I was in self-check out at our local grocery store when I overhead a conversation that has stuck with me. A middle-aged lady was explaining to another customer how a relative of hers had recently sold his home in Boise in order to buy a large tract of land in Montana. He purchased this massive estate for less than the cost of his home here. She was feverish with excitement about the opportunity.
She concluded with some mixed advice for her fellow shopper, who was warming to the idea, or at least sociably humoring her, “I would get in on that now. But don’t tell anybody, or else they’ll ruin it, like they did here!” As a recent transplant, I don’t have much room to criticize, seeing as I am one of the ruiners. But this attitude on rapid population growth comes out a lot, and for a Christian, it’s the wrong one.
I get it. I don’t like paving pebbles cracking my windshield, traffic and road closures, and longer lines at Target. Healthy processing of change is at least fifty percent grieving. You lose people, freedoms, and customs that never return. Growth requires adapting to change and seeing familiarity die.
Many growth-frustrated people long for the tranquility of unblemished nature or a slower pace of life, both of which grow scarce during urbanization. When you come down to it, though, the core objection I hear most often is that there are just plain too many…people. We should think carefully about such a reaction. There was a line I heard a couple years ago, and its wisdom has grown over time with me as I see it hold true in more and more places, including residential density: “There are no victories. Only tradeoffs.”
Cities, compared to small towns, contain more good and more bad because they contain more people. When you bring more human beings together, you will get more—more extremes and more of everything in between. You will get more crime, but you will also get more beauty. You will get more traffic, but you will get more places to go. You will get more rudeness and more kindness.
In pastoring I’ve heard the quip, “ministry would be great if it weren’t for the people.” When you complain that there are too many people, it’s worth remembering that you classify as part of that unfortunate category to someone else. Sometimes we epitomize cities as dens of sin while nature reflects purity and innocence. But God made human beings the crown of creation—the only thing created in his image, the only thing you will ever encounter with an eternal soul. Nature, meanwhile, can be more cold and brutal than any prison.
The Bible develops the imagery of two symbolic cities: Babylon and Jerusalem. Babylon teems with abuse, injustice, and selfish pleasure. Jerusalem shines with beauty, harmony, and generous abundance. Cities in this world are a mixture of both. Jesus primarily ministered by healing and restoring those around him, not by withdrawing to the wilderness. As Jeremiah said to the Israelite exiles, Christians should follow our Lord in “seeking the welfare of the city where God has placed us.” (Jeremiah 29:7)
An earlier version of this article was first published in the Star Courier
