The Golden Spruce

I don’t know about you, but I tend to set up totems in my life – little things that I hold dear that represent bigger things that I hold dear. They bear a resemblance to each other, but they exist separately. It’s easy to confuse the totem for the bigger thing, and start to be more concerned about the health of the totem instead of the health of the bigger thing. So much so that we can lose track of the bigger thing that’s at stake.

For instance, your home group might be doing really well. But it’s the last vestige of what used to be a healthier and much larger fellowship. If you focus all your energy on trying to protect and preserve that home group, it too will end up unhealthy. If, on the other hand, you focus all your energy as a group on loving people outside your group then you will end up creating more healthy groups and ultimately a large, healthy fellowship. But you will give people up in the process. They will go on to be in other groups. And your group will most definitely change. But you’ve got to cut down your totem so you can take care of the larger thing that it represents.

So goes my theory at least.

In British Columbia, Grant Holden attempted to draw attention to this phenomenon on a much larger scale by cutting down a 500 year old Golden Spruce (the only one of it’s kind). It was the last vestige of a healthy and much larger forest that was cut down without regard to the consequences. But the communities in the area had started confusing the totem – the Golden Spruce – for the larger forest and didn’t see the real damage that had been done until the Golden Spruce had been destroyed. Strangely, those communities were more angry with Holden for cutting down their totem than they were with the logging companies and themselves for destroying the forest.

Cutting down totems isn’t popular. There are lots of people in British Columbia that want Holden dead. But cutting down totems is necessary when the real thing is forgotten in light of the totem. I think this is the reason why God insisted that we not make totems (He calls them idols). It’s so easy to confuse the idol for the real thing. So quit wasting your time on the totems in your life. Cut them down. Focus on the real things instead.