August 19, 2005

     With our youngest child beginning to enter the “baby-talk” phase of development, the sounds of sweet little coos and chirps of joy and wonder are ringing throughout our home, thrilling my soul with bursts of joy.  Naturally, being the proud parents that we are, my wife and I have set ourselves to the important task of translating her words.  In one recent encounter, we were each pretty sure that we had a good handle on what she had to say.

     “Bab-bab!” she exclaimed.

     “There!” I yelled triumphantly.  “She just said, ‘Da-da!’ Did you hear it?”

     “No, I don’t think so,” my wife gently replied.  “She said, ‘Mama’.”

     “Gheg-bak!” our little girl said.

     “See!  She said ‘Da-da’ again!”  I exulted.

     “Um,” her mother responded.  “It sounded like ‘Mama’ to me.”  We laughed together and continued to enjoy our biased interpretations of her baby talk.

    In some ways, the happy babble of little ones is a language all its own, not communicating so much through actual words as through pitch and tone.  These latter qualities spell out all too clearly what little babies are really thinking and wanting in life, from crying when hungry or afraid, to giggling at our little peekaboo games.

     While “babbling” has been around a long time, of course, it does not always have such pleasing effects.  During humanity’s youth, for example, as people were migrating all over the place, a good many people settled in a flat river valley in a place called Shinar (later known as Babylon and Iraq).  Upon planting themselves there, they began a great construction project that none had yet attempted: the building of a tall tower that would “reach the heavens” (Genesis 11:4).  Especially emboldened by their expertise with the baked brick, a clever innovation at the time, they set about the task of lifting up for themselves a monument to their ingenuity and determination.

     Thus, they embarked on a great endeavor that was in reality a rehearsal of the greatest shame of the human race:  that of exalting ourselves, our ambitions, and our achievements above Creator God.

     And do we not hazard the same peril today?  Our presumption, ever a deadly snare, is the bedrock of our spiritual and moral downfall.  Even as God observes the swelling of the human ego, He notes our propensity for depending on our own gifts as well as our inclination to ignore and forget the great Giver of those gifts.

     In regard to humanity’s effort to build the tower, God said, “If as one people, speaking the same language, they have begun to do this (the building of the magnificent tower), then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them” (Genesis 11:6 NIV).

     How well He knows us!  He knows that a little pride in ourselves goes to our heads like a drug.  Easily addicted to it, we’re readily convinced that we can take on anything and anyone without fear of loss or defeat.  We decide in our hearts that we really don’t need anyone.  But with unchallenged pride in our hearts, we cannot really walk with God.  Why?  Because we do not perceive our need to “lean” on Him or to trust in His provision and grace.  We will not experience God as we ought as long as pride has its throne in our hearts.

     But we may thankfully ask, “Has not the LORD Almighty determined that the people’s labor is only fuel for the fire, that the nations exhaust themselves for nothing?  For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD, as waters cover the sea” (Habakkuk 2:13-14 NIV).

     God is not satisfied with our bowing to our own sufficiency or any other idol.  So He intervenes in our plans, ambitions, and accomplishments just as He intervened with human presumption in Genesis 11.  Notice how God observes their reckless disregard for genuine relationship with Himself and then does something about it.

     “Come, (the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit agree together).  Let Us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.’  So the LORD scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city.  That’s why it was called ‘Babel’ – because there the LORD confused the language of the whole world.  From there the LORD scattered them over the face of the whole earth” (from Genesis 11:8-9).

     Hmm.  They had lost their connection with God, because they trusted and passionately pursued their own glory through the work of their own hands.  As a direct result, their society was confused and scattered.  As a direct result today of losing focus on Christ, our own society suffers confusion and is becoming scattered, more pluralistic than united.  Although our coins today each bear the words, “E Pluribus Unum” (“out of the many, one”, plurality is increasingly pronounced and our unity seems increasingly non-existent).

     Though we speak English, our language has become just as confused as these who had built the Tower of Babel.  We don’t understand where others are coming from, nor do we care.  We don’t know why people do the things they do, nor do we perceive why they don’t do they things they ought to do.  We want to be understood without having to bother with understanding others.

    The culture wars taking place in America are little more than incessant babbling – pointless droning that sheds light on our imperfections but does not magnify our strengths, as we have allowed ourselves to believe.

     So how do we again find purpose and coherence for our lives and in our culture?  God’s people must simply return to the pursuit of our greatest calling in life:  that of genuine and earnest worship of our heavenly Father.

     “For this is what the high and lofty One says – He Who lives forever, Whose name is holy; ‘I live in a high and holy place, but also with him who is contrite....  I have seen the ways of (a man or woman who wholeheartedly serves and honors God), but I will heal him; I will guide him and restore comfort to him, creating praise on the lips of those who mourn.  Peace, peace to those far and near,’ says the LORD.  ‘And I will heal them’” (from Isaiah 57:15, 18-19).

     While we may not feel like we’re saying things just right or perhaps think that our service to Him is too riddled with human imperfection, He hears the “coos” and “chirps” of joy and wonder that spring from our hearts as we delight in Him, and He knows exactly what we’re trying to say!  Though our mastery of the spiritual things of God may sound almost like gibberish in our ears at first, rest assured, dear one, that our heavenly “Da-da” knows the difference between the “babble” of the world echoing in our lives and the “baby-talk” we utter as we seek to know Him better and grow in Him.

(Thom Mollohan and his family have ministered in southern Ohio the past ten years.  He is the pastor of Pathway Community Church and may be reached for comments or questions by email at pastorthom@pathwaygallipolis.com).