OCTOBER 18 2015
IS THE CITY BEYOND REDEMPTION?
Last week I wrote that, when disaster strikes, people in the city will not be able to find refuge. I did not elaborate then, promising to do this now. Here are a few obvious facts. When collapse looms there will be no electricity and thus all transportation will soon cease. Today people in cities such as Toronto and New York increasingly rely on public transportation which is good for mobility inside the city but traveling away from the core requires a car. Both in Toronto, the third largest city in North America, and New York tens of thousands have bought condos in the core, forsaking the use of the automobile, so all these people are stuck when disaster strikes: there simply is no escape. Stores only have a three day supply. After that: famine.
It all started with Cain. Cain? Who is he?
There once were two brothers, Cain and Abel. Their parents were Adam and Eve, which the Bible tells us were the first human pair. These two fellows were born when their parents were banned from the Garden of Eden. They were as different as two siblings could be. Cain was the man of action who worked the land and tamed animals to take the hard work out of farming. Abel was a shepherd. While Cain was impatient, Abel was slow in pace, contemplative, not lazy, but certainly no go-getter. Somehow Abel understood God’s plan for creation, he relied on God’s law, studied the way of nature, and marvelled at God’s goodness.
Cain was different. Because his parents had insisted on his doing so, he went through the routine of worship but really thought offering a lamb or other animal pretty silly stuff. He noticed Abel’s contentment, his happiness, his lack of uptightness and realized his own anxiety and his own restlessness.
All this did not escape God’s attention. He spoke to Cain: “what the matter with you? How come you are so unhappy? Cain replied: “I do all the work around the place. I toil from dawn to dusk and beyond. Abel, the pious fool, what does he do to contribute to the economic well-being of the family enterprise?” So, at one time when Abel had forgotten to close the gate and his sheep accidently strayed into a field ready for harvest, his anger boiled over and he knocked him cold. Abel’s head hit a sharp stone and he bled to death.
Then God got into the act again: “Cain, where is your brother Abel?” But Cain ignored the question and kept on walking. God repeated the question and Cain screamed back: “Leave me alone. Am I my brother’s keeper?” God: “Cain you killed him. His blood cries out to me from the ground. Now the ground is cursed forever and you will be a restless wanderer forever.”
Cain, scared, lamented: “You drive me from the land. Whoever finds me will kill me.”
The start of the city.
God makes a promise and allows him to develop creation in the way he sees fit. Why does God give Cain such freedom? God wants to speed up the development of creation. Cain, driven from the fields, uprooted from a slow-moving agricultural life, God gave Cain carte-blanche to bend God’s creation to mold it into the image of humanity. Until Abel’s blood flowed, there still was a great deal of stability and affinity between the human race and God’s creation. Cain shattered that closeness. He introduced insecurity, the taste for blood, the desire for revenge.
Cain, the insecure wanderer, who yet craved security, Cain was promised protection by God, a God whose existence he denied. The tragedy of Cain, the tragedy of the human condition, is that the human Cain will always be in search of a home.
So where does Cain search? He turns his eye and his desire to Eden, toward the lost paradise, and this too is the perpetual quest for humanity. The search for a home, the search for “Paradise Lost” is nothing else but the human desire for God’s presence.
Cain, in search for a home, in search for security, builds a fortified city.
It is now almost impossible to imagine life without the city. People even in the smallest communities, isolated on remote islands, depend on the city. The old age pension cheques, the TV programs, our tax notices, they all come from the city. Human progress and the city are most intimately intertwined. Harsh as it may sound, the city, the place of human progress, is the direct consequence, is the direct consequence of Cain’s murderous act and his refusal to accept God’s protection.
So Cain builds his city. For God’s open paradise, Eden, he substitutes his closed fort. He calls the city Enoch, which means “a new Beginning.” Cain is going to make the world over again in his image. God’s creation is seen as nothing. A new start is made, a new beginning. Cain, with everything he does, digs a little deeper the abyss between himself and God. Each solution to a problem becomes a new disobedience, each invention, each remedy, a new offence to God. With Cain paradise becomes a legend, creation a myth. Cain, in his city called “A new beginning” takes possession of the world, and molds creation according to his plan. It is no longer God’s world: it is Cain’s creation.
The city, what is it?
It is the place of people, rich and poor, old and young. It is the place of cathedrals and concerts, of head offices and sweatshops, of courts and crime. Many people of God live there, yet basically a city is the place where the human desire to exclude God from creation is the prime motive, is the place where people display a remarkable unity in being separated from God, where constant efforts are made to exclude any divine intervention.
Perhaps 60 years ago there still was a country-side separated from the city, but now there is little difference. Food production with monstrous tractors and so much other energy-intensive machinery has become just as heavily dependent on the total energy package as the city. The modern farmer has become little more than an extension of the city system. Now with the opening of India and China many more billions want to adopt the Western City and will become enslaved to the environmental waste cause by human progress.
Yet the city, Cain’s answer to Eden, to paradise, is God’s way of preparing God’s people for the New Jerusalem, the City of God. The city is now the place through which Christians, wherever in the world, must pass. The city is the world today, the world is the city, the global village where, says 1 John 5: 19, Satan rules. The Arabian desert, the valleys of Nepal, the African jungle, the forests in Brazil, the space above the earth where the satellites roam, every square inch of the universe has been annexed by the city. We need to be in the city but not of the city. We must work for the betterment of the city without adopting the mentality of the city.
For Cain, the founder of the city, it was first of all a monument to his own pride, his defiance to the God whose existence he even denied. God now uses Cain’s pride and is using our pride to produce human progress. Cain saw the city as the expression of his power to thwart God’s efforts to bring creation to its fullness. God uses the momentum of progress and the advance of human knowledge not only to bring about the downfall of those who willfully pollute creation, but miraculously God also blesses human progress for the benefit of the building of God’s city. The contemporary designers and builders of the city now have no God-Creator factor in their blueprints, yet they cannot manage to exclude God from the city. When the full truth is revealed it will become plain that God has used the sinful efforts of humanity to bring about God’s plan, the New Jerusalem.
The city has become the place of non-communication. Through all branches of electronic and written media, through advertising and promoting a consumer lifestyle, the economic aims everywhere are clearly identical. With a universal economic language, with ‘market forces’ in control world-wide and instantaneous satellite communication everywhere, never has there been a greater choice in communication networks and simultaneously a greater lack of personal communication. It is the Tower of Babel confusion all over again but now the confusion is not caused by God but is self-generated. Confrontation is now world-wide. As the population pressures multiply, as the conflict zones expand, as the soil becomes more degraded and the air more dangerous, so too wars and rumors of war multiply. The tragedy of human progress, of a life lived without God is becoming more focused, and so are the voices of despair and the acts of desperation evident in the millions of migrants now moving to where food and safe shelter beckons. No longer is heard a message of optimism, of a better tomorrow.
The entire world is now city.
We are now in the midst of the great cosmic drama of conflict that defines the earth as it yearns for the perfection of heaven. As Johan Herman Bavinck in his exposition of John’s book of Revelation indicates: “everything on earth is tiring” while the church lives in conformity and contamination. Therefore the world remains ignorant of what is to come and will be utterly surprised when the mighty choral, the jubilation song of the victory, will resound through the universe.
Last week I wrote that, when disaster strikes, people in the city will not be able to find refuge. I did not elaborate then, promising to do this now. In my previous column “Does violence against creation and the killing by humans have a common root?” I mentioned that the Bible urges us “To come out of it”, meaning the destructive lifestyle we are engaged in, and I pointed to Cain as the ultimate cause of this situation.
It is true that the city, the bastion built by Cain and his offspring, provides no refuge because it has become totally dependent on creation-destroying energy resources, totally depending in its electricity distribution network. It is equally true that moving to the country is basically no solution as it too has become an integral part of the urban scene. That basically means that there is no possibility that we can pull through when global disaster strikes. That is the cruel truth.
So what does it mean when the Bible urges us “To come out of it?”
“God is a Spirit and we must worship him in spirit and in truth”, Jesus tells the Samaritan woman at the well of Jacob (John 4: 24). The truth of the matter is that we must first understand the real state of affairs in our world, which means the sinfulness of our creation-destroying way of life. This means that there is no real escape from disaster when this present world falls apart which it simply inevitable. Therefore we must rely on prayer and God’s goodness to face the horrors of disintegration as escape to a safe haven is impossible.
The time to mentally and spiritually prepare for that is now. We must detach ourselves from ‘the spirit of this age’, the false god of capitalism, the false notion that compromise is possible, the false optimism that somehow we can muddle through. Don’t expect the church at large to provide the answers, even though some of its members will.
The Bible in its last book, the Revelation of John, tells us that we live “At the threshold of Eternity”. Today we are exactly there. The stage is being set for Jesus to return, but not yet. More about that next week.
Next week: Why a world ruler – The Anti-Christ? – is a logical next step.
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