Redeemed? or in process of redemption?

Gideon Strauss passes on some interesting questions posed by Pastor Jacobsen to an adult Sunday school class "What would a redeemed city look like?"

He articulated the question further as follows:

Would we notice a difference in how people treated one another when they passed on the street?

Would people be more joyful in their demeanor?

Would there be different traffic patterns on Sunday?

Would bars, strip clubs, and casinos see a change in business?

Would there be less litter in the streets?

Would there be the need for jails?

Would there be less work for police officers?

Read all the questions; it's an interesting way to raise consciousness.

My immediate question --- and you must understand that I am ignorant of the precise theological context within which the Pastor was speaking so I may be mis-understanding the term "redeemed" --- is whether "redeemed" implies a final, end state? Isn't redemption a process which one can never actually achieve in this life time? So how can one have a redeemed city here on earth? Moreover, and more importantly, how can we judge our progress? Unless I am totally mistaken, isn't there an implication in these questions that we would be more redeemed if we were more religious? How can we know that? is there any empirical evidence that a more religious person is more redeemed? Or is my own question merely an indication that I simply don't get it? (Which is probably true.)

Comments

[Alan Sullivan]

More to the point: New York achieved many of those enhancements under Giuliani, after the decay of the Dinkins years. Major and petty crime declined, the streets were cleaner, and the whole nation remarked on the outbreak of civility in a notoriously bad-tempered city. But I doubt very much that Mr. Strauss thought the place had been redeemed. Indeed, I fear that his sort of redemption is attempted daily in Riyadh and Teheran, with unlovely results.

[Gideon Strauss]

Dear David: I am thinking about your wonderful, provocative questions.

Dear Mr. Sullivan: A patient conversation about the idea of urban redemption is likely to alleviate your fears, at least as far as my thinking is concerned.

[Alan Sullivan]

Returning belatedly, after finding Gideon's comment via Technorati.

I suppose, Gideon, that you would argue for a theological basis to the partial redemption of NYC, since Giuliani is a devout man, and gathered others of like mind to work this secular miracle.

Frankly, I could not refute that argument. But there have been cities, Christian as well as Islamic, that turned into hell on earth for the sake of religion. I imagine that you would reply these descents reflected flaws in humans, not in theology.

In any case, I apologize for my presumptions upon you, in both my original comment and this one.

[pop goes lethal]

Foremost let me say thanks for the enlightened discussion.

The enlightened response is that those questions have no singular answer.

That is also the wrong response.

Redemption is a byproduct of art. The act of making art is a pious act, and unlike explicitly religious behavior, it is an inherently improving one.

Well, inherently improving so long as the artist embraces the pursuit to make good art. Good art is how truth is described. Of course, no work can actually contain truth. It can merely point which direction one seeking it ought look. But in striving to make ever better art, one must strive to understand truth more clearly, to manifest eternal artistic truths more faithfully, and to master the most compassionate of tricks - objective self-criticism.

You want redemption? Make a city of artists who have rejected the myth of aesthetic relativism.

Oh. And smoke a lot of speed too. That always helps. You really ought to be hitting speed pipe meth pipe first thing in the morning, you know?

And pour milk down your pants.

or at least...