Cities amplify the best, but also the very worst, of humanity.
City centers are fueled by individual self-interest. Everybody goes to the city to ‘get’ something – career, education, entertainment, money, power, sex, etc.
Population density in cities with limited resources and limited opportunities creates a competitive and tension filled culture.
The pace of the city makes people less compassionate even when they may want to be, ie. “I can’t stop to help that person because I’ve got to get somewhere to get something.”
Cities are deceptive. In the words of Jay Z and Alicia Keys Empire state of mind – “These streets will make you feel brand new, The lights will inspire you”. The problem is that while the city may be alive, that doesn’t mean you are.
The busyness of cities prevents us from stopping, reflecting, and asking questions like ‘why’ until we’re completely broken and miserable.
Cities are dense with living beings that refuses to connect with one another. ie. I can be nose-to-nose with another human being crammed in a gloriously life-filled subway and we can completely ignore each other. This chips away at our humanity daily because we know something’s not right.
The diversity in cities naturally brings with it conflicting interests and cultural clashes. Not only does the fringes of culture collide, but those who are already oppressed, are condensed into tight spaces which creates an even more volatile environment. People can be ticking time bombs.
Cities thrive on anonymity. Relationships become transactions and we further dehumanize one another.
Cities export evil. Cities inherently create, magnify, and propagate culture. When it’s bad, it’s bad for everyone. ie. how cities of the west have led the cycle of work-to-excessively-consume lifestyle now seen as the pinnacle of living for those in rural, village, suburban communities.Cities often displace wildlife and native cultures (we name our neighborhoods and streets after what we’ve destroyed ie. shady oaks, parkway forest, etc.)
Whether it’s for more affordable housing or an easier lifestyle – cities build up towards high-rise apartments. The living-in-a-box-in-the-sky infrastructure (that I currently live in) disconnects our relationship to the land and creation.
Cities can become empires. Empires oppress neighboring cultures, serve only the privileged few, and have an insatiable need to always expand and conquer.
And the list goes on. While murder rates are actually dropping in many cities compared to rural areas, cities can cause a death you’re not even aware of because it’s so broadly accepted.
With all that being said, cities are crucial and strategic to our global future. We need people in the city, especially those who want to seek the good of the city.
Just as God has a clear bias towards the poor, the scriptures also reveal that God’s heart leans towards the city.
From Genesis God calls for humanity to be fruitful and multiply. Not simply to reproduce (otherwise Jesus would’ve done a terrible job with this mandate), but to cultivate life in the widest sense – to create culture, to steward over creation, to develop civilizations, and ultimately cities.
Even the ‘garden of eden’ carries with it the idea of a lush park by a palace. A place dense with life near a kingly residence. Seeds of a future city.
God doesn’t allow his people to remain agrarian, and calls for ‘cities of refuge‘ to be made. Cities with leadership, government, jurisdiction, so that people might find safety and progress could continue without ongoing tribal warfare.
In Jeremiah 29 God calls for his people to seek the good of the city. Not to necessarily conform to the city, or to leech off the city, but to be rooted in the city. We are to be city builders.
The Apostle Paul planted churches from city to city because he knew that if he captured the heart of the city, the gospel would flow out from the city centers into the surrounding regions. It’s interesting to note that it seems the smallest unit of the church was referred to as an entire city – ie. the church of Ephesus, Philipi, etc.
God reveals his ultimate vision for humanity in Revelation as ‘a holy city’ descending from heaven. Pieces of Eden like the tree of life and rivers are still there, but it’s wrapped up in a city filled with life. Heaven’s like an urban jungle.
I’ve always loved this quote by Ray Bakke – “If you don’t like the city, you won’t like heaven”
These are just a few snapshot thoughts that could be unpacked a lot more. Your thoughts?
Just to follow up on my last post “Stop donating to Haiti?” which received quite a number of hits – my very general take is to go ahead and exercise your god given wisdom, but don’t let any amount of theorizing stop you from giving when it’s in your heart to do so.
I wanted to dedicate this post to the many Christian organizations that have helped pave the way for the church on issues of justice.
You can argue all you want about administrative costs, or selling-out-to-the-man, or whatever else; but organizations like World Vision, Christian Aid, Compassion, and World Relief have been serving and giving for decades. While much of the church believed that the mandates of these agencies were secondary to the preaching of the gospel, these organizations forged ahead not because it was cool, but because it was right.
Although I’ve never been a huge fan of the ‘Salvation Army‘ name, they’ve managed to transcend the name by their works of charity all over the world. They’ve built a global infrastructure making the gospel tangible to those who are poor and destitute – and now that the rest of the church is beginning to catch on, I think it’s their time to shine.
We owe all of these organizations a great deal. They’ve made it possible for us to mobilize much more rapidly in Haiti today. More importantly, they’ve been in the business of loving and serving people long before heart-wrenching photos were sent out or global emergencies were declared.
Say a prayer of thanks for the work that’s already been done today.
I haven’t asked for permission yet, so I’m posting the below comments anonymously.
It’s by someone who’s worked in disaster relief for a number of years.
Dear Friends,
We have all seen the terrible news that is happening in Haiti especially in the capital of Port au Prince. What I want to ask each of you to do is to give with your head and not just your heart. There is an obvious urgency for immediate relief efforts to rescue and save lives. But the reality is that for these purposes giving at this time is already too late. Aid agencies and other NGOs will determine a budget looking at what they have on hand and what they can hope to recover with immediate donations and spend accordingly. Money collected now for emergency relief will go to replace what is spent. Any extra will then have to be spent on ad hoc ‘emergency’ projects to be created in the months to come. The extraordinary outpouring of donations with each major catastrophe is an indication of Canadian sympathy but not wisdom. As with other major catastrophes aid agencies will collect more moneys then they can spend. This fact along with not-for-profit rules which require donations collected be spent only for the purpose for which they were collected (a good rule that protects donors), means agencies will have to come up with ways to dump cash at the end of the fiscal year. This kind of spending only encourages wastefulness at best and often leads to creating a culture of corrupt behaviour.
For aid agencies each disaster is a windfall and they must ‘make hay while the sun shines’. The administrative portions they keep for themselves are a strong motivator. They are not at fault for this rather it is the giving pattern of their supporters who only give when they see death, suffering and destruction on their TV screens. An earthquake of this magnitude is still beyond our human technology for prevention or even early warning. However, the risk reduction and amelioration that is part of disaster preparedness should have accounted for an event of this scale. And those preparations should have been attended to from year to year, requiring steady and targeting giving from donors and governments and the attention of the NGO community.
I visited Haiti in 2001 inspecting water and sanitation, community development projects of and preaching at a church of the Evangelical Baptist Churches of Haiti (EEBH). Port au Prince sits at the edge of the water and spreads up high mountains. The steep roads where they exist become torrential rivers with every rainfall sweeping anything not secured down into the harbour and knocking over the sheds and makeshift shelters of the poorest that live on the edge of the sea. Other construction is in concrete but often with limited use of expensive rebar; but even rebar would not have saved many of the buildings in this particular earthquake. The lack of adequate infrastructure will seriously hamper relief efforts. The lack of adequate in country stock piles of emergency supplies will mean that aid will come too late for many. Many have been killed and many more will die in the coming days.
I am asking you to hold of giving for emergency relief. For many this may sound callous. But as I have indicated, the emergency funds that will be spent are already in the accounts of the aid organisations; they can’t handle more in any real useful way for this emergency. The giving from the knee jerk reaction of governments and the general public will more than adequately cover these funds and replace the contingency funds.
What I am asking you to do is to hold off until the rehabilitation efforts get under way; when specific projects are developed that will rebuild and hopefully improve conditions. Every tragedy is also an opportunity. In the villages I visited water was managed using spring capping and rainfall capturing technology that provide safe an ample water for healthy communities. Many of these systems will need to be repaired or rebuilt in the coming months.
I hope to be able to get in touch with the General Secretary of the EEBH who hosted me during my visit and ask him to direct our giving.
In the meantime if you want to contribute to the relief efforts I would like to suggest channelling that through the Salvation Army or some other long term agency which does not spend a great portion of what they receive on themselves and a great deal of advertising. But do save the bulk of your generosity for the coming months when rebuilding efforts get underway.
Our family just watched the documentary Flow. Wired magazine declared it ‘the scariest film at the sundance film festival). The growing water crisis has been on my mind for a number of years and it will be an issue that I plan on rallying more resources behind.
We dedicated all the proceeds of one of our solar crash events to living water international, and my faith community takes part in the advent conspiracy (channeling our christmas gift money towards providing clean water), but I still feel like there’s so much more we can do.
Are we too late? Can or will the church make a difference here?
Since my last post about U2’s song “moment of surrender”, there’s been a number of verses that provoke me, but the line “vision over visibility” has really stuck with me.
Is there something that you see, that others can’t? A vision, a reality of what could be, that others don’t seem to ‘get’?
It looks dark and murky but you’ve got this strong gut-level hunch it’s a direction you ought to be going in?
Please keeping moving forward.
Seize it, for the love of God. Do something about it.
We’ll always be working in low-visibility, but vision doesn’t always come.
Take a hold of it and make it into a reality. We need you to help us see it. Our world is filled with too many people with eyes wide shut, working merely with the visible.
That statue waiting to be carved out of that stone block; that word of truth or encouragement that no one else can quite articulate the way you do; that service your community or city desperately needs but knows how to go about it… we need you to help us see the invisible.
Because if you don’t, it might slip away. And worst yet, it might be lost to humanity forever.
Dino what are your thoughts on inviting those who have yet to stumble into Jesus to serve along side of us? And what are some good ways of doing so without it being too weird as our intentions in serving may not entirely overlap?
Thanks for being a part of the Servolution Blog Tour. And what a great question, Lon! I’m all for it. One of the greatest ways to show people what the love of Jesus is all about is to have them be a part of an outreach.
If someone wants to serve alongside you in an outreach, there’s a good chance they’re already curious about something they’ve seen in you. Sure, there’s a chance their purpose isn’t the same as yours, but I’d guess the root of their intentions is to find out what in the world is making these people want to get out on a hot day and give away free bottles of water – no strings attached. I’m not saying you shouldn’t use wisdom – don’t put someone you don’t know in charge of children’s church.
Leadership carries with it a different requirement than simply joining you on an outreach. But by all means, I’d encourage you to take people with you on an outreach who haven’t made the decision to follow Christ yet. It just might be what draws them all the way across the line.
Besides the content and ‘nuggets’ I jotted in the notes, my biggest highligh quite honestly, was simply being released for a full day from family obligations to just soak. I really believe in the business of providing space – there is just so much random clutter often in our lives, to be offered an intentional and formative space to simply be, just did it for me.
Of course, being in the presence of great thinkers and practitioners helped. I’m not sure if it was on purpose, but I felt the plenary folks were a bit too heady for the general audience. I’m coming from a seminary background and thought some of the insights were too dense to move on to the next point. Maybe academics/scholars aren’t suppose to compress their thoughts like this?
Having said that, I loved getting the random soundbites and interactions from the twitter channel as other folks were in different workshops. Everyone always bashes online connections, but I think just as with ‘real’ life physical relationships, it’s what you make of it.
The good thing about all the rich and compact thoughts was there was a lot of good conversation after where people asked – what did he/she mean by… ? Maybe the calling is for those of us who did catch it, to help translate those thoughts to others.
I love thought provoking insights and conversations but as with most conferences I’m always left with – now what?
For now I’m left keenly aware that I’m steeped in powers both good and evil, I contribute and enforce powers that I rail against, and somehow in it all, Jesus is with us making the world new again.
