Last year I wrote a blog post about why my husband and I are choosing to stay in our city while many current Christians have left it for various reasons. This is a continuation of something I wrote in that post. My hope is that this relates to and helps anyone identifying as a Christian who is struggling to live where they are living, due to the “darkness” or the difficulties that arise in a city that rejects what God says. Particularly to those raising families in a place where Christians are few, I hope to encourage you where you are.

For definition’s sake, at some point I need to define what I mean by “Christian”. That word has many connotations to it and has been used and misused ad nauseum. For this post’s sake and for the sake of those reading this who have their own filter of what Christian means, I’ll attempt a one-sentence definition, one I would tell a child. A Christian is one whose greatest treasure is Jesus Christ, who lived, died, and rose in order to save and redeem anyone who puts their trust in him.

The question at hand today for my Christian friends is this: why stay in a godless city? Why raise a family in a place that holds values opposite to the Bible? Why stay when laws are unjust and unwise? Why stay when the schools are suffering and teaching a political agenda? Why stay when the darkness is so….well…..dark? The short answer is: we stay because it’s dark! Hopefully I will unpack that further and provide a launching point for some robust conversations. If you live near me, I’d love to grab some coffee with you and chat some more about it.

I recently came back from a workshop in downtown Seattle, equipping women teachers in biblical exposition. It was like three days of fresh air. We met new faces and heard about what God is doing in various churches in the area. We joked and laughed together about the ridiculous (and very humanly relatable!) characters in the Old Testament stories we were reading, because we could see ourselves in Saul’s excuses to Samuel. We cried together. We worshiped our risen King together. Being with other sisters in Christ who love and worship Jesus with you was invigorating, refreshing, and life-giving. In some ways I just wanted the sweet time of fellowship and training to continue. It felt really good being with other people who believe the same thing I do.

Perhaps I’m not alone. Have you also felt that way? Honestly, as a Christian, looking forward to the glory coming, our resurrected bodies, seeing Jesus FINALLY, worshipping him with no sin and no brokenness, fully redeemed creation….it’s no wonder when we get together that we love it and want more. We like being surrounded by other Christians. It’s comforting and encouraging. It’s also necessary for the building up of our faith (Hebrews 10:25 being one of many examples). However, it’s not the only piece. It’s not the only thing we were called to do and to be. Jesus also commanded all his disciples to be witnesses to him in all places and to all people (Matthew 28). We’re a sent people with a witness to Jesus.

With that in mind, we need to ask a question. Who is your Lord? Meaning who has the right and authority to tell you what to do with your life? Whose word has final say in your heart? If you claim to be a follower of Jesus, that means Jesus is not only our Savior but our Lord, and in being our Lord he has the ultimate authority to tell us what to do. A sign of our love for God is our obedience (John 15, “If you love me, you will obey my commands.”). This doesn’t mean we will never disobey, but it means our deepest desire is to do what Jesus commands, and when we fail to do so, we repent and try again. If Jesus is our Lord, our lives are no longer ours anymore (Galatians 2:20). our lives must be submitted wholly to him for his purpose. His commands are our very joy to obey. His word is our utmost priority. Who and what he values and loves is who and what we must value and love. What he hates we must hate. And when his commands and word rubs us the wrong way and reveal the idols in our heart, we must lay them down. We can’t serve both God and ________.

What does this have to do with living in a dark place, or raising a family in said dark place? Over the last couple years, I’ve become aware of a group of people identifying as Christian who are mourning and grieving that the US is no longer a Christian nation. They are saddened by the lack of love for God and desire to live in his ways. They pull their kids out of school because of their concerns over what children are being taught. Some believe the answer is the right president, or better laws. Some believe the answer is to homeschool and raise up a Christian generation to “take this country back” (just so you know, this is not why we have chosen to homeschool!). Some believe they need to prepare the more conservative parts of the country for what’s coming. Some are moving away from the darkness into places that still look or seem “Christian”, or perhaps more accurately, conservative (which does not equal Christian). It doesn’t take long reading the gospel accounts of Jesus’ life to understand that he united people of differing races, along with social & political beliefs, and this includes our red and blue bubbles today.

I can understand the grief and the fear these people have experienced. I share many of their concerns, particularly the ones regarding the quality of our educational systems. As a Christian, it’s hard to live alongside sin. In some ways, the brokenness should grieve us. But according to God’s story laid out in Scripture, culminating in Jesus,, it should grieve us toward the lost, not to a political agenda or a “save the country” campaign. Jesus’ good news is salvation for sinners, not salvation for the United States of America, or for the US to be a Christian nation.

If your heart is grieved over the state of your city, or your country, take a moment and consider your response to the darkness around you. Consider what your response reveals about your heart. Do you ultimately want the lost to be saved, or do you simply want to live in a country which holds the same values as you do? Do you ache for God’s kingdom to come to the unredeemed, or do you ache for your world to be a comfortable, Christian-ese one? Now, to be clear, that ache to live as God intended us to do is good! It’s wonderful when laws reflect God’s heart and will. And it will be fulfilled, praise God. At the end of the age. For eternity. We need to recognize that laws don’t change people’s hearts; the transforming work of the Holy Spirit does. Right now our command from Jesus is not to make a Christian nation, but to make disciples. Look to the heroes in Hebrews 11. They died in faith, not having received that which was promised to them, but greeted it from afar. They lived as sojourners on this earth, still waiting for their homeland. Because we already have a homeland and an inheritance waiting for us there, now is the time to pursue people and invite them to that homeland. They are God’s image bearers, heading for destruction and unaware of the God who loves them so much he gave up his Son to win them back. And so many of them don’t know him because Christians aren’t inconveniencing themselves to love and welcome the lost into their lives, homes, and churches to introduce them to Jesus.

As we consider our heart’s response to the sin and darkness around us, it may be that idols of country and nation, our idea of comfortably living in a “Christian” nation, state or city, are being revealed. If Christians are moving away from darkness instead of into it, I wonder if we’ve forgotten who we are, and who we serve, and under whose authority we live. I wonder if we’ve lost our purpose. I wonder if Jesus were walking among us if we’d find ourselves on the side of the religious do-gooders who wanted nothing to do with him because he was eating and drinking with the social outcasts and sinners of the day. I wonder if we actually love him, or we love something else instead. God may be loving us right now by revealing the sinfulness of people claiming Christ while huddling together and failing to go out and feed the lost the Bread of Life. Being theologically right is nothing if we are not also just as loving, as Jesus so beautifully demonstrated both grace and truth. The harvest is plentiful. There are so many lost people who need the gospel of Jesus Christ! What we need are laborers.

If we have the heart of God, we then have a heart for the lost. We are not surprised by people’s godlessness and sin. We expect lost people, and we go and serve and love and share Jesus with them. And while you find lost people everywhere, guess where a lot of them are: dark places! Isn’t a dark place where so many people don’t know and love God exactly where a Christian should be?

Parents, isn’t this a great location in which to raise your kids? They get to see your faith in action as you love your neighbor, as you be his witness, as you have the gay couple next door over for dinner to build relationship, as you pray with and for people, as you minster to the homeless, as you volunteer your time to help your city, as you work with the public schools to be Jesus’ presence with the kids and families, as you pray for opportunities to talk with your coworkers, as you strive for racial reconciliation in the community, as you grieve with the hurting and listen to them. In a spiritually dark place, it’s a wonderful opportunity to teach your kids what it looks like to be a Christian. Kids are smart. If they see being a Christian as Sunday attendance, youth group or Sunday school, prayers before meals, rote “Christian” things to do while your life doesn’t match the words preached on Sunday or the life Jesus called us to live, they will notice. They’re experts at identifying hypocrisy. And if they’re smart, they’ll want nothing to do with it.

Kids need to learn to love others who are different from them. They need continual opportunities to do so, to practice and then debrief with parents who love them and are doing the same thing. This is not possible if you seek to surround yourself only with others who think like you. Sometimes in trying to protect our children we fail to equip them. Growing children are not mature yet. Of course they need our protection. And they also need our example, our instruction, and ultimately our release as they grow. We need to them make decisions and choices and experience the consequences. Ultimately, my point for parents is the fruit of living a Christ-like faith in front of them is priceless. Sadly, a lot of kids raised in a Christian home learn more about categorizing people (“us & them”), to huddle perpetually with like-minded people, to go to church and do good things, but in doing all this they miss Jesus. I’ve heard many a testimony of someone raised in church but didn’t know Jesus. In a dark place, where Christians are rare, it’s very hard for that to happen. You don’t get comfortable benefits for being a Christian in spiritually dark places. Just like Jesus does with his upside-down kingdom, the darkness and hardships tend to build a stronger, deeper faith in Jesus.

I’m not saying we should go at this alone. God did not design us to live in a “Jesus and me” type of relationship. God saved us into a family, and made us to flourish within a community of others whose Lord and Savior is also Jesus. We need to encourage and be encouraged, reminders of truth, correction when we’re off, teaching of God’s word, rebuke when we’re in sin. We can’t walk with Jesus alone. In order to be part of the body, we need to live as part of a body. What I am saying is that we need to be aware of all that Jesus told us to do, not just part. We need solid theology and solid outreatch. We need to become aware of our blind spots, our idols, and our weaknesses and ask God for a heart of repentance and growth. We need to ask God to give us his values and heart for lost people. This will hurt, by the way. I’ve prayed that prayer, and if you are brave enough to do so, it will break your heart. And it will also move you into a deeper, more intimate, more joy-filled, more glorious existence than one chasing comforts or other lesser things.

As Jesus united people of differing social and political beliefs with his kingdom good news (which we don’t have to dig very deeply into the New Testament to see that he did), then I argue that Jesus’ kingdom good news is greater than our biases or social/political convictions. If his good news of salvation is for all people, and our eternal dwelling with God is secure, then I argue where we live now does not matter nearly as much as how we live where we are. If our call as Christians and our command from Jesus is to make disciples, then I argue we should seek to do that wherever we find ourselves. In particular, if we understand God’s heart for the lost, we see a dark place and instead of running from people “because they don’t believe what I believe”, or “they aren’t living the way God commands us to live,” it should prompt us to run toward them. What movie or great story has the hero running away from the brokenness of the world? If Frodo never took the ring to Mordor “because he would encounter a lot of enemies along the way”? If medics on the battlefield stayed in their foxholes while their comrades bled? The most important example is Jesus. What if he never came to the broken? What if he had never come to find you to bind you up and bring you salvation? Thank God, he did.

As I close, I want to recall the beginning of the book of Acts. We’ve been reading Acts together as a family during the mornings. Many Christians fled out of Jerusalem in the days of the early church, when persecution rose through Saul and others, and their lives were in danger. God used this to spread the gospel to others who had never heard it, particularly the non-Jews. Not knowing their heart condition and motivations for leaving, I can’t speak more to their fleeing, other than to say I trust God is at work in every movement on this planet to continue bringing his kingdom. Praise God, he works his will through every one of our successes and failures, and he will complete his word. Perhaps the best thing that could happen to our country is the end of us being a “Christian nation”, and the rejection of hypocritical Christianity in our culture. This darkness spreading from coast to coast could spark true, living, abiding, fruit-bearing faith in Jesus, and rid us of religiosity, our idols of politics and nation and comfort. Persecution spread the gospel for the new church. Maybe a spiritual revival is coming, just not in the way we had expected. Perhaps the best thing we can do to “prepare” is to begin by bending our knees and ask God to search our hearts. Repent for the ways we have failed to live with Jesus as our Lord, and surrender any idols we have been carrying. Then pray earnestly for more laborers for the harvest, and for God’s heart for the lost. Let’s surrender it all for Jesus, as he did for us. Let’s inconvience ourselves for him. Let’s give it all for him. Then let’s see where God takes us.