Look to the Good of the City

Exiles at Home, Directive 3

We find ourselves in the midst of a series in which I am trying to identify directives for living as “exiles at home.” Thus far, we’ve talked about allowing Jesus to shape our imaginations and honoring the kingdom community. As you may have noticed, these emphases focus on “the one foot in the kingdom” side of exiled life. Today’s directive takes us in a different direction by focusing on our presence and responsibility within our home culture. That directive is this: Look to the good of the city.

Much as I would like to claim this sentiment as my own, the idea of exiles looking to the good of the city is actually ancient in origin. Indeed, the prophet Jeremiah first offered this directive to Jewish exiles in Babylon. Here’s a part of what he said in Jeremiah 29:4-7:

This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says to all those I carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: “Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Marry and have sons and daughters; find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, so that they too may have sons and daughters. Increase in number there; do not decrease. Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper.” (NIV)

These words were part of a letter that Jeremiah sent the exiles to combat false prophecy and counsel them on how to conduct themselves in their new environs. Rather than holding themselves aloof and waiting for God to deliver them quickly (false prophets were telling the people to do just that), Jeremiah instructs the exiled population to put down roots and work for the good of their new home. Really, this is very practical advice. Because God would not deliver the people immediately, they should do all in their power to survive and even thrive. And, part of surviving and thriving had to do with looking to the peace and prosperity of the city. After all, their fates were largely tied to those of the city itself. If it thrived, then so would they, its residents.

Jumping now to the present, looking to the good of the city still has the practical weight that we saw above. We’ve seen that over the past year and a half in the pandemic. When cities and regions have done a good job in containing the virus through following public health precautions based in science, their residents have felt the ramifications of that public good in their everyday lives. In this sense, it just makes good sense to do our parts in securing the peace of our cities in the face of COVID and in general. On another level, Jesus adds further weight to Jeremiah’s directive by calling us to love our neighbors. In this, we are not only looking to our own good, but also to the good of those around us. As followers of Jesus, this neighbor focus becomes our guiding light as we look to the good of the places we call home.

All this said, we need to take a moment now to qualify things. When I speak of looking to the good of the city, I am not suggesting that we embrace Christian nationalism that conflates the United States with the kingdom of God and/or seeks to “take back” America for God. Christian nationalism is bad theology that leads to bad practice. When I talk about looking to the good of the city, I am talking about entering shared space in a spirit of humility to work with people who may or may not share our faith commitments. At its heart, looking to the good of the city needs to be a collaborative effort with our neighbors rather than a power play.

And, I should also note that looking to the good of the city is not primarily a matter of voting or macro-economics. We evangelicals have been conditioned for several decades to view things through these lenses. Yes, politics and big picture economics are important, but any time I understand my primary contribution as voting every few years and being a good consumer, I need to look at things on a more local level. Looking to the good of the city should lead us into constructive relationships with our local communities.

Thankfully, none of this is all that new in the evangelical space. I know of churches that actively engage with city officials in deciding how best to contribute to their communities. And, I know of many more churches with ministries especially directed at helping people in need. Looking to the good of our cities is something we already do. At the same time, we have also seen evangelical communities retreating into partisan mindsets and flouting public health guidance as the world battles COVID-19. The pandemic especially is an area where our devotion to politics has clouded our Christian vision and led us away from contributing to the public good.

In the end, then, looking to the good of the city must be taken together with the other directives for exiled living. Ultimately, Jesus must shape our imaginations in the ways we pursue the public good, and we should always proceed in ways that seek to honor our brothers and sisters in Christ. Especially now, as COVID resurges in the US, we have an opportunity to look to the good of our cities in the ways we respond to the virus. May we honor the Lord and one another in the ways we walk the road ahead.

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Photo by Henning Witzel on Unsplash