What is the Cost of Living in the City of God

As I sit here balancing my monthly budget, feeling my usual mix of hopefulness and regret, I was wondering what it would be like to live in a world without this stress. Perhaps anyone who has dealt with everyday annoyances like this might feel the same. I begin to think about escape, release, sanctuary, and I recall the story of John the Baptist from the Gospel of Matthew, third chapter. Perhaps you have heard of it?

The story is familiar enough, and the upshot is a picture of John as compared to Jesus like the night coming before day. John, we are told, is wild and wooly, even savage. Jesus, of whom he speaks, is, by contrast, portrayed in the Gospels generally as refined, genteel, preternaturally calm. One is wild; the other, civilized. One is a student; the other, a teacher. One is Id; the other; Superego.

We are told that John had a loyal following. I’ve always had the impression of a bunch of hippies, so to speak, going to see him outside the city, leaving their busy lives behind for a moment to be baptized into something new. Perhaps it was like what we might do by going on retreat; any chance to get away from it all was probably as popular in that day as it is in ours.

And, I have always wondered about what such meetings might have looked like. Going outside the city for a while to hear someone talk about the better days ahead; I’ve always imagined it was something like the weekend life-coaching seminars we have today. A successful woman or man comes to town, and people go out to hear her or him. They go to hear advice, wisdom, counsel, some nugget of knowledge that unlocks the secret to enjoying a life that seems increasingly hectic, often frantic, always on the verge, and never quite satisfying. Read some of the words from defendants in the recent college admissions scandal and one gets the sense that this enormous pressure to succeed today runs up and down the social spectrum. Hustle is the high cost of living in the city.

In any case, people then and now want to become committed to a new lifestyle. They want to be motivated for the next big thing! The last time I went to something like this was a real estate seminar in San Diego. At this event, we were told to envision the future, feel it, and work towards it. We were admonished to never forget something better is coming.

To sacrifice now for later is a life-coaching maxim. Gene Simmons has a life coaching book now; you know, the KISS guy. He’s giving work and life advice about how to be rich and “successful.” His version of sacrificing now for later is to not sleep or take a vacation. Elon Musk says something similar, and so does Jack Ma, founder of Alibaba. In sum, their advice is, see if you want to rich like me, then you must work every day without a life. Because that’s how I did it! 

And one can see the appeal. A happy promise is always appealing. It’s extremely motivating. So, if Simmons, Musk, Ma, the US military, and Donald Trump can use the imagination to motivate, and John the Baptist uses it in the Gospel, then what’s the problem? 

This a question that that intrigued 4th century Christian theologian Augustine of Hippo. And in his seminal defense of Christianity, The City of God, he comes to an interesting insight about this dilemma. Are the life in the world and living for God two different realities that require different life strategies? Augustine says no. He says that is the mistake of the Manicheans, his contemporaries who believed the world was evil and only an otherworldly Heaven was good. Augustine, however, argues that the world is good, people are fundamentally good, and our desire is good. 

However, the evils of the world arise when we forget our true nature as creatures of God; when we desire things in the world and forget that our truest desire is, in fact, for God. When we forget this, we confuse God with the world; we think they are one and the same. God is eternal, real, worthwhile, while the world is, not evil, but ephemeral, transient, not worthy of our deepest desire. Mistaking the world for God invariably leads us to pursue God by pursuing things in the world. We regrettably think God is out in the world somewhere to be worked for, found, purchased. 

This is how capitalism works. It wants us to desire the things markets have to offer, and it convinces us by claiming these can satisfy our deepest desires, for happiness, satisfaction, joy. Again, the problem is these yearnings can find relief only in God. To claim that the market can provide happiness and joy is to claim the market and God are one and the same thing, when in fact they are not. 

Another way to put this, according to Augustine, is to say the city of God is already here. From God’s perspective, therefore, we are already saved, only we make the tragic mistake of thinking we are not. So, we chase things in the world; we listen to commercials and charismatic people who promise happiness and joy, if only we would buy this or subscribe to that. We are desperate for that nugget of knowledge that will unlock life, that promises salvation, that will make us new. Is it any wonder we work so hard to buy the latest products? Because they are new; they are the latest, therefore they must be the key. 

So how do we resist? The key, pun intended, is so simple and free, it is incredible: the market offers and demands more, but God does not. God never says the future will be better; God says only to remember that the “already” is now, even though it looks like “not yet.” The “already” and the “not yet.” These are the tricky parts to keep track of when hearing prophets of anything.  False prophets like Trump will argue that the good stuff is coming; if you do this. And support me while I do that, then our fantasies will come true, and the future will be bright. 

And it’s works because the “not yet” is so readily apparent. You’re not happy, remember? Not rich. Not healthy, satisfied, or successful, whatever that means. 

But there’s the rub. It only seems so to me and to you. God through Jesus however, says Augustine, has already made it so, the “already” takes precedence. Life is then a blend of tragedy and comedy. The tragic we can see; the disappointments, the hurts, and the pain come too fast to ignore. 

Through the haze of the market, what is hard to see is that death and pain do not have the final answer. If we are Christians, then this is our open secret. We live lives of comedy, lives that seem funny to everyone else because they are slightly off, like John’s wearing camel hair and eating wild honey and locusts. We live lives that are just outside the city! We are called to live in that second city—the city of God. Life is indeed a tale of two cities, but we know which one will outlast the other, because it is not coming, as the market says, but already here, through a life of faith. We see through the world hazily and “darkly,” but insistent that much of what we suffer is self-inflicted, chasing answers that capitalism says we must have and can have if only we buy the next, latest, better, more…  

If John were a false prophet, he would not have baptized the people who came to see him. He would have told them come back for more, to buy his latest book. But he lives outside the city; he lives a life of faith, a life that is already good and happy. Not always pleasurable, but joyful in the truest sense. Thus, his followers could be baptized into the living faith of Jesus, as if he were “already” present. So too are we called; the good news is, contrary to the free market, it is a low cost of living. 

I’m doing my very best to keep all of this in mind while finishing working on balancing my check book. 

Amen!