The Record Scratch

Why we keep trying to leave a world we were meant to inhabit

The Misalignment

I was listening to a teaching on 1 Peter recently, and for about 90% of it, I was nodding along. The speaker was leaning into this beautiful idea of freedom—that we aren’t meant to be bound by religious checklists or rigid rules, but instead, we are designed to live lives of genuine flourishing. It was a “Genesis 1” kind of message.

But then, there was a moment of misalignment.

The speaker got to the part where Peter calls his readers “exiles.” Suddenly, the “Waiting Room” mentality we talked about earlier reared its head. The speaker used that word to suggest that the earth isn’t really our home, even quoting those same song lyrics about how we’re all just “passing through.”

It was a total record scratch.

The Accidental Exile

I don’t think the speaker had ill intentions. In fact, most of the teaching was incredibly helpful. But it highlighted just how deeply ingrained these scripts are in Christian culture.

The irony was that the “passing through” comment completely undermined the speaker’s own point. If we are truly free—created from goodness and love to inhabit an earth that was also created from goodness and love—then the idea that we are “exiles” on this planet makes no sense.

You can’t flourish in a place you’re trying to escape.

Reading the Map Correctly

When Peter uses the word “exile,” he isn’t giving us a passport to another planet.

In Chapter 1, he’s talking to literal exiles—people displaced from their physical homelands. In Chapter 2, he’s using the term metaphorically to describe people whose values are at odds with a culture that doesn’t prioritize human flourishing.

There is a massive difference between being an exile in a culture and being an exile on the earth.

We might find ourselves as exiles in a country that feels unfamiliar, or a political system that feels broken, or a culture that operates out of darkness. But we are never exiles on this earth. This soil is our territory. This atmosphere is what we were designed to breathe.

Living Abundantly, Not Just Eventually

The “passing through” script tells us that the darkness and brokenness around us is just the “way it is” until we leave. It’s a passive way of living.

But the story Peter is actually telling is about choosing not to live out of that darkness. It’s about people who are so grounded in their original design of goodness and love that they flourish even when the culture around them is a desert.

When we stop viewing the earth as a foreign land, we stop being tourists and start being stewards. We move from “waiting to leave” to “choosing to stay” and doing the hard, beautiful work of restoration.

The Invitation

Let’s listen a little more intently to the story being told. Let’s think a little more deeply about the words we use. And most of all, let’s live a little more abundantly on the ground we were actually created for.