Little boxes on the hillside... thoughts on chapter 2

I came home from St. Mary's this afternoon for spring break.  I went to go visit my friend Sean who lives a couple of blocks away from me, and without thinking, I asked my parents for the car to drive over there.  As I was driving there I realized that it was about the distance that I would walk from my townhouse to Calvert.  Why am I driving?  I'm at home that's just what I do.

This is what scares me about the suburbs.  This is a relatively small example.  But it scares me how easy it is to slip into a suburban ideology and way of life.  I found Lewis's "grey town" that Hsu cites in chapter 2 disturbingly appropriate as he jumped into his exploration of suburban living.  For me, the suburbs are a place where I feel as though I am surrounded by Satan.  That is not to say that they are evil, but they are full of deception and separation (Satan's best skills).  A place and a way of life that feels like mine is not.  It deceives me with its homely comfort and thereby tempts me to fall into the excesses that Christ has called me to resist.  The suburbs are deceptive to many.  Although the suburbs were marketed as "Edens" they may have turned out to be "grey towns."  There is deception because there is the appearance of community, but little to no authentic community, there is the appearance of cleanliness and niceness, but that is because the trash and brokenness have been shipped outside, there is the appearance of a safe place to raise kids and yet the devil is hard at work shaping their minds (check out the quote on page 45-46) and leading them towards death.  What scares me more than raising my kids in a neighborhood with a lot of crime, is raising them in a place where they will grow up self-absorbed and lack empathy.  I see this in myself and the ways Columbia has influenced me and taught me pity rather than empathy.  But empathy is what Jesus is all about.  Empathy is the incarnation, the crucifixion, and the resurrection.  Empathy is what it means to be a part of the church.  Empathy is what it means to love.  How can I raise my kids in a place that stunts that growth?  That is the real danger. There is separation in the suburbs as people are separated from their neighbors, from their families, from people from other socioeconomic classes (and sometimes ethnicities), from their food, from their jobs (long commutes), from their trash, and from their impact on the earth and society around them.  Satan is alive and well in the suburbs.  The church?  Not so much.  Which is what is so intriguing about Hsu's section "In search of Christian Suburbia."  He presents some interesting possibilities, such as the sixplexes and the sustainable suburbs project, some of which sound similar to Jubilee in some ways only in a more suburban setting.  I think these sorts of alternatives to single family living could be very effective ways to live out the gospel in the suburbs, however they would face the danger of falling into the same thing that single family units fall into, becoming self-absorbed.  Family becomes an extension of the self and community can as well.  Especially within such an individualistic context, it would be easy for such a community to be insular and self-serving.  Not reaching out into its surroundings.  But that is a danger in most any setting.  Individualism is really the threat and temptation that a suburban missionary would most have to battle with, as it is so pervasive and easy to fall into, yet pretty much the exact opposite of Christianity.  As someone who was raised in the suburbs the thought of being a missionary there terrifies me.  Not only because I have a lot of suburban anger (as you may have caught onto already), but because I firmly believe that the suburbs would be the most challenging mission field.  It would be so difficult not to backslide into the deception of the culture around you, but also I think it would go something along the lines of "a prophet is never accepted in his/her hometown."  If you go start your weird intentional community experiment in the inner city, you are already weird because you are a white suburbanite choosing to live in the inner city.  Here you are with people just like you, but there are two families living in your single family home.  Your whole street grows things together, shares cars, and prays together.  Pretty soon the neighbors are going to tell their kids not to play on the commie cult street.  The weirdness just got way more intense and acute.   There would be more barriers to break through to get to know your neighbors (not to mention fences).  I think community would look much more radical here because it would be so different from suburban culture and yet in the middle of it.

I'm intrigued, but I am also scared and still bitter towards the 'burbs.

Also, I have to comment on Columbia.  I'm not sure if Hsu has ever been here, but what he describes sounds more like the vision for Columbia than what it is actually like.  It is true that there are diverse housing options in each village and neighborhood of Columbia, but they are still somewhat separate and still only cater to a fairly narrow socioeconomic window.  Columbia is a pricey place to live whether in an apartment or a single family home.  There is definitely poverty in Columbia, but it is pretty well masked for the most part.  Also, I still haven't found this great public transportation to dc and baltimore.