The Root and the Fruit

When we speak of a root, we always speak first of the starting point. The root is the foundation, invisible beneath the soil. From it the plant grows, and the plant bears fruit. And the fruit is the only thing you see.

The tree reveals the root

Yeshua put it into a picture everyone understands: “By their fruits you will know them” (Matthew 7:16-20). A good tree bears good fruit, a sick tree sick fruit. And nobody would think of healing a tree by gluing better apples onto its branches. You go to the root. The modern world does the opposite. It treats the fruit. A diet for the eating behavior, an app for the sluggishness, a technique for the arguing. Symptom after symptom, while the root grows on untouched.

The root is called fear

Beneath the many burdens people carry, the deepest layer is almost always the same root: fear. And from fear grows one very specific fruit, namely control and the narrowing of life. The reason is simple and deep at the same time. Whoever cannot trust must control. Fear that does not trust love, or life, or its own body, or the Father, reaches for the only tool it has left: managing, rationing, securing, limiting. Control is fear’s emergency grip. It feels like a hold, and yet it is only the string with which fear ties life smaller.

Where the fruit ripens

This fruit of fear does not fall into thin air. It ripens exactly where life happens, in four fields everyone knows:

• Food. The diet as a fear system. Rules, forbidden lists, counting and measuring, the anxious “clean”, and then the relapse with its guilt. People control their eating because they cannot control their fear.
• Drink. The same strict control, or the numbing. A glass against the restlessness, caffeine against the emptiness, so the fear cannot be felt for a moment.
• Movement and activities. Compulsive training or frozen avoidance. An overloaded calendar or retreating to bed. Both are fear building itself a structure.
• Relationship. Holding on, clinging, walls, jealousy, the fear of closeness. Fear poisons the connection because it has to protect itself.

Four fields, one root. What looks like four different problems is in truth the same fear bearing fruit in four places.

That is why you are here

And this is exactly where the circle closes. You probably came to a nutrition site looking for a diet, an answer about food. But your struggle with food is a fruit. The root lies deeper. That is the gift of the Bible Diet, and the reason it is different. It does not hand you the next diet for controlling yourself, because that would only fertilize the fear root further. One more rule program makes the control stronger and the root thicker. The Bible Diet leads you to the root itself, from fear to love, to the place where control is finally allowed to let go.

Wisdom heals where law only binds

Now it also becomes clear why this whole site is called “Wisdom, not law”. A law is control, and control is the fruit of fear. So another set of rules heals nothing, it feeds the root. Freedom heals it. “The truth will set you free” (John 8:32). Eat the way you’re built, and you will be free, and this freedom is above all the freedom from control itself.

One fine point belongs here so that no misunderstanding remains. The Bible certainly knows self-control. But in Galatians 5:22 it stands as fruit of the Spirit, grown out of love, in a row with joy, peace and patience. That is a different nature from the cramped controlling out of fear. The one grows out of rest, the other presses itself out of panic. The same action on the surface, and beneath it two opposite roots.

How the root heals

You do not heal a root with more pressure from above. It heals in the light. The first step is to name the fear at all and bring it into the light, instead of hiding it under the control. The second is to expose yourself to the love that is stronger than fear: “There is no fear in love, but perfect love drives out fear” (1 John 4:18). The heart receives this love, and when it takes it in as true, fear loses its ground. Control may go, because at last there is someone you can entrust your life to. And then the plate becomes free as well, the glass, the calendar, the relationship. Not through a new rule, but because the root has become a different one.

In one sentence

What you feel in your eating, drinking, moving and loving is the fruit. The root beneath it is fear, and it does not heal through more control but in the love that sets free.

Further reading

The individual roots that grow out of fear:
Bitterness: The root from the old wound
Self-rejection: Refusing yourself love
Shame and guilt: The hiding and the accuser
Control: The fruit that becomes a root

Fear: The root beneath the roots
Agape: The giving love of the Father
The Bible Diet: How you really eat