Emails from Hotel Babylon
How to Live in Sin and Get Away with it
This is a summary list of a series of emails sent out from September 2001
until now entitled Emails from the Hotel Babylon.
The emails are written by Mike a travelling business man who stays in the Hotel Babylon whatever
country he happens to be working in. He emails his colleague Rob with
progress updates and in every email draws on a Bible story or passage as he
continues to integrated his faith with his work. The emails cover a range of
issues relating spirituality to life in the workplace. The series is intended to
cover the wicked cities of the Bible using stories and teaching by people
living in them or writing to people living in them. Mike’s interpretations of
the Bible passages is usually unconventional. This is quite deliberate to
force those discussing the issues to move beyond platitudes to sharing their
experiences at work and to look at how the Bible relates to these. These
studies are not intended to be safe. They are open ended and the discussion
will go on long after the meeting has ended.
The emails are intended to be distributed up to a week before the meeting
at which the questions are discussed. There is a Bible passage or two
focusing on a wicked city in the Bible used as a source for each email, which
should also be read before or at the meeting.
The purpose of the studies is to look at the biblical teaching around cities
portrayed in the Jewish and Christian scriptures as wicked. Rather than
skirting around them or assuming that these are places believers should
avoid – the book takes each city in turn and proposes how believers can and
should go about living in them as witnesses.
- Egypt– God and management – the Joseph effect – how to forecast 7
years of famine and supply a business plan with it - Babylon –Using prayer to work more effectively.
- Sodom and Gomorrah – Forgetting which side you’re on OR the
loneliness of the long distance negotiator. - Moses – when the client doesn’t want to listen
- Tyre – Blinded by success. Ezekiel on the Phoenicians
- Babel – divided by a common language: ambition the grand project
- Samaria – Worshipping the Baal – Religion that pays
- Curtains for Jerusalem – Religion is bad for you – according to Jesus
- Nineveh – Projection: Jonah and unforeseen and unwanted
repentance - Colosse – Corporate accountability: everything in its proper place
- Rome – The Powers That Be: God’s servants?
- Babylon 2 – Saying no at any cost
- Corinth – Tearing castles down
- Babylon 3 – The Great Whore: are my hands clean?
