Exile as Norm
"Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat their produce. But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the LORD on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare." — Jeremiah 29:5–7
It is one of the strangest letters in the Bible.
The people are in Babylon. Everything is lost. The temple is destroyed. The land is gone. The king has been led away in chains. And the prophets in captivity proclaim what the people want to hear: It will be over soon. We are going home. God will intervene and crush Babylon.
And then comes Jeremiah's letter. Not with promises of swift victory. Not with plans for revolt. Not with the comfort that the enemy will soon fall.
But with this:
Build houses. Plant gardens. Marry. Have children. Put down roots.
And the most provocative of all: Pray for Babylon. Seek the welfare of the city. For in its welfare you will find your welfare.
It is hard to overstate how radical this was.
Babylon was the enemy. Babylon had torn down everything sacred. To pray for Babylon was not merely unexpected — it was nearly unthinkable.
And yet it is exactly what God asks them to do. Not because Babylon deserves it. But because God's people are not called to survive in bitterness. They are called to bear fruit, even in foreign soil.
Jeremiah does not ask them to fight to reclaim what they have lost. He asks them to live faithfully where they are. Not as victims. Not as occupiers. But as people who plant trees whose fruit they may never harvest themselves.
Large portions of the Bible were written from exile, or in its shadow.
The Psalms carry exile's sorrow: "By the waters of Babylon, there we sat down and wept." But they also carry exile's trust: "Where shall I go from your Spirit?"
The book of Daniel is a story of faithful living in the heart of a foreign empire. Daniel serves the king. He does his work with excellence. He refuses to worship what he cannot worship — but he does so without hatred, without contempt, without rebellion. He lives as a stranger who respects his hosts, while holding fast to what cannot be negotiated.
It is a remarkable balance. Not withdrawal. Not assimilation. But neither a struggle for power. Daniel never attempts to overthrow Babylon. He attempts to live rightly in Babylon.
Some of what we believe we have lost may be something we were never meant to have.
For over sixteen hundred years — from Constantine to our own day — Christianity in the West has lived with power. With cultural dominance. With legislation shaped by Christian ethics. With churches at the center of towns and crosses on flags.
It has been so long that we have begun to believe this is normal. That Christian influence in society is something we are entitled to. That when it weakens, it is a sign that something has gone wrong.
But what if the opposite is true?
What if the first three centuries — the powerless, persecuted, vulnerable centuries — are closer to God's intention for the church than the sixteen that followed?
For it was in those centuries that the church grew fastest. It was then that it was most recognizable. It was then that love was the first thing people noticed.
There is an important difference between two postures toward the world.
One is a siege mentality. It says: We are surrounded. The enemy is outside the walls. We must defend what we have. Every cultural shift is an attack. Every loss is a step closer to ruin.
The other is an exile mentality. It says: We are strangers here. This world is not our final home. But while we are here, we will plant, build, serve, and pray for the city we live in.
We may recognize both in ourselves. And they live out the faith in entirely different ways.
Peter — the same Peter who drew a sword in Gethsemane — writes later in his letter:
"Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles."
It is a remarkable choice of words from a man who had learned it the hard way. Sojourners and exiles. Not rulers. Not defenders of a Christian territory. Strangers.
And what are these strangers to do? "Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation."
That is the strategy of exile. Not conquest, but witness. Not power, but life.
There is something liberating in this, even though it is also painful.
For the siege mentality is exhausting. It demands constant surveillance of what threatens us. It turns every cultural shift into a crisis. It makes us rigid, defensive, afraid.
The exile mentality frees us from the burden of saving the world. Not from responsibility — but from the illusion that it is our power holding everything up.
Jeremiah says it almost casually: Build houses. Plant gardens. Live.
Not in protest. Not in resignation. But in the trust that God is God, even in Babylon.
This does not mean that everything is indifferent. Daniel's three friends refused to worship the statue and walked into the furnace rather than bow. Daniel himself refused to stop praying, even though it sent him into the lion's den. There are boundaries that cannot be crossed.
But notice what they did not do. They did not organize a revolt. They did not mobilize resistance. They did not plot to overthrow the king. They simply said: We cannot bow to this. And then they left the consequences to God.
That is a different kind of courage than the courage of the sword. It is the courage to stand without striking. To say no without demonizing. To hold fast without grasping for power.
Perhaps what we are experiencing today — the loss of cultural self-evidence, the feeling of losing our footing, the unease that the world is changing faster than we can keep up — perhaps it is not a crisis.
Perhaps it is a homecoming.
Not to power. But to the position where the church has always been most itself: as strangers who love the city they live in, without owning it.
It is a heavier road than the road of power. But it may be a truer one.
For Jeremiah did not promise that Babylon would be comfortable. He promised that God was with them there. And that fruit could grow, even in foreign soil.