Fiona Veitch Smith

A Gardener’s Gospel - Week 21

One of the most depressing experiences I ever had was going to a Bonsai exhibition. There were rows upon rows of ‘adult’ trees – maples, oaks, juniper, cypress, beech - no bigger than table-top Christmas decorations. I was horrified to discover that some of these trees were hundreds of years old, but unlike their free cousins in the wild, towering proudly over the earth with their branches stretched heavenwards, these stunted trees would never be allowed to reach their full potential.

Image courtesy of Nicola Whitaker

Pathological micro-management

In the name of art and philosophy, trees are snipped and pruned, tied, wired and uprooted, to make a living sculpture, bent to the will of its maker. This is aesthetic gardening taken to the extreme. I suppose it could be said that anyone who cultivates a patch of land for beauty rather than bounty is guilty to some degree of the same thing, where shrubs are pruned, grass trimmed and flower beds laid out at the gardener’s will. But while domestic gardeners exert a degree of control, it’s nowhere near the pathological micro-management of Bonsai cultivators.

Many Christians are like Bonsai trees, stunted in growth and never reaching their full potential. For some, it’s a matter of choice, as they are happy to remain immature in their Christian walk; for others it is forced on them by abusive leaders and ‘discipleship’ programmes.

Insecure leaders

I’ve been in and around churches for 25 years and have seen my fair share of leaders who try to impose their view of what a Christian should look like on their followers. Beware the insecure leader with a vision! People are forced to follow the latest church growth strategy or discipleship method at the expense of their individuality, then shamed into submission by labelling their honest questioning as rebellion. That is not how God gardens. He has made us all individuals and he deals with us as such. Some people’s personalities and gifting will thrive in one set-up but not in another, and they need to be free to develop as God, rather than man, determines. A good leader will recognise this.

Immature followers

But no matter how good our spiritual leaders are, they will always be frustrated by the voluntary Bonsais in their midst. These are people who have perhaps been brought up in a church or made a commitment many years ago yet have shown little or no growth in their spiritual lives. How is growth measured? In previous sessions we’ve looked at the fruit of the Spirit as listed in Galatians 5: love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, kindness, gentleness and self-control. Fruit on a tree is the physical manifestation of inner growth and development. These qualities are first developed in our inner selves as we co-operate with the healing and sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit. Once this inner work is done, these Godly characteristics will eventually become visible to others through our actions. This is a mark of spiritual maturity.

Working on it

In Philippians Paul tells the recipients of his letter to:

work out your salvation with fear and trembling for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose.
Phil 2:13

To ‘will’ is an internal decision and to ‘act’ is a physical outworking of that decision. We have to work out our own salvation; effort is needed on our part. This must not be misunderstood as ‘salvation by works’ but rather an ‘outworking’ in and through our lives of the salvation that we have received from God by grace.

The problem is some people do not make the effort. Ten, twenty years after becoming Christians they are still struggling with the same old sins and the same old hurts, not giving nor receiving forgiveness and refusing to let go. As the writer of Hebrews comments:

By this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God’s word all over again - you need milk, not solid food.
Heb 5:12

Like babies, people like this are more concerned about what they can get from the church rather than what they can give. And like children, they will throw a strop if they don’t get it!

Fear and pride

So how do people become Bonsai Christians? I would suggest that it’s a combination of pride and fear. They fear what will happen if they let the Holy Spirit deal with issues in their lives and they are too proud to admit to others that they even have problems. Or perhaps they don’t really believe that God can heal, forgive or restore them so they won’t allow Him to get too near in case they are disappointed. Now while not all of us are Bonsai Christians all of us must recognise times in our lives when our growth has slowed or we’ve become stunted. Are fear and pride at work in our lives? Are we selfishly hanging on to our life as it is because of what we fear might be asked or demanded of us? I know that I fear ‘getting too deep’ at the moment in case God asks me to sacrifice my time and energy on some new ministry. With that sort of risk-averse attitude I’m in danger of becoming a bit of a Bonsai myself.

The Kingdom of God is like a mustard seed, which is the smallest seed you plant in the ground. Yet when planted, it grows and becomes the largest of all garden plants, with such big branches that the birds of the air can perch in its shade.
Mark 4:31-32

Subscribe to my feed to receive automatic notification of new content (what's this all about?)