Hebrew Bible: Babel

When I was reading the Babel story for class, I started thinking about the fact that it is hard for people to understand why God sometimes seems to have it out for people. Why couldn't God just let them eat the apple? Why couldn't God just let them build the tower? Why did God send the flood? These are questions kids ask me.

But this time I thought about when I facilitate groups on the challenge course. The point of each element isn't to finish it, but to learn and grow. Likewise, the point of life isn't just to do impressive things, but to learn and grow into what God wants us to be. The people said, "let us make a name for ourselves; otherwise we will be scattered abroad across the face of the earth." The challenge course is all about moving people out of the comfort zone, and cliquishness is one of the biggest comfort zones. We often manipulate the variables of an element based on what the group needs to work on. God does the same thing with our lives. The point wasn't the tower/city/whatever it was they were building. The point was their resistence to being scattered.

Anyone who has seen me in post-camp knows that I can relate to this. On the Challenge Course and with my friends at Camp, we often wish that we could stay together as a group, but we are called to literally scatter across the world. As much as I wish my friends from Australia and South Africa and England could stay here, we are meant to strengthen each other and then go out into the world. Even if we ran the best camp in the world and changed lives for Christ every day, that wouldn't be God's whole purpose for us. God isn't being cruel in separating us, God is trying to point us to God's will for us.