Holiness and Mission. Morna D. Hooker

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      2

      The Challenge of the City

      MORNA HOOKER

      According to Professor Robin Dunbar, of the University of Oxford, the human brain cannot cope with more than 150 friendships.1 Attempt to exceed that number, and social cohesion suffers. Although the manufacturers of my telephone at home have clearly been less than generous in limiting the number of my close contacts to 20 people, the creators of BlackBerry phones and Facebook have, if Professor Dunbar is correct, wildly overestimated the number of people with whom one can have a meaningful relationship.

      If the human brain is indeed programmed in this way, it is hardly surprising if our ancestors met problems when they moved out of their Stone Age villages and began to live in cities: there were just too many people for them to cope with. The inevitable results were violent clashes between rival gangs – each of limited size. Those who were not among one’s 150 friends were strangers, possibly enemies, even if they lived in the next street. Cities over a certain size were unfriendly places, and the larger the city, the greater the tensions. Big proved to be anything but beautiful. We are familiar with similar problems today. Friends who live in villages tell me how good it is to live in a small community, where it is possible for them to know all their neighbours, and where they are automatically part of a social network. By contrast, those who live in large cities can be desperately lonely.

      The truth would seem to be that, though cities are necessary and in many ways convenient, they are not our natural environment. According to Genesis, paradise was located in a garden, not a city. To be sure, two human beings could scarcely constitute a city! Nevertheless, the story of Adam and Eve reflects the belief common in the Bible that the garden, rather than the city, is the ideal place in which to live. When the prophets and apocalyptic writers came, at a later stage, to describe what the world would be like when God set it to rights and restored his creation, what they pictured was paradise restored: a return to the Garden of Eden, with nature yielding extraordinarily abundant harvests, men and women – and even animals – living at peace, and everyone sitting contentedly under his or her own fig-tree.

      Cities are, by their very nature, unfriendly places, simply because they are too big. Inevitably, they create social divisions. In a city, there must be a division of labour: some will do this, others that – and the ‘this’ may be considerably more pleasant and enjoyable than the ‘that’. In a city, someone must give orders, and others obey. Certain classes – or castes – will perform menial and unpleasant tasks, while others enjoy privileges. The result is a division between ruler and ruled, master and slave, rich and poor, people who matter and those who apparently do not count. No wonder cities create tensions – and in our own day, we see the problems that inevitably result: gang warfare; areas of deprivation and acute poverty; men and women who are living on the streets, or resorting to drugs and alcohol. Surrounded by millions, individuals lose their identity.

      Last week, on the way home from a lecture, my train had barely left King’s Cross before it came to a full stop – and remained stationary for almost two hours. The reason? The delay was due, we were informed, to ‘a fatality on the line’. Some poor soul, overcome by the pressures of life, had decided to end it all. Why, I wondered, had they done so? Was it because of the pressure of living in the modern city? And what had led him or her to commit suicide, not by a private act, but in this particular public way? Was it simply that it seemed to offer a quick fail-safe method? Or was it perhaps a desire to make some impact on society? Was it the last, desperate attempt by some lonely soul to make others notice that they had once existed? Certainly their actions affected the lives of several hundred travellers and their friends for a few hours at least, maybe more.

      Cities exacerbate problems and create new ones. As if to ensure that we are all aware of the challenge they present, the Evening Standard has begun publishing a series of articles on ‘Poverty in the City’, which it describes as ‘A tale of two cities’. Picking up a copy, I found myself reading:

      For all the achievement of Londoners and the wonderful things that this city stands for, poverty, homelessness, lack of advantage for dispossessed young people continue to challenge us all.2

      Judgement

      Not surprisingly, cities get a bad press in the Old Testament. The first recorded city is Babel – a name that conjures up in our minds a tower, but the Old Testament story is in fact as much about the city as about the tower, and sadly has nothing at all to say about the tower being toppled. According to Genesis, the descendants of Noah, finding a suitable place in which to settle down, said to one another:

      Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves; otherwise we shall be scattered over the face of the earth. Then the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which mortals had built.

      (Genesis 11.4–5)

      At this time, we are told, the people all spoke the same language, and unity gave them strength, so the Lord regarded their actions as an attempt to become powerful. And because the Lord disapproved, he ‘scattered them abroad from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city’ (Genesis 11.8). Building a city is not only necessary as a way of finding space for everyone to live; not only convenient – a way of providing food and services for everyone; not only a means of protecting people from their enemies, it is also an attempt to gain power and influence. So one gets rivalry, not only within cities, but between cities.

      Babel is only the first in a long line of cities to be condemned. The names Sodom and Gomorrah were a byword for what was evil and corrupt. And cities in other parts of the world were as bad. Prophets constantly pronounced judgement on them. The book of Nahum, for example, is an oracle against Nineveh. Jeremiah 50—51 pronounces judgement on Babylon. But Jerusalem was no better! Jeremiah announced God’s judgement on the city described as ripe for punishment (see Jeremiah 6.6).

      From the towns of Judah and the streets of Jerusalem I shall banish all sounds of joy and gladness, the voices of bridegroom and bride, for the whole land will become desert.

      (Jeremiah 7.34, REB)

      Why? Because the people have refused to worship God, have committed adultery, and have acted unjustly.

      Run up and down the streets of Jerusalem,

      look around, take note;

      search through her wide squares;

      can you find anyone who acts justly,

      anyone who seeks the truth,

      that I may forgive that city?

      (Jeremiah 5.1)