Urban/Suburban Theology
Or: Is Heaven a Planned Community?

I moved to the suburbs several months ago after 4 years of living in big cities with good subways and lots of action, movement, etc.

After visiting Boston last weekend, I've been thinking again about how different it is to live in suburbs. Transportation is so different. There are very few buses here, and no subway. If people walk, it's to exercise or walk the dog, not to get somewhere. Transportation is limited mostly to the car. Which means you're not going to run into a friend on the bus or train, and chat until your stop or theirs. Similarly with seeing people as you walk places. It's more private. There are more trees and landscaping, fewer bricks and less cement. Some days, it feels like I'm in the middle of a consumption machine, because I see the most people when I go somewhere to buy something. That's probably not entirely accurate, but I do feel that way from time to time. But everything does seem planned for stability and predictability (I also feel like I'm living in a cocoon built for raising children).

It's a different way of living. A different geography.

I've also been noticing a difference in church service content, especially when I think about the suburb churches I was raised in.

Sermons at my suburb churches tend/ed to emphasize God's love, with a certain push toward making good ethical decisions and putting up with irritating people. God is dependable and loving, and we need to behave well and show love to others.

Sermons at my city churches tend/ed to work toward intellectual honesty--facing hard questions and hard texts dead-on, and sometimes coming up with unsettling answers. God is interested in upsetting the apple cart just as often as keeping it upright.

I'm not saying that neither group ever entered into the others' territory, or that suburban churches aren't intellectually honest, or that city churches don't preach God's love. But I think the emphasis is different, and I am just fascinated by the possibility that the environment has an impact on what our image of God is: unsettling and exciting like a city; reliable and comforting like a suburb.