Collabin’: Truncated form of collaborating and verb tense of collab.
Example: Yeah man, I’m collabin’ with Will on this video… it’s gonna be sick (urbandictionary.com).
Our world is broken. Division runs rampant through the streets as families and friends and even nations are torn apart. This division affects each and every person alive today because we all know the pain of being separated from our loved ones and friends. We allow things like divorce, anger, hatred, lust, love of money, idolatry, and millions of other things to come between us and those we care about. The root, it can be said, of all division can be traced back to one original disobedience to our Creator. Whether it be “small” or “large”, sin has the power to drive a wedge between people and is the source of all evil and broken relationships.
Come back to the beginning with me. In the beginning, the world and all of its inhabitants were blameless. Adam & Eve lived in perfect harmony and unity with God, collabin’ with Him in the Garden and walking with him in a real and personal way. One day the serpent speaks to Eve and tells her that she can be like God if she eats the fruit of the tree that God told her not to eat from. Eve picks a fruit and takes it to her husband. When Eve explains what the serpent told her, both of them eat the forbidden fruit. Adam & Eve disobeyed the only order that God had given them in order to be like God themselves. Now, Adam & Eve didn’t need to collab’ with God. They now had the knowledge of good and evil just as He did; whatever they did, they could do it alone, without God’s help.
When humans decide that they are like God, there is a divorce, a separation, that takes place in the supernatural realm that tears apart the relationship between God the Father and his creation.
Adam & Eve “broke-up” with God in favor of knowledge, wisdom, and power for themselves. By promoting our own goals, we forsake God’s goals and the instant that happens, we stop walkin’ and collabin’ with Him.
Come with me now to a later time in the book of Genesis. In chapter 11:1-9 we have a description of the Tower of Babel and the people who were building it. These people were acting to promote themselves among the peoples of the earth when they built their city. They wanted “to make a name for themselves” and to avoid being “scattered”. Here’s the thing, God told Adam earlier in Genesis to “fill the earth”. He meant this order not just for Adam, but for all of the descendants of Adam as well, including the people of Babylon. Now, the people of Babylon were doing the exact opposite of what the Lord had commanded them to do. Instead of filling the earth and going everywhere, they stayed clumped together and started to build a large city and a tall tower. Not wanting to be outdone, other clans would have started “trying to make a name for themselves” by building tall towers and not “filling the earth” as they were commanded to. By acting in disobedience to God’s commands, the people of Babylon were sinning, just like Adam & Eve. Still, though the people of Babylon were acting in sin and were not collabin’ with God, they were collabin’ with each other.
In fact, when God saw sinful man accomplishing things as great as their city and tower, he said, “this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them.” This is a powerful statement, especially coming from God. There is such power in the human people when we are one race, one tongue, and one purpose. Even though we are a fallen people, cut off from our original position of relationship with God, there is still this potential within us: that “nothing will be impossible” for us. With all that has been accomplished by the human race; all of our wars, confusion, division, etc., we can only begin to imagine what would have happened if God had not intervened at Babylon!
Following this story, we know that God made a plan to stop the progress of their city and tower. God came down and confused their languages. What a strategy! God accomplished his goals without destroying everyone working on the tower! He got the people to where they wouldn’t/couldn’t work together anymore so that the tower and city would never be completed.
Isn’t it amazing what the human race can accomplish when we work together?
For more on this subject, watch for updates from my new book coming soon: Collabin’: The Connectivity Challenge.
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