The Tower of Babel

One of the greatest, most scandalous and dangerous lies which is preached in the church is that we must become more like Jesus. That was the lie which ruined Eve and Adam’s relationship with God. All because Eve believed the lie that she needed to become more like God. Notice that after the fall it wasn’t God who withdrew from those two. It was Eve and Adam who hid themselves from God. Shame had entered paradise. This rather persistent feeling renders us with a feeling of nakedness, of not belonging and it alienates us from recognizing our Heavenly Father’s love.

Shame is the means by which the prince of the power of the air controls and conditions his doomed kingdom. It is this feeling of disgrace that shame promotes which inhibits every man from being a true image of the Godhead. Shame cripples, ruins and it causes man to hide from God. Jesus never exhorted anyone to be like Him, because that would be to contradict and thwart His royal mission.

He came to expose the lie, atone for its consequences and provide liberty for the captives. The fall had rendered man spiritually blind. Man firmly believed that He had to improve himself so he began comparing himself with the creation. He found that he was superior to everything else in it, except his fellow man. The next step was thus to compare and contrast himself with his peers so that he could be the foremost among them.

Man began erecting his own righteousness, the tower of Babel. It was a bold and ambitious project which only outcome would be to entrench man in his delusion and reinforce the hold of the lie. So, God did what He does in every person’s life. He destroyed the tower and scattered man’s righteousness to the extent that it was completely leveled. This is the story of every man.

Shame’s twin brother condemnation has caused too many believers to bow their head with a urgent sense of falling short, simply because someone has passed on an idea of a standard which resembles the tower of Babel, that is, the original lie presented in different words. We are rendered feeling useless, of no value and a hindrance to God, because of our imagined shortcomings. We don’t feel loving, we don’t feel spiritual, and compared to others we seemingly do not have the brilliant gifts which they are endowed with.

Accepting ourselves is vital if we are to recognize ourselves as perfect images of Christ in our form. It was God who chose us. It was solely His initiative to gather us as a family of many sons. He chose us exactly as we are with every human facet we have. If He has accepted us we can accept ourselves. Not doing so is in fact an insult against His sober judgment.

Chasing our own righteousness is the basic sin which prevents us from becoming what we were created to be; ourselves. As a substitute we become a distorted version of ourselves. When we aren’t ourselves we are nothing. There is only one truth and only one righteousness which restore our true being; His.

Before the fall Eve and Adam perfectly expressed themselves. The day they ate of the fruit they became expressions of sin, and God plainly told them that their lives from now on would be a perpetual struggle to be something they never could be in their own powers. Originally they were furnished with faith faculties to be faith people. A life outside God was destined to be a life of appearances.

Only spirit people can discern spiritually and make righteous judgments. Thus the new creation is a partaker of divine nature. Such a person doesn’t judge in accordance with outward realities. He sees behind outer success, prestige, influence and affluence. That person clearly sees the emptiness in the hearts of those who are wise in this world. As a result a faith person does not pursue those things. He isn’t easily deceived by worldly things. What motivates him is the love of God which is outpoured into His heart. His passion is Christ, and nothing this world has to offer holds any appeal to him.

Faith involves the competence of seeing beyond appearances and accepting God’s truth about us as the final truth. If He says we are love, because He is love, that is a fact despite our circumstances or what we imagine we behold with our earthly eyes. The day we acknowledge that we in Christ are everything we are meant to be in this temporal realm we are set completely free to express ourselves without shame or any other crippling emotion.