How Can I Love My City?

Hi sisters,

Do you have favorite Bible teachers? One of mine over the years has been Timothy Keller. For me, He was the first teacher who opened the Scriptures to show how the Jesus movement started out as a city movement. The first gatherings of Jesus followers were located in metropolis areas and then spread to the country side. Luke ends His second volume (Acts) stating that Paul was proclaiming the Kingdom of God in the midst of Rome: the hub of the known world!

For a woman who grew up in the country, knowing this fact has helped me love the cities to which God has sent me. God developed in me a tenderness for my city (whether big or small, because God equally works in small towns too!). Not that this is always easy. I’ll be the first to admit that sometimes that love is purely agape (action love) without any phileo (brotherly love). Regardless, where we are is where we have been sent and we have a responsibility to that place.

During a quiet time recently, I had one of those “overlap” days in which at least two passages paralleled each other. This was in Psalms and Hosea.

Within her citadels God has made himself known . . . walk about Zion . . . Go through her citadels that you may tell the next generation that this is God, our God forever and ever (from Psalm 48).

In this passage, the Psalmist is using the fortresses of the city as a physical parallel to describe God. He is strong, great, and mighty. He protects His people. He is also a King! He rules in righteousness and justice.

Not only is the Psalmist describing what God is like using these physical parallels, but he is also proclaiming what all the people need to do in response. He is telling the people that it is their responsibility to know what God is like SO THAT they may tell the NEXT GENERATION. Walk around the city. See God’s work. And tell the next generation about it!

So what happens if people do not take this seriously? That brings me to Hosea.

[There is] no knowledge of God in the land. . . My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge. . . you have forgotten the law of your God. . . a people without understanding shall come to ruin (from Hosea 4).

Not good. This gives me a sobering reality. I think the kingdom of darkness has done a clever thing in Western cultures: convinced us that our faith is for our private lives and has no place in the public square. But if we want to answer the calling of loving our cities, we cannot live in this lie. The best thing for our cities is to allow the truth of God’s Word to permeate our lives and extend into our areas of influence.

In fact, Proverbs says: Wisdom cries aloud in the street, in the markets she raises her voice; at the head of the noisy streets she cries out; at the entrance of the city gates she speaks (Proverbs 1:20-21)

Doesn’t sound like private faith to me! (I’ve said this before, but how awesome is the fact that wisdom is a feminine noun????)

In the book Destroyer of the gods, Larry Hurtado analyzes what made Christianity different from the buffet of “religions” of the first and second centuries. One of his chapters is called, “A New Way to Live.” He says this about the observable faith of the early Christians: “What made the early Christian stance in such matters [like infant abandonment] different was not always the sentiment itself but that it was openly expressed and was intended to shape social behavior, certainly among Christians, and also even the wider public.”

Indeed, Christians would eventually change the tides of culture through the Kingdom being made manifest in and through their lives. Regular people like you and me, changed the social behaviors of Roman culture.

But before we all storm the court house steps or write letters to Congress, let us remember what God told Jeremiah:

“Run to and fro through the streets of Jerusalem, look and take note! Search her squares to see if you can find a man, one who does justice and seeks truth that I may pardon her” (Jeremiah 5:1).

Really God?? Just one?? Yep. One. Start there. Be faithful with one and see what God does. Will He not multiply the effort? One becomes two. Each finds another one. Two become 4. 4 become 8. 8 become 16. You get the picture.

Know what God is like. Proclaim Him no matter the setting (home, market, street, or work). His wisdom is needed in the public square and our cities need it. And if we want to change our cities not only in our generation, but for generations to come: find one hungry woman. What generation are you living for?