Babel fish

This morning, I attended Mars Hill Church, a small, nondenominational, emerging church that gathers at Jammin' Java, a very cool coffeehouse in the middle of Vienna, Virginia. I'm still processing the experience, and may have more to say about it later, but it was one of the most beautiful and God-centered worship services I can recall attending. It was, to use Dr. Len Sweet's acronym for emerging worship gatherings, EPIC: Experiential, Participatory, Image-based, and Connective. They included kids--and did it *well*, making it a good experience for both the kids and the adults. Everyone was very friendly--really! I think I have a lot to learn from these wonderful disciples, and I hope I can keep a conversation going with them.

But that's not what I wanted to write about, mainly. I wanted to share just a few of my thoughts on the teaching/discussion topic they chose for today: the Tower of Babel. Three kids (I doubt any of them were 10 yet) read the Biblical story (Genesis 11:1-9), then three other stories connecting it to the myths of other cultures (Greek and African) and to the New Testament story of Pentecost (Acts 2:1-41). Then, after a short preface connecting her own life story to these readings, the leader opened up the floor for discussion. It was a great discussion, and I apologize for not contributing these thoughts at that time, but most of them didn't occur to me until the next section of the service, a free-form worship time in which were were encouraged to pray, write, and/or draw. (So it often goes for us introverts.)

Anyway, this is what I thought about as I sat in silent prayer. (Write during church? Draw during church?? Um, er, sorry, I'm still recovering from the lack of hard pews and kneelers.) ;-)

Recently, I wrote to Mother Blair (formerly the priest in charge of Adult Christian Formation at my church, whom I miss muchly) that, while I don't feel like I'm to a large extent actively "part of the problem" (you know, THE problem--all of our man-made ills), I don't feel like I spend much time being part of the solution, either. Instead, I continuously devote huge helpings of time and energy to being what I called "part of the distraction." Endless amounts of my toil and thought go into accomplishing things that, in God's terms, are pretty much meaningless. I may not be actively increasing the misery in this world, but when it comes right down to it, what does making sure that nothing (I mean nothing!) comes between the American consumer and his or her destined web advertisement have to do with the work that Jesus has given his disciples to do? What does it have to do with being a fisher of men? Sure, I can do my best to make sure that my fellows on the distraction brigade have as pleasant a time as possible getting ads (and, secondarily, news content) in front of people's eyeballs. I can (try to) be an example of Kingdom living to the folks I work with. But it seems like so small a contribution to the reign of God.

Similarly, the Babel folks weren't evil. There's nothing in the biblical story to indicate that they were oppressing anyone (any more than was customary in those days), engaging in violence or terrorism, or even living immorally. What they were doing was investing *huge* amounts of time and resources (human and otherwise) in a big, ambitious project that was completely and utterly beside the point, from God's point of view. They were very industrious! That's good, right? Here in Northern Virginia, we're all really, really industrious! We accomplish tons. We're breathtakingly successful! We juggle marriage, kids, and high-stress, high-workload, high-paying jobs with the greatest of ease (sleep being optional). We have expensive houses, expensive cars, and expensive shrink bills, and it's all good, because just look at our success!

And I'm not saying that all of this activity is bad--by no means! Marriage and parenthood are divine callings, no doubt about it. I pray that those of us with spouses and kids are devoting the time to them that they deserve, and that we deserve to have with them. And a great many of our high-stress, high-paying jobs are absolutely doing lots to improve the lives of our fellow creatures. But I think it's probably worthwhile to reflect (as I'm doing now) on how much of this effort is part of the solution--God's solution--and how much is part of the distraction. Having some experience myself with the whole "divine wake-up call" phenomenon, I feel for the folks at Babel. I hope they found a good path, a godly path, to tread, in community with the fellow speakers of their new languages. And I hope each of us can also find a godly path to walk, with friends, as part of the solution. In Jesus' name we pray, Amen.