| | *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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| | Posted 8/4/2008 12:47 AM - 64 Views - 2 eProps - 3 comments
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