“Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” So Abram went, as the Lord had told him, and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran. And Abram took Sarai his wife, and Lot his brother's son, and all their possessions that they had gathered, and the people that they had acquired in Haran, and they set out to go to the land of Canaan.” – Genesis 12:1-5
It is hard to overstate the importance of this text for understanding not only the book of Genesis, but the entire Canon of scripture. For it represents a shift in redemption history which is even more significant than the transition from Old to New Testament.
Due to the fall of Adam and Eve, the future of mankind would be defined by sin. A breech in the covenant of works, the devastating consequences from which, not even death could provide escape. Therefore, in order to amend the fortunes of mankind (to rescue our race from an eternal holocaust) “a tear in [the very fabric of] history [was needed],” as Rusty Reno puts it. One which had to be “deep.” And one which is depicted in Genesis 12.
The call of Abram and Sarai to leave their country and kindred is not unlike the flaming sword wielded by the Cherubim in Eden. For both demanded the abandonment of one’s homeland. But, unlike their primordial parents, Abraham and Sarah’s exodus headed West instead of East. Meaning that theirs was the beginning of a return to paradise, not a banishment from it.
And yet, the sacrifice they had to make was seemingly as great. For they were required to forsake everything that they had known. Their land, their family, their nation, their gods. Their very way of being in the world. The labor and toil of generations from which they had received a substantial cultural inheritance. A legacy which accrued little interest, however, for it had been foolishly invested in graven images.
As Joshua informed the Jews of his day: “Long ago your ancestors—Terah and his sons Abraham and Nahor—lived beyond the Euphrates and served other gods” (Josh. 24:2 NRSV). As shocking as it must have sounded, Abraham, the father of the faithful had once rested all of his hopes and aspirations in the empty promises of idols.
Though what else could he do? For in the wake of the original sin, idolatry was his birthright. And futility his destiny. But the choosing of Abraham is not so much about the man himself as it is about the people whom God will raise up through his seed. Meaning that Abraham’s election, in this story, is more about service than salvation. For he is to be the patriarch of a new nation. A people whose cultural output will be so immensely fruitful that it will bless all the nations of the earth through the coming of a new Kingdom.
LONGING FOR A HOMELAND
Therefore, notice that what God promises Abraham is the very thing that he and his ancestors had longed for, and tried to achieve through their own ingenuity. The establishment of a nation and a land in which to dwell, all in order to make a name for themselves. Which is why they gathered together to build the city of Babel.
What they desired, you might say, was a homeland. A place where they felt at home in the world. A place (and a people) which gave them an identity (a name which would last beyond them, immortality). The very thing that Eden was to provide them.
God’s promised future is not a rejection of such hopes, but a “redefining” of them, as one writer put it. Where the distorted desires for a place, a people, and a posterity find divine fulfillment in the land, nation, and seed promises which God gives to Abraham. Being first fulfilled in the nation of Israel in Canaan, and then finally in all the nations of the earth in the eschaton.
The point being that since our banishment from Eden it is in our very nature to desire “a better country” (Hebrews 11:16). To have a nation and a place to call our own. In which we can feel at home in the world. So that we will no longer be nomads, wandering about the earth from place to place. But that we might dwell in the land, and feed upon God’s (and our ancestors’) faithfulness (Psalm 37:3).
This is why the feeling of homecoming is so powerful for us (Think of returning from an extended trip away and returning home again, the smell of your own house setting your heart at ease, sleeping in your own bed, or of men returning from war). Holderlin has a wonderful poem which captures this experience. Describing his return to Swabia, Switzerland after a long absence.
So we labor collectively (and generationally) to achieve that goal. An effort to cultivate this world, to refine it, to make it into a proper place for dwelling. A piece of heaven on earth. A foretaste of the coming of God’s kingdom in full. Which means that our patriotic impulses, and our pride of family and place, are not fallen desires which reveal sinful prejudices.
They are what scripture refers to as natural affections. Our natural desire for a homeland. Meaning that there is a form of national, regional, and familial pride which is perfect, and holy, and good. And which we should foster. A truth which we have turned our back upon in the modern world. Leaving our country and kindred and God (abandoning our cultural inheritance) not for promises of a better homeland, but to wander the earth as nomads.
A turning back to the East. A return to the wilderness driven by a resentful longing to go back to the futility of Egypt. In so doing we have become homeless. Perpetual pilgrims. Cosmic vagabonds. “Alienated from the commonwealth of Israel… having no hope and without God in the world,” as Paul says.
In our hyper-individualistic world, we have lost all conception of a commonwealth. The notion of the common good which has been replaced with the individual good. All of which is to say that we have lost a sense of people and place. We no longer see the value in dwelling in the land. We have chosen instead to wander in the wilderness.
Thus, modern man can sing with complete sincerity that this world is not his home. He’s just a passing through. To where, however, he knows not. One of the signs of our societal homelessness is the prevalence of spiritual restlessness, the initial signs of which were evident even as early as the nineteenth century when a Frenchman by the name of Alexis de Tocqueville came to the United States in an effort to understand its culture, the result of which is probably the most penetrating analysis of American society to date.
RESTLESSNESS OF MODERNITY
Tocqueville‘s research was published under the title: Democracy in America. And in chapter 13, he considers why, even in the midst of prosperity, Americans are restless. In the United States a man builds a house in which to spend his old age, and he sells it before the roof is on; he plants a garden and lets it just as the trees are coming into bearing; he brings a field into tillage and leaves other men to gather the crops; he embraces a profession and gives it up; he settles in a place, which he soon afterwards leaves to carry his changeable longings elsewhere.
If his private affairs leave him any leisure, he instantly plunges into the vortex of politics; and if at the end of a year of unremitting labor he finds he has a few days' vacation, his eager curiosity whirls him over the vast extent of the United States, and he will travel fifteen hundred miles in a few days to shake off his happiness. Death at length overtakes him, but it is before he is weary of his bootless chase of that complete felicity which forever escapes him.
Of particular emphasis for Tocqueville is the futility of such restlessness. That it bears no fruit. For the work is abandoned right before harvest. Which smacks of poor stewardship. And one of the strange things about America’s restlessness, Tocqueville notes elsewhere, is that it is present not just in the elite (which would be more understandable, the ennui of the rich, well documented in human history—the weary dissatisfaction, the boredom of spoiled children), but in the entire nation.
Like all things in America, our anxiety is democratic. An unease which has only grown with time. One place where we see this is in modern architecture. As Roger Scruton has pointed out, modern architecture is hideous largely because it is an architecture for nomads. It is designed for people “to sweep through it like a piece of paper on the wind and then disappear.”
Our urban landscapes are littered with abandoned modern buildings. And the reason they are abandoned is because no one wants to be in them. And the reason no one wants to be in them is because they are so darn ugly. Which is not true of beautiful buildings. Buildings in which it is a delight to dwell. They are constantly being repurposed. Think of the buildings on the Georgetown Square as a fitting example (Government offices, shops, restaurants, residences, gas stations, churches, doctor’s offices, etc.). The great irony, as Scruton observes, is that “if you consider only utility, the things you build will soon be useless.”
Another place where we see an increase in our societal unease is in the job market. Despite an economic downturn people are voluntarily leaving their jobs at a near-record pace. During a downturn. Some have referred to this odd phenomenon as the “Great Resignation.”
A number of these “quiet quitters” are aborting their careers altogether. “Embracing a profession only to give it up,” as Tocqueville says. Not because they must, but because after two or three years they are burned out. They feel compelled to move onto something else. Meaning that many are not only discontented with where they are, but with where they are going. Which makes it impossible for them to settle down.
And such restlessness is also made manifest in the housing market. A survey conducted by Architectural Digest found that 29% of Americans planned to move in 2023 and that another nearly 26% aspired to move but had no plans to do so. That is almost 60% who are either moving or who want to move. That is a crazy number.
I read an article about how popular online real estate listings are (websites like realtor.com), not just with those who plan to move, but with those who aspire to, but never will. People who are not even in the market for a new house spending an inordinate amount of time looking at homes in other cities and fantasizing about moving there.
We could probably find similar statistics in terms of the great migration of modern Christians from church to church. People today church hop like never before. In fact, I would guess that they even change denominations like never before. There is a fluidity among denominations which seems unprecedented. Changing churches not only every few years, but often multiple times in a year. And really many of them never commit to any congregation.
They are spiritual nomads who wander from church building to church building. Or, even worse, who just stay at home to watch worship online, viewing a different church service every week. And in doing so they make no progress. Not only in terms of their own spiritual maturation but in terms of fulfilling the cultural mandate. In terms of cultivating the earth. In making it into a home. In providing an inheritance for future generations to build upon.
“A good man leaves an inheritance to his children's children, but the sinner's wealth is stored up for the righteous.” – Proverbs 13:22
If you never dwell in the land, you will never build anything. You will have little of worth to pass on.
SPIRITUAL RESTLESSNESS
A final manifestation of our growing spiritual restlessness is the ascendency of what we might call “hyperactivity.” The engaging in what appears to be very productive work, but which in the end turns out to be fruitless. One popular form this hyperactivity takes is known as “multitasking.”
In the modern world we marvel at man’s ability to multitask as if this were some kind of miracle of evolution; another of the many signs of man’s superiority to the rest of creation. But, as philosopher Byung-Chul Han points out, this aptitude actually represents a regression. For multitasking is not unique to humans, indeed it “is common among wild animals” for it is “indispensable for survival in the wilderness.”
Think about it, “an animal busy with eating,” must at the same time attend to other tasks, like holding rivals at bay and keeping a look out for potential predators, all the while guarding its young and looking after its mate. In the wild, an animal must divide its attention between numerous activities which is one of the reasons why they are incapable of deep contemplation. They are always having to focus on many things at once. They are always having to multitask.
Meanwhile great cultural achievements are the result not of a divided mind, but a focused, sustained contemplation. The ability to leisurely meditate upon an idea, which requires, among other things, a safe place in which to do it. “The kind of [productive] idleness necessary for the creative process,” as Han describes it.
He gives a fascinating example of it. The development of dancing. I am convinced that dancing, like music, was a human innovation. An artifact of culture developed in fulfillment of man’s mandate. Where he takes the raw materials which God has made and creates something new out of them. Sound, for example, is the raw material and music is the cultural artifact man creates from it. Just as grapes are the raw material and grape juice (just kidding, I forgot we’re not Baptists) and wine is the cultural artifact man creates out of it. In a similar way, our body is designed by God to move in various ways, and the syncing of those movements to the rhythms of music is the cultural artifact.
Han rightly points out that an activity like dancing clearly represents a luxury. Something which came about not out of strict necessity for survival, but out of a sufficient amount of leisure time. Time to freely contemplate “useless” things like rhythm and body movements.
The point being that a purely hectic rush produces nothing new. Six days we are to work, and on the seventh day to rest. To contemplate God and His good creation. Which is exactly what God himself did on the seventh day, considering His achievement and calling it “very good.”
We work in order to have time for leisure, not the other way around. For the ultimate end of man is not work, but contemplation. Contemplation is what leads to cultural advancement.
Thus, “recent social developments” rather than leading human society toward further civility, are dragging it back into the wilderness. All such restlessness is making it impossible for us to fulfill our mandate to fill and subdue the earth. To turn this lush, overgrown meadow into a thriving garden city.
If we refuse to dwell in the land (and feed upon the faithfulness of God and those who have come before us) we will never build anything. We have chosen this restlessness. We have chosen to abandon our land and our people, to spurn our cultural heritage. Not in order to turn back to the West, like Abraham, but to turn to the East like Adam. And so, we need to stop wondering, return to our land, and settle down.
“Trust in the Lord, and do good; Dwell in the land, and feed on His faithfulness.”
– Psalm 37:3
Video Link: Our Cultural Restlessness - YouTube