» Thursday, 18 February A.D. 2010
cities and redemption
From Sidewalks in the Kingdom by Eric Jacobsen:
...This radical change in the status of the city from a place of sin and unfaithfulness to the ultimate context for our redemption raises at least one important question: What can account for such a radical shift? Why did God take what looks to be one of humanity's worst inventions and use it as the primary context for our redemption?
The answer to this question is to be found in the question itself. Our God is fundamentally a God of redemption. God takes us (and our decisions) seriously. When we make mistakes--even profound ones--God does not obliterate the scars these mistakes leave on our character and start over. Rather, God takes our mistakes and reworks them into his divine plan and transforms our scars into something beautiful. Joseph said to his brothers when they repented of selling him into slavery, “Even though you intended to do harm to me, God intended it for good.” So also it seems that God has said of our cities, “You meant them to be a form of escape from me, I used them to draw you back to me.”
And we see hints of this redemption theme all around the cities of the Bbible. Cain's desire to flee to Enoch after killing his brother later finds a redeemed expression in the cities of refuge. The fear of the residents of Babel that they might be scattered is redeemed when the Isrelites find cities in the Promised Land in which they can gather. The Hebrews long to be free from their tyrant, Pharoah, and eventually found a good king in the city of David. And finally, the Babel residents' desire to make a name for themeselves is met in Jerusalem, where God has caused his name to dwell.
Redemption shows that God's power to redeeem and restore is stronger than our ability to alienate and break down. But redemption is not always the strategy that we would chose if it were up to us. Often what we seek is a return to innocence. We want to forget about the past and start over. Psychologically, we repress painful memories. Relationally, we cut ourselves off from people who remind us our past. And culturally, we ignore our history in favor of what is new and current.
...But for those who seek to take the Bible seriously, this cannot be our strategy. We cannot hate the city when our God is using it for good. We can suport the city from a truly rural setting, but we cannot retreat to our own private gardens. That way has been closed off. We must at some level learn to take our cities seriously. Whether live, work, worship, and play in our imperfect cities, or even just for them at a distance, we need to look to our cities if we hope to catch a glimpse of what God has in store for us.
I approve of the strategy of incrementalism. Starting over can be an option, but the opportunity to do so happens so infrequently that we are danger of idolizing it. Not just in cities, but in other contexts, too.
posted by Nate @ 2:30PM