what we can learn from babel

This morning, as I contemplated what to write about, I heard a song. I’d heard the lyrics countless times before, but they hit me as if I were listening to them for the first time: “Every day the world is made, a chance to change.” Those words speak of such a profound, yet simple truth: Each day is an opportunity to recreate the reality we live in. Our world is daily defined by the collective decisions of the human race. There is no universal law dictating that the systems we lived beneath yesterday must also reign supreme today. And that realization gave me hope.

There is a peculiar and intriguing story found in Genesis about the origins of human interaction as we know it. Early in our history, everyone shared a common language; people spoke without the constraints of linguistic barriers. Lacking any such restrictions, the world’s populace undertook an unprecedented endeavor: Working together, they would build a stairway reaching to heaven.

Wanting to inspect what his creatures were up to, God visited the construction site. What he found unsettled him. The idea, embraced by a united front, was becoming a reality: “Look, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them” (Genesis 11:6, NRS). The implication here is staggering: When we unite together, we can accomplish anything.

It’s important that we understand the reason God confounded their language and halted the project. The issue was not their unity, nor was it their capacity to attain whatever they set their minds upon. Hubris was. Humanity wanted to cut God out of the picture by eliminating their dependence upon him; they wanted to ascend to heaven as gods. “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves” (Genesis 11:4, NRS; emphasis mine). Note the conspicuous absence of God from their plans.

But consider what might have been had their designs read differently, if their proposal was instead God-centered: “Come, let us build a city, with a tower to direct our gaze to heaven, so that we may make a name for our God.” Ambitions properly aligned, humanity would have succeeded in its God-honoring enterprise. And the outcome – a global city united under God – would be vastly different from the pandemonium that ensued at Babel. We can only speculate how history would read if that were in fact the case.

The crux of the matter is this: What are we building? I find in the course of my daily life that it is all-too easy to become stuck in my petty routines, anesthetized by the narcotic of predictability; I lose the plot. And in constructing a monument to me, I, like the tower-builders of Babel, waste my time on what is transient and bound to fail.  But now and again, I awaken to the whispers of possibility: What if Jesus-followers put down their individual pursuits for the sake of something much grander? What if our visions weren’t so small? What if we, the Church universal, united in a singular passion? I daresay, as God himself attested, that nothing would be impossible for us. So let us strive to be Kingdom-builders, a society whose aim is to heed the call of Jesus in blurring the lines between earth and heaven. “Every day the world is made, a chance to change…”