Suburbia

I"m going to start a series of posts on Suburbia. Why? Because I live there. :)

There has been much written lately on how to minister to different areas in our society. . . inner city, suburbs, rural, etc. . . . . Without a doubt, there has been too much written, and each part of our society comes with it's own problems, and each part needs Christians in them. The bible speaks in universals on this topic (mostly) and there isn't a right or wrong place to live.

So, as I write this series. . please know that I'm not saying that everything about the suburbs is wrong, and bad. The cities have their own problems and so do the rural areas.

I think, it's important though, to know what sins your local society pushes you towards, or make "easy" for you. There are things about the way in which you've chosen to live that push you towards certain things and away from other things. It's really important to realize that, then you can know what things to "flee" from and what things to "hold on to". That's all I"m trying to do. So, with that. . . I"ll do a shorter part 1, . . since I"ve already blabbed on.

#1 The Suburbs push you towards the sin of comparison/coveteousness.

I'll give this a short explanation here and come back to it in later points. But, basically, our suburban neighborhoods often turn into a big "show off" for folks with their houses, cars, accessories, etc . . .

When you're in the city and live in an apartment or older home, you're not trying to show off your stuff because there's so many people in a high-density area that no one cares about what you have :). In rural areas, you have more land (even in the "town" sections of rural areas) for your house and more of your stuff is "functional" (farm equipment, barns, fences, gardens, etc..) So having stuff is not for the purpose of "having the best/biggest/greenest _____ you fill it in). You have it because you need it.

I'm not sure what about the suburbs/home depot/lowe's/upgrades/floorplan/SUV culture that pushes us this way. But, for whatever reason, . . we're all trying to impress each other with what we're doing with our stuff in the suburbs. That much is un-deniable. We can take some instruction from the Apostle Paul when he said in 1 Thessalonians 4:11
"Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life, to mind your own business . . . .


more to come. . . . . .