A City Saviour

The recent gang-rape incident in our capital city shook our nation. One question that bothers me is: why did no one bother to give an immediate care for the girl who was lying on the road and was in desperate need of a piece of cloth and an urgent medical care? Was it not a cold attitude in a freezing night to a person in need? This calls for a deep retrospection in every individual’s life especially in those who live in cities.

Sodom described in the book of Genesis was a city, notorious to the extent that even today it is synonymous with sexual promiscuity. Interestingly God has always placed good people everywhere. Out of the rebellious Babel came Abraham, the father of faith. God in his own sovereignty decides the exact places where we should live (Acts 17:26) because He needs the presence of godly people for the salvation of places. Jesus calls his people as the salt and light of the earth in Matthew 5. John Stott puts it as “the twin vocations of the Christian.” Salt preserves. Light gives hope.

 A vocation in a city to be salt and light comes with many responsibilities. The rape laws found in the Bible gives a hint to the responsibility of a city dweller. It also connects us to the Delhi-incident. If a woman was raped in a rural area, the people would execute the man who did it. On the other hand, if she was raped in the city, they would execute them both (Deuteronomy 22:25-27). Why? There was an assumption in Israel that the city victims would cry for help, and neighbours would respond. If there was no response, the first assumption would have been that she didn’t cry for help. The responsibility of a city dweller is very clear: presence of neighbours or community is beneficial to the security and salvation of individual persons.

Look at Sodom again. The city was not destroyed for its sexual immorality alone. Ezekiel 16:48-50 describes the situation: “As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign LORD, your sister Sodom and her daughters never did what you and your daughters have done. Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy. They were haughty and did detestable things before me. Therefore I did away with them as you have seen.”

Sadly even within the “less than ten righteous” count, the wife and daughters of Lot fell to sin again. Such a situation is seen in the lament of God in Jeremiah 5:1 regarding the city of Jerusalem: "Go up and down the streets of Jerusalem, look around and consider, ​search through her squares. ​If you can find but one person ​who deals honestly and seeks the truth, ​I will forgive this city”. God is not looking for the presence of ten righteous in a city to preserve it, but for just one! The presence and power of one person could have spared Jerusalem.

Abraham interceded for Sodom. My highlight here however is not the prayer of a Godly person but the importance of the presence and witness of Christians in a city. Witness over weighs prayer, because God seeks persons who are honest and true in God-tangible ways. It is said that Nehemiah went to the suburbs and small towns intentionally to recruit a tithe (one out of ten) of good, capable resource people for relocation into the city. “Now the leaders of the people settled in Jerusalem, and the rest of the people cast lots to bring one out of every ten to live in Jerusalem, the holy city, while the remaining nine were to stay in their own towns. The people commended all the men who volunteered to live in Jerusalem.” (Nehemiah 11:1-2) Nehemiah prayed for the city and worked on it, but then he asked healthy communities to tithe their human resources into neighbourhoods of need. Nehemiah was honest and true in caring for the needy. 

God did not find ten righteous people in the city of Sodom. He destroyed it. City needs the presence of Godly people who would preserve it. God needs you in the city he has placed you to preserve the city from destruction. Look at the alarming statistics of the cities of the world. God cares for cities. He cared for the city of Nineveh. “…Nineveh has more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left, and many cattle as well. Should I not be concerned about that great city?" (Jonah 4:11). What concerns God, concerns us as well.

Am I a city saviour? A salt? A light? A person concerned for the needs of  the people in the city? 

(Some thoughts for this article are from Ray Bakke’s book “A Theology as Big as the City.” I had the privilege of listening to his lectures in India, China and the US where I was part of the seminars of the Bakke Graduate University)