The Duke of Sussex — no, not the husband of Meghan Markle but 1831’s iteration — founded the Garrick Club in the heart of London. It would be where “actors and men of refinement and education might meet on equal terms,” where “patrons of the drama and its professors were to be brought together,” and where “easy intercourse was to be promoted between artists and patrons.” Two years ago, women were admitted into this esteemed company, but there is still one people group who are banned from membership: the dull.
Its first committee declared “that it would be better that ten unobjectionable men should be excluded than one terrible bore should be admitted.” Today the principle still stands: in a world where you can be anything, you’d better not be boring.
Amongst the establishment clubs of London’s rich and powerful, suited and booted, the Garrick does a pretty decent nonconformist spinoff in its own theatrical self-expression. The members are still within the original triangulation. Part of the reason there was such demand to get into the club has been not only its exclusivity but also its cultural center of gravity. In its orbit is still the popular columnist of the London Times Giles Coren, who wrote amusingly about his failed attempts to gain membership, but clearly relishes each visit. You be the judge of whether dining rooms that look like something out of Downton Abbey are stimulating places. It may or may not be your cup of tea, but cities like London are filled with people who are interested and interesting.
Cities are a magnet for the aspirational. If I can make it there, I’ll make it anywhere. And as you click with this magnet, you then need to do everything within your power not to repel it, but to remain connected by being always and constantly interesting. The way that’s been done is to consume and convey culture to those around you. And so, if you excuse the metaphorical leap, the magnet becomes a treadmill, with the exhausting demand to stay as interesting as possible.
I’ve recently moved with my young family further into central London as vicar of an Anglican church, St. Michael’s Chester Square. The nearest public playground has a panoramic view of the front of Buckingham Palace. The attractional pull of these cities is intense for tourists, residents, and workers alike. There are dozens of dazzling products and services to consume, but not necessarily that which feeds the soul. An adult playground, if you will. This is how Tim Keller describes the tendency of those who move to cities, along with their elitism:
Urban residents, more than their country cousins, tend to take an unmistakable pride in sophistication and hipness. Christians must not be tempted to come to the city (or at least not to remain in the city) for these motivations. (Tim Keller, Center Church, 171)
Urban life can feed such pride, narcissism, and envy. All energy goes into protecting, preserving, and promoting as well as comparing, competing, and contrasting. Cities fuel, but often fail to deliver, the “main character energy” of the social media-driven impulses and individualism of millennials today. The city becomes, with mixed success, a backdrop for our own personal story.
Urban elitism doesn’t exactly reflect the man who hailed from Nazareth and died outside the city walls. So how can Christians live in these places? Keller was, after all, in the heart of Manhattan: “Christians indeed can be enriched by the particular joys of urban life, but ultimately they live in cities to serve.”
But surely that is just moving from one exhausting motivation to another? The service needs are overwhelming. But he’s right. We don’t move from the treadmill of being interesting to the treadmill of being useful. It’s by receiving the grace of the one who came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many. His tending to us is our sustenance and energy, not the city around us. Jesus is the protagonist, not us. We are freed from the tyranny of telling an interesting story for ourselves and liberated to simply enjoy being a character in his. This is liberating. It’s the freedom of stepping off the treadmill. My performance is no longer the source of my energy or my acceptance in the club.
There is freedom in recognizing that I am here to serve God primarily. God will lead me to serve those he wants me to. If I focus my attention on serving God and try to do so humbly listening to his Holy Spirit, I am freed from the “what ifs.” It also takes us away from the mirror of our own lives to reflect Christ to the city.
Still, there is the glaring interest gap for those outside of the church. For those of us who are followers of Jesus, we bear a lot of the responsibility for this. In What’s a Christian, Anyway? Glenn Packiam reports:
Only 18 percent of non-Christians say Christians are good at listening to others’ stories and standing up against wrongdoings and injustice. Instead, about a third of non-Christians agree strongly that Christians “see themselves as better than others.”
Christians, it seems, would actually do well to find the city even more interesting than they currently do. The paradox is that when we stop trying to be interesting, we are finally free to be interested. We can genuinely listen to others’ stories because we are no longer frantically trying to write our own.
This is what happens when we remind ourselves, against all odds, that we are not the main character in the story. Jesus is. And the story he has placed us in, not one of our own invention but of his authorship, gives us a healthy attitude toward the city and even ourselves. Keller writes:
The gospel alone can give us the humility (“I have much to learn from the city”), the confidence (“I have much to give to the city”), and the courage (“I have nothing to fear from the city”) to do effective ministry that honors God and blesses others … For our own continuing spiritual growth and well-being, we need the city perhaps more than the city needs us.
Where the public feeling toward Christianity has moved from indifference to undesirable and unpalatable, the church needs to reclaim what it can be. Not through gimmickry and hype, nor through an exclusive members’ club, but by being people of all shapes and sizes that God not only finds endlessly interesting but also loves. And from that place, if we were to exist in the city, for the city, that would be pretty interesting.
