Welfare State

In the book of Jeremiah's 29th chapter the prophet delivers God's message to the captives living in exile in Babylon. This group had been separated from their culture, their homeland, and their family. Further, their entire worldview was very keenly built around the importance of that "promised land" so God's message to them was certainly expected to be one about a victorious return and the downfall of their enemies.

But instead here is what Jeremiah relayed as the directive:

"Build homes, and plan to stay. Plant gardens, and eat the food they produce. Marry and have children. Then find spouses for them so that you may have many grandchildren. Multiply! Do not dwindle away! And work for the peace and prosperity of the city where I sent you into exile. Pray to the LORD for it, for its welfare will determine your welfare." (Jeremiah 29:5-7 NLT)

These words have been foundational in my life. I still remember exactly where I was sitting at my college church the first time I heard this passage preached on. I could write many, many paragraphs about the implications here for our lives. We could do a deep dive into the Hebrew word translated as "peace and prosperity" here, which is "shalom", and all its multi-faceted meanings and applications.

But, I'll refrain from that book-length treatment1 to just focus on the sentence:

"Pray to the LORD for it, for its welfare will determine your welfare"

These words had to cut deep to the original audience as the Babylonians were their literal kidnappers and oppressors. But, this command may also sting to our modern ears from a different angle. In an individualist society, we do not like the implication that our well-being is tied up with anyone else's. We are a people who are taught to "make your own luck" and "watch out for number one". For many of us, we know that these self-serving aphorisms are not exactly aligned with the Sermon on the Mount, but I would argue even if we outright reject them they still influence our way of thinking and seeing the world.

I remember when I was two weeks into a yearlong overseas assignment and we had a training about cultural adjustment. Everyone listed out the top values of their culture or subculture and shared them with the group. Then our teachers told us that we needed to be aware because these values were going to be violated in our new world. I sat there thinking, "Why do we need to waste time talking about all of the sinful, anti-Christian patterns of America? I'm don't ascribe to those things. Let's just focus on the good news."

But in truth, as an American I'm full of American values, good, bad, or indifferent. And within two weeks of that conversation I found myself standing in a line for a street vendor complaining in my mind about how inefficient, inconvenient, and unfair this system was and I had to catch my self with Method Man in the Wire gif (as seen below for the uninitiated).

So all of this to say, we are of a people that see the world through individual eyes and that can stretch us when we're commanded to care for the welfare of those not like us. To the original audience, these were their literal geo-political and day-to-day enemies, but the command is applicable to all of us that in our project of shalom-making the well-being of all is determined together.

In his great Letter from the Birmingham Jail, Martin Luther King Jr writes:

"We are caught up in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment on destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly."

This is another way of rendering verse seven. We're in this together. Because of the shared image of God within each of us, because of the requirements of love of neighbor, and because simple interconnectivity in the modern world, what happens to one of us ought to matter for all of us.

In a local context here in Jacksonville, we can state this as: If Brentwood is not ok, then the beaches are not ok. And if 103rd is not ok, then Mandarin is not ok. More broadly we can say, if Jacksonville is not ok then Omaha is not ok. And if Jakarta is not ok than Boston is not ok. And vice versa.

We need to care for one another because we share a common garment. The prescription may have varied forms in each case, but one thing we know is that indifference is not an option. The Jesuit theologian James Keenan summarizes this with, "Sin is the failure to bother to love."

Because we're all together, let us care, let us love, and let our welfare be dependent on one another.

1: If you want that book-length treatment, our team just finished Church Forsaken by Jonathan Brooks of Chicago and its quite excellent.