lifeasmission

Living in Oslo for a few months has encouraged me to continue thinking about the relationship between cities and city living. Cities seem to be vital in terms of the formation and advancement of culture, they feature shared living space in apartments, they allow for people to live, work, eat, play, and go to school all in the same area w/o necessitating cars, they more closely resemble the diversity that we ought to see in churches, and they provide the real opportunity for Christians to take Jesus up on his invitation to welcome strangers and to take care of the poor and oppressed. Certainly there are “drawbacks” – crime, noise, congestion, and lack or privacy are a few that come to mind, but I wonder if these aren’t things we understand as “drawbacks” specifically because of individualistic and consumeristic tendencies that exist within us.I’d love to hear peoples thoughts on the differences between urban, suburban, and rural life and the relationship between those contexts and Christian existence and witness.