Cage-Free Christians
Living in the city has gotten me “a few steps” closer to living without a car. Why is this such a big deal? Several things excite me about this possibility:
1. It sets me free from slavery to the Middle East. That’s one less American dependant on imported oil, not to mention lays to rest many of the wars and conflict in the region, and keeps money in America, rather than shipping it to Dubai and other oil boom towns in the Middle East.
2. One less exhaust pipe stinking up the city air. I don’t know about you, but when I ride to work on my bike, it really hits me how much pollution really affects our city environment. Its sometimes hard to inhale because of all the diesel trucks and cars pumping toxic fumes out on Clark Street. It sure would be nice if we could smell that sweet Lake Michigan air coming in from just a few blocks away.
3. The most important reason is that living without a car reels us in as humans to a more realistic limit. Instead of charging ever forward to the next task or errand, maybe living without a car puts a few less things on our plate, and causes us to say “no” to more, and “yes” to only the most important things, which brings me to the point of this post:
Developing healthy disciples of Christ in the urban Chicago scene will be hyper-local (within close reach), will focus on just a few, and will live a counter-cultural lifestyle. Walking, biking, and taking trains and buses puts you in human-on-human situations in a way that a “cage on wheels” is designed to keep you from.
Think of Jesus and his disciples. They walked everywhere they went. Their entire “circle of influence” was within a 3 mile radius. That’s just a few “tribes” (or neighborhoods) in Israel. Think of all the holes we would have in the stories of Jesus and his disciples if they drove from city to city (no woman at the well, no healing at the Bethesda pool, no Roman Centurian coming to faith…the list goes on….) It was because they were more focused on the journey than the destination that gave them a capacity to be sensitive to people in need, and God’s adventure for them along the way.
BTW – I think its awesome how Israel and Chicago are designed into walkable neighborhoods, each with their own distinctive ethnic and cultural flair. Both even have identical urban design (with lakefront property!) Check out what I’m talking about:
Fascinating! A lifestyle of community, neighborhood and walking promotes a discipleship engaged in interaction with neighbors – rather than a curriculum isolated by commute times.
I’m trying to implement this with disciples in our Pray4Chicago Project. This project is designed to get people out of their cages (cars yes, but also our daily rat-race routines that blind us to what God is doing in the city) and into their neighbors lives. What sort of things might happen? Well, when this happened with Jesus and his disciples, he said he saw “Satan fall like lightning from the sky!…and now you can walk among snakes and scorpions and crush them!” If Jesus gets this psyched about walking, maybe I should park my car, get out of my cage, and give it a try too.
