20 Jul Babel & Evangelism
We all know the story of Babel in Genesis 11. The people were unified in purpose and the Lord needed to mess up their languages so that they would not achieve what they set out to achieve. The Lord confused their languages and they were unable to keep working together, and ultimately split up and became nations all over the face of the Earth, each with their own language and culture.
Today of course there are hundreds of languages (thousands even) and cultures. Missions organisations spent a lot of time and effort in language training, Bible translation and more, in reaching people with the word of God. But could all of that have been simpler if the tower of Babel story had not happened? Could not God have done it another way, so that the process of evangelisation was simpler?
No, not really.
Babel was necessary because what was happening was bad, and needed to be stopped. For a sense of why it was so bad, this link leads to a video which explains. But the result of people speaking many languages actually leads to something which is hugely necessary.
The incarnation of the gospel.
What?
That phrase that sounds like goobeldegook, is a strange way of saying that because of the mixture of languages, and the need for people to actually go and learn a language, it puts a face on Jesus.
When we didn’t understand God, he sent his son, born of a woman, who came in the flesh to reveal who God was. Christ was incarnated. We didn’t understand God’s language, and even those who did (aka the Jews) found it had little effect. But when God came in person to see us, that is, he incarnated the good news, we began to understand.
The result of the diversity of language, is that it requires us to go with the good news. If we all spoke the same language, the motivation would not be the same. But missionaries go in person, and put a face on God, and take the gospel to people in thier own language, place and culture.
And THAT, makes a very huge difference.
So as it turns out, Babel doesn’t make the gospel harder, but it actually helps it.
Image: White Temple Ziggurat in Uruk: By tobeytravels – This image has been extracted from another file, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=92851923
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