You need to go to Chicago

The two years after I graduated from college turned my world upside down.

College was a magical time for me. I spent five years at two private Christian colleges. During those five years, I actually started to enjoy being me. I came into my own among the most gracious, kind, loving people I have ever known to this day. And I finally found that the Gospel of Jesus Christ really is good news. For the first time in my life, I started to believe that God loves me. Really loves me.

When graduation finally came, I didn’t want to leave!

But I took a job with a Fortune 500 company that immediately transferred me to Chicago.

Chicago and that Fortune 500 company were shocks to my system.

I grew up in a small town in Ohio. I spent the last three years of college in a small town in Arkansas. Up to that point, I had few experiences with big cities and all of them scared me somewhat. Chicago was sensory overload. I’d never seen so many people in so many colors speaking so many languages at the same time. Every neighborhood looked like a bad neighborhood to my small town eyes. Every person I met on the street looked to me like a mugger or a panhandler. I was terrified!

My only refuge was my office out in the suburbs. But that was not much of a refuge. After five years among people of such caring and warmth, my coworkers seemed cold and not caring. I remember the time one of the old guys at the office took me aside and said: “If you want to go anywhere with this career or with this company, you need to start drinking. If you don’t drink, you don’t have a prayer!”

Every week, I thought about giving up and moving back to Arkansas or Ohio. I would leave the office at 8 o'clock at night, eat alone at a restaurant, and then go home to bed. I would be at the office by 7 o'clock the next morning and do it all over again. “Dark” is the word I use to describe those days in my life.

The story has a happy ending. After a year, I ended up loving Chicago. I loved its neighborhoods. I loved its people. I loved its vibe. I explored every part of the city. Hosting family and friends from out of town became one of my favorite things to do. I would proudly show them my new home.

In the end, I quit the job at that Fortune 500 company, but not because I was homesick. It’s because they wanted to transfer me to a different division in another city. I told them I didn’t want to leave Chicago!

A lot of things happened to change how I felt about Chicago.

One of them was that I made four close friends with whom I spent a lot of time. At least twice a week, I got together with them to eat takeout from our favorite restaurants, talk about life and love, and watch movies. We prayed and studied the Bible. We went on camping and sightseeing trips. We got very close.

What made these friends unusual is that all four of them were from the former Soviet Union.

One night, we were eating takeout and watching a movie. I looked around at them and said: “You know, it’s weird that I love you all so much and that we’re such good friends.”

“Why?” they asked.

“Because when I was a kid growing up in the 1980s, I thought Russians were the ‘bad guys,” I said. “I grew up thinking of you as mortal enemies and villains. And it turns out that we’re not so much different. Here we are the best of friends!”

They laughed. They said that, growing up in the Soviet Union, Americans were always the 'bad guys’ and villains in the movies they watched.

And now, here they were living in America and hosting Americans as close friends and honored guests in their home.

That little exchange sums up why I think God sent me to Chicago.

Growing up and going to college in a “bubble” as I had, God knew that I was myopic. Not only did I believe that Christian college and small town American life were “good,” “pure,” and “true,” I also believed that everything outside of Christian college and small town America was not as good.

Before moving to Chicago, I thought cities (and the people who lived in them) were not as good. Maybe even bad.

Before becoming close friends with four former Soviets, I thought people who were not American were also not as good. Maybe even bad.

I recall a conversation I had with a woman a couple of weeks after I moved to Chicago. I was complaining to her about the city. No, not really complaining. I was criticizing the city and its people. I was putting it down while I talked about how much better we were in small towns.

She cut me off.

“You know, this is my home. I like it here. I choose to live here. I like the people here. I’ve been here a long time. You’ve been here two weeks. What do you know?”

Over the next year, God would show me how much I didn’t know.

Why do I think God was behind all of that?

It’s because of Bible stories like the one in the Book of Acts 17:16-34.

In that story, the Christian missionary Paul arrives in the great city of Athens.

Going to Athens was not in Paul’s plan, but he fled there to hide out because people in another city were trying to kill him.

Paul was a flawless follower of Jewish culture, law, and tradition. A Jew’s Jew. So, it is strange to imagine him wandering among the altars and statues and temples of the Greek gods.

How out of place did Paul, a man who believed “the LORD your God, the LORD is One,” feel among the many gods of Greece?

The people of Athens did not make him feel welcome. For starters, Athenians would think of Jewish monotheism as a “hick religion” for primitive people from the backwaters of the Roman Empire. When Paul arrived in the city and began proclaiming the Jewish Messiah, it would have sounded like babble (which is what the Athenians called it in Acts 17:18).

The Athenian philosophers “invited” Paul to present his case on Mars Hill. This was not a friendly invitation. In Athens, Mars Hills was a place where people were put on trial to make their case before the gods and before the public. Religious teaching was subject to regulation in Athens and it appears that some people thought that Paul’s preaching broke the law.

So, there was Paul on trial in a strange city with its strange beliefs about philosophy and religion.

And this is what he said:

“I see in every way that you are very religious!” (Acts 17:22)

Then he went on to say that the Greeks and the Jews came from the same God (17:24, 28), have the same blood (17:26, 28), and share the same problem (17:27).

In a strange city with strange religions, Paul said to the people: “We’re not strangers! We are so much alike! We are all human beings who come from the same Source. We are all passionate about religion and purposeful about seeking God. We are all trying to solve the same problem of how to find God. We are so much alike!”

And all of that started with these two words: I see (17:222).

I see.

In Athens, God helped Paul see the Greek people in a new way.

Just as he sent me to Chicago to see the city and its people in a new way.

I believe that same God is still trying to get his people to “see” now.

There is a great need and opportunity for rural Christians to go share life with people in the city for awhile.

There is a great need and opportunity for urban Christians to go share life with people in the country for awhile.

I often hear Christians do as I did when I first moved to Chicago. They criticize and pass judgment on people and places they do not know. City Christians can do this just as well as country Christians. And both do.

This is not the Way of Jesus Christ.

This is not the Spirit of God.

If you feel God nudging or pulling you out of your comfort zone to go to a place that seems strange, or even dangerous or hostile, go.

God wants you to do this.

How do I know?

Because God’s will is to “create in himself one new humanity in place of the two, thus making peace” (Ephesians 2:15).

The first step is for Christians to leave the comfort of the familiar to go meet with people in uncomfortable, unfamiliar places.

If you haven’t had your “Athens” or “Chicago” experience yet, now is the time. The Gospel does not come to life in you or in our world without it.

Go see.