Merlin's Mustache

Greetings All:

I’m sorry if you’re tired of me referencing this book again, but author Tom Rath has been front & center in my sub-conscience, likely more than any other author except for maybe Dr. Henry Cloud, for the past 5-6 years since I first read Rath’s Eat Move Sleep book. I find it difficult that it took me until last fall to be “compelled” to order his decade old book Are You Fully Charged?  (AYFC) Even stranger, he has authored several others I’ve not yet even researched, perhaps this winter. I say all that to suggest that for right now, just read this prologue slowly and carefully and see if it just might resonate with the passion and desires of your heart as well as the mission of your soul for the hours we each have left to serve Him. More opportunities ahead.

Tomorrow, July 30, is a big day. We’re driving to Orlando Airport at 2 AM from Sarasota to fly to Panama to begin our second trial winter. We’ve been preparing for this since early June and the day is finally here. Pray for His protection and that we complete all the hoops in Panama City with the vets to bring our puppy Angel into the country. Blessings to all.

PROLOGUE:

When you are fully charged, you get more done. You have better interactions. Your mind is sharp, and your body is strong. On days when you are fully charged, you experience high levels of engagement and well-being. This charge carries forward, creating an upward cycle for those you care about.

          I am far more effective in my work on days when I am fully charged. I am also a better husband, dad, and friend. More notably, I can do more for others. However, until recently, it was unclear to me what specific actions create this daily charge.

          I’ve spent my entire career studying workplace engagement, health, and well-being. While I have written several books on these topics, the greatest challenge I have faced personally is how to integrate findings from my research into my own daily routines. After all, knowledge does little good unless I can change my behaviors.

          Fortunately, a new body or research has recently emerged that focuses on creating daily well-being. Historically, asking people questions and tracking their actions was time consuming and expensive. As a result, researchers gathered broad, general information about people’s lives and work. Most research on well-being over the past century was based on asking people about their lives over the span of years or decades.

          When people are asked to reflect on an entire lifetime, the first things they think of are broad concepts like health and wealth. The problem is, these general measures are not very practical for improving people’s lives on a daily basis. Health is the sum of many years. Wealth is not created in a span of days. This is why a different way of measuring what’s important in life is crucial.

The Science of Daily Experience

          The time and cost of tracking what people do are now remarkably low. It is much easier to measure thoughts, feelings, and behaviors on a daily, even momentary, basis. New technology enables scientists to ask people what they are doing at various times of the day, who they are with, and how much they enjoy an activity. Sensors and wearable devices can even measure how people are doing, with no input required from those wearing devices.

          These technologies, paired with innovative research methods, have led to a rapid expansion in knowledge about the central elements of daily well-being. Researchers call this daily experience, which is the product of positive and negative experiences (or positive and negative affect) throughout the day. Daily experience is measured by asking people whether they have emotions like happiness, enjoyment, stress, and other feelings within a given day. This distinction between daily well-being and broad evaluation of life satisfaction is important because it leads to very different conclusions about the best investment of time and resources.

          Traditional measures of life satisfaction, for example, might suggest putting a great deal of energy into increasing your income. Yet, although life satisfaction scores continue to increase (almost indefinitely) with income, making more money does not actually change daily experience once people reach an income threshold.

          In the United States, for example, daily well-being does not show any statistically significant increases after someone reaches $75,000 of annual household income. While this figure has received a good deal of attention, people tend to miss the fact that almost all of gains in daily well-being associated with increases of incomes occur below the $40,000 level. Essentially, a certain income level is necessary for food, shelter, and preventing daily worries, but once you have reached that basic level of financial security, making more money is unlikely to lead to better days.

          The study of daily-well being is also upending the conventional wisdom that wealthier countries have happier citizens. In the past, when scientists looked at life satisfaction, the wealthiest countries were consistently at the top of the national well-being rankings. But when Gallup asked people in 138 countries about their daily experience, the results told a very different story. The country with the highest “positive experience” score was Paraguay, a nation that ranks 105^th in terms of its wealth (measured by GDP per capita). Among the top five countries on this daily well-being index, four were in the bottom half of the wealthiest countries list!

          This research is encouraging to me because it suggests that daily well- being does not depend on accumulating riches or living in a wealthy country. The more I’ve learned about the difference between long-term evaluation and daily experience, the more I’ve grown to understand the importance of the latter. Personally, I care a lot more about laughing, smiling, and enjoying moments with my wife and kids today than I might rate my overall life satisfaction 10 years from now. And trying to help people improve their day-to-day experiences is more practical than trying to improve their life satisfaction over time.

          Your own satisfaction with life certainly matters. But you create meaningful change in moments and days, not years and decades. It is easier to improve your own happiness – and the well-being of others – when you focus on doing it right now. Taking small meaningful actions today is the best way to make changes. And eventually, these small changes will lead to important long-term outcomes.

The Three Keys to a Full Charge

          To discover what creates a full charge, my team and I reviewed countless articles and academic studies, and interviewed some of the world’s leading social scientists. We identified and catalogues more than 2600 ideas for improving daily experience. As we narrowed down the concepts to the most proven and practical strategies, underlying patterns continued to surface. Three key conditions differentiate days when you have a full charge from typical days:

          Meaning:  doing something that benefits another person

          Interactions:  creating far more positive than negative moments

          Energy:   making choices that improve your mental and physical health

          When we surveyed more than 10,000 people to see how they were doing across these three areas, we found that most people struggle on a daily basis. For example, when we asked them to think about their entire day yesterday, a mere 11 percent reported having a great deal of energy. Clearly, most people are operating well below their capacity.

          As a result, they are less effective in their work. Their interactions with friends and family are nowhere near as good as they could be. And their physical health worsens as days with too much stress and too little activity accumulate. It is time for this to change.

 BOTTOM LINE:  

       The good news is that you don’t have to go on a retreat in the woods to find meaning, you don’t nee to find new friends at a cocktail party to have better interactions, and you certainly don’t need to run a marathon or embark on a fad diet to create physical energy. The biggest changes for your daily well-being start with a few small steps.  

NEXT UP: We’ll see when we get back to our Boquete home again. May take a few days off!

Plain Values July 25, 2025

Words by Ferree Hardy

The summer before my first husband, Bruce, died, we took a rare walk down the street behind our house. Just as rarely, we talked about our future instead of the usual concerns involving our children or the church Bruce pastored. The setting sun cast long shadows and golden rays as it neared the tree-lined horizon. The air was calm and light, and so were we. This was just a leisurely stroll after supper.

We wondered out loud, “What lay ahead for us?” Bruce had been pastoring Riverview Church in Novelty, Ohio for almost seven years. He’d pastored two other churches before coming here. In each one, at the six or seven year mark, it just happened that another church would ask him to come to them. Would we sense God’s calling and be moving on to a different church once again?

Our roots were settled deep with this congregation. When we were first married, they called Bruce to be their first youth pastor. Now he was back as their senior pastor. The teenagers we’d loved so much when he was the youth pastor were young adults now—marrying and starting their own families. I taught their children in Sunday School and Children’s Church. Our own children were teenagers, involved in the church youth group, baseball, and a variety of school events. We’d purchased a home. Life was good.

I had even given notice at my full-time job that I’d be leaving at the end of the year, or as soon as we could find and train my replacement. I was looking forward to being a full-time mother and wife. Staying home would be a huge—but welcomed—change.

Yet, we both sensed that there was something more—that a deeper level of change was out there. What was it, and how should we prepare? We were blissfully, and blessedly, unaware of the brain aneurism that waited ahead in the dead of winter.

When I interviewed Marlin and Sharon Beachy for their story* last month, they told me something that I didn’t have room to include then, but it’s fitting for today. They said, “We don’t want to know the future.” I agreed wholeheartedly, and we had a great conversation. Isn’t it better to live each day as if it’s our last? Life is precious; the people in it are precious. If we knew our “expiration date,” it might consume us with anxiety; some of us might cower and hide. Or if we had plenty of years left, we might squander the here and now.

I wish you’d been in on our talk. What thoughts would you have added? Why not share this article with your community of friends, neighbors, and family and hear what they have to say? I’d love to hear from you too, so please feel free to contact me. My address is at the end of this column. I can learn from you; this is an important topic for your input and perspective.

But let’s continue the walk from those many years ago. After some moments of silence, Bruce and I came to the end of the street. Dried grass and wildflowers—Queen Anne’s Lace, the papery blue flowers on chicory, and the deep brown seeds clinging to stems of curled dock brushed lightly as we turned and headed back home. As our house came into view, so did the plan. Almost simultaneously we agreed: the next thing we were to do was to “get the house ready.” That was all we needed to know. Whether Bruce was called to a new pastorate and we’d need to sell, or whether we’d stay in this lovely place long enough to see grandchildren running through the living room, “get the house ready,” was a good directive. Innocently, I just thought we’d strip off the old wallpaper and give the walls a fresh coat of paint.

Years later, at lunch with a group of widows in Charlotte, North Carolina, I mentioned this rather mysterious incident. My widowed community gave me the crystal clear meaning of “get the house ready.” Without hesitation, one of the women gasped, “Set your house in order!” She was referring to the Old Testament story of King Hezekiah being told by the prophet Isaiah that his death was imminent. “In those days Hezekiah was sick and near death. And Isaiah the prophet, the son of Amoz, went to him and said to him, “Thus says the Lord: ‘Set your house in order, for you shall die, and not live.’” (NKJV)

Looking back, I realize that although we never connected our plan with Hezekiah’s at the time, God did give us what we needed to know that day. Months later, the day after Bruce died, a carpenter and a designer both knocked on my door. They had no way of knowing what had happened the night before, and they were there for the appointment we’d made to help us “get the house ready.” I was numbed by shock and grief, so I asked them to come in and get started! Awkward and unnerving as that must have been, they did.

Over the next weeks as wallpaper was stripped, the floors redone, and everything was a mess, it pictured perfectly what was happening to my life. My life was being stripped; my footing would never look the same. I understood a bit more of Jesus’s work as a carpenter, and of God’s work as my designer. I don’t want to make light of how painful it was, but widowhood was a fresh coat of paint, new flooring, and much more storage space in my heart.

My community of Plain Values readers, widowed friends, and The Divine Carpenter and Perfect Designer continually gives me cohesion, order, and peace. The wisdom of widows is a priceless perspective. Make sure you see, acknowledge, and consult the widows in your community today.

BOTTOM LINE:

And, like Marlin and Sharon Beachy also told me, “It’s the grace of God that we don’t know the future … Do not dwell on IF your loved one might die. Instead, love them to the fullest.”

The future we plan for ourselves is tenuous at best. We have no guarantees except the never-changing ones from Jesus: God is love, God is good, He cares for you … Therefore, He has the full authority to tell us, “Do not worry about tomorrow…” Matthew 6:34 (NKJV)

Let’s rest our future in God’s hands.

*See “When A Phone Call Marks the Darkest Night,” Plain Values, June 2023.

To learn more about widowhood, order a copy of Postcards from the Widows’ Path—Gleaning Hope and Purpose from the Book of Ruth. It’s a gentle, biblical guide for widows that has many saying, “This is the best I’ve ever read!” Mail a check for $14.99/copy (paperback, 248 pgs.), along with your address to: Ferree Hardy, 76 Grace Ave., Ticonderoga, NY 12883. Please allow 2-3 weeks for delivery.

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Inspired by Wendell with Editorial License by merlin …

We’re living in exciting times. While some folks sit around wringing their hands in growing alarm because of the darkness obviously sweeping into our nation and the world, God is calling His children to step forward in commitment to His service. We have a job to do. This is no joke. We can no longer wait for someone else to do something for we who claim to serve and love the Lord Jesus are the only ones who can truly meet the challenges. WE’RE IT!

I hear your heart Wendell, I really, really do. But let’s consider God’s math now, (remember the prior post about the extra $300 appearing) not our math, for I am expecting God may either raise up multitudes more of new recruits to help, or take down millions of the resistance as needed, OR DO NEITHER, SINCE HE IS GOD, ALL just in time to accomplish ALL of His purposes right on schedule! merlin

            Many generations of Christians have done well at faithfully attending their churches week after week. However, there is no more time for just sitting and soaking it all in! It’s time to move out. It’s time to build on the foundation of faith we’ve all received from those years in church. It’s time for we, God’s people to make our faith come alive and productive by choosing to fully surrender to Jesus’ lordship over our own lives becoming active and intimately involved in the passion and burden of the One we claim to follow.

            Tell me, what more can we possibly learn before we feel qualified to finally enter the ranks of those Christian soldiers who burn with such a love and devotion for their Savior that we are compelled to selfless action? Men and women, sometimes with much, but more often with little or no talent or training, struggle yet press forward, because we really believe what Jesus does and says, by representing in our very lives, the love and grace of a kindhearted Father to a world full of hurting and wandering souls while guiding us toward the promise of a better destiny through Jesus, being the Only way to the Father! That’s it! So simple! Yet it’s so incredibly powerful, like search lights piercing the pervading dark skies.

BOTTOM LINE:

            Guess what? When we finally choose to throw away our lifelong precious earthly safety nets into God’s ever present and available recyclable dumpsters, such as our hard-earned rights and accolades as citizens of Planet Earth, with all of its worries and fears, even our lack of perfection and our skittish self-confidence, realizing that as we let it all Go, Now we can finally become those inviting warm radiant lights representing the love of Jesus Christ shining boldly into the pitch black crevices of a yet imprisoned humanity FOR WE ARE BECOMING His transformed & empowered ambassadors about to make a difference!

GO NOW! Take the light we’ve each been given. Throw off those things that cover it. May we hold our lights high so we can see His opportunities that await us!

NEXT UP:

Time to Change Directions! “Do You Wish You Knew The Future?” Words by Ferree Harder of The Widow’s Path as published by Plain Values July 25, 2025

From Wendell & Daisy Martin’s book GO NOW! From the INNERMOST PARTS OF THE HEART to the UTTERMOST PARTS OF THE WORLD Plus Forty Stories of Faith.

Likely many of you could share similar God Moments from over the years, or perhaps, even since covid, but because public sharing may be construed as blowing trumpets, you refrain except for in intimate circles, such as your small group, etc….. merlin

It happened on our most recent trip to China and Vietnam toward the end of March. It was a rather different sort of trip this time. For one thing, I didn’t have a team of people with me as I normally do. That in itself was a refreshing experience, allowing for some precious opportunities to meet people while on a very flexible schedule. I was free to just go with the flow. One of the things on my to-do list was to deliver the quarterly supply of support money for the Christian leaders and families that Go Forth Ministry supported in Vietnam at that time.

Randy, who was accompanying me on this trip, had just read the story of Jesus feeding the five thousand in his daily devotion guide that morning. Having finished that reading, he casually flipped back to the Old Testament and just happened to open to 2 Kings 4, the story of the widow’s oil. He told me later that he had wondered why God brought these two similar stories to his attention that day and was anticipating something special might happen.

While Randy was having his devotions, I was preparing for the day       ahead. I carefully counted out the two packs of $100 bills, plus a $20 bill, totaling $1820, the three months of support money I had arranged to give. Really, I had prepared it carefully! I had one pack of ten $100 bills and another pack of eight. This money had been kept in a separate envelope. I count it again carefully, just to be sure, for at least the fifth time. This was just before our Vietnamese contact arrived at our little hotel room in Ho Chi Mihn City that morning. I knew the amount in the envelopes was right!

I thought it would be best to count the money once again before our contact arrived so there would be no question between us at the at the amount. First, I counted out the little stack of ten $100 bills. Then I counted out the stack of eight $100 bills. But amazingly, it totaled up to $900. I put the extra $100 aside, certain I had made a mistake. I counted again. And again, I counted $900. Once again, I put the extra $100 aside with the other $100.

This really didn’t make any sense to me! I knew without a doubt there was only $800 in the stack. But I had already found an additional $200. How could this be? I counted it again. Again there was $900. Now I had an extra $300. I was very perplexed but had a sneaky feeling that God was up to something. (CLUE!) Randy was just quietly observing. He understood. But me? Not a chance! I was just happy that our rapidly shrinking budget had been stretched, and I just assumed that perhaps at my old age, I had forgotten the simple art of counting to ten.

I counted the stack of $100 bills again. This time I counted the accurate amount. I counted it several more times before I finally handed the $1820 over to our contact, $300 richer on my part. Or was I?

God had his plan in this – of course! Just a short time later, a Vietnamese pastor came into the room and, in a passing comment, mentioned about several house church pastors who were traveling great distances every week on foot to serve the Lord. Was there any way we could help them purchase a few bicycles? It didn’t take long to understand why we had the extra cash. I quickly gave him $200 that would purchase four new bicycles. But I still had the other extra $100 and was left to ponder what other need would yet arise.

It didn’t take long. On our arrival in Shen Zhen, China, a few days later, I was absolutely amazed to be met at the front of the hotel by a snowy-haired, dear saint of a lady we had known years before but had lost all contact with. Years earlier, God had called her to a ministry of intercession for North Korea.

Traveling by herself from her lonely home on the China side bordering North Korea, she has arrived safely in Shen Zhen City with intentions of heading directly on to Hong Kong. But before reaching the border, her passport was stolen, a major headache for an American in China in a hurry and on a limited budget. For her, applying for a new passport would mean about a week-long stay at the hotel in China, the same hotel where Randy and I just happened to also be staying.

It was a wonderful reunion! Later, with a typical question missionaries often ask each other, I inquired how her finances were holding out.

“I’m ok,” she replied, a usual faith missionary response.

“But that’s not what I asked.” I challenged. After taking the time to press for details, I found that she didn’t have the money in reality (yet) to pay the impending hotel bill. How wonderful to be able to tell her how the Lord had already prepared the money ahead of the need. Not a few tears were shed as this dear women’s faith became the reality of the Lord’s promised provision to her, a limitless source that those who live by faith must repeatedly choose to rely on.

So, I have to ask: what is the lesson of the $300? Perhaps Randy has the answer! For myself, I’m reminded that God really does love us, He really is with us and aware of all we are experiencing in life as we serve him, He really is all powerful, and we really don’t need to worry about anything except our dedication to follow and love Jesus!

From Wendell & Daisy Martin’s book GO NOW! From the INNERMOST PARTS OF THE HEART to the UTTERMOST PARTS OF THE WORLD Plus Forty Stories of Faith, of which this was #38

NEXT UP:

I’d Be Remiss, If I’d Not Include Wendell’s “Final Word” From Pg. 423.

1996: VIETNAM

The meeting had gone on longer than usual, but the group of believers didn’t mind. There had been no reason to suspect any trouble from the authorities this evening. No one seemed to be watching them.

          The little meeting house was nestled among a cluster of palm trees and low shrubs, like an island in a sea of sand dunes. In the distance, waves could be heard as they broke across the miles of uninhabited sandy beaches. That night, Tran’s younger brother, Nguyen had just publicly committed his life to service and obedience to Jesus Christ. Tran and his close friends, Huynh and Dang, were overjoyed by Nguyen’s changed life.

           It all started suddenly a week earlier when, Nguyen, the youngest of the three, fell seriously ill while looking for work in Ho Chi Minh City. In the hospital, he struggled for each painful breath of air as he held on to his young life. When word reached Dang of Nguyen’s situation, he immediately quit his job, and along with Huynh, made the two-day journey to the city. Then the two of them rushed to the hospital to pray for Nguyen, who was now indeed very close to death.

          All eyes were now on Dang and Huynh in the open hospital ward as they cried out to the Lord to heal Nguyen. In Vietnam, most people have no knowledge about Jesus, much less seen anyone praying to this invisible God. As the curious onlookers watched, suddenly a bright beam of light appeared, shining directly on Nguyen’s chest. The healing was immediate! The living God had heard! The living God had answered! Everybody in the room saw it!

          Before the three young men left to return to their hometown, they prayed for each person in the hospital room. Altogether, six more people received immediate healing!

          A week later while in his first church meeting, Nguyen took his stand for Jesus publicly. God was so good! He had shown His love to them in such a powerful way! Their faith was stronger now because of the testimony they had just heard. He is a God who really heals, just as He said He would.

          Cautiously, the believer’s slipped away from the illegal meeting. They were ever wary of the watchful eyes of neighbors and authorities, yet eager that those same people should come to know this wonderful God too,

          I thought a moment on Huynh and Dang’s dramatic story. “Is this story for real?” I wondered. It is the first question many of us ask when we hear these kinds of reports. Then I was reminded about the life-changing bright light that had shone on Saul, the Christian hater, recorded in the book in chapter nine in the book of Acts.

          BOTTOM LINE:

As I probed the matter with them, Huynh laughed, Nguyen’s healing was quite unusual. Sometimes we pray for the sick, and they don’t seem to get healed. We get discouraged and give up too soon.”

NEXT UP:

Huynh then went on to relay the next story about persistent prayer, Chapter 33, that will be the post for tomorrow. 

From Wendell & Daisy Martin’s book GO NOW! From the INNERMOST PARTS OF THE HEART to the UTTERMOST PARTS OF THE WORLD Plus Forty Stories of Faith, this being #32

Faith & History: Thinking Christianly about the American Past… Robert Tracy McKenzie. See bio following… Aptly & timely provided by Tim, a faithful reader and encouragement to me…

As a historian, I spend a great part of my waking hours thinking about the passage of time.  At the heart of thinking historically is the realization that none of us lives in a vacuum.  Humanly speaking, our lives are influenced (not determined, but profoundly influenced) by what has gone before us.  If there is a single truth that inspires the serious study of history, it is the conviction that we gain great insight into the human condition by situating the lives of men and women in the larger flow of human experience over time.  In short, to think historically is to remember that we live in time.

But remembering that we live in time is also essential to thinking Christianly.  We must remind ourselves daily of one of the undeniable truths of Scripture: our lives are short. The Bible underscores few truths as repeatedly—even monotonously—as this one. “Our days on earth are a shadow,” Job’s friend Bildad tells Job (Job 8:9).  “My life is a breath,” Job agrees (Job 7:7).  David likens our lives to a “passing shadow” (Psalm 144:4).  James compares our life’s span to a “puff of smoke” (James 4:14).  Isaiah is reminded of the “flower of the field” that withers and fades (Isaiah 40:7-8).

These aren’t exhortations to “eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die.” They are meant to admonish us—to spur us to wisdom, not fatalism.  The psalmist makes this explicit in the 90th Psalm when he prays that God would “teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom” (Psalm 90:12, New King James version).  To “number our days” means to remember that our days are numbered, i.e., finite.  The Good News Translation is easier to follow here.  It reads, “Teach us how short our life is, so that we may become wise.” Part of growing in Christian wisdom, it would seem, involves reminding ourselves that our lives are fleeting.

American culture, unfortunately, does much to obscure that truth. Compared with the rest of the world, most American Christians live in great material comfort, and for long stretches of time we are able to fool ourselves about the fragility of life. The culture as a whole facilitates our self-deception through a conspiracy of silence. We tacitly agree not to discuss death, hiding away the lingering aged and expending our energies in a quest for perpetual youth.

Madison Avenue and Hollywood perpetuates this deceit, glorifying youth and ignoring the aged except for the occasional mirage of a seventy-year-old action hero aided by Botox and stunt doubles. If you need further proof that our culture flees from the truth of Psalm 90:12, just think about Times Square on New Year’s Eve.  Of all the days of the year, New Year’s Eve is the one on which Americans most pointedly acknowledge the passage of time.  We do so with fireworks and champagne and confetti.  Think about that for a moment.

In his wonderful little book Three Philosophies of Life, Christian philosopher Peter Kreeft sums up the message of the Preacher of Ecclesiastes in this way: Everything that we do to fill our days with meaning of our own making boils down to a desperate effort to distract our attention from the emptiness and vanity of life “under the sun.” Our pursuits of pleasure, power, property, importance—they all “come down in the end to a forgetting, a diversion, a cover-up.” Isn’t that what we see in the televised spectacles on New Year’s Eve?

For the Christian, being mindful that we live in time means not running away from the truth that our lives are short, but rather letting it wash over us until we feel the full weight of discontentment that it brings.  According to Kreeft, “Our desire for eternity, our divine discontent with time, is hope’s messenger,” a reminder that we were created for more than this time-bound life, fashioned by our timeless God with an eye to a timeless eternity.  Being mindful that we live in time should heighten our longing for heaven.  In A Severe Mercy, Sheldon Vanauken goes so far as to identify the “timelessness to come” as one of the glories of heaven.

BOTTOM LINE:

So here’s a resolution to consider for 2018. (originally published Dec 29, 2017) In addition to losing weight, organizing our finances, and working for that promotion, let’s remind ourselves regularly that we live in time.  May the psalmist’s prayer be ours: “Teach us how short our life is,” Lord, “so that we may become wise.”

Faith and History is the blog of Robert Tracy McKenzie, professor and chair of the Department of History at Wheaton College.  Before coming to Wheaton in 2010, I served for twenty-two years on the faculty of the University of Washington, where I was honored to receive the university’s distinguished teaching award, was named a member of the U.W. Teaching Academy, and held the Donald A. Logan Chair of American History.  Along with dozens of scholarly articles and book reviews, I have personally authored two of the approximately 70,000 books about the American Civil War (published by Cambridge University Press and Oxford University Press).  In keeping with my changing sense of calling, my most recent book, available from Intervarsity Press, is The First Thanksgiving: What the Real Story Tells Us about Loving God and Learning from History.

I wrote The First Thanksgiving for the same reason that am writing this blog: I have a burden for the church and a deep desire to be in conversation with Christians about what it means to think Christianly and historically about the American past.  (For a fuller explanation, check out “Why I am Writing.”)  I hope you will find food for thought here.  Please consider subscribing if you do so, as well as sharing this site with others who are interested in the life of the mind, the love of God, and the exploration of the past. 

NEXT UP: Wendell Martin’s GO NOW book: Dream of a White Shirt…

By Joel Salatin, as published July 18 2025 by by Marlin Miller in Plain Values’ email. To subscribe to the print version, go to plainvalues.com/subscribe.

Foreward by merlin: Few of you know likely know the first of our three agriculture related labs was a soils lab in ’85. I first met Joel from Swope VA at an Acres USA in ’86 shortly after we returned to OH from the other side of Augusta County. My partner & father-in-law, LaVerne Horst, was quite obvious early on in our partnership of his hopes that I would follow in the trail blazing path Joel was already exhibiting in the regenerative agricultural movement, as he is now a popular speaker, writer and a household name in many circles. Forty years ago though I was preoccupied with other spiritual battles consuming three decades such that filling either LaVerne’s, or even my wife’s dreams, were not front & center for me. Therefore you read of being “Retooled & Thriving” as the foundation for this blog given me by my three sons when I was forced to retire instantly after I caused an accident on 9/18/18. God does have His ways of grace & mercy for slow learners! I include this simply because it confirms so well what happens chasing fake meat (or whatever) rainbows. A different twist to Satan’s deceptions. I seriously doubt if many of you have been so exposed prior. Enjoy!

Joel Salatin

Why are you opposed to innovation?” This is the first response to fake meat promoters when I dare to question their quest. One of the neat things about becoming an old geezer is that I can actually remember quite a few things. Over time, you can put together patterns and realize you’ve heard these statements before.

If anything triggers the “Why do you hate progress?” response, it’s daring to question the technological promise du jour. I’m old enough to remember when agricultural experts around the world began to promote feeding dead cows to cows. The protocol promised to produce cheaper beef and give the industry additional revenue for slaughter wastes. What could be wrong with that?

Farmers like me looked around the world and couldn’t find an herbivore that eats carrion. That presented a problem. Cows are herbivores. Did this scientific promise offer solutions? Or a new package of problems? Those of us who held back received the scorn and finger-wagging of scientific orthodoxy. We were backward, barbarians, Neanderthals, Luddites, anti-progress, and stuck in outdated ideologies. Our arguments about nature offering no pattern for this met contempt and dismissal; it didn’t matter. We were told, “We’re clever, and if we can get a cow to eat dead cows, who cares?”

The results took a while. But several decades later, mad cow disease (bovine spongiform encephalopathy) reared its ugly head and this feeding methodology quickly fell into disrepute. To my knowledge, none of the scientists who promoted the effort ever apologized. Instead, they refocused their attention on discovering the cause of this strange new malady. When they found it, they received credentialed promotion for finding the culprit of their misadventure. Instead of suffering retribution, they received accolades for finding out the cause of this new disease. How ironic.

In another case, although I wasn’t around to see it, Justis von Liebig’s 1837 discovery that all life is simply a rearrangement of nitrogen (N), potassium (P), and phosphorous (K), launched the chemical fertilizer industry that still prevails across the planet. But it’s coming to an end with the ascendancy of biology. From a new understanding of the soil food web to the human microbiome, a repudiation of “life is simply chemical” is creeping into the mainstream.

I would like to think that if I were living at that time, I would have dared to question the artificial fertilizer paradigm as fundamentally flawed because it promised life without death. Nothing in the physical world illustrates this better than a compost pile. Comprised of things that lived, it functions with trillions of microbes eating and being eaten. It’s a magnificent object lesson of the spiritual truth that in order for something to live, something else must sacrifice to feed life.

This principal holds true not only for life through Christ’s death, it even holds true for how we experience the fullness of life. True living requires dying to self and serving others. The notion that things can live without death is fundamentally flawed and speaks deeply into the notion that chemical fertilizer can ultimately offer vibrant life.

That brings us to the idea of fake meat in all its forms. Sometimes it’s called artificial meat and sometimes lab meat, but the whole idea is that it’s meat-like material promising provenance as good as the stuff that grows on an animal. The arguments sound compelling.

1. Animals don’t have to die.
2. Help solve global warming.
3. Better nutrition—no animal fats.

While this all sounds noble, it all has as a fatal flaw: it promises life without death. Venture capitalists have poured billions into numerous companies promising to develop fake meat. But on this one aspect alone, the technology, like feeding dead cows to cows, should be dismissed as either impossible or, if achieved, developing crippling problems.

Interestingly, these companies today are floundering. All of them are nearly a decade behind their timetable promises. By now, they were supposed to capture 10 percent of the protein market. They were supposed to be in nearly all restaurants. They were going to take a big bite (pun intended) out of real beef, pork, and chicken. But they haven’t.

Due to ongoing droughts in the U.S., domestic cow numbers are lower than they’ve been since 1950. If these fake meat outfits actually had something to offer, this shortfall and exorbitant cattle prices represent a golden opportunity to launch into the marketplace. Instead, all these companies are either going bankrupt, issuing apologetic press releases, or retreating to explanations about how much more difficult this is than they anticipated.

Indeed, replicating living things isn’t easy. The Achilles heel of the whole idea turns out to be waste. How does a body handle waste? An animal has a mystical and majestic labyrinth of blood vessels, white blood cells for immune function, liver and kidney filters, and even urine and manure pipes. But a vat of manufactured cell culture enjoys no habitat for protection or functional network of distribution.

Gleaming truck-sized stainless-steel bioreactors adorn the brochures and press releases of these fake meat companies, but in actuality, this shiny equipment is still in fantasy world. The few pounds of material produced have come from vessels no larger than a 5-gallon bucket. Most of it has come from 1-gallon jugs. The reason is that every time these manufacturers try to scale up their production from a tiny vessel to a larger bioreactor, it collapses in waste.

So far, the only mechanism to remove waste material is bubbles, which pick up material and send it through filters. As we all know, kidney dialysis in hospitals work, but they are a far cry from the real thing. People on dialysis suffer debilitating complications and must take handfuls of salt pills or medications to stay alive. Dialysis, as miraculous as it is, remains a far cry from functional kidneys.

Toxicity invades these vessels of protein slurry because the concoction contains no natural immune system. White blood cells don’t exist. Blood vessels don’t exist. Trying to maintain sterility to keep foreign microbes from growing is now a completely unexpected limitation on these fake meat production systems. These outfits thought they could control foreign substances, but it turns out microbes are pretty small, and nature doesn’t like sterility.

The sheer cost of maintaining absolute sterility staggers these facilities under expensive protocols. The body does all this at no cost by sending white blood cells snooping around nooks and crannies to find and destroy invaders. In these fake meat pots, as cells grow, they give off waste. Microbes die, remember. That’s the only way cells can grow. Things eat, poop, eat, poop. It’s a never-ending consumption-exhaust system that an animal handles beautifully and effortlessly.

But in these fake meat vats, the only transportation mechanism is blowing bubbles through the medium. It works, kind of, in a gallon jug. But in a 2,000-gallon vat, such a notion is completely ineffective. The whole batch succumbs to its own toxic waste. It can’t excrete. It can’t vomit. It can’t sneeze. It can’t slobber. As living organisms, we take all these functions for granted. We don’t even think about how they work and how important they are in overall functional health.

But a vat of dividing cells, without any of these options, is doomed to implode on its own filth. Protective and cleansing mechanisms don’t exist, and slowly these darlings that dominated venture capitalists a mere decade ago are hitting a wall of biological reality.

While I don’t wish ill to these investors and these sincere-minded, starry-eyed entrepreneurs, I admit great satisfaction in seeing the “fearfully and wonderfully made” aspect of creation show itself supreme yet again. I never tire of applauding God’s design, His handiwork. While being accused of being stodgy and old-fashioned, we who kneel humbly at God’s pattern and dictate find solace in the death-to-life affirmation.

Over the years, when we see the masses flooding toward an idea, we can easily be taken in with pleasant promises. Who wouldn’t rather put on a bag of 10-10-10 instead of putting the time and energy into messy compost building? Who wouldn’t want to cut $100 off the cost of producing a beef? The world system promises comfort, convenience, and cash for all sorts of alleged progress. In the end, however, all so-called progress must submit to a divine plan and God-ordered pattern.

When we see this principle unfolding before our eyes, I’m prompted to cheer “Go, God!” I apologize if this sounds like bringing God down to soccer field fan-club status, but folks, isn’t it fun to watch God’s plan dominate? To watch Biblical patterns win? As sacred as it is to defend doctrine and theology, I relish the opportunity to defend God’s interests in day-to-day physical living. When we have this dramatic of an object lesson of spiritual truth, we should exult in an awesome win. Too often, we don’t win.

BOTTOM LINE:

Fake meat is giving us a direct, real-time visual aid into the great debate, started by Liebig in 1837, as to whether life is fundamentally mechanical/chemical or biological. Fake meat’s trials and tribulations give the faith community a wonderful opportunity to not only defend God’s greatness, but His order. The ultimate order is attaining spiritual life through a divine sacrifice. What a profound confession.

NEXT UP: Who knows what may surface in the next 48 hours before my next deadline?