Genesis 11:1-9

I think everyone must have dreamt of being significant at least once in their lives. Quite often, as the years go by, life's events suppress such thoughts and force us to settle for just existing. Getting by is as big as our ambitions get. It seems sad to me that people often reach such a point of hopelessness.

Babel seems to reveal to us another of life's tragedys. The people were so repelled by the thought of this hopelessness, the prospect of insignificant wandering, that they determined to make themselves famous. Their vision was to build themselves a throne in heaven. I guess this a picture of finding contentment, peace and significance. They were determined that they had it in them'selves' to do this.

I cannot quell this thirst for significance inside of me. I cannot make it disappear. Does this appetite within leave me in the same boat as those that strived at Babel? I'm not convinced it does. The desire for significance is a desire to find meaning and purpose in life. If allowed it can be a quest to rediscover Eden and understand again the place we have in God's heart. The tragedy of Babel is that the people pursue this, not by searching for God, but by looking within. It would appear to me that this story speaks powerfully to our times. Those of us caught in life's rat race can often make the mistake of thinking that if we keep striving and keep building then just round the corner we will arrive at a place called "happiness". The problem is that eventually we wake up to find that much of what we have invested our lives in has crumbled around us. The tower eventually tumbles. "Self" has an unsaitable appetite and however high we build the tower eventually we realise the sky has no limit.

God says "this is only the beginning of what they will do". It reminds me of those horror stories that people tell you when you are a kid...remember the ones with endless stair cases and you are being chased by some dark and terrible creature. God, in His kindness, steps into try and save people from this endless pursuit of contentment. He knows that they will stop at nothing to discover this "illusion" called fame.

God's act at Babel is merciful. He steps in and tears down the illusion. God's desire is that mankind would realise that quest for significance, the pursuit of heaven, is completely impossible outside of Himself. We need to look not to our selves but to God to discover our significance. Soon enough you will discover that nothing is more significant than being the object of His love, knowing your were made to walk with him and live for him.

As the people of Babel were scattered, and the foundation of the city lay in ruins, the people were probably lying under the stars in the deserts, no longer consumed with an illusion, wondering who is out there. Sometimes the things that cause our tower to tumble force us to rethink and that can be the greatest act of grace in our lives.

A friend said to me recently that "our moment seems really heavy". That night I woke up and felt acutely aware of just how temporal I am. Today seems so important, we seem insistent on taking ourselves so seriously. Today will just be another day that will drift off into history and if our investment was in the illusion of this world then we will watch all that we had hoped in fade with the flowers of the field. God has told us that the only thing that will remain is love. May we find our significance as we soak in His love and learn to love as he loved.

Naked - A revisit to Genesis ??

During my teenage years I had a very painful relationship with the mirror. Every day it would remind me of the confidence crippling condition that plagued my face. I'm sure on average an hour or more a day was spent twisting my head in directions that it should not go and constantly adjusting mirrors to ensure I could see from every angle just how bad the acne really was.. The other 23 hours were spent wondering whether I would be accepted looking like a shiny red porous ketchup bottle that had accidentally been filled with mustard. It was pretty hard to get out of my head the reflection I had been staring at.

Earlier in my blog I wrote about how self conciousness seemed to be a consequence of the fall. Before this event it was as though Adam and Eve were staring intently into the person of God. In a sense God acted like a mirror. They were defined by what they saw. What Adam saw in God helped him understand himself. Then suddenly they were plunged into darkness. The mirror which once defined them was now seemingly opaque. I sense the terror of that moment as I read Genesis. Suddenly this deep and searching question grips them, 'who am I'? They became aware, in a new way, of this thing called self, now starved of what once fed it.

It seems funny when you think of it like this that it took philosophers until the enlightenment to begin trying to figure things out with themselves as the first point of reference (humanism). It would seem it took thousands of years for their brains to catch up with their souls. Here was Adam staring into a broken mirror lost and confused as he looks down and realises he is stood there naked and all the animals were watching. The changed, self concious Adam is desperately looking for some kind of assurance that he is 'OK'. Self is no longer feeding on God, it is searching for some sort of covering, something else to give it meaning.

We all know that struggle, don't we? The nagging questions of are we 'OK' or not? Are we loved, accepted, included. A constant looking at others, trying to figure out whether we are made in their image or not. I'm surely not as fat as her? Do I sound as confident as that? Have I got the same determination as him? Surely I don't dress that bad? If only I could get as toned as him! Our relationship economy ensures that we surround ourselves with the people that make us feel good, the ones that we like the image of, the rest we push out into life's lonely corridors. The ones that stammer; or dress funny; or can't figure out social rules all leave us with this nervous thought that actually we might not be OK either. 'Self' likes to feed of people that comfort it. So we reward those people, and with 'self' puffed up by the reward it returns the compliment. We group ourselves in packs feeding off each other, trying to understand ourselves in a broken mirror and closing the doors tightly to those that don't conform.

Some people give up the fight, they resign themselves to being losers, they take comfort in hating themselves. Others buys Ferraris and polish them until they are so shiny that they can just about see their own reflection. They feel really good about themselves because they think they are a Ferrari.

Jesus is different. Really different. He has what Adam lost. At one point he turns around to his friends and says "I only do what I see my father doing". He has got it. He has the intent starring into God thing that Adam seemed to lose. Jesus wasn't busy building himself nice houses or hanging out with the righteous people. He didn't need that stuff to make him feel good about himself. He didn't struggle with the questions that we struggle with. He didn't need the posh car or the job title to convince himself that he had made it. No! Jesus was staring into God and what he saw defined him. What he was looking at explained the "who" question for him. We feel insecure when people don't like us, we feel undermined when people question us, we retaliate when people hate us. Jesus hung on the cross, staring intently into the faces of his enemies, their eyes so hate filled that they had demanded his life and yet from His heart Jesus pleads for them to be forgiven. Nothing is more deeply moving, more utterly profound, more truly beautiful than this moment. This is the definition of wholeness, the explanation of what it means to be fully human (in the creation sense). Only the person who lives staring into the mystery called Love could do this.

Until I started to think like this I never really understood how I could be called righteous. I didn't get why, although I went on sinning, I some how got to be righteous because of the cross. Then I realised that Adam wasn't staring into a mirror at the beginning of the story as I thought. In fact it was the other way round. Adam was the mirror. Eternal life was the opportunity to tilt a lump of dust and water in the direction of a great light. The glorious reflection defines, gives meaning, identity and reason. Jesus fixed what severed that relationship in the garden, he took a cloth, dipped it his own blood, wiped down your mirror and then invited you to look into the light again. Despite the memories fading in the glass, despite the shadows that occasional darken your shine the invitation cries out for you to allow the warmth of His light to fall on you again. As you respond in this way His righteousness begins to define you, His love begins to stream out of you, His beauty marks. Left congealed in the bloody rag is the dirt that once dimmed this perfect reflection. You are free.

I guess this all helps me to understand a little more of what it means to die to self, to take up my cross daily, to lose my life. All the reference points I once used to understand myself have got to go. The constant inventing myself in the image of others must end. I'm in the world but the world will not define me. I'm not made of the stuff of this world. I can't look there any more to understand my identity. Eternal life will found when I rediscover the God whose image I was created in.

Why God is Beautiful - A reflection on the first half of Genesis

Just got back from a holiday in the French Alps with the family. There we were all gathered round the dinner table, entrepreneurs, doctors, managers, aid workers, young and old. The conversation was lively as the educated thrashed out the concepts of right and wrong and how they might protect the lives of the next generation from decisions and choices that would damage and spoil. There was something familiar about the answers. Previously we had discussed Sudan and sat bemused as what to do. Should the outside world intervene. Should we send the military in. Should we cut out the perpatrators of this terrible evil. We reflected on Iraq and other messy situations where we thought we had a clever answer.

It seems to be a question everyone asks, "why doesn't God intervene". Most of our lives we fight against intervention. For most of us it starts young and we push our parents away and wonder why they always have to interfere. As we get older we get frustrated with our managers at work; the inland revenue, the nanny state. In politics there is a constant battle for the devolution of decision making to a local level. In fact when you really think about it most of us don't really like intervention at all, well certainly the strong handed authoritarian stuff.

Despite our dislike of such intervention one of the first objections we make against God is "why didn't he stop that, why didn't he step in". As I've been living in Genesis I've started to realise that actually God is normally one step ahead of us. Some people think the flood is just a story but just imagine for a minute that you were God. Imagine for a moment that time stood still and you could cast you eye across every human interaction on the earth. Yeah sure you would see some beautiful things; people sharing their food with the hungry, nurses caring for the sick, families laughing together, couples making love but you'd also see some deeply distressing things; a machete lifted against an pregnant women, a young girl being abused by an old man, a crying child as parents raged against each other; a drunk verbally assaulting his fearful wife; a deceptive preacher teasing money out of the vulnerable; a holy huddle closing their doors to societies outcasts; a rich man walking past the homeless. What would you do if every where you looked all that you could see was 'human evil was out of control. People thought evil, imagined evil - evil, evil, evil from morning to night." (Genesis 6, The Message). I think you would call your friends up and you'ld all sit round the table and you'ld say someone needs to intervene. You'd wonder why God didn't and you'd probably even doubt that he cared. You expect the perpetrators to be stopped and to never again be allowed to do this. You'd soon realise that actually you were a passionate interventionist.

You know what? God took your advice...He did what everyone expects of him. He did what everyone thinks he doesn't do (or hasn't done)...He intervened. He stopped the murderers in their tracks, he rooted out the deceivers, he cut off the proud, he removed the religious con men, he shackled the selfish rich men, he crushed those who crushed others. You know what the result was? Just one man and his family was left. The problem is that when we curse God for not stepping in we somehow want to isolate ourselves from the worlds problems. We deceive ourselves into thinking there is some easily distinguishable line between what is right and wrong and that by some remarkable fate we fall on the right side of that line. Sometimes I get forgetful and think that I'm not really part of the problem, that I'm good. I forget that I think about myself most of the time, buy things that were made in sweat shops, walk past homeless people daily and always find I'm too busy to anything about some of the terrible things I'm party to.

You know what happened after God tried the "stick your boot" in method? He promised he would never, ever, do it again (on that scale). Why? Because it didn't fix the problem. Noah got drunk, Canaan raped his father (or least dishonored him), the people of Babel tried to make themselves into God and the proliferation started all over again.

Sin is not a benign cancer that can be cut out, it is ragingly malignant and knows no boundaries. God cannot be the surgeon you want him to be because that method just won't work, you must discover another, wiser, more beautiful means of hope.

It was at this point in my thinking that I suddenly realised the significance of God's promise to Abraham. Suddenly it all became so much more meaningful. The heart of the promise was not about creating a little pocket in the world where everything worked and people were good. No! The vision was much bigger, much more enchanting, much more beautiful. God's promise was given for the purpose of a world wide blessing. A blessing that would extend to every family and touch every life. As far as I can see the rest of this great book (the bible) goes on to explore the fulfillment of this promise. God's method of intervention changes from 'strong hand' to a relational approach in which he would embody his love.

God's unrestrained passion to bless, restore, renew and rescue the earth advances despite human sin. It advances despite the fact the deceit marred the lives of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. It advances despite the blood on the hands of the vengeful fathers of the 12 tribes of Israel (Jacob's sons). It advances despite famine and barrenness. It advances in the face of great human suffering. God's intention to reach us with his love, despite our sin, prevails as the bible unfolds. Centuries of rebellion, spiritual adultery, idolatry and yet still God would not go back on his word. Despite humanities refusal to work with him he would pursue his vision of bringing blessing to the whole earth once again.

The out working of God's promise to Abraham becomes clearer when God's promises to David a Son in 2 Samuel 7. This is the first explicit articulation of the person that would come to establish God's vision. It is a great signpost in the story that would reveal Jesus as the hope of the world. This new, relational, method of intervention would reach the world in an unexpected way. Sadly many still haven't grasped this restorative story.

Many people fail to realise the Old Testament is a great story of grace. It is about the advancement of a promise despite human resistance and pride. It is a story where love triumphs despite evil. It never hides the ugly things that marred the journey, it speaks honestly and lovingly into our reality. It speaks loudly of why God is beautiful.