What Faith Offers Urbanists: A Reason to Build

Over the last several weeks, I’ve been asked on numerous occasions about how faith has shaped the way I view urbanism and other topic around city building. Today’s edition of Hope in Cities is an attempt to answer that question in some detail.

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You’ve seen the before and after pictures. The once-great places ravaged by the suburban experiment and auto-centricity; highways that decimated historic neighborhoods and displaced marginalized peoples; paradise paved to put up a parking lot (shoutout to Joni Mitchell).

Those pictures can be inspiring rally cries to rebuild what we once had. They show us what’s possible. But they can also be incredibly discouraging: if great places were destroyed once, who’s to say they won’t be paved over or otherwise dismantled again?

These questions tend to create an existential dread reminiscent of that which opens the book of Ecclesiastes:

“‘Meaningless! Meaningless! . . . .Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless.’ What do people gain from all their labors at which they toil under the sun?” Ecclesiastes 1:1-4 (ESV)

So what do we do? How do we continue to put our finite time, energy, and resources into things which seemingly won’t ultimately matter?

The book of Hebrews offers an answer:

For here we have no lasting city, but we seek the city that is to come.
Hebrews 13:14 (ESV)

The hope of Christianity rests in something called the Gospel of the Kingdom.

Christians believe that in the death and resurrection of Christ, people find personal salvation. You’re probably aware of this. But they also receive an invitation into the kingdom of God - the work God is doing both now and in the future to restore the world from the sin that entered at the fall of man.

Jesus is more than a “Get out of hell free” ticket, and heaven is more than clouds and harps (I’m still not sure where we get that idea from). When Christ returns, he doesn’t promise a “Round 2” of his first-century earthly ministry, but rather an ushering in of a restored and perfect kingdom. Heaven coming down to earth.

In Revelation 21, the penultimate chapter of scripture, the apostle John describes what this will be like:

And he carried me away in the Spirit to a great, high mountain, and showed me the holy city Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God, having the glory of God, its radiance like a most rare jewel, like a jasper, clear as crystal . . . . The foundations of the wall of the city were adorned with every kind of jewel. The first was jasper, the second sapphire, the third agate, the fourth emerald, the fifth onyx, the sixth carnelian, the seventh chrysolite, the eighth beryl, the ninth topaz, the tenth chrysoprase, the eleventh jacinth, the twelfth amethyst. 21 And the twelve gates were twelve pearls, each of the gates made of a single pearl, and the street of the city was pure gold, like transparent glass.”
Revelation 21: 9,18-21

Paradise in the opening chapters of Genesis is a garden. But eternal paradise in Revelation is a city. A city created by the hand and breath of God, more perfect and complete than we could ever imagine.

Like utopianism, Christian faith encourages a belief in a perfect world. But unlike utopianism, Jesus doesn’t task us with building it.

So what does this mean for the Christian urbanist? Even if this city sounds pretty great, why build if everything we do now will ultimately be wiped away by some sort of eschatological gentrification?

In the present moment, the Christian’s work is not that of an architect or a planner, but of a reporter, a neighbor, and an evangelist.

In everything we do, including working toward better cities, we wage war against the darkness of the present world and strive to provide a taste of and an invitation to a life of freedom in a city built by the architect of all architects. We create beacons of hope for weary souls seeking present and eternal rest. We do this by loving our neighbors, and we do this by building places where they can flourish - a hint of what eternity will be like with God.

And we do this work out of the freedom that our salvation and our future home both rest on the finished work of Christ. When we stumble in our own lives, and when we fail to create places of ultimate human flourishing, neither define us; neither is the lynchpin of our fate.

At the cross and at the city gate, the Lord says “It is done.” (John 19:30, Revelation 21:6).

We all feel a sense of restlessness and despair in our current condition. No matter our faith (or lack thereof), we all share a deep and aching sense that things are not how they should be. We recognize the fleeting nature of even the most beautiful places, relationships, and people.

And like Samwise Gamgee, we wonder: “Is everything sad going to become untrue?”

In Christ, and the new creation he promises, the Christian faith answers that question with a resounding “yes.”

Most of urbanism is an act of chasing heaven. But for the Christian, there is a remedy to that restlessness. The kingdom of heaven comes down to us. And until our final breath, we get the privilege of building places that give our neighbors a taste of what the Lord is preparing for us.