Before moving to Bakersfield, I worked in Naperville, Illinois, a far-west suburb of Chicago that consistently ranked #1 in national surveys -- the best place in America to raise children; the best library system in the country, and so on.

I've been thinking about the impact of news like this on our collective psyches. How does this impact the lives, and particularly the aspirations, of those who live in such places?

In Bakersfield, the local paper chronicled the news with both a news article and an editorial, aptly titled, "C'mon now, is Bakersfield really that bad?". Both pieces not only present the news, but also the local angle that it's really not that bad of a place to live, despite what the experts say. The local paper includes a regular column about the high-achieving kids who grew up here, left for a while, and then moved back here to live. It's as if there's some sort of collective effort to convince ourselves (because nobody else really cares) that we have a city that's worth living in. It's an interesting form of self-talk; an attempt to buck up our own spirits in the face of depressing evidence.

Contrast that with Naperville, which also regularly chronicled the city's achievements. There was a real pride of place for the people who lived there. In fact, the people who lived close by, but not actually in the city itself, would often tell people that they were from Naperville. (Full confession: I worked in Naperville, but lived in the neighboring suburb of Bolingbrook. But on more than one occasion when asked where I lived, I answered "Naperville.")

When my wife and I first moved to Bakersfield to start our church, a well-intentioned pastor from northern California laid hands on us and prayed, "God, bless this couple in their efforts, because they're going to the armpit of hell, itself!" We tried, mostly successfully, not to laugh out loud at his characterization of the city to which God sent us. Not being from California, we had no idea how deeply set this impression of our fair city really was.

For those who were born and raised here, such comments are not merely comical, but deeply disturbing. Like the father who continually tells his son, "You'll never amount to anything," I wonder if this ongoing Bakersfield-bashing creates the worst kind of poverty -- the poverty of low expectations. How many people allow the environment to deeply impact their identity? How many are never challenged to be great because they are constantly being told they are not?

For the follower of Jesus, our identity isn't determined by where we live, but by our new life in Christ. Whenever I think of Bakersfield, I think of the words of Paul to the church in Corinth:

"Take a good look, friends, at who you were when you got called into this life. I don’t see many of “the brightest and the best” among you, not many influential, not many from high-society families. Isn’t it obvious that God deliberately chose men and women that the culture overlooks and exploits and abuses, chose these “nobodies” to expose the hollow pretensions of the “somebodies”? That makes it quite clear that none of you can get by with blowing your own horn before God. Everything that we have—right thinking and right living, a clean slate and a fresh start—comes from God by way of Jesus Christ." (1 Corinthians 1:26-30 The Message)

In the end, whether you're a "somebody" or a "nobody" in the eys of others, everything that you have comes from God by way of Jesus Christ. Let's not let our environment determine our identity, but instead remember that our real identity comes from our heavenly parent and not our earthly place:

"How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!" (1 John 3:1 NIV)