Home & Religon

I have been branching out of my typical reading lately, theology. Joey recommended a book to me called "The Geography of Nowhere". I was reading today on my lunch break and came across an interesting section. The author, who is a none believer, wrote this book in an effort to lament how we as a country live in our communities and our houses. I find there are several interesting parallels in what he describes in the following:

Americans wonder why their houses lack charm. The word charm may seem fussy, trivial, vague. I use it to mean explicitly that which makes our physical surroundings worth caring about. It is not a trivial matter, for we are presently suffering on a massive scale the social consequences of living in places that are not worth caring about. Charm is dependent on connectedness, on continuities, on the relation of one thing to another, often expressed as tension, like the tension between private space and public space, or the sacred and the workaday, or the interplay of a space that is easily comprehensible, such as a street, with the mystery of openings that beckon, such as a doorway set deeply in a building. Of course, if the public space is degraded by cars and their special needs - as it always is in America, whether you live in Beverly Hills or Levittown - the equation is spoiled. If nothing is sacred, then everything is profane.

The equation is also spoiled when buildings cease to use the basic physical vocabulary of architecture - extrusions and recesses - and instead resort to to tacked-on symbols and signs. One is a real connection with the real world; the other is an appeal to the second-hand mental associations.

This habit of resorting to signs and symbols to create the illusion of charm in our everyday surroundings is symptomatic of a growing American character disorder: The belief that it is possible to get something for nothing... They (Americans) didn't care if things were real or not, if ideas were truthful. In fact, they preferred fantasy. They preferred Lies. And the biggest lie of all was the place they lived was home.

He goes on from there. But you get the point.

There are alot of applications that we could pull from this, and at some point all illustrations break down. I thought about the tension the author refers to and remember something that our pastor told me several years ago when dealing with tension in the promises of God. He basically said that tensions are good. They keep us striving for the truth and in making our calling and election sure. I think of all the people who call themselves Christians but are not and simply hold to the tacked on symbols of "Faith". It sickens me to think of these people living a lie. They believe they are a 200 year-old Georgian Plantation house but are really just a prettied up Jim Walter Home.

Food for thought.

Brice