Not in God’s Name 4 The Tower of Babel

Genesis11:1-9  

                                                                                                Gustaf Dore

“Now the whole earth had one language...and they migrated…and came upon a plain and settled there.”

What happens when those different people who have lived in their different nations and developed  different languages and cultures for one reason or another try to share the same land?  The image that Genesis 11 presents is one of migration, forced labour and cultural genocide.  Archeological evidence shows that assimilation has been the political response to a conquered people since time immemorial.  Conquering nations want to make a name for themselves, a name that extends even to the heavens.  New technology (brick making) makes it possible for one group of people to rule the others.  Forcing ‘one language’ on everyone else may be a way to make governance easy but it destroys human freedom.

God’s no to the Tower of Babel was a yes to the babble of human freedom.  If the flood was a rejection of human freedom without order, the destruction of the tower was a rejection of order without freedom.  Peace that is enforced through oppression and violence or the threat of it, is not the peace of God. 

Our humanity makes it inevitable that we will care for some people and not others. We will feel closer to those who speak our language, who share our culture, who live in our homes. How do we relate to people who are different?  The stories in the next chapters of Genesis, the stories of the children of Abraham explore the potential for human beings to see each other as God sees us, to love each other as God loves us.  To understand this message in these stories, we need to read the details in light of the details of our lives. We need to read the subtleties to see what we might have missed when we read them through our particular cultural lens. 

We live in an era when people are ‘migrating from the east’ and from every other direction.   The European migration that colonized much of the world was a colossal failure with respect to peace and freedom.  If we had read the story of Genesis 11 we would have known that God did not intend for us to share one language, culture or creed, even when we share a fertile plain.  If we continue to read the story of Genesis with an eye to the details and incongruencies we might just find some direction that can help us live peacefully and freely today. 

I acknowledge the ideas of Jonathan Sacks in his book “Not in God’s Name”