In examining history and the contemporary world-wide climate, it is clear that religions rub up against each other and cause conflict, sometimes with catastrophic results. If one group of people believes they have "the truth," it follows that others who believe differently would not have the truth. This can often lead to arrogance, stereotyping, hatred, and oppression.  

What then is the solution to this discord? What do we do? Many academics had hoped, and continue to hope, that with time and education people will stop believing in religious views, yet that has not actually happened. The percentage of people who say they are religious worldwide has grown over the last fifty years, not declined. In America there is a new fascination with spirituality today that was not present fifty years ago. In Africa, the percentage of professing Christians has increased from 9% to 50% in 50 years. In South Korea, in the percentage of professing Christians has increased from 1% to 50% over the past 100 years. In China, there is an explosion of people believing in Christianity even though the government has tried to stomp it out. Clearly it is not just going to go away. 

Others claim that active education against religion will eradicate the oppressive and strife associated with religion. The New Atheism of Dawkins and Hitchins pushes a view of radical secularism where no faith views are allowed. These authors state that atheism is the best for humanity. Sociologists, however, have noted that atheists and secularists are the least giving of their money. If secularists are right and this is all there is in life and all values are relative and we are just the sum total of carbon, chemicals and oxygen, then one could care about people if they want to, but it would not be a social imperative. Based on the data, secularism does not seem to spur people on to caring for the greater good of society. 

So what do we going to do? We are all part of a greater society but it seems religious people on the whole are tribal and intolerant of people who do not hold on to their own views, and secular people on the whole fail to make as much of an effort to give of their possessions and time. How are we to live in the world as a society? As Christians, we must also ask how we can believe in an absolute TRUTH without being oppressive or arrogant? 

Christians tend to fall into the same arrogance as secularist and believers of other religions. It is easy to fall into the trap of self-righteousness and condemnation. Jeremiah 29 clearly calls Christians to engage with a different culture, to live with those who have different worldviews, and to work for the redemption and the peace of the city in which they dwell. Jeremiah 29 speaks to the experience of the Jewish population, God's people, who were taken away from their homeland by the Babylonians. The reason why they were brought there was to essentially breed them out, to have them be absorbed into that culture, into that society, and to become non-distinct. Interestingly, the Babylonians wanted the Israelites to lose their faith, much like our modern secularists desire a society in which religion is not present.  

The prophet Jeremiah speaks for God and tells the Jews to build houses, plant gardens, eat, have sons and daughters, find wives, increase, and care about the peace and prosperity of the city. What? This is the city that is filled with the people that raped and killed your family members—the ultimate people who don't get your faith. Babylon in the Bible is always the place that is known for where violence and oppression comes from and yet: 

a) In verse 4, God sent the people there "I carried you into exile" and b) now I want you stay awhile and care about this town and people who are different from you and even hate you. What God is doing in this chapter is revealing a completely different plan for the entire world. So how were these Jews going to be any different? They weren't. Not naturally. Augustine who lived in 400 AD, developed an idea about two cities: the city of God and the city of man. The city of man is characterized by pride, self-service, and the oppression of others. In contrast, the Bible speaks about a heavenly city that operates not on pride but on peace, joy, and justice. This heavenly city will come down to the city of man to restore it. That means all cities today are both broken places, but are also places for great hope of renewal. We are to take what is broken in money, power, relationships and work to bring about peace and justice. 

The word here for peace is the Hebrew word shalom, which does not merely mean peace, but implies harmony and rightness and perfection. God is calling Christians to work for the perfection of the city that is where our ultimate hope lies.  

Do we do this? Do we use our distinctions to serve others? In the Rise of Christianity, Rodney Stark writes of the early Christians who stayed in plague-ridden cities in order to care for the sick and dying often at the cost of their own lives.  The power of their radical service led to a Roman empire that was largely Christian.  

This desire to serve self-sacrificially can only be founded on a person who enters a city that does not love him, serves it, loves it and was cast out of it because of his care for them. Because Jesus gave His life, we are then able to live lives of service. How can Christians oppress others if at the heart of our faith is a person who gives everything for others by dying for them on a cross? Sure Christians do oppress others, and are self-righteous and prideful but only when they forget that they were forgiven by grace, that they do not deserve God's love because of their sin. He gives it to us anyway, and now we love and care for others not because we are better then others, but because we are in the same boat and with the same needs. 

The resurrection shows us that God is fixing the world, bodily, physically, and so we can be apart of that fixing redeeming workforce. Pluralists and secularists say harmony can only happen if we get away from absolute truth. What if, instead, we believe we received grace? We are restored by what He did, not by what we do. This strips away pride and allows us to serve others because Christ served us. 

So are you using this city for school only, or do you care about it more then that with all its warts and issues? Do you have a greater plan for why you are working and living here? What is the foundation you are trusting in?