I grew up in the Los Angeles area (Santa Monica) and never want to move back. One thing which soured me on my hometown was the poor air quality there in the pre-auto-emission-control era, even in our bayside part of the metropolis. Suffering from asthma I savored every trip to my grandmother’s home in the clear air of northern Arizona and every excursion to hike in pristine mountains with the Boy Scouts. Coming home from a long backpack trip in the Sierras, I would dread the moment when the car came up over the “Grapevine” and I could see the whole smoggy, congested city we were headed back into.
In fact, if you had asked me to describe heaven or paradise, I would have talked about something that looked a lot like a high Sierra meadow or lakeshore or else what was then the still fairly wild country around our northern Arizona cabin. It would not at all have included skyscrapers or freeways or even concrete. There would certainly have been no smog or crowds or noise or crime.
I’ve had to adjust my conception of paradise as I’ve looked more honestly and deeply into the promises of Revelation, particularly chapter 21, our text for this coming Sunday. As Eugene Peterson makes plain in Reversed Trumpets, the description of our eternal home is not some natural wilderness, unspoiled by buildings or roadways or great numbers of human beings. It’s a city. To put it simply (though certainly not originally), though the human story begins in a garden, it ends in a city. God intends to ground and center His kingdom in a renewed and restored city.
Peterson notes that the city chosen by God, Jerusalem, though not a crushing mega-city like L.A. or Tokyo or New York, is still not the most attractive place on earth and has a pretty sad history. It was after all, the place where God’s people abandoned their faith and where Jesus was rejected and crucified. Yet God selects just such a place to redeem and renew as the image of eternal life with Him.
Unlike some of my friends and colleagues who seem to enjoy living in or visiting huge sites of human habitation, whether for the food, for entertainment, for the wide possibilities of ministry or for the sheer energy of it all, I am still a pretty reluctant urbanite. I still enjoy every opportunity to escape to mountains or fishing stream.
The hope I do see in the picture of the Holy City in Revelation 21 is that it seems to include and redeem all the best of city life along with all the natural beauty I associate with non-city wilderness, a river flowing through the midst of it and spreading trees. It seems to tell me that I don’t need and should not be isolated from my fellow human beings in order to enjoy the best of life as God created it. Despite the separation of “nature” from city in present times, it will all come together in peace in the Kingdom of our Savior.
In the meantime, I try to see how God is at work in our present cities, how that vision of a the perfect city where beauty, humanity and urban life come together perfectly can inform the ways in which we live together here and now. It feels like a calling not to leave and abhor the city, but to work for its redemption, insofar as God gives us grace and wisdom, to make these present dwellings more like that eternal residence.
i am pretty sure eugene peterson knows no more about heaven that i do. ellul’s book, meaning of the city is a good one. heaven will be more like a walk on the john muir trail with close friends than what he describes. (i am pretty sure i know no more about heaven that eugene peterson.)
i also grew up in so. california in the much more polluted upland area. i remember working on my uncle’s ranch for a summer in colorado completely isolated in 1965. my cousin’s friends visited and tried to sing the chorus of HELP, (if you want a challenge try that!) because we had no electricity and no radio. it was wonderful to be back in the early september smog.
oregon is still in the pre pollution control era for car exhaust. we have thousands of smoke machines still on the road, and no random checks to force the owner to get a tuneup.
Interesting thoughts, Craig. I was able to read a bit of Ellul’s book on-line and I think he is pretty much on the same page as Peterson. The city in the beginning is human rebellion against God (Cain, Babel), but that is why it is the city that needs to be redeemed in the Kingdom and become something good. I look for a City where all the best of human life and the created world come together in beauty and glory.