OrganicJesus.org

The Shire
A lot of people would like to escape the collapsing empire and live in the hinterland, enjoying a sort of "lifeboat community" rather akin to the "back-to-the-land" movement stoked by the last energy crisis in the 1970's. It's often romanticized, in my mind like recreating Tolkien's legendary Shire, but also seen as a sure way of surviving petro-collapse. Admittedly, this is the option I would most enjoy: living quietly in the country and eating food off of my own land sounds challenging, but immensely fulfilling.

However, it lacks much genuine missionality. It is the "Essene Option" of dealing with structural or historical evil: escape. If the homestead is really out in the sticks, it's hard to be God's light to the world, to fulfill that Genesis-rooted vocation of being God's image-bearers in a fallen world. Sure, I'm living in harmony with the non-human created order by choosing this option, but how am I joining God in his mission of setting the world to rights?

Indeed, Jesus seemed to ignore this option in his time, as he did not even sincerely acknowledge the "Essene Option" during his recorded ministry. (the Essenes were a sect of Jews who withdrew from a corrupted society to wait for YHWH's deliverance). On the contrary, Jesus said to be "in the world, but not of it." Walter Wink says that usually in John's writing, "the world" doesn't mean "the created order," but "the domination system. So, Jesus seems to advocate a way of being the people of God that is in the domination system, but not of it.

Summarily, this option seems to be a beautiful, if flawed, way of personally or communally dealing with the age of Less. It should only be pursued by the Christian if they incorporate into it a way of being missional to some rural community.

Solidarity in the City
At the other end of the spectrum is where I have felt myself more drawn. It is undoubtedly the riskiest and least assuring of long-term survival. As economies fail and food becomes prohibitively expensive and then even dangerously scarce, the city is not where any sane person should WANT to be. It will prove messy, grueling, and harsh, a Hobbesian jungle of live that is "nasty, brutish, and short."

However, fear of death should not deter those whose confidence is in a resurrection. We're to seek first the kingdom of God, not our own survival.

Further, this is a beautifully incarnational option. Just as God entered a broken and aching creation to save and redeem it to himself, so the people of God can enter into the darkness and mess of a collapsing world to point to the one whose mustard-seed kingdom is even then setting the world right-side up. If we're to be image-bearers of the King who identified with his realm's brokenness and hurt, Solidarity in the City certainly seems to be a splendid option.

It also has the poetic flourishes of pointing to the metaphors we have for the final state of God's creation, when it is at last set to rights: a garden-city! By imagining the kingdom in the city, we'll have few options but to start gardening in every scrap of tillable soil we have. Imagine in 20 years: every median, yard, and park full of vegetables! The concrete jungle of most cities would be substantially aesthetically and environmentally redeemed under such a vision. To be sure, it's worked in Cuba.

Yet for all its biblical and theological merits, the idea of enduring the coming crapstorm as THE way doesn't stand up to Jesus' own instructions to the first generation of Christians. This leads us to the next option.

National Flight
Jesus warned his followers to flee Jerusalem when the time for its destruction came.

"So when you see standing in the holy place 'the abomination that causes desolation,' spoken of through the prophet Daniel--let the reader understand-- then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains. Let no one on the housetop go down to take anything out of the house. Let no one in the field go back to get their cloak. How dreadful it will be in those days for pregnant women and nursing mothers! Pray that your flight will not take place in winter or on the Sabbath.
(Matthew 24:15-20 TNIV)

While some Christians are free to read this as referring to Christ's return, the early church understood it to mean that when Rome was knocking at Jerusalem's door with their siege weaponry and battalions and abominable imperial seals, then was the time for them to escape. To be sure, Christians did flee Jerusalem before it was sacked. While the blood of over a million citizens flowed so heavily down the street as to extinguish flames (so says Josephus), a remnant of God's people escaped that wrath and continued living and proclaiming his Way.

So in the coming wrath of petrocollapse, Christians can follow this principle of Christ's call to be God's light up to the very last times before devastation. The generation was warned, had the opportunity to know what really makes for peace, but refused. It is almost reminiscent of Paul hitting the dust off his shoes as he leaves cities that reject the gospel of the Risen King. It may be appropriate for some Christians to say, "we loved and served and warned America about this, but they did not choose the way of salvation and peace, but of imperial ruin and anguish. Come, let us take God's message to those who will bear fruit with it." The axe of historic judgment falls as oil peaks, and contemporary Christians may enter into the long narrative of YHWH's Pilgrim People, carrying in their lives the banner of the loving and risen God elsewhere throughout the world.

This has occurred to me as a decent choice. The time may come to depart, kick off the dust, and expatriate to somewhere like Mongolia or Latin America. What matters is that those who pursue this option are missional in both segments of it: being God's prophetic voice before it gets sticky, and continuing that sort of vocation wherever else they wind up.

Nomadic Wandering
Finally is the option of journeying through the land in community. Some, like the Psalters, are already doing this as a pre-collapse alternative lifestyle. Later, it may become a necessity. Indeed, I am sure that many of the landless poor will pack up and be forced to live out of their backpacks. It's like the Shire option, but much harder and less rooted.

This seems to be an alright option, too, biblically. Jesus wandered around, but not to escape hard times (though quite possibly to escape the power elites he so perturbed!). And many of the prophets were likely homeless in some sense. And Paul traipsed all over the empire sharing the exciting news of God's revolution, making a living by building tents.

It doesn't seem to be a stretch for some Christians to wander their country or the world demonstrating and announcing King Jesus, and making a living for themselves while they're at it. I can so happily imagine some folks wandering the oceans in sailboats, going from port to port to announce God's alternative to the hardships of peak oil. Or maybe couples adventuring through America and gleaning off the bounty of the forest and meadow. Again, like the Shire option, it's easy to romanticize this one.

I think of a conversation from Pulp Fiction between two hitmen. Jules is thinking about leaving the business.

VINCENT: So if you're quitting the life, what'll you do?

JULES: That's what I've been sitting here contemplating. First, I'm gonna deliver this case to Marsellus. Then, basically, I'm gonna walk the earth.

VINCENT: What do you mean, walk the earth?

JULES: You know, like Caine in "Kung Fu." Just walk from town to town, meet people, get in adventures.

VINCENT: How long do you intend to walk the earth?

JULES: Until God puts me where he want me to be.

VINCENT: What if he never does?

JULES: If it takes forever, I'll wait forever.

VINCENT: So you decided to be a bum?

JULES: I'll just be Jules, Vincent -- no more, no less.

VINCENT: No Jules, you're gonna be like those pieces of s**t out there who beg for change. They walk around like a bunch of f****n' zombies, they sleep in garbage bins, they eat what I throw away, and dogs piss on 'em. They got a word for 'em, they're called bums. And without a job, residence, or legal tender, that's what you're gonna be -- a f****n' bum!

JULES: Look my friend, this is just where me and you differ --

Indeed, the "Nomadic Wandering" may seem naively cool and romantic to some, but hideously stupid, ill-sighted, and embarrassing to others. Both need correction. And especially to the allegedly "realist" voice of those who side with Vincent in the above exchange, it bears noting that, as St. Paul notes, "God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him. (1 Cor 1:27-29).

CONCLUSION
All of the above options seem viable, so long as missionality is pursued. Christianity was not meant to be enjoyed privately or in seclusion from society. Rather, it is a vocation of proclaiming who's really in charge, that God's new creation is an inbreaking reality that can we can participate in today, and of modeling what the triune God is truly like.

So if the Christian decides to deal with peak oil by heading for the hills ASAP, they had better be prepared to continue their heaven-sent vocation to rural folks or travellers.

If they decide to stay in the city, they had better consider long and hard how they could demonstrate God's kingdom through peace amid violence and sharing amid hoarding.

If they flee elsewhere just before it gets zany, Christians had better not lose sight of announcing God's reign wherever they resume life.

And if they do the nomadic thing, it's critical that it not be a selfish way of escaping responsibility, but as an exhilarating way of dynamically blessing many communities.

Whatever path is pursued, it must always be remembered that the Christian's duty is to seek first the kingdom, not their own survival at any cost.