properly.

And if you don't, then nature will rise up or God himself will vindicate. So I think that's like evident with the fish. God sends the fish to eat him.

He sends a force of nature to swallow him up because he sinned. The, uh, Israelites were not to harm nature or God would judge them. Um, or he would send famines or, you know, you see what I'm saying? He would send famines.

He would send forces of nature to judge them. Okay. That was a lot.

What do you think? Um, I agree. God cares for his creation. He cares more about some kinds of creation, maybe especially humans that are in his image, but yeah, he cares for his creation and it makes sense.

It's just a natural law that when you mar God's order in the way that he has decided that things ought to be, according to his person, um, there are repercussions. Yes. Um, yeah, you see that everywhere.

You see that, um, in terms of taking care of your body, you see it in terms of, but literally everywhere, like relationships, um, the way you go about working. So if you do something poorly or you treat something, how it's not designed to be treated, it'll come back to hurt you. Yeah.

Seems like maybe that was the principle of, um, I for an eye kind of thing where the judgment corresponds to the sin. So you sin against nature and God's order in nature. Um, it kind of, it seems like it has the mind of its own and maybe it does.

Yeah. It's going to come and get you or like through angels as a mind of its own. And yeah, we'll come in and get you.

That's good. Um, kind of made me think a little bit about STDs. Um, like you, if you're promiscuous, you have a higher, there's just so many STDs that God's put in creation.

I do think like, obviously me and you are probably more in the line. Like AIDS was created in a lab. But, um, but I'm saying other like, like chlamydia or syphilis that obviously was not created by humans.

That was before all this technological advancement where we could pull something like that off. Um, so there are tons, there are tons of STDs where it's, it's basically you're sitting against nature. You're doing something unnatural, like having sex out of wedlock or even like, like a lot of, a lot of, um, a lot of STDs come from like gay, gay sex a lot because it's unnatural and they do it so much and they do it so much.

Yeah. So if you're, if you're unnaturally doing something that goes, that's another kind of example, like nature's going to come back. God's going to send the angel of chlamydia, um, to come in a title.

Yeah. Come and get you. Um, but we do see that in scripture.

Isn't there a, like an angel of pestilence, an angel of famine? I think isn't there like, remember Michael Heizer talks about a little bit like, like there's a, there's the shades. Um, and then like, those are specific angels over a specific thing. Or doesn't he talk about the Psalms that there's like the angel of death, right? So there's these forces of nature, like death is built into nature after the fall.

So there's not this angel of death that goes out and dishes that out. So we don't want to necessarily think about death as like this, uh, your body just ceases to work properly. You die.

Yeah. It's intentional by God. Yeah.

Why can't we also think of it as, um, the grim reaper that there's the angel of death has come and it's your time and God's taking your soul from you. And he brought it about by allowing the, the, uh, the, the death fairy, the death angel to come in. Like, you know, it's your time.

Right. Um, yeah. Death is not a passive force.

And in the same way, nature, like you were saying earlier, I mean, it, it doesn't happen passively. There is an active process. Yeah, exactly.

What's going on behind it. Yeah. Guiding, directing.

Yeah. And I can't, I mean, it is God ultimately, like you said. Yes.

Yeah. Okay. So let's bring it back to Tolkien then, just cause the story is so good and how he like portrays it.

Cause I think the ants and how sorrow man, he's a fool. Um, treebeard specifically says that wizard should have known better. He should have known, okay.

He's a wizard. Maya, right? Um, he should have the knowledge to understand that if you go against the way a luvatar or Eru made the world, you are, there's going to be repercussions and treebeard knew it. Um, right.

And then here they come. Here comes the ants to destroy or think and sorrow man's fortress. Who's it? What's it called? Orthon.

Yeah. Orthon. Yeah.

Or saying that's the, that's the name of the, his place, right? Yeah. The tower. The tower.

Okay. So yeah, here comes Isengard. Isengard.

Yeah. That's the name of it. And then I think it's the tower.

So here comes these, uh, trees in mass. Um, sorrow man has no idea even came up with that. I know it's actually magnificent.

It's really good. Um, even before that though, we see old man Willow, um, when they're in the, right after the barrel downs, right? They go to, I'm sorry, right before the barrel downs, they're going through, um, I forget the name of that little forest. Yeah.

That there's a little forest there in the Shire and they have to travel through it. And, um, he taught Bombadil and then he taught me boy. And, uh, that the book of in the house of Tom Bombadil by C.R. Wiley was so helpful in kind of juxtaposing Tom Bombadil versus sorrow man.

And then especially in how they deal with nature. I love it. I guess that's my, you know, profession.

I'm in the environmental field and, uh, I love that as a principle, picking out that story to key us into Tolkien's understanding of the way the world was made. But then I think he's also, he's taking his cue from the medieval worldview, which is taking their cue from the church fathers, which is taking their cue from the Bible and the Greeks, which is, you know, more the Bible, the Bible is the more the guiding and directing, but they do have a lot of stuff in the Greeks too. Um, but basically it's a, it's an ancient historic thought that comes from the Bible and Tolkien's picking up on it all the way in the 20th century to craft this story about how these two different characters interact with the created world.

And, and Bombadil comes up to old man Willow when he's being a punk and, uh, seems to him. And that's how he, that's how he entices or persuades the natural world by showing love uh, and beauty and honor to old man Willow and put keeping him in his proper place and knowing his tendencies, you know, he frees the hobbits. Saruman, on the other hand, um, tree beard talks about how Saruman used to walk through fangorn forest.

Do you remember that comment in the book? He said he used to, like Saruman used to care about the old things. He used to be like Bombadil in terms of caring for creation, caring for those things that grow old and have story and a past and history to them. And no longer, no longer, he's turned his eye away from the way Louboutin made the world now has turned his eye to sorrow, Sauron's, um, Sauron's complete inversion of the created order.

And it bites Saruman and his buttocks. Yeah. Big time.

So, well, he wants to ring as well. So maybe to some degree, it kind of goes back to what the ring represents being like sin, basically. Yeah.

So that develops into, I mean, the ring kind of, it also represents pure power. Yeah. So, um, I think that's kind of the, the root of where he goes wrong.

Yeah. But, but think of, yeah, yeah, let's, let's like explore that more. The idea of power there and their interaction with nature, Bob, it over as a Saruman.

Yeah. When Bob, it interacts with the ring. He already, he already has a power or an understanding of the creative world and a Louboutin.

Yeah, exactly. It's does not entice him because he already understands power. Right.

He has a grasp on it. Yeah. Saruman doesn't tempt him whatsoever.

It doesn't. It's, it's like a silly little, it's like a silly little thing to him. Right.

But Saruman, on the other hand, is enticed by a trick. Yeah. That, that, that part cracked me up in the book.

Um, because, you know, I always grew up watching the movies and, uh, the ring is never ever treated like that. The movies, it's always like the super grave thing. That's like this impending doom is surrounding this ring.

And I would have loved to see the movie, a scene like that where the ring is like put in its proper place. And it's just like, yeah, treated flippantly by Tom. But yeah, I don't know.

Is there anything you're thinking about there in terms of like power and the ring and how like Babadil doesn't even care about it, but Saruman does so much and that, that leads him to do something bad to nature. What do you think? I guess Tom, apart from representing like a godly mastery of nature, whereas Saruman is forcibly taking control of the things to use them to his desired ends instead of their designed ends. Yeah.

Um, so the ring itself kind of represents in that sense, domination or just dominion by power and dominion by love. Yeah. So, um, it's, it is kind of the difference between wisdom and folly.

Yeah. Represent. It's a good point because both have immense power with them.

Yeah. There's a proverb. Um, it's something like the wise cares for the needs of his animals, but the don't even understand.

Dude. Yes. That's a good proverb.

Yeah. That's a tough one. The wise has regard for his beast and the fool doesn't.

Yeah. That is sorrow. That is Saruman versus Babadil right there.

And it's in the scriptures. I just wouldn't, I need to read more token in terms of how he, like what he thought about his own story. I just wonder if he comments on that because I read some stuff by him on after world war one, he sees, he sees this like, um, mechanization of society with through all these machines and he does not like it, especially the ways that we can kill each other now.

So he writes a lot against like machines and the mechanized society where in industrialization, along with what modern day weaponry and, um, you know, he, he very much dislikes that. Um, yeah. Maybe he saw that it kind of tended toward transhumanism in a way, maybe not that specifically, but kind of the, the idea that you don't need nature anymore.

We've moved past nature and we can kind of evolve ourselves separately. Yeah. And tap into it whenever we need it.

And whenever we need it is, we need to make sure we get as much as we, right. Um, do you remember in Lewis's that hideous strength? I think it's Phyllis, Phil, Phil Strato describing his vision of the ideal future. And it was no trees, all trees were fake and metal.

Oh yeah. And it was just like a completely fake reality. That's completely controlled and inorganic.

Yeah. And like, that's, that's the vision of transhumanism and eternity. Yeah.

Yeah. The, the one who hates God and wants what he offers, but won't go to him. Yeah.

Yeah. Once his own avenue of power rather than the power God has provided, like you and Christian, I've talked a lot about the, we have the divine upgrade in Christ, transhumanist or what Tolkien was looking at or Lewis with that story. They were at the very beginning of it, the industrialization leading to, but they knew the telos of it.

They knew where it was headed, the direction it was going. Yeah. And we already have that divine upgrade, that route to power through Christ and Bombadil and Tolkien understood that too.

Just in Tolkien's world, that there's the correct route to power and it comes through humility and love and dominion in that way. And Sauron, Sauroman are wanting dominion, a different route that destroys rather than builds. So, you know, you can get this transhumanist utopia, but it comes at the expense of the society.

You're trying to turn it into a utopia. And then once you have the utopia, there's no society left. There's nothing left.

So you've come, basically you're just cutting the tree branch out from underneath you that you're sitting on because you're an idiot. You're a fool. And that's why Sauroman and Sauron eventually come to ruin because it's like Christ saying in Luke 11, a kingdom divided cannot stand, insinuating Satan's kingdom is always divided, which is why Jesus was using that as a proof as to why he wasn't casting them out by the power of Satan.

Because the kingdom divided cannot stand. Um, say it's not going to do that. So Jesus's kingdom is united and Satan tries his best to keep his friends united, but he can't because there's no unity where there's no love and there's no love with Satan.

So he's going to try his best to put on a front of Alliance. But, uh, just like Sauron and Sauroman, it's always going to implode. Yeah.

They're always looking to back set each other. Yeah. Because they both want the same thing.

Exactly. Yeah. They can't both have it.

Yeah. Sauroman did. I think if the ends wouldn't have done that, I would have been curious to see how the two towers would have, uh, let's say they won that initial battle and they actually destroyed Rohan and it was just, it was just Gondor left.

What would that union have been like to collapse on the land of Gondor? I wonder if it would have been, um, like a completely unified effort or if it would have been like probably would. Oh yeah. It's hard to say.

Yeah. I don't know. I don't know.

Yeah. It's definitely a society like that is built solely upon whoever can hold the power. So whenever that person runs out of power or somebody stronger rises up, then it's perfectly permissible to usurp them in a society like that.

It's like the French revolution. You're always beheading the next guy, whoever, whoever beheads the other person first is the person that's on top and then they get beheaded and it just, you know, it just gets crazy. Um, in Christian society is not built on that.

There's a, there's a respect for authority and it's not like somebody who holds power only holds that because, because they're powerful. It's because they've been humble and then they've been exalted. Great.

That's why they hold it and everybody can recognize that, which is why the next guy is not trying to behead the king or whatever. That's why it's Christians. We don't do that.

Um, right. So it's just totally different way to view a power structure and how one ascends or descends on that and what it takes to get to the top and what we're really trying to do in civilization. Christianity has a completely different system than what sorrow and sorrow, man, the communist social, transhumanist, modernist, atheistic liberal is trying to propose, you know? Yep.

Yeah. Well, I don't know. That's a pretty fascinating topic.

Um, I don't know. Did you have any other, I guess, thoughts or ways we could drive it? Trying to think through the Tolkien story. There's anything else that's interesting.

Well, I mean, this is the way the elves live with nature. Um, I think that's fascinating. They always build their societies into the woods.

Um, black loft. Lorian is like that. It's extremely wooded and in the midst of beautiful creation and you don't see them building.

I mean, honestly, when we import this into modernity, sorrow, man is a modern day neighborhood developer. You come in, you see a forest, you cut it all down so we can do our our little thing. Can I make money? Yeah, exactly.

But, um, the elves are more like an old European hamlet nestled in the mountains or net what that word. Yeah. You don't know what this analogy quiet.

It's like, what does that work? I guess I'm just trying to, I'm trying to wonder in terms of how we develop in the world and how we interact with nature. When you come up and you want to make a dwelling place for humans is your first, is your first thought is to level the landscape and destroy everything. And then we'll come up with the beauty.

Or do you look at that stand of trees and say, we'll cut down a couple of these that are dying. That'll be enough room to build a house. And then we'll build into it.

And we actually recognize there is beauty in this landscape. So our goal as humans, when we're building things from a Christian worldview, I think should be different. Yeah.

Like clear cutting something seems like a very odd thing. Yeah. A Christian society would do the goal is more to exploit it than to actually optimize it and care for it.

Yeah. Because as Christians, we do need to take care of both the land and the people and they don't, they don't need to be at odds. Yeah.

But if you do have the perspective that you just need to optimize everything, then that's not exactly that. But when your values aren't oriented correctly, like if you put money above the people, then you're not going to make a good product. And that's kind of what maybe Saruman is like.

Yeah. Um, recently I learned that Pfizer in their budget, um, like they expect to dump chemicals. So they have in their budget, like covering waste disposal, well, like waste disposal costs, but like they're dumping stuff.

I think they shouldn't be dumping. Okay. But they, they plan to deal with that.

Yeah. Like they don't care about the environment. They're just profit.

Yeah. Yeah. But in a Christian society, the businesses would take that and come out on themselves.

It's not up for the government to create an EPA and force a narrative on them. Sure. I would say personally, I would leave it to the States and it would be only biblical law.

Um, obviously in terms of like how you would deal with the environment. Yeah. Government isn't even meant to, the purpose of government is to administer justice.

Yeah, exactly. That's it. Yeah.

So if you're dumping a chemical that kills somebody or harms somebody's property, um, then yes, the government has a right to, to regulate how you are impacting the environment as a company or whatever. But I definitely think the EPA has gone way overboard. Sure.

Yeah. But it would have to be actual biblical law and biblical reasons to, right. Um, like we go a little crazy with like the wetlands delineation stuff.

It'd have to be, oh, you're dumping a carcinogen in the Creek in your backyard that runs down to Susie and, uh, Tom's property and their kids play in the Creek. Okay. That should be some kind of fine or something.

The government, I think definitely has a right to come in and say that. And ultimately you'd want a Christian society. People would be governing themselves.

There'd be self government. So they wouldn't be doing stupid stuff like that. You know, and eventually the land will kill the people who, yeah, all of a sudden there'll be, uh, a wooden nymph knocking on their door or living up in their attic.

Yeah. Yeah. Stomping around, giving them the spooks, scare them out.

Yeah. That's so tactic. I don't know.

It'd be interesting to think more about biblically, how a, um, environmental management would work in the, at the governmental level biblically. But I do think things that are carcinogens that kill people. It's like administering justice.

If you murder somebody through a chronic exposure to a carcinogen, that definitely seems like a biblical jurisdiction for the government. Yeah. But I think it should be a state level.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Subjecting everybody to non ionizing radiation, um, against everyone's will. Yeah.

We've definitely like created an idol where we have to have these phones, you know, we gotta do, we gotta, we gotta have these high speed phones and at the expense of everybody's health, you know, it comes back to the almighty dollar. Um, yeah. So yeah.

Don't even buy Bitcoin. Don't even buy the dollar. Yeah.

You're not going to laugh at me saying buy the dollar. I thought I thought that was funny. That was good.

I just didn't laugh. Oh, I thought that was funny. It just didn't cause me to laugh.

Right. That's it. I thought about it.

I was like, Oh, that's funny. You said that was funny in your mind. Yeah.

That's all I want. Honestly. That's all I want.

We don't even have to, our friendship doesn't even have to get outside of our minds. We don't have to do anything externally. That's fine.

That's fine. As long as I know you're my friend, did you hear that? Were you thinking bad thoughts about me? Oh, that's a stupid comment. I think we pretty much exhausted this topic.

And if we had some like notes written down, maybe it'd be a little bit more structured, but hopefully that was structured enough where you guys like thought that was interesting. You know, or at least. Oh yeah.

Uh, Noah's growing some ints. Um, yeah. Yeah.

You're going to tell the audience where you're growing inside. Remember what dude you, we were just laughing about this beforehand. You go out back and you've been even urinating in a specific spot.

Oh yeah. Tell the, tell the people they're dying to know. There are these like different kinds of plants are growing.

Like unique things. Yeah. Yeah.

It's kind of cool. The, the, the nate nature is responding to, uh, Noah's sin of urinating on. Well, I think it's a blessing.

Well, I have also heard that nitrogen back, if you're grounding in a specific area, yeah. Okay. I've heard that specific herbs.

I think you, I probably heard this from you. I think actually Candace is who told me. So I think we probably heard from Candace.

Yeah. Specific herbs that you need will come up. I know.

See the world's so enchanted, but just, oh yeah. Yep. I'm kind of going to continue.

That's fine. Okay. Um, water.

Okay. I'm with you. I know about water.

Water. If you sing to it. Okay.

It will, uh, structure better. Oh, like the vibration to plants. Yeah, exactly.

Okay. They will grow better. Yeah.

Look up. Uh, if you guys are interested in that topic, look at the fourth phase of water by Gerald Pollack. Um, or just look at the science of the fourth phase of water.

It's like a gel like structure that does really well with a vibrational energy. And it's like how water has a memory. It's like how water stores energy.

It's super cool. Really cool. It's that, um, it's what almost all the water, but also the water.

It's the science of adsorption, how things stick out, like water sticks to the surface of things and then it stacks on itself and then it forms like a gel. Yeah. It's pretty wild.

It's pretty cool. It acts like all of, all of, uh, natural systems are kind of based on that, because I learned about this a lot in my fate of environmental pollutants class in my undergrad. And cause we had to look at how water traps or how certain pollutants.

That's a cruel class name. I know. Yeah.

There is a lot of chemistry, but it's basically looking at the chemistry of water or soils or air. Like what's the vapor pressure, how, like how, what, what, what kind of energy is involved to get a certain chemical into and out of a certain phase to make it travel on that medium. So like, which, like what's the fate of this environmental pollutant, uh, like benzene, you know, how does it operate in water? How does it operate in soil? How does it operate in air? Um, interesting.

Yeah. So it was a really tough class though, but it was cool as I was learning about it. I'm like, Oh, fourth phase of water is everywhere.

Obviously we didn't get into the, we didn't get into the memory that how the, um, the molecule can store memory and store energy. We didn't get into all that, but, um, it is a real thing in academia. So going off of that, maybe that's how trees become ends.

They, after such a long period of time, their memory, it's like a sentient mind evolves out of that. Yeah. A sentient mind evolves.

Dude. That's like a, uh, I think that's called emergentism, which we don't like as Christians. We got it.

That was my philosophy. Just for trees. Just for trees.

I'm going to say more than angels kind of animating them. Okay. So if it becomes old enough, it's like so well established in an environment.

Maybe an angel is like, it's like the angel. Oh, I really liked that tree. Yeah.

Yeah. It's the throne of the angel in the forest. Oh yes.

Because it's the old ancient oak. That's good. Yeah.

You tend to think of like an ant being extremely old tree. I know. I love old trees.

They got so much character too. Everybody loves an old tree. There's so much character and you can sense it when you're at the base of something like that.

It's like, wow, this thing was around during the civil war. Awesome. You know, that's so cool.

Uh, now it's kind of sad story actually. There's at my parents house where I grew up, um, out back and probably a hundred yards, uh, to the left of the backyard, whatever direction that is east. There was a huge, huge tree, like oak tree.

I think it was an oak. Yeah. Um, like probably a couple hundred feet tall.

It was huge. Um, it was like dripping sap onto somebody's deck and they owned the tree, but they had it cut down because a sap on their deck. Yes.

And literally everybody in the surrounding area of the neighborhood was out watching this happen and it was like shaking their heads and frowning at it. No, no, no. Like, see, that's sad.

You can, yeah, you can kind of like feel it. You know, I know dude, that it's wicked. I could sense it.

Yeah. When I, a lot of modern day arborists, if you guys look at, um, you'll, you'll see it. Um, they do this thing called, um, like crowning the tree where they will like lop off the top basically, which is really bad for the tree.

Not all arborists do this. And I think they've changed a lot of their practices. Um, but that's a thing you can do, or you can kind of like cut back really heavily into a general shape.

But when you see a tree prune back really vigorously, it's just so ugly, but it's also kind of sad. Or like you're saying, when you see an old tree getting cut down, an old tree being killed, uh, it's, it is just terrible. Um, so everybody loves trees.

Obviously the whole neighborhood turned out to watch that one being cut down. It's like, Oh wow, my kids liked looking at that and going up and touching it. And I mean, being, being next to a tree, you cannot wrap your arms around is glorious.

I mean, that's glorious. It's so cool. There's one of my grandparents like that where my wingspan around the tree, if he had another person on the other side, you still wouldn't touch, touch them.

That's how thick that tree is. Um, so it's just so stinking cool. Um, we know that nature is enchanted.

We absolutely love old trees like that, which is why I'm so against clear cutting for a, like what should happen when you're, when you're developing land, I think, when you're say a developer comes in and they want to put in a neighborhood. Yeah. Cool.

I don't have anything. There's nothing wrong with neighborhoods. Uh, here's what, here's what I think is bad.

Well, there's, there's some things wrong with neighborhood. Maybe we can get into some architecture stuff and it's, it's ugly. It can be done.

Well, is what I'm saying. The idea of the neighborhood is not necessarily wrong. I mean, the whole zoning thing is wrong.

The whole zoning thing is wrong. It could run a business out of it. And so it's, it's so inefficient.

It doesn't, there's no profit for the city. Yeah. Um, it's just a dream.

Exactly. It could be done better, way better and altered to make sense. So, but I was specifically thinking about trees and nature, they'll come in and clear cut.

And, um, what I think makes a ton of sense of what they do in Carmel a lot is you go into these neighborhoods in Carmel or these nice affluent neighborhoods where they had enough, they're not trying to make a bunch of cheap houses for cheap people. They're making nice houses for people with money so they can afford to not clear cut and keep all the old trees in the neighborhood rather than planting like Bradford pears and river birches that are going to grow really quick with a super ugly trees. So when you go to these old neighborhoods, they always have old trees in them and it's really cool.

And they built, they built it. That's what I'm trying to say with the elves, the elves, like La Florian is built into the woods and they don't chop down the trees, um, the, the, the old glorious ones. So I think when you go logging, um, it's called selective cutting and you're supposed to choose the ones that are young and, and, and you get a lot of wood and a lot of profit out of, but the old ones, you don't, you don't want to cut down and, and same, same kind of idea with them.

You get buck tags and doe tags. You're not supposed to kill the ones that are coming up that are going to reproduce and all that. You can kill super old dying ones.

Um, but the ones that are mature and are going to be the next, like these older trees that are, I'm not talking about dying trees. I'm talking about a tree that's still healthy. That's old.

You want to keep those when you're doing selective cutting, when you're logging, you want to take the ones that are good cash value. That way the next generation can come back. Um, so there's just a lot to talk about there.

It's like the draft for war. The what? The draft for a war. It's like the cutoff age, I think it's 26 and it's only down to 19.

You don't draft older people. It's, it's just completely different. Yeah.

But yeah, you don't, you don't send your old men off to war because that's not what they're for. Yeah. Same way.

Old trees aren't like, they have a different value than like a material good. Yeah, exactly. Like they're a source of wisdom.

Um, as far as with magic, maybe in a way they're majestic. They're beautiful. Well, just like Minas Tirith have that the, uh, what's the data tree? Yeah.

Gold white tree. The white tree, the tree, the King think they call it the tree, the King. I forget there's like a specific name for it, but the tree of the King, that's at the top of the Zenith of Minas Tirith.

Yeah. It's trees are a token piece. So those old trees, those legacy trees that your whole neighborhood turned out to see chopped down, they hold so much cultural and aesthetic value.

So when we just like are indifferent to them and destroy them, I don't think God is pleased with that. I mean, that's why we feel it when we, when you see an old tree like that being cut down, you can feel it like, Ooh, we just wasted like 300 years worth of work. Ooh, I felt bad.

I don't like that. Um, yeah, so it's, it's terrible. Um, and God's not pleased with that.

There are trees, I think that, uh, in Africa, the kebab trees or K-bob trees. I forget exactly how to pronounce it or what they're called. I may be butchering it or Kelbab trees, something like that one.

Yeah. Kelbab something I'll show you afterwards. Um, they get really big.

They're like, besides the redwood, they're one of the biggest trees in the world. The redwoods out in California and they can live, I think like 500 plus years. Like some of them out in Africa right now are like pushing 500.

I mean, maybe even a thousand, I feel like I remember hearing that tossed around, but there could be trees growing in Africa or even maybe some of the redwoods. I don't know how old those get, but there are some trees that are that old that are were planted during Thomas Aquinas writing his Summa Theologia. You know, that's crazy or Anselm's works.

Anselm was thinking about his ontological argument while this tree was growing. So there's just so much history and rootedness and we need to honor the things that are old in the world. And, um, yeah, I think that's the main gist.

We're at 45 minutes. That's a good little episode. Um, I think, I think we gave some good little thoughts here.

Anything to wrap up with? Go read, uh, in the house of Tom Bombadil, go read Lord of the Rings. Don't we quote one other thing that I mentioned? Yes. Uh, that hideous train.

Oh, that hideous strength was the other one. Yeah. Read the space trilogy to, um, CS Lewis and Tolkien on all these things.

Oh yeah. The fourth phase of water. He's not a Christian or anything.

It's just interesting science. It's like the, he's like got the easiest gateway to understand it. You can probably just read Wikipedia on it.

You don't need to read general pod. Just unless you're really interested. Just type in the fourth phase of water.

Um, yep. I think that's, yeah, the main trigger is one of them may have been one of the books. I mean, strong towns just talk about some of this development stuff.

Yeah. Oh yeah. Read strong towns by what? I don't know.

What's his name? Just type in strong towns. You'll find it. But he talks a lot about like how to develop land properly.

And we're just a consultant for city planners. Yeah. He's just really, he was, he just, he's got a good book on that.

And we need to really rethink the way we do our land management. I think it's atrocious. And our cities and neighborhoods are so ugly.

Yeah. I mean, they're just, they're immensely ugly. And trees and nature are such a big component.

There's so many studies about people that recover faster when they can see nature from out of their hospital window. And if they have an interior room where you can't see, they don't get, there's just so many random little stuff like that. So being out and grounding being taken from the dirt.

Yeah. When we were created. Yeah.

So we're pretty closely tied to it. We're supposed to be in the dirt. So don't be in, don't be inside all the time.

Get your kids outside. Get yourself outside. Huh? Touch the grass.

Touch grass. Watch out. If you touch grass, you might become a traditional Presbyterian.

Touching grass has a direct correlation to conservative, political. Yeah. It will make you more crushed.

Make it giga chad. All right. Well, that's it folks.

Thanks for listening to the King of the Ages of Mortal Invisible. Hey, thank you all for being on. You're welcome.

King of the Ages of Mortal Invisible. We've only got the honor and glory forever and ever. Amen.

Sole day of glory.