Culturally Irrelevant

From seeking the Kingdom to the economy and from C.S. Lewis and pain to Dave Ramsey, Greg Atkinson’s post today on “draw near” really hit the nail on the head in so many ways.

If you have any extra time, I’d encourage you to look through his blog, especially a post from March 9 on “pruning” at the bottom of page two. Here are a couple quick quotes from “draw near”:

On my blog a while back, I spoke of God’s “pruning”. I talked about a situation that was extremely difficult, humiliating, humbling and really put me in my place. At the same time, it was wonderful, Spirit-filled, God-ordained and edifying. Our God takes the tough times and makes something beautiful out of it.

I sincerely believe that it’s in these hard times that God wants us to run to Him and run to Him first. Not to our banker, our broker, our real estate agent or even friends. First and foremost, He wants His children to call on His name and fall to their knees in worship. The Bible teaches us to “seek Him first”. (Matt. 6:33)

Most people glaze over when someone starts talking about the kingdom of God. We get the general idea, but the word kingdom isn’t appreciated since it’s outside our experience. For a voting democracy, the idea of life under a dictatorship is too foreign to carry any practical significance. But there’s a really great reason why Jesus’ first sermon topic was “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near!” We’re easily caught up in the “kingdoms” of men because they’re all around us, and they’re pretty amazing, naturally speaking (Dubai comes to mind). It’s what we can see and hear. But God’s kingdom is so different. It’s not observed with looking or listening.

Some years after the flood of Noah’s day, a bunch of people got together and moved to a cozy little plain in Shinar (Babylonia). They baked up a ton of bricks and built a city with a massive tower in the middle (a ziggurat). Their motivation was to band together, muster their collective strength and wealth and make a name for themselves. Oh, and they wanted to build something that would reach to heaven, representing their amazing mad ”skills”.

On the surface you might think that these people were just acting on common sense. I mean, isn’t that pretty much what everyone does? You get together, build a city, put up a wall, pool your resources, fight off the bad guys and live happily ever after with your family and a little garden out back, right?

The catch is that they knew about God, the history of the garden, the fall and the flood. They knew God had a way of doing things, but they deliberately chose to leave God out of their plans. They wanted their own thing, something great that would be a monument to what they could accomplish without him. Of course, you know the rest of the story. God takes one look, doesn’t disagree that they have amazing skills, but foresees the danger of their rebellious independence and in mercy stops it before they have a chance to pull it off and self-destruct in a lifestyle of arrogance and self-indulgence. At the end of the day, they got off pretty easy.

A little segway. Clarity by contrast is a beautiful thing. Bite into a Gala apple from Wal-Mart and you’ll think you’ve got a really crisp, refreshing apple. But then sink into a Pink Lady from a local health food store and strap your taste buds down, cause it’s a world of difference. Or take that blue shirt you bought 2 years ago. It’s still a deep blue in your mind, even though you know you’ve washed it a million times. You wear it over and over, thinking it still looks great. But then one day you see it in an old picture and realize how faded it has become.

Ok, the point. Tomorrow I want to contrast the “Shinarites” from Genesis 11 with the story that immediately follows in Genesis 12. This is where it gets good.