![]() ![]() They were rejecting God’s mission of ongoing change and growth, and choosing instead to aggressively defend the ways things were.ĭefending the way things are, at the expense of a better future, is the Sin of Babel.īut the Lord came down to see the city and the tower the people were building. God wanted humanity to grow-these people wanted things to stay the same. That was part of their mission, part of what they needed to do to keep growing, so they could become the planetary species God had always intended them to be. God had just told them to scatter over the face of the earth. They were supposed to be exploring new possibilities and new places. People will be so proud of where they’re from, no one will ever venture out to explore new possibilities or new places.Īnd here’s the crux of the problem. If they make the most famous city ever, no one will ever want to leave. Why do they want this city, and why does this city need to have a tower?Īccording to their own account, they’re doing this to make a name for themselves, so that they can avoid being scattered over the face of the earth. Sure enough, there’s something very similar going on here. ![]() The Bible’s first city-builder? Cain, right after he slew Abel. In the book of Genesis, this is a red flag-so far, the good guys are nomads, spreading out across the landscape, filling the earth, while the bad guys are city-builders, murderous tyrants trying to batten down the hatches, surround themselves with walls, and hold their ground. Notice, first of all, they’re not setting out to build a tower, they’re setting out to build a city. “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves otherwise we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth.” (Genesis 11:4) Then God blessed Noah and his sons, saying to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the earth.” (Genesis 9:1)Īnd that’s exactly what humans started doing. ![]() God had given these instructions in Genesis 1, but after Noah’s flood, the mission was relaunched, and God reiterated these instructions to the people emerging from the Ark: These are God’s first instructions to humanity: be fruitful and multiply (so there would be more humans to help), and fill the earth-so that the work could be truly global in scope. The very first thing humanity had to do was to become a planetary species. Growing into that immense role would take time, though. When God created humanity, he created them in his image, made them godlike (Genesis 1:26-28), and instructed them to participate in his work, creating and cultivating the life of the world, just as he had done. In the Bible, the Tower of Babel has a context. In doing so, they may be unwittingly enacting the Sin of Babel themselves. It’s almost like they mashed up the Bible with Icarus, Prometheus, and Jack & the Beanstalk.Īnd every time someone feels like humanity is advancing too fast, they pull out this story, and try to slap people down with it. That’s not really in the Bible, but it’s what a lot of people hear and repeat. God sees what the people are building, and furious at their hubris, destroys the tower, and condemns humanity to the Earth. In this story, a group of people get together to build a tower tall enough to reach heaven-from which they intend to launch an all-out war on God himself. Perhaps no biblical story has captivated people’s imaginations like the Tower of Babel. ![]()
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