Smart city, loving God
In 2013 Fast Company ranked Seattle as the smartest city in America. Congratulations! I imagine not much has changed in a year. Heck, we probably got smarter! Brilliance and innovation makes Seattle an exciting place to live. Startups find fertile soil and young professionals find promising careers in our fair city. World leading companies like Amazon and Microsoft have literally changed how we live, where we do our work, and where we buy our kid’s diapers. Boeing continues to make the world safe to explore, while Expedia helps us plan our trips. Need I mention Costco?
There is little question in my mind, our collective brilliance is a sign of God’s love and grace upon our city. Part of why we were put on this planet was to steward God’s creation and cultivate it’s potential. We ought to thrive on this creativity; it’s what keeps us going. Furthermore, God gives us significant freedom to use our minds and to dream big.
At the same time, given our smarts, there might just come the temptation to think that our brilliance and creativity obviates any felt need for our Maker. Some of the strongest objections to faith are cultivated in the kind of minds that make our region great—imagining that to preserve intellectual integrity, we best avoid faith altogether. Or if one does have faith, he must be shutting off parts of his brain.
I’d suggest that our God-given minds lead us to opposite conclusions. Shouldn’t a Microsoft programmer who understands the difficulty of writing code, marvel at the 3300 billion lines of code that a Designer has, inexplicably, embedded in our DNA? Shouldn’t a Boeing engineer who perfects the wings of a 737, marvel at the sparrow, not one of which, Jesus said, “falls to the ground outside your Father’s care?” (Matthew 10:29). And shouldn’t a scientist at Fred Hutch who gives her life to battling rebellious cells, occasionally marvel that the majority of cells in the human body don’t rebel?
I’m not sure intellectual soundness is faith’s hang-up. Perhaps it’s something deeper. What message could possibly capture people’s hearts and minds?
The Apostle Paul, writing in the first century to a group of Christians in the city of Corinth, reveals his approach to people this way: “And I, when I came to you, brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. And I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling, and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.” (2 Cor. 2:1-5)
I’m intrigued by Paul’s words, because I often find myself tempted to think that a smart city demands smart answers, answers full of “lofty speech and wisdom”. Paul seems to think differently, hinting that our longings are more complex then logic and reason alone. He worked hard to simplify his message to two things: Christ and him crucified. Why is this message so powerful? What about all the objections? What about the pervasive skepticism?
Paul is not original in his thinking; he is actually taking his cues from God. God’s plan all along, to reach into our world and rescue humanity, was not through an appeal to reason, but through a saving act of love. A genuine and sacrificial act of love. In Jesus, God came to our world, and laid his life down, taking the death we deserved upon himself, so that we could be with God forever. The cross is God’s loving appeal: “Come Home!”
It’s easy to debate right and wrong, republican or democrat, conservative or liberal (all things many people assume Christian’s are fixated on). But it’s really hard to debate love. Love is in a category of its own. Sometimes it doesn’t make much sense. In fact, when it’s undeserved, love makes very little sense. That’s grace. I think this is why Jesus crucified is so powerful. It’s powerful because one must reckon with it, no matter what the objections are. And when presented, like a gift, it’s received or discarded, trusted or dismissed, beautiful or embarrassing, powerful or foolish. It’s hard to argue with love.
So if God’s way of reaching the world centers on the sacrificial love of Jesus on the cross, our love more than our smarts will draw others too. And if this good news, illuminated by God’s spirit, has transformed the hearts, minds, and cultures of billions of people for over two centuries now, I’m sure it’s still good enough for Seattle. After all, it’s pretty hard to resist love, no matter how smart you are.
– Pastor Jeff