This is what I enjoy about reading the Bible and listening to the perspectives of thoughtful people: I’ve been a Christian for a little over 30 years and I’m constantly learning. I see us as empty vessels into which knowledge is poured like earth. The first may be in the form of boulders — the basic understanding that we are saved by Christ alone through faith and repentance. Then progressively smaller rocks – the details of God’s plan and how it unfolds in the Bible — down to finer points that works like sand filling in the gaps in our understanding.
This (it can’t be an original thought) came to me as I considered what I heard Tim Keller lay out a concept to which I hadn’t given much thought, in a podcast titled “The Battle for the Will.”
He starts by explaining our position in the world as Christians — “not tourists, not immigrants.” Tourists go to a destination with no intention of fitting in or staying. They travel in groups of like mind. They see the main sites, then go to the airport and leave most often never to return. No permanence.
Immigrants come to a destination with the intent to assimilate — to become full-fledged citizens and contribute to the society they are adopting. They’re escaping somewhere and (should) want to fit in to their new homes to some extent.
But Christians? As the saying goes, we are to be in the world but not of it. We’re not tourists, not really caring about the place in which we find ourselves. Nor are we immigrants, hoping to completely become a part of it.
Keller goes on though. He explains our position in parallel to the exile in Babylon. The Jews were not tourists — nor were they immigrants. They were prisoners. But God gives them a command — they are to pray for their prison. “Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat their produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare” (Jeremiah 29:4-7).
And this should be the Christian today. Exiles in a foreign land, not citizens. Longing for our true home. But this too: Commanded by God to be at peace with those around us. To pray for our neighbors. To contribute. All with the promise of going someday to our true home and not some place equally as ugly as the place in which we live now. We are not tourists – here for a visit only to return eventually to our native land. But we aren’t immigrants either — we should have no intention of staying. We are still entirely separated as a chosen people
So my lesson today: we are exiles in Babylon, and although we are not to be in love with the world, we are to pray for it and the people therein. And we are to do it looking to our eternal home where the cares of the world shall pass away and we are safe in the arms of the Lord.
