Tim Keller's City Fetish, Homesteading, and the Agrarian God

If you are watching closely enough, you'll see the Holy Ghost blowing his breath away from the cities. Follow Him.

You might recall that back in 2020, men dressed as sugar plum fairies pranced in choreographed ballet at Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Manhattan. It was, for me, the three-thousandth reason to dislike the flavor of Tim Keller’s Christianity. Such a thing is not enough to anathematize a man, but it’s enough to make you head to the washroom after you shake his hand.

Sugar Plum Fairies aside, Keller’s love affair with the city never sat right with me. Among other reasons, it was because all the wrong people seemed to like his city-fied Christianity, and all the right people seemed to despise it. But when Keller came out with his “Theology of the Cities,” in which he crafted a novel theology around his affinity for cement and skyscrapers, few could put into words as to why it didn’t quite sit right with them.

I had no such problem with finding words, and penned a two-part series entitled “A Refutation of Keller's ‘Theology of the City’.”

In it, I explained Keller’s affinity for urban life, and how he typified (and twisted) God’s Kingdom to fit an urban setting. And bizarre, it really was. It’s oddity was only partially overshadowed by a sea of young men in skinny jeans nodding enthusiastically in agreement to his claims, while trying not to spill their latte, and acting like they knew what he was talking about.

Personally, I’m not convinced that almost anyone really knew what Keller was talking about at any given time. I often said that Keller’s tweets “made as much sense as a Jaden Smith tweet, read backwards.” But because it’s always been chic to nod along with whatever Keller said, much like complimenting the style of the emperor’s new clothes, people agreed emphatically that the Kingdom of God is exactly like Manhattan.

A SYNOPSIS OF KELLER’S CITY THEOLOGY

When Keller tweeted things like, “We always talk about how we take the city the gospel, but we never talk about how the city brings the gospel to us,” (May 17, 2017) he was referring to a very real assertion that God designed an urban kingdom.

In his Theology of Cities, Keller explains the concept…

God designed the city with the power to draw out the resources of creation (of the natural order and the human soul) and thus to build civilisation

The man was so pretentious, he used the British spelling of civilization. I just noticed that. For crying out loud.

Anyway, Keller’s claim is farcical. While it’s true that the city “draws out the resources of creation” (if, by that, he means like a parasite draws blood), the city doesn’t produce resources; it consumes them. And further, his argument that the city builds civilization sounds exactly like what the residents of Babel argued, before God stomped their lego tower and scattered the bricks (and the people).

Keller makes some interesting claims in his Theology of Cities. First, he argues that God invented the city. To make the argument, Keller draws upon Scripture passages promising the New Jerusalem. While true, he overlooks the fact that God has only promised one city, and it’s future-tense. The cities that man has built, have been absolute horror shows.

Keller quotes Meredith Kline (the mentor of Mark Dever)…

‘The city is not to be regarded as an evil invention of ungodly fallen man... The ultimate goal set before humanity at the very beginning was that human- culture should take city-form... there should be an urban structuring of human historical existence.’

Among the first commands God gave humanity was to spread out and not collect themselves in cities (Genesis 1:28, 9:7). The first city in human history was the city built not by God, but by Cain (Genesis 4:17). Maybe that’s why their murder rates are so high. Cain, who was fleeing from the presence of God (at God’s request) was the original city-builder. Perhaps that’s why if you’re fleeing from God, the city is a good place to do it.

But the next city-builder we see in Scripture is Nimrod, a man of legendary wickedness who the Bible refers to as a “mighty man” (the same term used for Nephilim in Genesis 6:4). And he built the great city of Babel. And if you know the story, God came down to earth and huffed and he puffed and he blew it down. In this narrative, one of the reasons God knocked down their connector sets is because they were not spreading out as he told them to do.

After that, the next prominent city we see in the Biblical narrative is Sodom. Lot, Abraham’s nephew, pitched his tent toward the city (Genesis 13:12). Apparently, all the city has to do to suck you into gay pride parades is tempt you to look at it, because the next thing we know, Lot was out of his tent, moved into town, and the gay guys were pounding at the door trying to rape the angels.

Next up, we have Nineveh (wicked), Tyre and Sidon (wicked), and so on. Little positive is in the Scripture about cities. I suppose Jerusalem was the exception to this.

Just kidding, Jerusalem was wicked (Ezekiel 5:5-6). The prophets really, really didn’t like Jerusalem. In fact, in the passage from Ezekiel cited above, you can see the anthropomorphized exasperation (God is impassible, but sometimes he expresses emotion so we can understand) when he says, “I set her at the center of the world, all the nations ranged around her. But she rebelled against my laws and ordinances, rebelled far worse than the nations ranged around her—sheer wickedness!”

“Sheer wickedness” is a pretty good way to describe cities almost anywhere.

We’ve all seen the news reports of the human feces in the subways, and vagrants doing their business in the tunnels. Where I live, if a man announces he has to pee, he’s just explaining why he’s about to grab his coat. We go outside like God intended.

But Keller literally turned the command of God upside down. He wrote…

“It is widely understood that when God tells Adam and Eve to ‘have dominion’ and ‘fill the earth’ he is directing them to build a God-honouring civilisation…that since Revelation reveals that the ‘end’ of creation (the climax of the work of the ‘Second Adam’ Jesus Christ) is a city - that therefore God was calling Adam and Eve to be city builders.”

Friends, you’d have to have on your beer goggles and stare at a Magic Eye poster to come to this conclusion. God explicitly says to fill the earth, and there’s no way to fill an earth of 196.9 million square miles (I googled it) with cities. Right now there are 8 billion people on Earth. Let me do the math for you; if a city had the population density of Tokyo (6,100 people per square mile), it would require a city of only 1,311,475 square miles. In other words, a city the size of Peru could fit the entire world.

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I don’t know if you know this, but Peru isn’t that big (unless you’re a Western European).

In terms of the ways the city is the glory of world civilization, Keller’s assertions are equally as peculiar. He claims that cities are “places of refuge” (drawing upon the City of Refuge in Joshua 20, etc). Of course, we’re going to overlook the fact that cities are where you go to be raped, mugged, and murdered primarily. Think of it this way; if there was crisis of virtually any kind, the first thing people would attempt to do, is leave the cities. Ain’t nobody running into the cities in a time of panic.

Keller argues the city is a place of “cultural mining” (which I guess what he thinks they use to make Teslas or something). Keller argues that the cities attract minorities because “diversity is strength.” Basically, imagine any rational idea for living outside the city, and just assume that’s the argument Keller provides for living in one.

HOMESTEADING

Homesteading is more of a lifestyle than anything else. It’s the goal of increasing self-sufficiency, rather than complete self-sufficiency. Few homestead with the intention of never having to go into town again. And that’s a good thing, because as a homesteader, I’m in Tractor Supply way too much.

For most, it’s about a simpler life. It’s about knowing where your food comes from and having a connection to it. It’s about being careful regarding what we put in our bodies. It’s about wanting only water in our water. But it’s also about teaching our children the benefits of hard, manual labor. It’s about teaching them that life doesn’t give you a day off, because animals always need fed and gardens always need watered. It’s about fostering self-discipline in a soft, obese culture. It’s about putting your feet in the dirt. It’s about getting your Vitamin D from the sun instead out of a prescription bottle. It’s about taking pride in a well-made pie, or the skill required to make your own soap.

And yeah, it’s about using the restroom outside like God intended.

I can’t begin to express to you the benefits that I’ve enjoyed - and my family - from homesteading. When we bought our farm, I couldn’t tuck in my pants or lift a grocery bag because of torn rotator cuffs, which occurred when I had seizures from Xanax withdrawal. They told me I’d have to have surgery, because physical therapy couldn’t mend it.But 500 pounded fence posts later, my shoulders healed completely.

Suffering from natural paranoia, I used to lock all three locks on each door, arm the alarm system, put a gadget on the door to alert you someone touched the door knob from the outside, use a door-stopper, check my magazine to make sure nobody took the bullets out of my gun while I was away, and still wake up every time cars drove by on the busy street. Of course, people did legitimately try to kill me once in a while (polemics can be dangerous), but part of it was over-stimulation of senses; constant human noise. I’m not going to describe my security routine on the farm, because of OpSec, but it’s definitely less involved. I sleep like a baby when there’s nothing to hear but coyotes off in the distance and tree frogs chirping.

When you have to get up on a sub-freezing morning, like I did today, and break the ice and feed the animals whether you want to you not, whether you’re sick and running a fever or not, not matter what, it disciplines you into a better person.

It’s made me a more compassionate human. I can’t begin to express the level of genuine care I have for my animals. It might seem counter-intuitive, but the fact that I’m going to personally kill and personally butcher these creatures one day - in a brutal reminder of a fallen world in which stuff has to die for my kids to eat - it makes me compassionate for them, appreciative of their personalities, and desirous to give them a happy, healthy life until it’s their time to be harvested.

It’s a real joy when your kids say, “Dad, can we have a [such and such animal]” to just go, yup. Let them have their needless kitties, their multiplying rabbits, their exotic birds, and their mini-goat that serves no purpose other than being adorable. They’re only kids once (I’m referring to the children, and not the goat). If they want an emu, let them have an emu for crying out loud.

When my life was hectic, and I lived the life I did, I would fall asleep at night dreaming of what I have now. I think that, as tortured as I was, I knew intuitively that getting away from it all was what my soul required.

A recent poll of 4,000 self-identified homesteaders indicated that a quarter of them had been homesteading less than three years, indicating monumental growth in the lifestyle. It seems that people really want out.

In addition, most homesteaders are college-educated and previously experienced successful careers. This is also important, because it indicates that these aren’t just hillbillies who’ve never been the zoo; they are people who tasted what the world had to offer them, and chose to reject it.

They discovered that what the city offers them, doesn’t satisfy them or make them happy, no matter how many 24 hour Planet Fitnesses that tempt them to live in the city limits, or how many kiosks sell $8 lattes.

And although I’ve seen no studies, let me tell you from hanging out in homesteading circles, ranging from Reddit groups to co-ops, from group chats to support groups; the majority of new homesteaders are believing Christians…and seriously committed ones.

Why is that? What is the Holy Ghost doing?

THE AGRARIAN GOD

Quite the opposite of Keller’s Sugar Plum Diety, God has always been an agrarian. As we discussed above, God’s command to Adam and Eve was not to build cities, but to “subdue the Earth.” That is not done by concrete and steel, but by carving out farms from the wilderness. That is done by tilling the ground. That is done by taming wild beasts.

And not only was their job to subdue the earth, but to fill it. Frontiers needed explored. The borderlands needed cultivated. The hinterlands needed homes. Fences needed erected. Wells needed dug. The boondocks needed Bibles.

God likens himself to us as our Shepherd, steeped in agrarian language. Some have opined that this is because He was expressing to the Israelites the only life they knew…and I’m here to tell you that’s a danged-old lie; he could have likened himself to Levitical clergy, to the judges, to tribal leaders, to the men of commerce at the city gates, to the makers of purple apparel, or to the craftsmen. Even in ancient times, the Israelites were quite aware of city life, which had existed since Cain and Nimrod, and they could remember in their collective memory from the days of Egypt; God could have referred to himself as a Pharaoh and they would’ve understood the concept. After all, the Jews had sojourned for 400 years in the greatest metropolitan empire the world had ever known, headquartered in Cairo, and had seen the pyramids. But instead, God likened himself to a Shepherd, because he is an Agrarian God.

He is the one who own cattle on a thousand hills (Psalm 50:2). And its to the hills we look and find our salvation (Psalm 121:1-2). Even in the empire of Rome, Jesus referred to him in agrarian terms, as the God of the Harvest (Matthew 9:38). We are the sheep of his pasture (Psalm 100:3). The Kingdom of God is like a farmer who’s gone out to sow (Matthew 13:3-8). Jesus is the vine, and God is the vine-dresser (John 15:1-5). Believers are Christ’s first-fruits (1 Corinthians 15:3). Jesus will return when an angel announces it’s time for him to ‘thrust his sickle and reap’ (Revelation 14:14-15). Evangelism is likened to one farmer who plants, and another who waters, but God who makes it grow (1 Corinthians 3:7-9).

Keller was right about only one thing as it pertained to the city; and that is the promise that God will bring us one city himself, in that Age to Come.

But hear me out and let my fingers preach a sermon through type…

That New Jerusalem will have streets of gold, not to demonstrate the immeasurable value of gold. God is not flaunting his wealth. God is flaunting the absolute worthlessness of gold. Glory.

Friends, you don’t pave the streets with that which is valuable, but with that which is worth nothing. Asphalt is a petroleum byproduct. Gravel is nothing but crushed stones. I submit to you that the reason God has paved the streets with gold is because it is his chief rival among all the lesser gods, the preferred idol of man. And God, in his righteous wit, has determined to melt the gold to liquid, and pave the streets with it so that it can be trampled underneath the feet of men for an infinite number of years in the eternity to come. Glory.

The New Jerusalem will have 12 gates, with which people will be free to come and go for the primary purpose of that city’s existence, which is to worship the Lord Jesus Christ as a testimony to his wisdom, justice, mercy, and power. That city will not be like Keller’s New York or Nimrod’s Babel, a towering, hideous monolith and monstrosity forming a monument to the vulgar accomplishments of men, but a glorious engineering feat hand-built by the Divine Carpenter, testifying to the accomplishments of Christ. Glory.

The New Jerusalem will not be a city like Keller’s Manhattan, a breeding ground for every form of villainy and vice contrived in the hearts of men, a sulfur-stenched home to plagues of vermin and vagrants, a ghetto culture of gutter creatures with grotesque sins on perpetual parade, but a pristine home to denizens of the celestial variety and humans with glorified natures, no longer wandering Hebrews climbing up from the sewer, but his chosen people who are forever home. Glory.

The New Jerusalem is no concrete jungle or cement paradise, but one with a river flowing directly from the throne of Almighty God and we shall rest in the shade of the Tree of Life. Glory.

Cities, of the type that Keller worshipped, are no type and shadow of the New Jerusalem to come. They are crass perversions, vulgar mockeries, and profane taunts blaspheming the city Christ is preparing. They are a place, where - like Babel - man comes together to plot against God, to find a market to peddle their sins, and become a place where the shadows cast by our monuments to pride block out the light coming from the Son of God.

Perhaps, it’s time you think about moving to the country.

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