Sometimes I wish I knew more about my neighbors. Every day I walk up and down the streets around my apartment with little knowledge of who lives where and who does what and why and how and when and such.

I pass the same auto repair shop with the same middle aged guy who comes to work just before I leave. Sometimes he’s picking up a paper as I’m heading for the bus. I pass the line of Korean shops, the restaurants, the video store, the supermarket, the billiards place. I pass the Middle East Bakery. I pass the Sign place, a dry cleaner, Snelling Motors. I also pass the house with the deflated swimming pool in the front yard.

On the way home it’s often a different street. I pass two churches and so many crowded, overgrown yards. Today I saw a house tucked away in the space between two other houses. It looked smaller than the pigeon house we had back home, which was a glorified shed/garage. The tiny house was long and skinny, and I can’t imagine why it was built.

There’s another house on the corner with curved arches and stucco walls. It’s quaint. Rather odd looking next to the enormous, aluminum-paneled duplex next door, but still quaint.

So many places with so much history and people I know nothing about. One of these days.

A friend asked me the other day what I thought about an article that accused Christians of giving into materialism. I admitted the article was right, but expressed a lot of frustration that it would take a whole lot to change people’s actions. I was my own proof.

And it’s really beyond Christians. Certainly Christians have the most pressing reason to leave materialism behind (let’s just say it wasn’t listed as an ideal in the Sermon on the Mount), but it’s really a problem endemic to Americans.

And who’s doing anything about it? A few kooks have started a magazine and published a book or two. Sometimes they hit the nail on the head, sometimes they don’t.

The whole issue is boiling below the surface of American thought, waiting to rise up. The real question is whether or not the church is going to force the uprising and cause the change, or will the church once again be following culture’s lead with a nod of our heads and a “Yeah, that’s what we thought all along.” It seems the church has been caught with its pants down on plenty of broad cultural idea like environmentalism and feminism. Will materialism be next?

I think it’s time the church lead for once in its life. It happened before when a man named Rev. Martin Luther King lead scores of people on march after march. The Civil Rights Movement succeeded. It was a costly battle, one you could easily argue has been given up recently, but it was successful nonetheless.

“Before our eyes we have the results of ideologies such as Marxism, Nazism and fascism, and also of myths like racial superiority, nationalism and ethnic exclusivism. No less pernicious, though not always as obvious, are the effects of materialistic consumerism, in which the exaltation of the individual and the selfish satisfaction of personal aspirations become the ultimate goal of life. In this outlook, the negative effects on others are considered completely irrelevant. Instead it must be said again that no affront to human dignity can be ignored, whatever its source, whatever actual form it takes and wherever it occurs.” — Pope John Paul II, “Respect for Human Rights,” January 1, 1999 (appeared in the July/August 2001 issue of Adbusters magazine)

Sometimes the Pope can be pretty smart. I marvel at why Christians (especially the brand of Christianity I grew up in, where Catholics aren’t considered Christians) don’t give the Pope more credit. No one stands up against more of culture’s crap than the Pope.

And now he’s set his sights on materialism and consumerism. Where do evangelical Christians stand?

Since moving into our little apartment at 1625 Minnehaha Avenue I’ve noticed the differences between city and suburban life.

In suburbia the car is the required mode of transportation. There is no other alternative. In most cities there are a few alternatives. Most cities have some form of bus transportation, and a few cities also have some sort of rail transportation. In the city the bike is also much more of an option. In the city five or six miles is an easy bike commute, and puts nearly every store you’d ever need within reach. In suburbia five or six miles will get you to the convenience store and maybe a fast food joint or two. If you’re lucky and the sidewalks work out you might make it to a K-Mart.

In suburbia the lawn is the crowning achievement. Developments are planned with large lots and plenty of yard. The result is curving streets and big lawns. In the city the streets are laid out in a simple grid and the houses are spaced as close as possible, resulting in minimal yard space. No one in the city would ever think of owning a riding lawn mower.

And finally we come to the more important differences. Cities tend to be lower income and more racially diverse. Suburbs tend to be higher income and white. That’s obviously a generalization, but my experience seems to back it up. There are certainly poor people in the suburbs, and there are certainly rich people in the city. There’s actually a lot of middle class people in both places. There are also plenty of different races living in the suburbs, and the city has its share of racially homogenous sectors.

So what’s the end result of all that? Stereotypes. Ask anyone from my hometown (a suburb of Detroit) what they think of downtown Detroit and the answers will invariably be negative and reflect a fearful attitude. More often than not those same people have rarely been to downtown Detroit, save for a Tigers game. Suburban life is not only filled with green lawns and curving streets, it’s also filled with fear and racism. The homogenous nature of the suburbs only worsens racial stereotypes. When you see more African Americans on TV than you do in real life, it’s pretty easy to let a few television stereotypes take over. You expect the Chevy Caprice with tinted windows to be a gang banger. You expect the two kids talking on the corner to pull guns on you when you ride by.

You don’t see them as people, you see them as a threat. It’s a pretty sad state of affairs. While riding my bike today I had all these thoughts going through my head as I wrote through the city neighborhoods of St. Paul. I felt horribly out of place, riding my new bike with my shiny new helmet and my wife with her new bike and shiny new helmet, and digital camera around her neck. I felt very upper-middle class, despite the fact that my income puts me on the lowest end of middle class (I’ve realized lately how spoiled I am). I also realized how very little solidarity I have with my neighbors.

This morning I went to a different church than I usually do, one smack in the middle of city, only a few blocks from my apartment. I immediately noticed that the church wasn’t reaching the surrounding demographics. This area has a high concentration of Asians and African Americans. I noticed only three African American kids in a sea of predominately old white people. I also noticed that most of the pews were empty. The church was maybe one-third full. I’m guessing this is because the demographics of the surrounding community have changed and the church has failed to capture the new demographic. What’s left is the old guard, pews full of silver haired men and women. The church will probably die with them.

All of this made me think intently about who the church is reaching. I’ve grown up all my life in suburban churches. The church I’ve called home for the past few years is a suburban church. Now that I’m living in the city I’m thinking of attending more of a city church, and I’m curious to see how these churches meet the needs of their community, needs that are much more tangible. Suburban churches tend to easily become country clubs. I guess I’m hoping to find something more in a city church. Not that there should be a whole lot of difference. Maybe the church is simply becoming ineffective at reaching the common person, which is a fact I don’t doubt at all.

I find it curious that Christian leaders claim that we live in a morally bankrupt society. If our society is morally bankrupt, do you think it has anything to do with the fact that Christians are noticeably absent? Perhaps our Christian leaders aren’t very good leaders.

If society is without morals, it’s because we have few good examples. Why? All the good examples are hidden away in our Christian subculture, right where no one in mainstream society can find them. How can we complain that people are morally bankrupt when we’ve squirreled truth away in our Christian bookstores?

It seems the church of today is frightened and scared. We pull our children from the public schools and batten down the hatches. If society is messed up, we better circle the wagons and hope we can survive. I don’t know about you, but the Savior I believe in didn’t care about the odds. He didn’t care if the battle was lost, he showed up to fight anyway. And he won. We have almighty God on our side, yet we hide in the Christian bookstore and hope to snag a few pagans off the sidewalk. I’m sorry, but that’s not how church works. Jesus didn’t wait for the people to come to him, he went to the people. He found the morally bankrupt people, he had dinner at their houses, and then he gave them the truth they so desperately needed.

I dislike manipulation. I dislike the fact that radio stations only play one song off an album until hearing it makes you puke like some kind of Pavlov response. I dislike that sweeps month on TV features shows with the most sensational plot lines imaginable–not because they’re the best stories, but simply because they draw the most viewers. I dislike industries that exist solely to make a buck off people. Often times people are good at hiding their money making behind good intentions, but sometimes it just can’t be hidden. It’s most obvious on teen web sites that are surfer driven and don’t have any actual content. Low maintenance and high profit. But do they care about teens? Only the ones with money. I dislike people who tell me I have to like or not like something because of an association with the “adjective” Christian. I dislike cigarette ads that tell me not to smoke. I dislike beer ads that tell me not to drink and drive. Why do you advertise and sell your product and then tell me not to use it? I dislike magazines and TV shows with near-anorexic girls that don’t look anything like the real girls I grew up with, or even the real anorexic girls I grew up with. I dislike a society that tells me sex is supposed to be a certain way. You’d think they got their information from a junior high bathroom.

It seems kind of ludicrous to have a conversation on race in a room full of white people. How can you begin to understand the issue with only one race represented? I suppose that wasn’t the thrust of the gathering, but the topic came up. It was at a reading of a very intelligent and respected author. I wondered if he saw the foolishness of a crowd of white people talking about race. I suppose I shouldn’t complain, at least there is some dialogue. It just frustrates me that segregation is so ingrained in our lives. I walked back to my truck and passed people of other races that seemed a million miles away from me. Our circles of interest are radically different. This has been going on for ages, and I wonder if the trend will continue. The intelligent and respected author suggested we rely less on labels and concentrate on people. He said you can’t love a labeled group. But you can love a person. Perhaps that’s where the change needs to start. Little things like that. I wonder if the day will ever come when I can walk into a restaurant and the color of some one’s skin will be an attribute like any other I would use to describe them: tall, short, blond hair, red hair, glasses, etc. Of course to each one of these a certain stigma is attached and it seems rather hopeless.

I wonder how Jesus saw people.

Today a girl at work was talking about MTV’s The Real World and said they put those people on TV so we can look at them and judge them, talk about whether their hair is ugly and how they made a stupid decision. She said this in defense to a roommate’s comment that she’s judgmental. I couldn’t help but laugh.

Today as I was riding my bike across the Robert’s Street Bridge to the parking lot where I park my truck, I saw something I wished I could stop. Several hundred feet ahead of me a high school aged boy was riding his bike along the sidewalk. People are always walking along this sidewalk towards the cheaper parking lots on the other side of the bridge. Every time this kid passed a woman he reached out and pinched her butt. Most of the women jumped in shock and fear, and the kid rode on, snickering to himself. The women continued on to their cars, looking flustered and upset. I wanted to yell at this kid. I wanted to catch up to him and do something. If I was close enough to him I don’t know what I would have done, but I would have done something. I’ve never felt so powerless before. By the time I reached my truck I was very tempted to peel out after the little hoodlum and run him down. I just don’t understand some people.