The “Millennium Bridge” Problem

When the Millennium Bridge opened in London, pedestrian traffic began to cause a slight sway. As each individual began adjusting their gait to compensate for this motion, it unwittingly began synchronizing their input to the resonance of the bridge. So then the sway of the bridge began to take on a life of its own, so to speak.

I feel like a lot of human problems work this way.

Our individual walk might not intend to interact with anyone else’s. “To each his own,” right? But somehow it ends up working together to interact with a flawed environment so that now we all unwittingly begin acting in concert towards some diabolical end. It takes on a life of its own. Even if a few individuals try to stand still to stop feeding the tumult, it carries us along with it anyway. 

It’d be great if we had the sense to walk to a different resonance despite the tumult. And maybe enough others would begin to walk with us so that together we’d begin to tamp down on the way it controls us and makes us keep feeding it. 

But I feel like we’ve been fed a naïve view of what freedom really is. The Tumult has every reason to keep us thinking we’re free to walk however we’d like, because this is the very thing that enslaves and conforms us to serve its ends. 

The Lord calls us to walk freely and together in a different way so that his kingdom, not the world’s, begins to hold sway.