I’d like to look at the story of the Tower of Babel as told in the book of Genesis 11: 1-9 and see what take aways there might be for us in 2023.
“Now the whole earth had one language and the same words. And as people migrated from the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. And they said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly.” And they had brick for stone, and bitumen for mortar. Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth.” (Genesis 11:1–4)
Before going into the Genesis story, I think it will be useful to look at the structure of Babylonian ziggurats.
The Babylonian approach to their Sky God, was that their God needed some passageway in order to be able to descend from heaven to earth. The Ziggurat was that structure. It was a stairway to heaven upon which their God could enter through the “Babel”, the gate of God at the top of the tower, and then descend the stairs and make his grand entrance into his temple, built at the foot of the ziggurat, where he would then be worshipped. Interestingly the towers were not built for people to ascend to heaven but rather for their God to descend from heaven.
The Babylonian God had needs, he needed to be worshipped and placated with sacrifices. Being attentive to his every whim was the job of the people. It was their liturgical duty. In their mindset, a pampered deity was a deity that would bring them prosperity and protection. It is a bit of a take off on the Chinese aphorism, “Happy wife, Happy life!”. Their religion was a symbiotic and transactional relationship between their God and his worshipers.
In the Genesis story, the tower was built so that the people could, “make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth.” These goals are perfectly reasonable. What society plans to organize their communal life around the principles of “anonymity” and “annihilation”? Wanting a legacy (making a name) and desire for community (reluctance to scatter) are normal aspirations. So, what’s the issue? The short answer is that they saw their relationship with God as being transactional and not covenantal, but this takes a bit of unpacking.
Verse 3 reads, “And they said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly.” And they had brick for stone, and bitumen for mortar.” What are these guys up to? They otherwise are not using natural stone, but a manufactured product designed and produced to their technical specifications. They have taken “the dust of the earth” and applied their technology to form standardized building blocks for their project. I imagine the tower would have been quite an impressive innovation, for the time.
Perhaps they were working under the assumption that, “If we build it, He will come!” and God will be so “gobsmacked” by the beauty of our leading-edge design and technology that he will want to come and visit us all the time. One question though: Is a God that will gladly accept the lead role in a cage, of our making, a God worth worshipping? Would God’s acquiescence to approaching us, on our terms, reduce him from being the “Holy Ghost” to just being the “ghost” in our machine? The transactional mindset of trying to make God an offer He that can’t refuse and expecting God to buy into that, is not a winning long-term strategy.
In verse 5, God does indeed “come down” but not by descending their stairway from Heaven. God is clearly not a fan of the project. Like all projects there is the problem of “requirements creep” and this project is creeping into the domain of trying to project manage the “divine”. If power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely, for their sakes God has to get them off of the trajectory that they have put themselves on.
I imagine that they have bought into their own PR pretty hard, and it would be difficult to get them to down tools and just cease and desist on their own. God, knowing human nature like he does, and wanting to make this a “learning” moment for them probably says, “Ok, boys, FOOL AROUND AND FIND OUT! and see how all this works out for you”. In the story, once the tower is partially built, they all start speaking different languages and the project is abandoned.
As a bit of a thought experiment consider the following: A group of fellows start a band. They have some natural talent; they want to make a “name” for themselves and leave a musical “legacy”. They believe that the rock and roll gods have smiled on them because they have become famous overnight. They start to build their musical opus. In the beginning there was an “all for one and one for all” bravado to their relationship. But after their enterprise starts to take shape, they start to disagree. One thinks their music should speak more the language of jazz, another the language of country and another the language of the blues. They falter as a group and the band breaks up. Each person’s quest for power and control of their project has destroyed their social cohesion and their musical edifice now is in ruins. A mini-Babel perhaps?
Fast forward to Dalhousie University’s Rebecca Cohn Auditorium, February 1990. At the invitation of the Nova Knowledge Association a select group of business and academic leaders were assembled to hear a lecture buy a “futurist” on the future of the “Information Superhighway”, or what would eventually be known as the Internet. Back then, a 1200 baud dial-up “on ramp” to that highway was $3500.00 a month! And that day we all had to paid 50 bucks to listen to this guy!
He waxed eloquently about the “Digital Superhighway” and how it was being built using the latest innovation in data transmission, TCP/IP (Transport Control Protocol / Internet Protocol). Since it was a brand-new system and built from state-of-the-art components it would not be tainted by any anomalies from the past. When this superhighway was completed, in all of its pristine magnificence, then “world peace would be on the horizon!”.
Everyone would have a node, a name, on the network and for the first time true participatory democracy would be available. Social cohesion would be through the roof and Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity would finally arrive via this electronic highway. In his vision of the future, sanctified by technology, he was telling us, "And when these things begin to come to pass, then look up, and lift up your heads; for your redemption draweth nigh" (Luke 21:28).
I wonder if God, coming down into the Cohn Auditorium that day, might have said to himself, “Ok, buddy, FOOL AROUND AND FIND OUT! and see how all this works out for you”. 33 years later, the internet hasn’t yet delivered us into that digital land flowing with milk and honey! Interestingly the Internet is bogged down on the issue of competing languages. Dis-information, mis-information, hate speech, censored speech, etc. Has the Internet become Babel 2.0?
There is a current philosophy that believes that “existence precedes essence”. That only after something exists will the animating transcendent essence of that thing come take up residence within it. The “thing” could be built from bituminous blocks (Babel), data blocks (Internet), interlocking ideas (Philosophy/Theology), or beliefs like “If I only have myself surgically reconstructed then, in essence, I’ll become a real boy or a real girl”. Again, FAFO! This is an extreme example approach to life called “materialism”.
Joseph Ratzinger, Pope Benedict XVI, made a point apropos to this talk:
“Christianity is not a philosophical speculation; it is not a construction of our mind. Christianity is not ‘our’ work; it is a Revelation; it is a message that has been consigned to us, and we have no right to reconstruct it as we like or choose.” - The Ratzinger Report (1985).
James P. Schall S.J. writing in the magazine, “The Catholic Thing”, makes the following comment on Joseph Ratzinger’s quote:
Popes and bishops have no more important task than to keep the essential “message” intact. “Philosophical speculations” only follow upon and aid the accurate reception of revelation and its content. Any attempt to “reconstruct” it or tone it down in the light of some fancied “construction” of the mind is itself to reject what has been “consigned” to us. It is this latter consignment, however unpopular or alien to a given culture or era, that God wanted to be kept present in the world down the ages – and entrusted the Church to carry it out.
What is the nature of this Revelation? In the next chapter of Genesis, chapter 12, God makes his counter-initiative to the whole Babel business: the covenant offered to Abram. Remarkably for the ancient world, this covenant is not premised on the idea that God has needs. God offers the same sorts of benefits to Abram that the people of Babel were after. “And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing:” Genesis 12:2. God gives Abram a new name, "Abraham" – "a father of many nations".
But there is an incredible difference between this and the “I’ll scratch your back if you’ll scratch my back” approach to the divine. This covenant offer from God is not based on codependent transactionalism. A covenant offers a different and deeply personal way of being in relationship with God. Persons involved in a covenant enter into their association voluntarily, there is no coercion involved. It is a relationship of mutual trust. A marriage is an example of a covenant and in the book Song of Songs God likens himself to a bridegroom wooing his bride.
“You shall be My people, And I will be your God.”, Jeremiah 30:22. This declaration of covenant develops into an “Immanuel theology” giving us a “God with us” perspective to our lives. Immanuel is not just a Christmas story. God’s plans and purposes have always been to be in relationship with and to dwell among the people he created. This was evident in the Garden of Eden and reflected in the purpose and liturgy of the temple. It entered into a new phase of reality with the Incarnation and reached its pinnacle at Pentecost, when Babel was reversed and people spread throughout the world, not in the aftermath of a failed project but with the presence of God within them.
In our concupiscence, our default approach to God is tainted by transactionalism. This obscures the nature of our relationship with him. Our personal satisfaction in this life or the next should never be the prime motivator of our faith—God is worthy, and that alone should suffice for us to be committed to him in every aspect of life. We are daily challenged by the reality that God does not need our gifts, our attention, our prayers, our worship, or our companionship. We are in his debt, not he in ours.
In closing, we should acknowledge that as much civilization and culture both secular and religious, can be instruments of order, they can also be disruptive. We cannot rely on them to bring ultimate order to our lives or our world. We find rest (order) by taking on the yoke of Christ, not by having all of our insecurities and trials resolved to our satisfaction but in the joy of knowing that God has given us each a name and through the work of Christ our name has been written in the Lamb’s Book of Life.“Nevertheless, do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice that your names are recorded in heaven.” Luke 10:20
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