Reflections
on the Tower of Babel, pt. 1
“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…” Gen. 11:1-4
There is far more to Babel than the confusion of
languages. The story ought to exist as far more than an historical footnote.
Like so much of the first parts of Genesis, here we find the foundations of the
great drama played out by men on the earth. Genesis is not the story of
others—it is our own story.
Yes, plenty has changed since that fateful moment in
ancient Samaria—one could point to an extensive list of the things that would
be unrecognizable about the world to an ancient Babelite architect unfortunate
enough to be suddenly transported into the modern world. But the one thing that
might surprise the time-traveling architect more than the airplanes and nuclear
warheads—provided he is an architect who knows how to think about things—is the
extraordinary, miraculous, fact that almost everything else has stayed exactly
the same. Even the ancient man was surely something of an evolutionist,
believing that time and progress are interchangeable; that the cruelty of man
will fade as he learns to live with himself; that sin will cancel itself out;
that as man learns he will be able to cure disease and cheat death. The dreams
of the Modern Man remain the same, but the dreams are no longer based on
reason, for history has proven otherwise.
Our clothes and our technology might have changed in
the many years since Babel, but the men and women who fill these clothes and
use the technology are precisely the people who built the pyramids; the people
who wrote the Iliad and the Republic; the people who thought that it was a good
idea to build a tower to the heavens.
What has changed least of all, perhaps, is man’s
unflappable belief that by carrying himself higher he will necessarily be
bringing himself closer to God—not in terms of physical closeness, but in terms
of likeness. Or, to put it in a way more fitting for our more “enlightened” age:
we are not seeking to be like God, but we are seeking some other sort of
transcendence. Something not of this earth. Gravity, not sin, has become our
greatest curse. Churches (not the least of the offenders) are built with their
magnificent steeples pointing skyward, ostensibly with the intention of
pointing one’s gaze toward the heavens in order to be reminded of the One who
is worshipped within, but in reality isn’t it true that even churches have long
tried to achieve something of profound and surpassing architectural and
altitudinal stature?
Man accomplishes great things, but most things that
we would call great are only great inasmuch as they glorify man. The innovation
of manned flight, remember, was not invented by those who dreamed of
transcontinental travel or even scientific research—it was merely to lift man
higher into the heavens. We saw the birds in the sky and we were jealous and
sought what we did not have. And so with carrying men to space. And so with
children climbing and swinging from jungle gyms and tree limbs.
Babel was not a singular instance. It was not an
isolated occurrence. Even if the construction of a tower was not a sin in
itself, it was at the very least a sign and symbol of something deep and
irreducible within the heart of man—something that makes man curse himself for
being so bound to this earth; for to the heart of man even the earth is not
enough. What we have been given is never enough, and man, in his infinite
wisdom and power, may one day transcend what is in order to achieve what might
be.
And what have we found in our journey? We have carried
ourselves to unimaginable heights, to the point, even, to the blackness of
space, where the scourge of gravity cannot be found, where man is free to float
and flit effortlessly, drawn toward no surface and being driven in no
direction.
The emptiness beyond this world is a perfect
metaphor for the idolatry of man. We refused to be controlled any longer by the
forces of our planet so we carried ourselves beyond them and found a place
where we are at last in control of our own fate—we are modern-day Israelites,
forsaking the glories of a blazing, fiery God for things of wood and metal that
we could carry with us in whatever we chose to do. But what has this idolatry
brought us? Nothing short of death. We have found that we do not belong in
space; we must take unprecedented precaution, spend incalculable resources, all
in the name of merely keeping ourselves alive. We have escaped the curse of
gravity and found that it was none other than gravity that allowed us to live
in the first place. If that does not effortlessly bring one back to the idea of
God, then one is not trying hard enough.
The same must be said, it seems, for man’s newest
Tower of Babel—and one that seems very much opposed to this entire idea. I’m
referring to man’s even more expensive and engaging efforts to dig mighty holes
in the earth for the sake of discovering, not what is great and infinite, but
what is greatly infinitesimal. Our instruments are buried deeply in hopes that
the answers we once sought from the heavens will be found more clearly beneath
the earth. White-coated tinkerers have descended into the deepest pits,
perforating the surface of the Earth in order to build mighty tubes with mighty
magnets; they have bored mighty holes and filled them with mighty
instruments—the most exquisite electronics ever imagined and brightest minds
ever produced by the universities filling vast, dark sloughs. And all in the
name of discovering “god”. They have gone so far as to give His name to the
things they seek, for they truly believe, in their all-too-human arrogance,
that they have been granted the gift of building an experiment that will carry
them into the heavens and introduce them to God.
Whether we carry ourselves upward to flee from the
Earth or bury ourselves in hope of discovering the secrets of the heavens, we
are all seeking the same thing: to transcend our own humanity. Within us all is
a need for something more; a deep, innate uneasiness and stir-craziness that
assures us that there must be something more, and that the purpose of man is to
seek these things. And it is true. We have both the need for something more and
the desire to discover that thing. What too many in this world fail to realize
is that this is how it has always been, and that there is a far easier answer.
We have known the answer since long before Babel, we
just have a tendency to forget.
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