A California nightmare

California's population dropped for the third year in a row. For a state that had only known the up and up, this was big news in 2020, and the trend has been holding. The primary reason? Californians moving out of state.

Headlines about California these days reflect the state’s decline. San Francisco loses retail stores downtown, and then some. Human feces on the street is common there, as are overdose deaths. A friend was staying at a hotel in San Francisco last month and was witness overnight to a man screaming, just screaming, outside his hotel window. The man wasn’t being hurt. He was just screaming on and on for no apparent reason. California dreaming? More like nightmares.

Beyond the headlines, here in Southern California, an office building bordering a local neighborhood had become vacant and become a magnet for the homeless. The city planned to demolish it, with appropriate notices posted a good long while. When the demolition claw finally tore off the façade of the building, neighbors watching from their backyard met the glazed-over gaze of the homeless people who (evidently) were still living inside. That episode occurred not long after a neighbor’s teenage child came home to what he knew was supposed to be an empty house (his parents were away that time of the day)—only to hear someone showering in the bathroom. He called his parents, who told him to call the police. The police came—and found a homeless woman in the bathroom, showering away. She had broken in when no one was home.

I can continue. Several doors down from that house, a house was sold to a couple who had bought it sight unseen—that is, save for a FaceTime with their local real estate agent. On FaceTime, the agent had raised his phone over the backyard fence to show them the walking trail beyond—and there and then the couple saw a homeless man urinating on the trail. Why then did they buy the house anyway, even beating others in a bidding war? Well, coming full circle to San Francisco, they had lived next to an alley there—and had witnessed much, much worse, they said, than a homeless man urinating. So ... Sold! Current price per square foot in the neighborhood? $677—compared to the national median of $222. And as the episodes with the homeless reveal, a swanky neighborhood it is not.

The absurdities of California living are now legion. California’s economy was nearly the fourth largest in the world last year, with some of the wealthiest industries and ZIP codes clustered in the state, yet we can’t keep the lights on in the summer. Did you get that text message from the state government during the heat wave last year begging you please to wait to charge your Tesla until 10 p.m., after the power surge is over?

It makes sense to move out of California, especially for families with children—and many are. Everything from housing to school choice to taxes to affordability to traffic to crime—really, everything but the weather—suggests that such a move is a sane choice. But for those who stay here in California, not least due to fidelity to church community, vocation, friends, and neighborhood, how shall we live?

There is something to be said of California’s being a harbinger of things to come in America. So, if we Christians in California get a front-porch view of Rome starting to burn, surely faithfulness and strong communities of faith are paramount. This is where the otherness, that strangeness of our faith, is embodied robustly, vibrantly, and cheerfully in community with the old and the young all living it out.

For there is no other way to hand down our faith and heritage to our children, especially in a place as hostile to the faith as California. We are not without hope. If the episodes of the children of Israel in Egypt and the persecution against the early church are any clue, God may just do some of His most exquisite work with His children who, far from being comfortable, find themselves under tremendous pressure—precisely in places like California.

Of course, for the rest of the faithful in far-flung states, here is the message: You may not be interested in California, but California is interested in you. The call to faithfulness and strong communities of faith is for you too. There are worthier reasons to live faithfully (chief of which is such is the way of love and God calls us to it)—but down the list, be guardians against turning America into just a larger California.