Thought for Week with Rev Norman Hamilton: The gifts that need to be properly recognised

Ezekiel, Song of Solomon and Chronicles are examples. And the same is true with some events and stories – the account of Noah’s descendants building the tower at Babel in Genesis 11 is one of them. Yet it is a very instructive story for our modern world.

A key sentence reads: “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves."

This ‘Babel-like’ need for self-admiration is very much with us today. For example, the attempt by some parents to ‘push’ their children to a level of excellence in school or sport or music that risks them feeling failures if they don’t quite make it; the almost worship like adulation poured on celebrities whose every word carries great influence with little or no questioning of their underlying set of values or beliefs; the prestige that comes from wearing the latest trainers or having the latest iPhone; the expectation and/or pressure to have a ‘dream home’ with its underlying assumption that it will help create heaven on earth.

Perhaps, I need to be crystal clear. I am not denying that some people are very gifted and that those gifts need to be properly recognised. Nor am I suggesting that shoddiness is a path worth travelling.

But I am suggesting that when anything – anything – becomes more important than being in a harmonious relationship with the God who made us and the Saviour who died for us, that very thing helps us build our own tower of Babel - making our own name for ourselves so that others will be impressed by what we do, have, are.

It is very significant that Jesus never sought fame. Quite the reverse. He was born in the most lowly of residences to a mother who handled the shame of being a single mother alongside her earthly husband Joseph who stood by her in all that was happening. The New Testament knows nothing of self-admiration and self-promotion for followers of Christ.