Last night we arrived home from a weekend out of town, and Julie asked me "I wonder how long it will take the kids in our neighborhood to find out we're home? Ten, or maybe fifteen minutes?" Like clockwork, about ten minutes later a group of seven or eight boys and girls stopped at our house to visit. We were still unpacking our car, so we stopped what we were doing and chatted for a while to catch up on everything that had happened in our neighborhood while we were gone. One boy had a birthday, hence the reason he had cake icing smeared on his face. One kid had a new bike, and he had to tell us every detail about it. That group of kids left, and we went inside to put Kyra and Sierra to bed. While I was tucking Sierra in, she said "Dad... I'm so happy to be home. I missed our house and I missed everyone." With the kids snuggled in to their beds, Julie and I settled into our summer evening ritual of sitting on the front porch to reflect on our day. We greeted people as they walked past. We talked to our neighbors. A kid from our Monday night group saw us and stopped by for a freezie pop. The combination of the warm summer breeze, the good conversation, and the unpredictability of who we might meet next made for a fun evening. We were both happy to be back at home and in our neighborood with our community again.
The story I just told is not the picture that most people have in their minds about Homewood. Most people in Pittsburgh think of Homewood as a dangerous place that reasonable people should stay away from at all costs. However, this story captures well the countercultural and radical call of the gospel of Jesus Christ. The message of the world, especially in America, is that we should make our lives more comfortable. Good people distance themselves from the poor by becoming upwardly mobile and living out the American Dream. Success means more money and more power and bigger houses and bigger toys. Meanwhile, that worldly message is crushing people (including many Christians in America who are desperately trying to do whatever it takes to achieve that lifestyle). Authentic community... the kind that we read about in the book of Acts in the Bible... the kind that Jesus Christ modeled for us... is nearly impossible to find if we choose to distance ourselves from the poor and choose to live in a world of individuality and consumerism. Christians around America are moving into gated communities at an alarming rate, doing what they think is best in distancing themselves and their families from brokenness in the world when in fact they are going in the complete opposite direction of Jesus' radical call to live out the gospel in a broken world. In fact, even if a community does not have a gated entrance, many American Christians choose to live in places where the society has been set up so that they do not have to interact with any poor people where they live, where they shop, where they go out to eat, where they go to church, and where they work.
My point is that it is extremely difficult to experience authentic community, the kind that the early Christian church experienced, by living in places that promote individuality, consumerism, racial discrimination, and class discrimination. The interesting thing is, people will go to amazing extremes in order to live in places like that. They'll take on crazy mortgages, work crazy hours, and sacrifice in crazy ways in order to reach the lofty heights of... there being no poor people around them to interact with, everybody having the same skin color and socioeconomic class as them, and intentionally distancing themselves from being able to live out Christ's call to be his hands and feet to people who have been marginalized by this world. My life is not perfect, but I have found that I have experienced greater community in Homewood than I have in any other place I have lived during my lifetime (which has mostly been in the suburbs). I love living in the inner city. I love having people stop over to visit with us all the time. I love knowing my neighbors, and not having to force those relationships. I love that God has put me in a position to be an extension of the body of Christ to meet people's needs as those needs arise in a neighborhood that is largely rejected by the successful and powerful people living in Pittsburgh. There's no place I'd rather be.
If this post is challenging you, I might suggest a few questions for you to ask yourself. Have you chosen to live in a neighborhood that buffers itself from poor people, where the majority of people there are the same as you racially and socioeconomically? How about where you choose to shop, worship, and work... does everyone seem to look the same as you racially and socioeconomically? Is your lifestyle radical, or do your values pretty much look like the values that the world promotes and embraces? Have you, maybe unintentionally, distanced yourself from people in need in order to pursue a more comfortable lifestyle? Are you engaged in deep, meaningful relationships with people in need? If you are struggling with the answers to these questions as I do, my advice would be to go back to the Bible and read the Gospels and Acts through in order to challenge yourself with how countercultural Jesus' life was and how countercultural the lives of early Christians were. Those examples are far greater than anything I could ever share about my own lifestyle. After all, the point is Jesus, not me. The point is that followers of Jesus should be living in ways that are different than the world's measures of success. When we enter a relationship with Jesus, our lives should never be the same. We now live according to biblical values, not worldly values. I hope all Christians can come to experience the joy that is found in living a radical, sold out life for Jesus that does not conform to this world.
3 comments:
What a difference there would be if we all took seriously the example of real community presented in the Gospel! Our experience in San Salvador is very different from yours, but also very much the same. Yesterday my family had lunch with some homeless men, chatted with them in our (very broken) Spanish, and played some games with them. And we had a great time! Back when we were focused on achieving our American dream this is something we would never have imagined! But my husband and I and our kids have found such richness in the relationships with these men. They are becoming our friends. Would I ever in my wildest dreams pictured my five year old daughter hugging a teenage drug addict in El Salvador? No way but God has dreams for us in this kind of community that we never can imagine ourselves. Thanks for encouraging others to look for what God has for them "out there" in the world!
Danielle... thank you for this great example. You are giving your kids a tremendous gift by raising them in that environment. First, it sounds like you're raising them in an urban environment. God is moving in urban environments all over the world, and your kids will be much better equipped to understand how God is moving in cities than kids who were raised in sheltered, suburban or rural environments. Second, your kids are building authentic relationships with poor and marginalized people as a part of the rhythm of their every day lives. Many parents intentionally shelter their kids from brokenness and suffering and poor people, and then they try to overcompensate by introducing those things to their kids in controlled environments like visiting soup kitchens or short term mission trips. That type of parenting sends very mixed and confusing theological signals to kids, and they will likely have a hard time applying their faith and understanding the true nature of the kingdom of God when they become adults. Your kids will know the kingdom of God because they are experiencing it in a real, authentic way. Finally, it sounds like you are raising them in an environment that is different from them racially and socioeconomically. What a tremendous blessing you are giving them! Most of the people in the world live on less than two dollars a day. Most of the world is non-American and non-white. Your kids will have a much more complete understanding of how the world really operates by living in an area with high poverty and where people are different than them. Your daughter will learn more about the profound, countercultural love of Christ and the kingdom of God by hugging a drug addict in El Salvador than she will ever learn in a controlled Sunday School classroom environment in America.
Thanks for the encouragement! We are in a very urban environment. San Salvador is the capital of El Salvador with around 2 million people. Although we are far from Pittsburgh, there are many similar elements to our experiences. I agree with you that God is moving in urban environments. That is very clear in Latin America as each year more and more people move from the rural areas into the urban centers. There are many social problems here, particularly the large rate of gang violence. So many Christians in El Salvador, both national and missionaries, have reservations about reaching out to kids in gangs and on the streets. Since we moved from Cranberry Township, the gang culture is not something that we were very familiar with! It does look "crazy" that we would take our two young kids to a city with one of the highest percentage of homicides in the world, not to mention a myriad of other social problems. But the experiences we have all gained just in our first nine months here are completely worth it. I think it would have been "crazy" for us not to do this. The thing we love about being in this city is that we are right in the middle of what God is doing...where heaven meets hell in many senses. It hasn't been easy, but it was the best move we've ever made. And as I've read in your posts, that's been true for your family too!
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