Home
/
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
/
Instructions for Exile from the Book of Jeremiah
Instructions for Exile from the Book of Jeremiah
Jul 18, 2025 8:17 PM

“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” –Jeremiah 29:11

Jeremiah 29:11isa popular verse among many of today’s Christians, as Evan Koons humorously points out in a new article at Q Ideas.

“Christians love this verse,” he writes. “It has all the ideas and values we crave: prosperity, safety, security, hope, longevity. It’s the verse we most associate with the book of Jeremiah.”

Yet, as Koons is quick to remind us, the “bigger picture” of Jeremiah 29 is far less rosy.Jeremiah is writing to a displaced people living in a strange land, struggling to understand how they might live peacefully and fruitfully in the here and nowwhile keeping their sights and spirits focused on the not yet.

“Somehow, we’ve forgotten that Jeremiah 29:11 is written in the midst of unspeakable calamity,” Koons writes, and perhaps it’s because “we fail to recognize that all of Jeremiah’s letter to the exiles, not just Jeremiah 29:11, still applies to us today.”

Koons continues:

Sure, our passports and birth certificates tell us one thing, but Philippians 3:20 tells us another: our citizenship is in Heaven. And don’t get me wrong, every square inch of this world belongs to God and His Spirit dwells in us, but we are not yet fully home. Exile is the time in between. We see through a mirror dimly (1 Corinthians 13:2)…We live and die in exile, in the midst of calamity. We live and die in Babylon. e “not home”…

…And I wonder, do we feel that tension today? Do we feel the longing to be united with Christ, to know and fully be known? Do we feel the homesickness, the dis-ease, of being barred from our home? Or, could it be that e to embrace this world and a culture that preaches happiness, safety, and security at all costs—a culture that flees from all forms suffering and fort?

Our preoccupation with Jeremiah 29:11 leads me to believe that this is true. We desperately want to make our home, but before our home is ready.

Christians go about this in plenty of clumsy and counterproductive ways, which Pastor Greg Thompson of Trinity Presbyterian Church effectively summarizes under the following three categories (as reference and paraphrased by Koons):

Fortification is all about protection. These are the Christians who hunker down in their own Christian bunkers with their own Christian friends and their own Christian thoughts and Christianly wait until Christian es back.Domination is all about getting out into culture and condemning it. These Christians are on mission to fight the world and take it back in the name of modation is all about waving the white flag. These Christians don’t want to hide. They don’t want to fight. They just want to blend in, drink really good beer, and get about the business of the day. Unfortunately, in blending in, these Christians lose the reality that they are “set apart.”

So, if all three of these methods fall short, what are Christians to do?

As Stephen Grabill ponders in Episode 1 of For the Life of the World: Letters to the Exiles(a seven-part film series starring Koons himself):“Maybe what God asked of the Israelites in captivity he’s asking of us today.”

Or, as Koons goes on to explain: “We are being called by God to spend the remainder of our days serving our captors, working with them (not fighting them or conforming to them or fleeing from them—but serving them) promising nothing. It’s rooted in the belief that all of our vocations (family, work, public service, education, art, and more) matter.”

For more on what this might look like in application and how we as Christians ought to approach it, watch the entire series, which releases later this month.

Watch the full trailer here. See the trailer for Episode 1 below.

[product sku=”1440″]

Comments
Welcome to mreligion comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.
Sign up to post
Sort by
Show More Comments
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
How were people On Call in Culture 165 years ago?
What is so special about 1837? That was the year Abraham Kuyper was born. September 29th is his 165th birthday. So we thought we would go back to 1837 and see how people were being On Call in Culture back then. We don’t know if they were all believers on a mission to bless the world, but by seeing what was going on 165 years ago, we hope you are encouraged to engage your world in 2012! How did people...
Is it really ‘aid’ if it goes to relatively wealthy nations?
Alan Duncan, an aid minister in the UK, says his government is “forced” to hand over large amounts of money to the EU’s foreign aid budget, but has no say in how the money is spent. The problem is that much of the $2 billion+ “aid” money (one-sixth of the British budget) goes to projects such as making a Moroccan water park more eco-friendly, an art project in St. Petersburg, and building a hotel and plex in Barbados. Britain’s International...
Counting the Profit of a Third Party Choice
Joe Carter recently highlighted the discussion at Ethika Politika, the journal of the Center for Morality in Public Life, about the value of (not) voting, particularly the suggestion by Andrew Haines that in some cases there is a moral duty not to vote. This morning I respond with an analysis of the consequences of not voting, ultimately arguing that one must not neglect to count the cost of abstaining to vote for any particular office. One issue, however, that I...
Did 2,362 Millionaires Get Unemployment Checks in 2009? (Answer: Yes they did.)
The Congressional Research Service (CRS), a group that works exclusively for the U.S. Congress, issued a report with one of the greatest titles I’ve ever seen on a government document: Receipt of Unemployment Insurance by e Unemployed Workers (“Millionaires”) Now the first nine words are nothing special, typical policy-wonk speak. But whoever added in the word “millionaires” with scare quotes and parentheses is a genius. Most people would have been nodding off around the word “Insurance” but seeing millionaires (that’s...
Stop Apologizing for Our Liberties
You cannot apologize to a fanatic, says Lee Harris. It only serves to convince him that he was right all along: The last few weeks have witnessed a peculiar and disturbing spectacle: An American administration that has spent a great deal of time and energy apologizing for our liberties—in particular, for what many would regard as the foundation of all our other liberties, namely, the freedom to express our minds as we see fit. This signature freedom, of which Americans...
Markets and culture: A time to play, a time to pray
Faced with the prospect of a professional athletic career, a nearly-half million dollar salary, and a perfect lady, what’s not to like? Apparently, for Grant Desme, it was the noise and unrest of the world. Can a culture of life and the noise and tumult of the marketplace co-exist? Rev. Robert Sirico, reflecting on this, says they can, so long as it is not a place where: [C]apitalism…places the human person at the mercy of blind economic forces…What we propose,...
Want to Help the Poor? Promote a Free Market in Health Care
Want to help the poor? Promote a free market in health care. That’s the argument made by John C. Goodman, author of the new book Priceless: Curing the Healthcare Crisis. Timothy Dalrymple recently talked with Goodman about the best approach for restoring free-market pricing mechanisms into the market for medical care and health insurance: Aren’t there some people, however, who have little of money and lots of time, and would prefer to wait in order to receive cheaper care? There...
Dodd-Frank: The Other Serious Threat
At least es at us head on. The greater legislative threat may be the one that most Americans have never heard of. Economist Scott Powell and Acton friend Jay Richards explain in a new piece in Barron’s: While Obamacare received more attention, the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, also known as Dodd-Frank after its Senate and House sponsors, … unleashed a new regulatory body, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, to operate with unprecedented power. Dodd-Frank became law in...
Rev. Sirico on Life, Work, and Human Flourishing
J.Q. Tomanek of Ignitum Today interviewed Rev. Sirico about life, work, human flourishing, and his new book, Defending the Free Market: JQ Tomanek: Back in the day, holiness was misinterpreted as a cleric or religious life thing. How can a lay Catholic practice their faith? What are some ways to sanctify our work as lay Catholics? Is “ora et labora” just a monk thing? Reverend Sirico: Yes, religious people are often tempted to e so “heavenly minded they are no...
On Call with Dr. Pamela Casson
Dr. Pamela Casson, a pediatrician in Colorado Springs, knows what it means literally to be “On Call.” This week she shares with us in this video interview with Jon Hirst how she sees God working through her in her work with families, children and the world around her. Thank you Pamela for giving us an inside look at how you see your work as blessing the world. ...
Related Classification
Copyright 2023-2025 - www.mreligion.com All Rights Reserved