I have a confession to make…I am an iPhone user. Yes it’s true. And I love my iPhone. There truly is an app for everything! This week I downloaded a free app called ReadingPlan, which gives different reading schedules to get you through the Bible in a year. I’ve selected to read thematically through the scripture, which has been taking me through parallel passages in Genesis and Hebrews, with the occasional glance at Psalms.
This morning I came to Genesis 11-13 and Hebrews 5. Bible in hand, I set out to tackle these four chapters but I failed to get even 10 verses into Genesis 11 before I was taken back by a simple, yet profound, reality of our human existence: control is an illusion.
I’ll wait for the ringing in your ears to stop before I go on…
If you’re unfamiliar with the passage, this first section of Genesis 11 describes the events at the tower of Babel among the generations following the Flood. Having read this story several times before, I began reading with a general sense of detachment, reading the story for reading’s sake. Then I came to verse 4…
And they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower whose top is in the heavens; let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth.”
God looked upon what man was doing (vv.5-7) and realized that they had grown in skill, technology, intellect and ambition (my own observation) and decided it was too dangerous for them to be left to this pursuit. And in verse 8 it reads…
So the LORD scattered them abroad from there over the face of all the earth, and they ceased building the city.
The very thing that man was trying to avoid by building this celestial city ended up sealing that very fate. What’s the literary term for this. Oh yes, irony. This is stuff Hollywood tries to manufacture (yet they’re re-making Spiderman for the fourth time?).
The population at Bable made two major, yet very human errors that I am glad to be reminded of: they failed to place their identity in the Lord, and they believed they were in control of their lives. For very different reasons, every human on earth struggles with these two defining characteristics of a joyful, fruitful life. Whether it was the way we were raised, the experiences we’ve encountered, they cynicism we’ve adopted, the failures or the successes, for one reason or another may of us miss these universal truths until we’re facedown in the dirt wondering how we got there.
Let me save us all some time…stop trying to control your life. Jesus said “for whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.” It’s a classic paradox, but classically illustrated in Genesis 11.
