Dave Bing, hopelessness, & justice

Welcome to the city, Mr. Bing. You will find it a tolerable place, quite charming in a lot of ways — that is, provided you have any time to meander about. Remember: this is a home, not a business.

Treating Detroit like a business gave us the casinos. Now we’re a tourist destination, right? I mean, doesn’t everybody want to go to the D now?

Pardon the sarcasm.

It is a time of newness and hope, but many Detroit residents are sick of hoping. Hope feels like a drug that we can’t stop taking, a drug that gives you a wonderful fleeting high and then leaves you breathless, battered, stumbling. If Dave Bing can make 200,000 people move into 50,000 empty houses, then we shall declare him the messiah and bow at his feet in fealty. But I’m not holding my breath.

The Savior for us is far too just for our liking. He destroys, He rampages our hearts until He finds fertile soil there. He will keep tilling until the weeds can’t hold, until our passion for life is circumscribed by His passion for meaning and beauty.

The people of Detroit (myself included) have sown the wind, and we shall reap the whirlwind. But that is the very reason I want to be here. It is a privilege to be annihilated by the living God. Not every place is so lucky.

~ by Daniel on May 8, 2009.