You Cannot Serve Both

How the Garden Exposes the Difference Between the American Economy and the Economy of the Kingdom of Heaven

By Josh Singleton | Founder, serving as Lead Cultivator, The Neighborhood Garden Project

Every economy is built on a belief about what is true.

Not just about money, but about life itself. About what is scarce and what is sufficient. About what must be protected and what can be released. About what can be trusted, and what must be controlled. About what ultimately sustains us when conditions change and certainty disappears.

These beliefs are rarely stated outright. They are embedded. They show up in how we budget, how we measure success, how we respond to risk, and how we treat one another when resources feel tight. Over time, they stop feeling like beliefs at all and begin to feel like reality.

The American economy is built on a particular set of assumptions. It assumes that scarcity is the default condition of life, that security must be accumulated, that progress requires constant growth, and that stability is achieved through control. Because of these assumptions, the system trains people to compete, to accelerate, to protect what they have, and to fear falling behind. These patterns do not stay confined to markets or institutions. They shape bodies, relationships, and imaginations.

The Kingdom of Heaven economy begins from a radically different place.

It assumes that life originates in abundance, not lack. That provision is not something to be manufactured, but something to be received. That trust precedes security, not the other way around. That growth follows obedience and timing, not pressure. In this economy, value is not extracted, but cultivated. Strength is not hoarded, but shared. Stability is rooted in relationship rather than reserve.

Because these two economies begin with opposing assumptions about what is true, they produce entirely different outcomes. They form people differently. They reward different behaviors. They shape institutions toward different ends. One trains us to survive. The other trains us to live.

And while they often operate side by side, they are not compatible. We cannot fully inhabit both at once. Every decision about money, time, growth, and control quietly declares allegiance to one or the other.

Whether we name it or not, we are always being formed by the economy we trust to sustain us.

Scarcity vs. Sufficiency

The American economy begins with scarcity.

There is never enough time, money, labor, or margin. Needs are assumed to outpace provision, so the system is designed to compensate. Accumulation becomes wisdom. Efficiency becomes virtue. Growth becomes proof of health. The unspoken logic is simple. If we do not secure more now, we will be exposed later. Fear does not always announce itself, but it quietly becomes the engine that keeps the system moving.

Under this posture, rest feels irresponsible. Slowness feels dangerous. Limits are treated as obstacles rather than signals. People and resources are pushed to perform beyond their capacity because tomorrow is framed as a threat that must be outrun. Even abundance is experienced anxiously, because it is never considered enough to last.

The Kingdom of Heaven begins with sufficiency.

Not excess. Not indulgence. Enough. Daily bread. Provision that arrives when it is needed, not stockpiled to quiet anxiety. Manna that cannot be hoarded without spoiling. This is not an accident of the story. It is the lesson. Sufficiency in the Kingdom is not a ceiling placed on generosity or growth. It is a teacher that exposes where trust actually lives.

When provision arrives daily, control loses its grip. When enough is truly enough, fear no longer has leverage. Sufficiency trains attentiveness rather than anxiety. It teaches dependence without humiliation and restraint without deprivation. In the Kingdom, abundance is not proven by how much is stored, but by how confidently life can be received, released, and received again.

Sufficiency does not shrink life. It stabilizes it.

Accumulation vs. Circulation

The American economy rewards accumulation.

Resources are gathered, stored, protected, and leveraged against future uncertainty. Value is measured by what can be held, controlled, and preserved over time. Wealth that remains still is treated as security. Movement is often viewed as risk, and release as loss. The highest aim becomes insulation from need, volatility, and dependence.

Over time, accumulation reshapes posture. Possession replaces participation. Guarding replaces giving. The fear of losing what has been gained begins to dictate decisions, narrowing imagination and hardening boundaries. Even generosity is often calculated, structured to ensure that control is never fully surrendered.

The Kingdom economy treats accumulation as a risk.

What is received is meant to circulate. What is given multiplies. What is held too tightly loses its vitality. Jesus’ warnings are not against provision, planning, or stewardship. They are against stagnation. Grain stored without regard for others becomes a liability. Talents buried out of fear produce nothing. Wealth that ceases to move begins to decay.

In the Kingdom, resources behave more like seed than storage. Their value is revealed through release, not retention. Circulation is not recklessness. It is how trust stays active. What flows continues to bear life. What stops flowing slowly turns inward and dies.

Security in the Kingdom is not found in accumulation, but in the confidence that provision will continue to arrive as resources continue to move.

Control vs. Trust

The American economy is structured to reduce dependence.

Forecasts, buffers, projections, and guarantees are designed to eliminate uncertainty wherever possible. Risk is treated as failure rather than as a condition of life. The ideal system is one in which outcomes can be predicted, managed, and secured in advance. Trust becomes unnecessary because control has taken its place.

This posture reshapes how people relate to one another and to the future. Dependence is seen as weakness. Vulnerability is avoided. Decisions are made to preserve autonomy rather than deepen relationship. Over time, the system trains people to trust structures more than people, and reserves more than provision.

The Kingdom economy is built on trust.

Provision follows obedience, not prediction. Supply appears in season, not in surplus. Security is found in relationship rather than reserves. This is why Jesus consistently invites people to release control before outcomes are visible. Nets are dropped before fish are counted. Giving is practiced before multiplication is proven. Steps are taken without guarantees.

Trust in the Kingdom is not naïve optimism. It is practiced alignment. It assumes that life is sustained by faithfulness rather than mastery. Trust is not spiritual ornamentation layered onto economic activity. It is the currency itself. Where trust is absent, the Kingdom economy cannot function. Where trust is exercised, provision is revealed.

Control seeks certainty before movement. Trust moves in confidence that provision will meet obedience along the way.

Productivity vs. Fruitfulness

American systems measure value by output.

How much was produced. How fast. How efficiently. Results are prized over readiness. Performance is elevated above formation. Pressure replaces patience, and acceleration becomes a substitute for discernment. Under this logic, visible activity is treated as health, even when the underlying structure is failing.

This framework reshapes how people experience their own worth. Value becomes conditional. Rest feels unearned. Limits are interpreted as resistance rather than information. Over time, both people and systems learn to produce on demand, even when doing so compromises depth, integrity, and long-term viability.

The Kingdom measures fruit.

Fruit takes time. Fruit depends on roots. Fruit cannot be separated from the unseen work that precedes it. It nourishes others and carries seed for what comes next. In the Kingdom, growth is evaluated not by volume but by continuity. What matters is not how much appears, but whether what appears can sustain life beyond the moment.

The Kingdom is not opposed to work, but it refuses extraction. Fruitfulness cannot be rushed without being damaged. When pressure replaces formation, what looks productive may still be sterile. What endures is what has been allowed to grow at the pace of its becoming.

Transaction vs. Relationship

The American economy thrives on transactions.

Clear exchanges. Defined outcomes. Minimal attachment. Value is transferred, and the relationship ends. Efficiency is achieved by reducing ongoing obligation. Distance protects autonomy. The cleaner the exchange, the less anyone owes or is owed once it is complete.

Over time, this logic reshapes how people relate to one another. Interaction becomes instrumental. Help is evaluated by cost and return. Responsibility is bounded and temporary. Even generosity is often structured to preserve separation between giver and receiver, ensuring that no lasting mutuality is required.

The Kingdom economy is relational at its core.

Provision flows through people rather than around them. Needs are met within shared life, not through detached transactions. Giving is not an act performed at arm’s length. It is a form of participation. When Paul speaks of material support within the body, he does not frame it as generosity from above, but as equality among members who belong to one another.

In the Kingdom, value moves through relationship, not away from it. This movement transforms both sides. The giver is not insulated from the receiver, and the receiver is not reduced to a project. Mutual dependence is not a failure of the system. It is evidence that the system is alive.

Where transactions end responsibility, relationship deepens it. The Kingdom does not seek efficiency at the cost of communion. It insists that life is sustained through continued presence, shared burden, and durable bonds that do not dissolve once value has changed hands.

Urgency vs. Timing

The American economy is driven by urgency.

Speed is treated as wisdom. Faster is better. Delay is loss. Waiting is weakness. Expansion must continue or collapse feels imminent. Movement becomes compulsory, not discerned. Decisions are made to maintain momentum rather than alignment. When urgency governs, anything that slows the system is framed as a threat.

This posture reshapes judgment. Slowness is misread as failure. Discernment is dismissed as hesitation. Rest is postponed indefinitely. People and institutions learn to move even when direction is unclear, because stopping feels more dangerous than continuing. Urgency becomes self reinforcing. The faster the system moves, the more speed feels necessary to survive.

The Kingdom moves by timing.

Readiness matters. Seasons govern growth. Nothing is forced before it is formed. Jesus is never hurried, even when the stakes are high and the consequences are real. He delays when healing is requested. He waits when death is imminent. He moves only when the moment is full.

Timing in the Kingdom is not resistance to action. It is protection from misalignment. It preserves what is not yet ready to carry weight. It prevents growth from outpacing roots. Waiting is not passive. It is attentive. It listens for ripeness rather than responding to pressure.

Where urgency demands movement to relieve anxiety, timing releases movement when life can be sustained.

Two Outcomes

The American economy produces anxiety, competition, burnout, and isolation, even among those who succeed within it.

This is not a failure of execution. It is the natural fruit of the system itself. When scarcity is assumed, fear becomes rational. When accumulation is required for safety, competition becomes unavoidable. When control is prioritized, trust erodes. Even success carries tension, because it must be maintained. What is gained can be lost. What is built can collapse. Rest feels provisional. Peace feels conditional.

Those who thrive within the system are often the most burdened by it. Achievement does not resolve anxiety, it intensifies it. More responsibility, more exposure, more pressure to perform. Relationships narrow as efficiency increases. Identity becomes entangled with output. Life becomes something to manage rather than inhabit. Isolation is not accidental. It is functional. The system rewards self containment.

The Kingdom economy produces peace, generosity, resilience, and shared life, even among those with little.

Not because hardship is absent, but because fear is no longer in command. When sufficiency replaces scarcity, anxiety loses its leverage. When circulation replaces accumulation, generosity becomes normal rather than heroic. When trust replaces control, resilience emerges, not as toughness, but as adaptability rooted in relationship.

Shared life becomes possible because no one is required to secure themselves alone. Needs are not hidden. Provision is not privatized. Strength is distributed. Peace is not the absence of challenge, but the presence of confidence that life is being sustained by something deeper than effort or foresight.

These two systems cannot be blended without distortion.

Attempts to merge them always collapse toward one or the other. Scarcity corrodes sufficiency. Urgency overwhelms timing. Control crowds out trust. The language of the Kingdom may remain, but the operating assumptions shift quietly underneath. What begins as faith becomes strategy. What begins as provision becomes contingency planning. What begins as shared life becomes managed exchange.

Jesus does not suggest balance between these economies. He names allegiance.

“You cannot serve both.”

This is not moral language. It is diagnostic language. It describes how systems work and what they require from those who live within them. Each economy demands loyalty. Each trains desire. Each forms imagination. Each shapes what feels reasonable, responsible, and safe.

To serve one is, by definition, to release the other.

Every life, every household, every organization is already answering this question through its choices. Not in theory, but in practice. The economy we trust to sustain us is the one we ultimately serve.

A Final Anchor in the Soil

If these contrasts feel abstract, there is a simple place to test them.

The garden.

Soil responds immediately to the economy imposed upon it. It does not debate theory. It does not respond to intention. It responds only to practice. What is believed shows up in what is done, and the results are visible.

Scarcity thinking strips soil. When ground is treated as if there will never be enough, it is pushed to produce beyond its capacity. Nutrients are mined rather than renewed. Rest is eliminated. Cover is removed. The surface may still yield for a time, but structure collapses underneath. Erosion accelerates. Life disappears quietly.

Accumulation without circulation rots soil. Organic matter piled without breakdown turns anaerobic. Nutrients locked up and unmoving become toxic. Fertility is not increased by hoarding. It is sustained by exchange.

Urgency exhausts soil. Seasons are ignored. Roots are not allowed to establish. Growth is forced before readiness. What appears productive in the short term weakens the system long term.

Control degrades soil. Tillage disrupts structure. Microbial networks are broken. Water runs off instead of infiltrating. The illusion of management replaces actual health.

But sufficiency rebuilds soil. When enough is enough, life stabilizes. Cover protects moisture. Organic matter accumulates slowly and steadily. The system strengthens from the inside out.

Circulation restores soil. Nutrients move. Roots exchange. Decay feeds life. What is given returns multiplied.

Trust stabilizes soil. The unseen is allowed to work. Microbial life does what it was designed to do. Growth emerges without force.

Timing protects soil. Planting waits for readiness. Rest is honored. Nothing is rushed into bearing weight it cannot yet carry.

The garden does not care what we say we believe. It reveals what we practice.

And so do our lives.

Every household, organization, and community is already operating in one of these economies. The evidence is visible. Anxiety or peace. Extraction or regeneration. Isolation or shared life. Burnout or resilience.

You cannot argue with what you can see with your own eyes.

The only remaining question is not which economy we admire, but which one we are cultivating, and what it is quietly forming beneath the surface.