A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus you will recognize them by their fruits. (Matthew 7:18–20)
The Bible was written across many centuries by different authors, which gives it great variety. Yet because “All Scripture is breathed out by God” (2 Timothy 3:16), it also displays remarkable consistency. We can observe this consistency through the images that appear repeatedly throughout Scripture.
One image that appears repeatedly in the Bible is the river flowing from God’s presence. Scripture begins and ends with this image, and it appears several times throughout. In Genesis 2, we read:
A river flowed out of Eden to water the garden, and there it divided and became four rivers. (Genesis 2:10)
The psalmist declares:
There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy habitation of the Most High. (Psalm 46:4)
This is intriguing because Jerusalem has no river, yet the psalmist saw one in a vision of his heart.
Several prophets also saw this river:
Then he brought me back to the door of the temple, and behold, water was issuing from below the threshold of the temple toward the east (for the temple faced east). The water was flowing down from below the south end of the threshold of the temple, south of the altar. (Ezekiel 47:1)
On that day living waters shall flow out from Jerusalem, half of them to the eastern sea and half of them to the western sea. It shall continue in summer as in winter. (Zechariah 14:8)
Jesus also spoke of this river:
Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’ (John 7:38)
Interestingly, the Old Testament contains no verse that reads “Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.“ However, since the first century had no quotation marks or commas, what Jesus said was probably, “The rivers of living water mentioned in Scripture will become reality in the believer’s heart.“ Since the river in the Bible flows from God’s presence, and God’s presence dwells in the believer’s heart, the river flowing from the believer’s heart appropriately fulfills the Bible’s vision.
Finally, we see a river flowing from God’s throne in the new Jerusalem:
Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb (Revelation 22:1)
Life in the Garden
What was the river’s significance, and how is it connected with us? We find the answer in Genesis 2:
When no bush of the field was yet in the land and no small plant of the field had yet sprung up—for the LORD God had not caused it to rain on the land, and there was no man to work the ground, (Genesis 2:5)
We often imagine that the world God created in the beginning was perfect and full of life. Yet here we read that no plants grew on the ground. Why? Because there was no rain and no workers. We often think every problem started with the Fall, and that everything was perfect before. But that’s not what the Bible says. Even before the Fall, the world lacked water, workers, and plants. God didn’t create a self-sufficient world. He created the world so that, without connection to him and without human intervention, there could be only death.
Though there were no plants, God didn’t leave the world as a desert. He planted a garden and placed Adam and Eve there. Many people think of Eden as a paradise built for Adam and Eve’s enjoyment. But God planned the garden to be a source of life for the surrounding desert. Adam and Eve were not created for happiness but to participate in God’s plan to transform the desert into a garden. This was the meaning of God’s first commandment: “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth“ (Genesis 1:28). God had a plan for the world, and he invited Adam and Eve (and all their descendants) to participate by enlarging the garden.
Let’s consider the garden’s size. God put Adam in Eden “to work it and keep it“ (Genesis 2:15). It was a piece of land that one man could manage without modern technology, perhaps around four hectares. Large, but not too large. Then God created Eve, so together they could expand the garden further. If they had obeyed God and multiplied by having children, they could have gradually turned the desert into a garden. God said, “Fill the earth!“ (Genesis 1:28). He envisioned a world without desert. Bearing fruit was necessary to fulfill God’s vision.
Nations
Let’s imagine what would have happened if Adam and Eve had never sinned. According to God’s plan, they would have had children, and their children would have had children. Soon, the land around the garden would have been too small. Many would have traveled down the river since they needed water. The Bible says the river flowing out of Eden divided and became four rivers (Genesis 2:10). In every culture, there are four directions, so we can imagine four rivers flowing in four directions, reaching the whole world. People would have followed the water. Their job was to water the ground to bring forth life. God said, “Fill the earth!“ He wanted to turn the desert into a garden. Therefore, God expected humans to settle in various parts of the world.
Different natural environments always create different cultures. For example, in Europe, some settled in the Alps. There isn’t enough land for raising crops in the mountains, but there are meadows perfect for raising cattle. When you have cows, you don’t slaughter them for meat every day. You milk them. So you have lots of milk. But you can’t just drink all that milk, so you think, “What can I do with milk?“ Then you realize you can make cheese from milk. That’s why Switzerland remains famous for cheese today. Later, when Europeans discovered cacao in America and brought it to Europe, they realized they could mix cacao with milk and sugar to make chocolate. There you have another famous Swiss food. Also, without modern technology, they needed to find ways to communicate across deep valleys and rugged mountain terrain. Eventually, yodel was born.
In Finland, where winter is long and cold, they developed the sauna, which provided warmth and cleansing. Then it spread to other cold countries. In Korea, to eat vegetables during cold, long winters (humans need vegetables for vitamin C all year round), they mixed napa cabbage, seafood, and salt, then fermented it. Later, when chili from America was introduced, the kimchi we know today was born.
As the natural environment shaped culture, culture shaped language. Some cultural items are so unique that there’s no translation, like yodel, sauna, or kimchi. Swedish fika might look like a coffee break, but if you know Swedish culture, you know it’s much more. The Danish word hygge means something like comfortable, but much deeper. It’s a concept centered on creating a warm, cozy atmosphere and enjoying life’s simple pleasures, often with loved ones or in peaceful solitude. In Germany, the evening after work is called Feierabend, which literally means “celebration evening” or “holiday evening.” When you call evening Feierabend, you show that you’re not going to work in the evening simply because there are too many things to do. It shows that Germans strive for work-life balance.
Though it’s a myth that the Inuits have dozens of words for snow, language does reflect what’s important in your culture. In Korea, the concept of respect is so important that there’s no polite form of “you.” Addressing someone as “you” means you’re not respecting that person, because if you truly respect them, you would use their social position to address them. There are so many different ways of showing proper respect in Korean that the real difficulty in learning Korean is understanding the social etiquette. According to Thorleif Boman, the difference between Hebrew thought and Greek thought is reflected in their respective languages. The Hebrew language, which expresses dynamic Hebrew thought, is dominated by verbs and asks, “What is happening?” while the Greek language, which expresses static Greek thought, is dominated by nouns and adjectives and asks, “What is this?”
Another element of culture is genes. Each nation has a different gene pool, and genetic differences are reflected in its culture. For example, you look slightly funny wearing traditional clothes of another culture, not only because we’re not used to the combination of your face with the clothes, but also because the clothes were designed for a different physique. Genes influence how people act. For example, Koreans are always surprised that Westerners enjoy extreme sports. The difference comes from genetic differences: Westerners (especially men) produce more testosterone than Koreans, and they face physical challenges more easily. Higher testosterone levels are also why Western men wear facial hair more frequently than Koreans.
At the beginning of the Bible, God called cultures into being when he said, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth!” The Bible ends with the picture of nations bringing their glory and honor into the new Jerusalem (Revelation 21:26). The glory and honor of the nations are their cultures. God expected the human race to create cultures, and he will see his desire fulfilled at the end of history. When we participate in building culture through our jobs, hobbies, and sponsorship, we fulfill God’s desire for us to create culture. God didn’t just want humans involved with religious activities. God wants culture from us.
Secular and Sacred
One of the greatest spiritual traps holding Christians back is the secular and sacred dichotomy. Many Christians believe that when they serve God in church, they’re doing something meaningful and spiritual, while all other activities, like studying, working, and social interaction, are meaningless and secular. This idea is so strong that most Christians think this way occasionally. For example, we think studying theology is sacred while studying philosophy or engineering is secular. Working in the church is sacred; working at Nvidia is secular. Watching The Passion of the Christ is sacred; watching The Last Temptation of Christ is secular. Listening to Bethel music is sacred; listening to Taylor Swift is secular. For many Christians, life becomes a long struggle to avoid the secular and embrace the sacred.
But Adam and Eve in the garden didn’t have that dichotomy. They were called to care for the garden, and whether they picked up fallen leaves or harvested crops, they were doing God’s will. Think of medicine. Even though there was no sin in the garden, they could get hurt. If Adam dropped a rock on his foot or Eve sprained her ankle, they needed ways to improve their conditions. They soon discovered that certain herbs made them feel better. Then they tried different herbs, whether eating them or applying them to the skin, to discover what they could do. This was the birth of medicine. Today, we don’t think medicine itself is Christian, and a doctor should do something outside the hospital to live as a Christian, like going on a mission trip or teaching Sunday school. But that’s not what Adam and Eve thought.
The reason we live with the secular and sacred dichotomy is our twisted view of the body. We think the body is evil, and whatever we do with the body is meaningless. This is exactly the wrong thinking Jesus warned against. He said, “Watch and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees“ (Matthew 16:6). Concerning these two, the Bible says, “The Sadducees say that there is no resurrection, nor angel, nor spirit, but the Pharisees acknowledge them all“ (Acts 23:8). Apparently, the Sadducees were materialists, while the Pharisees opposed them. As Christians, we’re not materialists, so we don’t embrace the leaven of the Sadducees easily. But the leaven of the Pharisees greatly tempts us. If someone is infected with the leaven of the Pharisees, they sound spiritual, and people respect them. “Do not love the world! Forget your bodies and focus on spiritual activities! This world will pass, so don’t try to do anything in it!” The problem is, when you live according to the leaven of the Pharisees, you must be hypocritical. Nobody can live like a Pharisee because their teaching isn’t based on reality. We all have bodies, and by denying them, we become hypocritical. That’s why Jesus said, “Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy“ (Luke 12:1).
God created our bodies, and when he told Adam and Eve to care for the garden, he implied they should care for their bodies as well, because without caring for our bodies, we cannot do the task he entrusted to us. This means cooking, cleaning, and exercising are all part of God’s plan for us. It means a personal trainer is valuable in the kingdom of God, just like a Bible teacher. One of my jobs in Berlin is collecting bread donations from a local bakery. I go with a big shopping cart and bring back bread. I’m grateful that God uses me to fulfill the Lord’s prayer. Jesus taught us to pray, “Give us this day our daily bread,“ and when I bring bread, people see their prayer answered. I don’t say, “Oh, others are leading worship, teaching the Bible, and I’m just doing something meaningless.“ I know what I do helps people stay alive, and that’s precious to God.
Working the Garden and Keeping it
Let’s imagine how Adam and Eve lived in the garden. We can discard the traditional idea of two naked people strolling around, doing nothing except picking fruit occasionally. This picture comes from the worldview that says “Work is bad.“But the Bible doesn’t say work is bad. It only says that because of the Fall, the ground is cursed, and humans must endure hard work to feed themselves (Genesis 3:17-19). The problem with this worldview is that since work is considered bad, they expect not to work when we go to God’s city at history’s end. But if we read the Bible correctly and see that God put Adam in Eden “to work it and keep it“ (Genesis 2:15), then we expect to work in the new Jerusalem as well.
What does it mean to work it and keep it? To work it means to develop it. The garden, like all of God’s creation, had great potential, but only when someone developed it could it realize its potential. To keep it means to guard it. The garden was in the middle of the desert, and if you don’t protect it, the desert might swallow it. We see the desert growing in many parts of the world today. For example, the Sahara grows by several thousand square kilometers per year, threatening many people’s livelihoods. People are fighting to stop desertification, and many international organizations work together to build protective walls of trees and reclaim lost lands. It’s a noble effort, and that’s exactly what Adam and Eve were called to do.
To develop the garden and protect it from the desert, Adam and Eve had to work very hard. It wasn’t just physical work but also mental work. They needed to find ways to live in the garden, which took great ingenuity. For example, the Bible says Adam named the animals God created (Genesis 2:19). For that, he needed to think about the best way to call each animal. His naming ended with naming Eve as a woman (Genesis 2:23), but that was only the beginning of a new phase of life. To live and work in the garden, they needed to develop everything. For example, they had to recognize the right food to eat. We think the fruit in the garden was as sweet as the fruit we buy at the supermarket, but most people don’t know that the fruit we eat is the product of millennia of development. Even if we look at pictures from a couple of hundred years ago, we see that fruit wasn’t as good as today’s fruit. Watermelon was mostly white, oranges were green and full of seeds, and eggplant really was the size of an egg! Only because we improved nature can we enjoy sweet fruit today.
Many things looked harmless but were poisonous. For example, wild almonds contain poison for protection. Only after choosing non-poisonous mutants for generations can we enjoy almonds today. Acorns, the fruit of oak trees, can be found everywhere but contain tannins, which cause stomachaches. But somehow, people discovered that if you soak acorns in water, they become edible, and people began eating acorns, which helped them survive when food was scarce. In Japan, blowfish is considered a delicacy, but it’s also highly poisonous. How did they find a way to eat it? Through centuries of trial and error. Probably, they ate different parts of the fish to see if they were poisonous. Many died in the process. But because of their sacrifice, if you go to a fancy Japanese restaurant today, you can order a dish of blowfish (or fugu in Japanese) and enjoy it without worrying about dying.
After leaving the garden following the Fall, Adam and Eve had to continue their journey to find ways to survive in the world. Life was difficult as they still didn’t have modern technology. Hunting animals was a big challenge. God told Noah and his sons, “Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you“ (Genesis 9:3). But this didn’t mean meat would fall from heaven. Rather, they had received a hunting license from God. Hunting was still their task. What did they hunt, and how? Most people imagine they hunted slow, tame animals like sheep and goats. But their numbers were limited, and often they had to hunt aggressive big animals like bears. Then it became a true struggle for survival: either we eat them, or they eat us. How did they hunt bears and other big animals? Maybe they threw lances or shot arrows. Or they set traps. In any case, they worked very hard to find ways to hunt animals safely.
Trees
Because we are so used to the secular and sacred dichotomy, we tend to focus on the parts of the Bible that use religious words like worship, prayer, and Scripture. However, the Bible communicates God’s truth through natural images a lot. River, mountain, and fruit carry important spiritual significance that no religious words can. The tree is another natural image the Bible uses to explain our role and destiny. The people of God are compared to trees a lot in the Bible. Probably the most famous is found in Psalm 1:
He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he prospers. (Psalm 1:3)
In another psalm, David compares himself to an olive tree:
But I am like a green olive tree in the house of God. I trust in the steadfast love of God forever and ever. (Psalm 52:8)
Isaiah compared God’s people to oaks of righteousness:
…that they may be called oaks of righteousness, the planting of the LORD, that he may be glorified. (Isaiah 61:3)
The tree was an important part of Jesus’ ministry as well. Jesus presented himself as a tree:
I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. (John 15:1)
He compared the kingdom of heaven to a plant that becomes a tree:
He put another parable before them, saying, “The kingdom of heaven is like a grain of mustard seed that a man took and sowed in his field. It is the smallest of all seeds, but when it has grown it is larger than all the garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.” (Matthew 13:31–32)
He compared his ministry to restore Israel to the efforts of a patient gardener trying to make a fig tree fruitful:
And he told this parable: “A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard, and he came seeking fruit on it and found none. And he said to the vinedresser, ‘Look, for three years now I have come seeking fruit on this fig tree, and I find none. Cut it down. Why should it use up the ground?’ And he answered him, ‘Sir, let it alone this year also, until I dig around it and put on manure. Then if it should bear fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.’” (Luke 13:6–9)
Finally, the cross Jesus died on is called a tree:
The God of our fathers raised Jesus, whom you killed by hanging him on a tree. (Acts 5:30)
Image of God
We are compared to the trees because we draw water from the river of God to bear fruit. What is a fruit? According to Jesus, a fruit is the expression of the tree:
A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus you will recognize them by their fruits. (Matthew 7:18–20)
A tree has a nature, which is hidden, but when you see the fruit, the nature is clearly revealed. For humans, fruit can be an action or a word. A good person doesn’t do or say bad things, and a bad person doesn’t do or say good things. That’s why John the Baptist said, “Bear fruit in keeping with repentance” (Matthew 3:8). Many people claimed to have repented, but if their actions didn’t change, it meant their hearts didn’t change. As Christians, we should bear fruit to show we are true followers of Jesus.
When God told Adam and Eve to be fruitful (Genesis 1:28), he was telling them to express his own image that he had given them (Genesis 1:26). We are so similar to chimpanzees in DNA that Jared Diamond calls humans the third chimpanzee (because there are two existing chimpanzee species). But if we’re so close to chimpanzees in DNA, why do we act so differently? Because we carry the image of God, and other animals don’t.
In the past, many tried to distinguish humans from animals by our abilities, like the ability to speak or use tools. But as they observe animals, they discovered that animals also have amazing abilities. For example, Koko the gorilla was taught to communicate using a form of sign language. Koko learned thousands of signs and was known for her ability to combine signs creatively to express thoughts and emotions, such as expressing sadness or humor. Also, some animals were observed using tools. Chimpanzees use various tools, and they even sharpen sticks with their teeth to use as spears for hunting small mammals. New Caledonian Crows are advanced tool users. They don’t just use found objects; they manufacture tools. They craft hooked tools from twigs to fish grubs out of tree crevices. Otters are famous for carrying a favorite rock in their armpit pouch. They float on their backs, placing the rock on their chest as an anvil, smashing clams and mussels against it to open them. So it’s not very meaningful to distinguish humans from other animals by ability. But it’s still meaningful to see what desires they have that other animals don’t have.
Humans have certain unique desires that make them truly human. First, they want to know. Aristotle wrote in Metaphysics, “All men by nature desire to know.” We want to know so much that children in poor countries try to go to school even when their families forbid them from doing it. Those who know are respected by society as professors, lawyers, and doctors. We read books, newspapers, Wikipedia articles, and watch TikTok to get more knowledge.
Second, we want to be morally excellent. There are two key moral qualities: justice and goodness. We seek justice and goodness in ourselves and others. People want justice. When people see injustice, they’re willing to sacrifice their lives to protest. So, when a massive demonstration is caused by one death by oppression, the result is often the deaths of many protesters. That’s why it’s so difficult to oppress people. Oppressed people don’t want to stay oppressed. They seek freedom and dignity, and they rise up even when the government uses many methods to prevent an uprising. We also want goodness. We like good people, praise them, and educate children to imitate them. We want to punish those who aren’t good, and that’s why superhero movies are so popular: they show a world where superheroes punish wrongdoers.
Third, we want beauty. Beauty is the quality we seek as we buy things, choose partners, and dress ourselves. We want a beautiful home, a beautiful car, and beautiful nature. We travel to see beauty, go to museums to appreciate beautiful works of art, and go to movies to watch beautiful people acting. When we’re poor, we focus on getting food, but as we have money, we focus on enjoying beautiful things in life. Some of us want to become professional creators of beauty like artists, musicians, and photographers. This strong desire is rarely found among animals.
Finally, we like to communicate. While animals communicate as well, their communication is always practical. For example, bees communicate where honey is, and crows give alarm calls signaling predators. But humans just like to talk. Even when we don’t have specific things to discuss, we start by talking, preferably over a cup of tea or coffee. No other animal chooses their partner based on conversation with a potential mate, but that’s what we do, because we like talking so much.
If you think about it, what we call culture is an expression of those desires:
- From our desire for truth, we have philosophy, science, and journalism.
- From our desire for justice and goodness, we have ethics, the legal system, and politics.
- From our desire for beauty, we have art, design, and poetry.
- From our desire for communication, we have phones, social media, TV, and movies.
Those uniquely human desires also show who God is. God is true, just, good, beautiful, and he communicates. The image of God in us makes us seek the properties of God.
Out of Zion Shall Go Forth the Law
So the garden of Eden wasn’t just paradise where Adam and Eve could enjoy leisure, but the beginning of God’s plan to turn the desert into habitable land. For that, Adam and Eve and their descendants should bear fruit, both by having children and building culture. Even though humans failed several times, like Adam and Eve eating the forbidden fruit, Cain killing Abel, and the people of Babel building a tower in defiance of God, God never gave up his vision of turning the desert into a garden. With Abraham, God started a godly nation among the fallen nations. Now God’s will was done through this particular people, and Israel’s job was to influence the nations through their culture. Even though they failed repeatedly, at the moment of national disaster, God reaffirmed his vision for Israel:
It shall come to pass in the latter days that the mountain of the house of the LORD shall be established as the highest of the mountains, and shall be lifted up above the hills; and all the nations shall flow to it, and many peoples shall come, and say: “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the house of the God of Jacob, that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths.” For out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem. (Isaiah 2:2–3)
Here we see the vision of the mountain of the house of the LORD established as the highest of the mountains. In history, the mountain was the place where people met the divine. In the Bible, Moses met the Lord on Mount Sinai. Prophet Elijah confronted the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel and experienced fire from heaven. Noah’s ark came to rest on Mount Ararat, and God made a covenant with Noah after the Flood. In China, Mount Tai is considered sacred in Confucianism, Daoism, and folk religion. Mount Fuji in Japan is sacred in Shintoism, and climbing it implies spiritual union with the divine.
If humans meet the divine on a mountain, could the garden of Eden, where Adam and Eve met God, also be a mountain? Though there’s no proof, since the river flowing out of the garden divided into four rivers (Genesis 2:10), it’s highly likely. The mountain is not only a place to meet the divine, but also where the law is given from the divine. Moses received the Law on Mount Sinai (Exodus 31:18). Jesus gave his first teaching on a mount (Matthew 5:1). Here, Isaiah prophesies that the nations will flock to the mountain of the house of the LORD so that “he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths” (Isaiah 2:3). Here, nations aren’t just coming, but coming to learn how to live.
Nations need the law to know what to do and what not to do. In many primitive tribes, murder is quite common. Why? Because there’s no law that says “Thou shalt not kill.” When people don’t learn how to live, they live according to their fallen nature. That’s why the Ten Commandments are so important: they taught Israel how to live, and through them, they eventually influenced the whole world.
We often think of Jesus as our Savior, which is correct. But he’s also our teacher who taught us how to live. His Sermon on the Mount has influenced the shaping of the world’s cultures. As the nations learned justice from the Law of Moses, they also learned to be forgiving from the teachings of Jesus. Without Jesus, we would live in a world where mercy is hard to find.
Teach the Nations!
Jesus commanded his disciples to teach the nations “to observe all that I have commanded you” (Matthew 28:20). And that’s what the church has been doing, even though most Christians didn’t realize it. Think of education. In most countries, education was primarily for the teacher and not for students, because it was the teacher who created the educational system. So children had to learn what interested a much older man, not something they wanted to learn or that would benefit them.
Then John Amos Comenius, the last bishop of the Unity of the Brethren, came up with a revolutionary idea: students should be the center of education, and the teacher should teach what interests and benefits them. He didn’t just teach a new philosophy of education, but also wrote a textbook that was very popular at that time: Orbis Pictus (The World in Pictures). In this textbook, he showed the world using pictures, which was a new idea at that time, and he put Latin and the vernacular together so that a student could see the picture to understand the meaning, and also learn Latin by being exposed to it. Today, most textbooks have lots of pictures, and that goes back to Comenius.
In his lifetime, Comenius suffered greatly: he lost his wife and two children during the war, and his home and library were destroyed. Expelled from Bohemia in 1628, Comenius lived as a perpetual exile across Europe, never returning home amid Counter-Reformation persecution. He lost his second wife in 1649 and faced further ruin in 1656 when Leszno burned, destroying property and more manuscripts. Though some responded to his new method of education, eventually nothing came of it. His ideas seemed fruitless. Then his ideas influenced Jean-Jacques Rousseau, a French philosopher, and through him, shaped modern education. When children are respected in classrooms, when they can learn through textbooks with pictures, and when they’re encouraged to develop their creativity, we see Comenius’s legacy still alive.
This is what the world needs to see. We need to teach the world, not by forcing them to accept our ideas, but by showing them how biblical teaching can transform life and culture for the better. We are the mountain of the house of the Lord, and we have the mandate to teach the nations God’s way of life.