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The Billboards of Babel

by Travis Tamerius

Reprinted from Grace Notes, June 1997.

"And they said, Come, let us build for ourselves a city, and a tower whose top will reach into heaven, and let us make a name for ourselves; lest we be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth" (Genesis 11:4).

Have you noticed the myriad ways in which a town tried to stake its claim to fame? Especially a small town. You travel the roads across this fruited plain and you meet a host of billboards promoting what is alleged to be noteworthy about a particular town. Pigeon Hole, Wyoming: Home of Beulah Tinklewinkle, 1953 State Spelling Bee Runner-Up; Clark, Missouri: Birthplace of General Omar Bradley; Mitchell, South Dakota: Home of the World's Largest Corn Palace. It's not enough to exist on the state map. It's not enough to have a Casey's General Store and a Tastee Freeze. A town must be known for something.

We have been rescued from anonymity through God's lavish love.

Just as towns lay claim to their collective worth, individuals hunger for dignity. We each desire our name to have meaning.

But where do we get a name that signifies meaning and value? How do we live an authentic life as the people we were meant to be? Our culture gives us no answers here. Our present-day society is the tragic story of a civilization that has fallen on its own sword. The attempt to liberate humanity from dependence upon God has produced a society with no meaningful understanding of what it is to be human. We have gelded the only God that can give birth to truth, beauty and righteousness. We have created a culture of death that has lost the dignity of life.

A personal name is important in an impersonal world such as ours where it is increasingly possible to exist without intimate relationships. We can order supper with a phone, earn a paycheck through a computer, marry by signing a piece of paper and make babies with the help of a test tube. The bank defines you according to your net worth. The university knows you by a six-digit number. Government documents label you according to an ethnic category.

Is there a place where we can recover our identity? Is there a picture of our true humanity than can be fashioned together from the various pieces of our puzzling existence?

The Bible says there is such a place. We have been created by a personal God who has left a stamp upon our lives by conferring to us His very own image. He has created us to live in fellowship with Him. He has called us through His Spirit. And He has named us as joint heirs with His Son to receive a divine inheritance that awaits us.

As Christians we do not exist within this sprawling universe as nameless and faceless people. Rather, we have been rescued from anonymity through God's lavish love. He has brought us into a family and called us by name: Abraham, Sarah, Tom, Laura.

The lesson from Babel's tower is that man cannot make a name for himself. The lesson from Calvary's tree is that God can.