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The Tragedy of Babel

The Tragedy of Babel

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 Introduction• The Tower of Babel account, found in Genesis 11, is a strange story tucked in between the Flood and Abraham. The whole story happens in just 8 verses, but the meaning and impact of this account echoes throughout history and impacts us even today.• I’m Brent, and this is episode 48 of The Bible Unplugged. We start a 3-part series on the Tower of Babel account and examine how that story continues in our current experience.• Please take a minute to look at the show notes for this episode at PowerLoveandMiracles.com under the Podcast tab.The Background• The impact of the Tower of Babel story can easily get lost when reading through Genesis. Between the Flood Account and Abraham’s beginnings, we find a series of lists naming the descendants of Noah’s family. An 8-verse interlude breaks up the list with an intriguing account of how humanity learned a painful lesson: unity, when driven by pride and ambition, isn’t necessarily a good thing.• Beginning in Genesis 11:1, we find that everyone spoke a common language with a single dialect. One would think that’s a good thing, but we learn otherwise.• The people settled in the plain of Shinar located between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. This area is in present day Iraq.• The people who settled there came up with what they thought was a good idea. In Genesis 11:3-4 they said, “Come, let’s make bricks, and burn them thoroughly.” They had brick for stone, and they used tar for mortar. They said, “Come, let’s build ourselves a city, and a tower whose top reaches to the sky, and let’s make a name for ourselves, lest we be scattered abroad on the surface of the whole earth.”• The next verse tells us that God “came down to see” what the people had built. God then said, “Behold, they are one people, and they all have one language, and this is what they begin to do. Now nothing will be withheld from them, which they intend to do. Come, let’s go down, and there confuse their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech.”• This confusion of their language led them to abandon their building project and scatter throughout the world.What Happened and Why?• At first glance, this looks like an ancient urban planning process. Some people believe God felt threatened that the people may no longer worship him if they succeeded. Neither of these theories is close to being accurate.• The threat of The Tower of Babel isn’t in the ability of humans to do great things; it’s the trap of believing that people don’t need God—that pride in self-sufficiency is the goal of self-worship.• There are some details in this story that show that God cared enough for his creation to rekindle the people’s desire for a purpose greater than themselves.What Were the People Really Building?• In this story people said they wanted to build a tower that reached to the heavens, but the real motive isn’t obvious. It’s doubtful that they believed they could build a tower high enough to reach God. It wasn’t possible—and that wasn’t their real motive.• What they build\t is called a ziggurat— a massive stair-stepped temple designed not for people to climb to heaven, but to compel the god’s they worshipped to descend to earth.• Ziggurats can be thought of as cosmic landing pads. The higher they built, the more likely their gods would notice. Religious rituals were performed at the base of the Temple. To steal a movie reference, the belief was, “If we build this, the gods will come.”The Counterpunch• There’s an immense irony in this story. They built this temple to compel God to come down to them, thinking they had to do this to get God’s attention. The sarcastic irony is—God came down to see what they were doing. What God saw wasn’t a great temple, but a great deception.• The lie wasn’t the tower’s purpose or height. The lie was the heart behind it. They said, “Let us make a name for ourselves.”• This was human pride disguised as spiritual achievement. They wanted God-like power, but on the own terms. They wanted God’s presence—without God’s permission. They wanted ultimate power without the divine blessing.What Do We Learn from This?• Here’s where this story gets uncomfortable: The Tower of Babel isn’t just ancient history. It’s current reality. We tend to place material and worldly things above our devotion to God. As the people of Babel did thousands of year ago we may be enticed with the thought of fame and celebrity instead of allowing God’s greatness to show through us.• We find out the hard way that our hopes and dreams, when built on a foundation of human desire and effort, can easily crumble. God only calls us to purposes that have divine power and heavenly significance.• The desire to manipulate God into getting what we want is a common fault. There are believers who think that if you pray just right and with the right attitude, God is ...
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