“There is a City of Gold
Far from the rat race that eats at your soul
Far from the madness and the bars that hold
There is a City of Gold
There is a City of Light
Raised up in the heavens and the streets are bright
Glory to God—not by deeds or by might
There is a City of Light
There is a City of Love
Surrounded by stars and the powers above
Far from this world and the stuff dreams are made of
There is a City of Love
There is a City of Grace
You drink holy water in sanctified space
No one is afraid to show their face
In the City of Grace
There is a City of Peace
Where all foul forms of destruction cease
Where the mighty have fallen and there are no police
There is a City of Peace
There is a City of Hope
Above the ravine on the green sunlit slope
All I need is an axe and a rope
To get to the City of Hope
I’m heading for the City of Gold
Before it’s too late, before it gets too cold
Before I’m too tired, before I’m too old
I’m heading for the City of Gold”
- Bob Dylan – “City of Gold” (1980 – Special Rider Music)
I’m past eighty years old now. My journey is almost complete. There are mornings when I sense that I can hear the conversations and the beautiful music drifting earthward from the Celestial City. That’s a far cry from a few years ago, when my view of that Celestial City seemed so distant.
While I realize that I’m currently earthbound, I take great comfort in the fact that I’m closer to my real home and I rejoice in that.
The world I inhabit now is full of false gods and false promises, greed, and corruption running rampant. It’s been that way here on earth since the beginning of time. History is full of examples – Egypt, Rome, Babylon. Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, etc.
While we Americans try carve out an exception for ourselves as the “shining city on the hill”, we have strayed far from the original covenant many of our forefathers agreed to. Our streets are violent, with criminals often acting with impunity. Many of our politicians are openly corrupt.
Sadly, the America we inhabit is far from being that “shining city on a hill.” I believe it’s more like the America Bob Dylan described in 1989:
“We live in a political world
Courage is a thing of the past
Houses are haunted
Children unwanted
The next day could be your last”
As I said a few sentences ago, this world has been subject to corruption for thousands of years. The Christian scholar, Augustine, lived during the times when the great Roman Empire was collapsing. He observed it and described what he was seeing in his masterwork “City of God”
Thankfully, my sense of hope is higher now than it was a few years ago, when things were far less corrupt than they are now. Back then, my wife, Nancy, and I were also discussing our growing sense of alienation with “the things of this world.” The abiding life theme coming from those discussions was that our shared pilgrimages had a way to go. We saw the “celestial city” less dimly than we did a quarter of a century before, but we recognized that our vision was still dimmed by the temporal realities that so often dominated our lives. This begged the question for us. “How can we truly learn to be “in, but not of, the world?”
As Christians, we have learned that a substantial part of our historical narrative is the shared story of aliens and strangers looking for a city they had neither built nor seen. As we now gaze back through time we see the panoply of fellow travelers who preceded us. There was Noah. There was Abraham, who left one of the most vibrant cultures in the early world to seek the city Nancy and I now see dimly in the distance. There was Moses, who traded the wealth of Egypt for a pilgrimage in the wilderness with God’s liberated slaves. As we hear the names called we see human weakness in all its glory. We see a prostitute, a coward in hiding, a self-absorbed strong man, and a repentant adulterer. We see the prophets who set trumpets to their mouths only to be stoned for the words of warning they proclaimed.
These are the citizens of our homeland.
Through all the tribulations in life these men and women saw life through a common prism – faith! They chose alienation from the familiar and safe for a promise they never saw fulfilled on the earthly side of their journeys. And it is that prism through which we too must see our lives and our times.
As we proceed on our respective journeys, we see what they saw long ago. The road we must travel is difficult, littered with the age-old temptations to stay earth-bound and proceed no further than our culture will allow. Moses experienced it when Pharaoh responded to God’s demand for liberation with the telling words, “You can go, but don’t go too far.” So do we.
One of the great lessons of history is that even the greatest of cultures are imbued with curses as well as blessings. Egypt, Babylon, Greece, and Rome could boast of power, wealth, philosophy, art, law, and human progress. But theirs was also the story of barbarity, corruption, and unbridled evil. Empires rose, full of promise, only to descend into madness. Another would supplant it. In time the cycle would repeat itself. Our fathers in faith saw this and refused to give in to the temptation of becoming earth bound. They sought something better.
Ah, but we’re Americans. We’re different. We’re the people of the “New Frontier” and the “City on the Hill.” We’re “the last best hope of earth.”
This, I think, is the great American curse. It’s the temptation to which far too many Christians have fallen prey. We’ve all too often succumbed to the false notion that America is our final destination. Richard John Neuhaus recently wrote of this phenomenon and its accompanying tension and asked whether, for the Christian, America may be more Bablyon than it is the New Jerusalem we’ve falsely thought it was, or hoped it would be:
“The title American Babylon will likely puzzle, and even offend, some readers. There is in America a strong current of Christian patriotism in which “God and country’ falls trippingly from the tongue. Indeed, God and country are sometimes conflated in a single allegiance that permits no tension, never mind conflict, between the two.”
There’s a tension at play here. We live in one world. We seek, or should be seeking, another. In the third century Tertullian asked the question – “What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?” In our time should that question be – “What has American Babylon to do with the New Jerusalem we seek?”
Is this all a matter of just splitting hairs? I think not. The tension is as real as my American citizenship and the sense of love, duty, and patriotism I feel for my country. I realize that I’ve been a partner to freedom, privilege, and wealth that few in history have had. I am an American. But, the sense of alienation I feel in my little corner of Babylon is also as real as the dynamics of the new city I seek. As I read the accounts of those who have preceded me in faith I also understand that my Babylon carries its curses as well. America is no different in that regard than any other empire in history. The children of Israel had their taskmasters. So do we! This new age is not immune. As C.S. Lewis once observed:
“What assurance have we that our masters will or can keep the promise which induced us to sell ourselves? Let us not be deceived by phrases about ‘Man taking charge of his own destiny’. All that can really happen is that some men will take charge of the destiny of the others. They will be simply men; none perfect; some greedy, cruel and dishonest. The more completely we are planned the more powerful they will be. Have we discovered some new reason why, this time, power should not corrupt as it has done before?”
Can we escape the tension? I think not. About the best we can do is give moral voice to our concerns, live in peace with others as much as it is possible, realize that our narratives are linked historically to a different homeland and people, and to learn to sing the song of Zion in a foreign land. That seems like so little. Perhaps so. But if we give in to the temptation to make Babylon our permanent abode we fall prey to the false notion that we have the capacity to create heaven on earth. Once we give in to that delusion it may only be a matter of time before we stir the stagnant water, see ourselves mirrored there, and worship what we see.