Is this accidental how people who are authentically changed by grace and mercy and are showing it in radical ways in and through cities?
Jesus uses this metaphor. “You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden.” This reflects what the Jewish people were told to do during their “in-between” time in Jeremiah 29:4-14 They were told to settle and grow in the city, seeking the peace and prosperity of the city, especially the impoverished.
Time and time again, Christian teachings and community have proved effective in the solutions to poverty.
Am I saying that religion is the answer?
Yes and no.
It would be an oversimplification and a great horror to minimize the complexity and depth of social problems by saying that people just need to get more religious.
What I am exploring is what happens when Christians become truer in their faith ignites a social change that leads to cultural transformation.
Christian community is the only solution, because it is the only one that seeks to go far enough to be effective.
It is more conservative than a liberal approach and more liberal than a conservative approach, but it is more extreme than either.
What produces lasting or sustainable change?
Enlisting participants, in a sociology project aimed to combat a social problem, who do not look into the eyes of poverty as participants in a community but that want to befriend them and participate with them as a part of their family.
Living among people with values, beliefs, and practices that differ greatly, the Christian message, moral standard, and community still stand out as powerful and essential agents of change and resolutions to the social problems that exist in cities, especially poverty.
The answer is not to abandon these things in this city and leave the city that is dreamt about with the alarm clocks, but make that city a reality through the practice of the standards and resources of the Christian faith and community, to heal poverty.
