Institution Building Requires Virtue

As the great dechurching continues and Christian institutions fail and falter, those of us who remain and desire to see Christianity flourish will need to build new institutions to advance this work and carry it on after we are gone. Unfortunately, during times of fear and turmoil, it is very easy for us to build institutions founded on vice rather than virtue. When this happens, we construct institutions like Cain or the people of Babel. Such cities have their origin in human vengeance (Gen 4:24; Nah 3:1).

In contrast to these great cities of man, the city of God has its origin in divine mercy (1 Pet 1:3). Its designer and builder is God (Heb 11:10). We are “living stones” of that city, “a spiritual house” (1 Pet 2:5), and “the temple of the living God” (2 Cor 6:16). In this city, the blood of Christ “speaks a better word” than the blood of Abel whom Cain slew, one of mercy and forgiveness (Heb 12:24).

This biblical teaching of the two cities shows us how to establish institutions. And it is important. Today, I worry that some of us are founding cities of blood like Nineveh (Nah 3:1), cities of vengeance like Cain (Gen 4:24), or cities to make a name for oneself like the builders of Babel (Gen 11:4).

Social media accelerates vice and resists the virtues of patience, self-control, and restraint. Passions are everywhere celebrated, and heroes of vice have found their moment (Isa 5:22). But Christians must not consent. We have no lasting city here (Heb 13:14), and the only thing that will persist into eternity is an institution built on the theological virtue of love, since “love never ends” (1 Cor 13:8).

Here then is my argument for why we should not consent to the vices of the mortal city as we build new institutions. Rather, we must recognize that we are “a spiritual house” that God builds whose vocation involves going into the cities of blood to share the mercy of God (Nah 3:1; Jonah 4:2).

Building the City of Man

After Cain murdered Abel, God exiled him east of Eden to the land of Nod. There, he wandered in the land called wandering, which is the meaning of the word Nod. And there, Cain built a city to find safety and security and to make a name for himself. He called the city Enoch, after his son, so that his family’s name would have a future.

Today’s builders might feel at home in this city. The city grows. Music, metallurgy, and the arts flourish. People shape the city, foster a culture, and love the land where they wandered. Cain loved his kin, naming the city of Enoch after his son. Years later , Lamech would immortalize Cain in a poem—showing that literary works also flourished in Enoch.

And yet this city built with human hands ended just as it began—with murder. Lamech tells his two wives poetically:

“Adah and Zillah, hear my voice;

you wives of Lamech, listen to what I say:

I have killed a man for wounding me,

a young man for striking me.

If Cain’s revenge is sevenfold,

then Lamech’s is seventy-sevenfold.” (Gen 4:23–24)

Few things change. Nimrod the great hunter before the Lord builds the great cities (Gen 10:9–12). He builds Nineveh—which God calls “the bloody city, all full of lies and plunder” (Nah 3:1).

And he builds Babel, the typological city of man. The next chapter in Genesis tells us that it was a place of sin.

The people there wanted to seek safety and security— to “make a name for ourselves” (Gen 11:4), all the while wandering further east from God (Gen 11:2). Small matter that God had already given humanity a name; those in Babel want one for themselves. And they say “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens” (Gen 11:4). Here, the construction in Hebrew emphasizes that both the city (נִבְנֶה־לָּ֣נוּ) and the name (וְנַֽעֲשֶׂה־לָּ֖נוּ שֵׁ֑ם) are for themselves.

They are builders. But they should have gone to the city where God would place his name (Deut 12:11). There, God would come from heaven to earth to the place where his name dwelled. The city builders wanted to go to heaven with their tower, to make a name for themselves. But a city whose foundations are vice has no future.

From this city, we must come out (Rev 18:4). And if we don’t, we might find ourselves builders of a city whose cornerstone we reject—“The stone that the builders rejected” (Ps 118:22). And this happens when we build to create security for ourselves in places where God’s name does not dwell, a house whose founder and designer is not God but us. “Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain” (Ps 127:1).

Some few of today’s builders aim to create institutions built on the same vicious principles of Cain and Lamech. They foster their culture by seeing everyone else as an enemy. One is either a friend by supporting them or an enemy. They love kin, place, the arts, and culture. They want to preserve their culture, their kin. They want to name the city Enoch; they love their musical instruments and their metal works. They write their poetry, full of vengeance and murder—full of improper sexuality as Lamech’s polygamy implies.

Being the Building of God

By contrast, God promises to place his name in Jerusalem (Deut 12:11). The reason why the city can be built up there is because God chose it. But even then, that city is an image of reality, a type of the city that is to come. For Jerusalem is built “as a city” (Ps 122:3), but one that draws our minds upwards to the city above.

On earth, Abraham lived as a sojourner or resident alien. “I am a sojourner and foreigner among you,” he says (Gen 23:4). Abraham looked not to the land from which he was called nor to the land of Jerusalem as such. Instead, “he was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God” (Heb 11:10).

And like Abraham, “here we have no lasting city, but we seek the city that is to come” (Heb 13:14). The reason why should be clear: “Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain” (Ps 127:1).

And yet while we await this city, we become a building. Peter calls us a “spiritual house” (1 Pet 2:5). Paul calls us “a dwelling place for God by the Spirit” (Eph 2:22) and “the temple of the living God” (2 Cor 6:16). And as “living stones” of this temple (1 Pet 2:5), we must be a “holy nation” whose purpose is proclamation and holy living (1 Pet 2:5, 9).

We become the building—we do not make it with human hands. This distinction matters because the origin of God’s building (us) is divine mercy (1 Pet 1:3; 2:10). And the manner in which we exist as the building matters. We remain the building even as we cultivate our institutions.

God calls us to defend the faith “with gentleness and respect” (1 Pet 3:15). Lacking gentleness and disrespect are signs of vice, not virtue. They are signs of man’s city, not God’s. “For it is better to suffer for doing good, if that should be God’s will, than for doing evil” (1 Pet 3:17).

Given the stakes (“The end of all things is at hand”), God calls us to “be self-controlled and sober-minded” (1 Pet 4:7). Yet many (especially online) lack the courage of self-control, being mastered by the passions of the flesh like wrath, anger, and slander. They attack the “enemy” without respect; they wage war with instruments of the flesh rather than the Spirit.

Many misunderstand the true enemy. They call their political opponents their true enemy. Certainly, there are people who call us enemies. When Jesus says to love our enemies, he implies that we have real enemies! Yet he does call us to love our enemies. But beside all of that, the reason why we must act virtuously and so train our minds by habit to discern good from evil is because of our true enemy, the Devil (Rom 12:1–2; Heb 5:14).

Peter tells us: “Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour” (1 Pet 5:8). Satan entraps us by sin, by passions, by wrath and anger, but letting the desires and passions of the flesh overcome our mind. Instead, we ought to cast our anxieties upon God (1 Pet 5:6–7). Satan wants you to punch back harder, so that he can enslave your soul (Heb 2:15). God wants you to cast your anxieties upon him, because he cares for you.

As the spiritual house of God, we are called to be priests to worship God and to minister to others so that they can know him too (1 Pet 2:5, 9; 4:10). There is no place for the vicious way of Cain, Lamech, and Nimrod.

Going Into the City

Building a great city is not the win we think it is. God calls us out of her (Rev 18:4). But it is not the city per se which is the problem. It is its origin (murder, vengeance), character (vice), and destiny (separation from God).

But that is why God called Jonah to go to the city of blood, Nineveh (Nah 3:1). Jonah wanted to destroy his enemies. His flesh led him to flee. Why? Because he knew God’s character: “I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from disaster” (Jonah 4:2).

Like some of today’s Christian Nationalists, Jonah loved kin and country. He wanted to divide Israel and Nineveh into the neat categories of friend and enemy. But that is not who God is. God’s mercy goes to a thousand generations, but his wrath has its limit in the third or fourth generations (e.g., Deut 7:9; Exod 34:7). The nature of God is mercy, love, grace.  

God sent Jonah into the city of blood (Nah 3:1). And God sends us into the cities of blood. We come out of them morally and spiritually—we don’t partake in her sins (Rev 18:4). Yet we go to the nations to “proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light” (1 Pet 2:9).

We don’t build the city here below. We don’t partake of its sins. Instead, we seek a city whose builder and founder is God (Heb 11:10). We cannot build a lasting city here below because it is impossible (Heb 13:14).

While we love our natural relations of family, friends, and country, we know that God made us into one new human being (Eph 2:15). We know that we are a new and “holy nation” (1 Pet 2:9) characterized by faith, hope, and love (1 Pet 1:1–2:3). As newly born again, we are a new creation, a third race in the language of the Letter to Diognetus (§1).

While grace does not destroy nature, it shows us its proper place. We are resident aliens in this world (1 Pet 2:11). And God calls us to the nations (Matt 28:19–20). With Martin Luther, we sing, “Let goods and kindred go, this mortal life also.”

If we hold too closely to natural goods, we will not sell all that we have and follow him (Mark 10:21). If we love kindred improperly, we will not properly “Love the brotherhood” of believers (1 Pet 2:17). If we lack patience, gentleness, and respect, we will let the passions and desires of the flesh win the day—so the devil will assign us a house in the kingdom of darkness.

As the temple of God, a “spiritual house,” we build up places where God has placed his name. But we cannot fall into the trap of building the great city of Babel. The violence and viciousness of the city of man must be rejected.

Only the One whose burden is light and yoke is easy can build a lasting institution, which we are in the Spirit. Only the one who will not break a bruised reed or trim a dim wick can show us the love of God in Christ Jesus as the Spirit sheds abroad that love into our hearts.

When that happens, the Lord is in it. He will build the house. And that is the kind of institution that will last into eternity. Because of all things, love never ends. So the city begins in mercy, which is love applied in time, and it ends in love—for God is love. All other foundations will fall into sinking sand.

Note

This article draws upon (at least) a fourfold source: my time spent writing my thesis on the Pentateuch during my ThM, my interest in political theology, Augustine’s The City of God, and Jacques Ellul’s Technological Society and The Meaning of the City.