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| *This is a helpful article that will give some balance to some of you who love Tim Keller and his vision for the city. I greatly respect what he's done via the Redeemer network, but I've noticed that his well-articulated vision for the city has led people to embrace an extremely dogmatic "anti-suburb" mindset. And as some of you know, when people start dogmatizing anything other than the core essential doctrines of the Church, my hair stops growing:)
Redemptive View of Suburbia
by Steve McCoy
There is a growing trend of romanticizing the city. My man-crush, Tim Keller, is a loud and important voice on the strategic need to reach our city-centers. Even more, Keller shows the centrality of the city as the future for God’s people…
I’ve heard Keller elsewhere humorously quip that it’s not a suburb coming down from heaven in Revelation 21, it’s a city. He’s right, of course.
But in consequence I think many who love Keller, including me, tend to over-romanticize the city to the point that we feel we must laugh at suburbia’s ugliness and hyper-consumerism. Commonly the flight to suburbia is seen as fleeing from the city, chasing after the American Dream, a selfish plunge toward more and bigger and better, an escape from the dangers of the city to the suburban facade. There’s some truth there to be sure, but I’m not sure that’s as true as I’ve always assumed.
I think there are some aspects of suburbia that compel us to live for values that the city has pushed aside. Let me point out some that come to mind…
1. Cultivating a Garden
We were kicked out of the Garden of Eden because of our sin. The world lacked the order and beauty of the Garden, but man was commissioned by God to have dominion, which should at least mean that we were to create gardens where they didn’t yet exist. That is still part of our job.
Keller points out that the Garden becomes a City, but I’m not sure that’s the fullest picture. In Revelation 22, as Keller explains in the quote above, there’s a river in the center of the city where we also find the tree of life. It appears the Garden blends into the City.
Our modern cities aren’t necessarily models of blending. Just as architecture in the suburbs is often a facade of the man-made treasures we find in our cities, so gardens in our cities are are often a facade of nature found in and around our suburbs. In our cities we find trees growing out of concrete holes! In the suburbs we find nature intertwined with our architecture. Where our cities have failed, our suburbs have picked up a more heavenly picture of the city.
2. Be Fruitful and Multiply
At creation man was commanded to “be fruitful and multiply.” Kids are the way dominion happens in the world. And it’s not only that we should have a kid, but the more the merrier. Children are a blessing from the Lord, and while the world’s values have created the strong desire to limit childbearing, God values multiplication. While the world’s values say that more children means more burden, God’s values say that more children means more blessing. I don’t see any biblical mandate on how many children to have, but I think there is a biblical mandate to see children as gifts and that we should desire those gifts from God.
Our cities make having multiple children nearly impossible. There is less living space intended for larger families, at least not larger families who aren’t very rich. Public schools in urban areas are rarely recognized for their academic quality and private schools are typically very expensive. Cities are not good on families, which is why when city-dwellers start having kids they start moving to the suburbs.
Suburbs are known for having good schools and safe neighborhoods. There’s more affordable housing with more space in the house for larger families as well as yards to play in. For what’s wrong in suburbia, it’s a place well-equipped for people who want to “be fruitful and multiply.”
3. Lonely Places
It’s no secret that Jesus would often go to “lonely” places. He would go to fast and prepare for ministry in the wilderness, to pray, to get away from crowds of people, and so on. Lonely places, wilderness places, were normal and accessible. Before his crucifixion Jesus spent time alone in the Garden of Gethsemane, very near Jerusalem.
Our urban environments don’t make the wilderness sorts of lonely places all that accessible. Some may say that we don’t have to create a world that matches the world of Jesus to enjoy similar experiences. True. But Jesus seemed to make such good use of lonely space that the availability of it would be a blessing. I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that the example of Jesus shows a value to wilderness that is worth retaining.
Even when you find some space in the city, say in a local park, it’s full of people spread out trying to find a 10′ by 10′ swath of grass to eat their sandwich and get some “alone time” before trekking back to work on the gray city streets. In suburbia the story is very different. I can get on a bike from the middle of my suburb and get to the middle of nowhere in about 5 minutes. Even in nearer suburbs open, empty space is often much more accessible.
Conclusion
This isn’t an attempt to say someone should choose to live in the suburbs over the urban centers. Go where God wants you to go and live faithfully. Both have wonderful things and terrible things. Both have redeeming qualities and sinful tendencies. This is simply an attempt to think through the redeeming qualities of the suburbs and show how suburbia can be seen, at least in part, as a helpful corrective to what the city lacks.
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| *My former prof (one of my favorites) wrote a recent meditative article for World Magazine.
He Makes the Wind Blow
Storms and natural disasters proclaim the regularity of God | Vern S. Poythress
As if cyclones and earthquakes are not enough, the hurricane season is around the corner. The strongest hurricanes, in Category 5, have winds above 155 miles per hour. A wind like that produces a pressure of about 4 pounds per square inch, which may not sound like much, but it results in a total force of 3,000 pounds on a human being who stands in its way. That is fierce power.
Scientists can't stop hurricanes, but they can explain them. Huge wind spirals arise in a complex process starting with differences in air pressure produced by the sun's heat and evaporation in tropical waters.
The Bible says, "He [God] makes His wind blow" (Psalm 147:18). The wind—including hurricane wind—is His. It belongs to Him. And He makes it blow. Do you believe that?
Many people believe that some kind of God exists. But to them He seems remote. For practical purposes science, they think, has replaced God. The wind blows because of differences in air pressure. The nightly weather report explains it. And what the nightly weather report doesn't explain, the expert scientists could explain and explain in massive detail until your eyes glazed over.
So was it just a primitive mentality when the Bible said that God made the wind blow? No. The scientists still deal with the same God, the God who rules the wind. What the scientists investigate is the regularity and faithfulness of the way in which God makes His wind blow. He is so faithful and so consistent that you can write mathematical equations to describe it. And of course the mathematical equations come from man's mind being in tune with God's mind, and having the privilege of thinking God's thoughts after Him.
Modern man would like to forget God most of the time, and maybe bring Him in only for convenience, when he feels a sudden need for some sweet religious comforts. But the real God is not comfortable. He is the infinitely powerful and sovereign ruler, governing His wind in all its detail. That is why the scientists' equations work.
This God brings us the spring winds and rains and May flowers. But He also brings hurricanes that exhibit the power of His word: "The voice of the Lord breaks the cedars; . . . The voice of the Lord flashes forth flames of fire" (Psalm 29:5, 7).
The Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God, empowers God's word, and so the Holy Spirit is behind the power of the wind that blows at the command of God (Ezekiel 37:9, 14).
We need to wake up to God's presence as He rules the wind, and stand in awe of His wisdom and power. Scientific explanations should remind us of the faithfulness of God's rule, rather than serving as a substitute for acknowledging Him who is the origin of the very possibility of science.
"By the word of the Lord the heavens were made, and by the breath of His mouth all their host" (Psalm 33:6). "In the beginning was the Word" (John 1:1).
—Vern S. Poythress is Professor of New Testament Interpretation at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, where he has taught for 30 years
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| My Deepest Thanks to Those Who Have Served This Country in Uniform
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Why Are Calvinists So Negative?
John Piper
I love the doctrines of grace with all my heart, and I think they are
pride-shattering, humbling, and love-producing doctrines. But I think
there is an attractiveness about them to some people, in large matter,
because of their intellectual rigor. They are powerfully coherent
doctrines, and certain kinds of minds are drawn to that. And those
kinds of minds tend to be argumentative.
So the intellectual appeal of the system of Calvinism draws a certain
kind of intellectual person, and that type of person doesn't tend to be
the most warm, fuzzy, and tender. Therefore this type of person has a
greater danger of being hostile, gruff, abrupt, insensitive or
intellectualistic.
I'll just confess that. It's a sad and terrible thing that that's the
case. Some of this type aren't even Christians, I think. You can
embrace a system of theology and not even be born again.
Another reason for Calvinists could be seen as negative is that when
a person comes to see the doctrines of grace in the Bible, he is often
amazed that he missed it, and he can sometimes become angry. He can
become angry that he grew up in a church or home where they never
talked about what is really there in Romans 8, 1 Corinthians 2, and
Ephesians 2. They never talked about it—they skipped it—and he is angry
that he was misled for so long.
That's sad. It's there; it's real; the church did let him down, and
there are thousands of churches that ignore the truth and don't teach
it. And he has to deal with that.
Another reason Calvinists might be perceived as negative is that they are trying to convince others about the doctrines.
If God gives someone the grace to be humbled and see the truth, and
the doctrines are sweet to him, and they break his pride—because God
chose him owing to nothing in him. He was awakened from the dead, like
being found at the bottom of a lake and God, at the cost of his Son's
life, brings him up from the bottom, does CPR, brings him miraculously
back to life, and he stands on the beach thrilled with the grace of
God—wouldn't he want to persuade people about this?
Do Calvinists want to make everybody else Calvinists? Absolutely we
do! But it's not about elitism. It's about having been found by Christ
and having the glory of God opened to us in the process of salvation.
It's about having the majesty of God opened in all of his saving and
redeeming works, wanting to give him all the glory and all the credit,
and cherishing the sovereignty and preciousness of grace in our lives.
Why wouldn't we want to share this with people?
If it is perceived as elitist, that is partly owing to our
sinfulness in the way we go about it, and partly owing to people's
unwillingness to see what is really there in the Bible.
I just want to confess my own sins in how I have often spoken, and I
hope and pray that I don't have the reputation of being mainly
negative, but mainly positive.
I look at my books sometimes when I hear that kind of criticism, and
I say, "OK when I'm dead and gone, and all that is left is sermons and
books, will my reputation be that? Will it be that I have a whole bunch
of books and sermons that are mainly negative, harsh, and elitist?"
Time will tell. I hope not.
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