For some time, the Biblical account of the tower of Babel troubled me. Why would a good and just God scatter the people of the Earth just because they were doing well?
"Now the whole world had one language and a common speech. As men moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there. They said to each other, “Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar. Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of the whole earth.”
But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower that the men were building. The Lord said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.”
So the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. That is why it was called Babel – because the Lord confused the language of the whole world. From there the Lord scattered them over the face of the whole earth. (Genesis 11:1-9, NIV)
Is not confusion a tool of the evil one? Was God somehow threatened by his creation? Such questions are typical of an egocentric, fallen creature. It’s not until the story is seen through the perspective of grace that it begins to make sense. The Lord’s confusion of languages was an act of grace that impeded man’s progress for our own sake. To believe that mankind comes to knowledge without the help of the Lord is not founded upon scripture. In fact, to believe that knowledge somehow exists outside of God is contrary to scripture. Therefore, the progress of the whole earth in the story of Babel is directly related to God’s revelation of his glory in his creation. All of the scientific developments since the creation of man are due to God’s impartation, or revelation of knowledge, for He is the source of all knowledge.
So then, why would the Lord put a stop to such progress? And why have I called this “an act of grace”? Perhaps Mary Shelley can help us understand the point better. Frankenstein is a cautionary tale about scientific responsibility. The creator has a responsibility towards his or her creation. In the same way, those that are the receivers of imparted or revealed knowledge are responsible for the use of that knowledge. Sadly, as we see in Dr. Frankenstein, man is quite often incapable of properly handling such responsibility.
The progress of the whole earth was impeded by God because in His grace he saw that mankind was accelerating beyond the limit of our capacity for responsibility. Though mankind, and creation itself was, is, and continues to be tainted by sin since the fall of Adam, God’s perfect knowledge – what could be referred to as a revelation of His glory – has not been tainted. What happens when a fallen creature begins to inherit such perfect knowledge? Enter Dr. Frankenstein.
When man speeds ahead, developing new and better ways, he is prone to misuse such advances, or in the least, treat such advances without the proper responsibility that they are due. So it can be seen that the confusion of languages was not to stop man from advancing, but rather to slow him down, lest in his fallen condition he should speed ahead and bring the whole Earth to ruin. In the same way, we believers patiently wait for the return of our Lord, even after 2000 years, understanding that the delay is an act of grace. With the passing of every year comes the opportunity for more people to receive salvation through Christ. Though the world will come to an end, the delay of that end is a chance for God’s creation to be redeemed before the judgment.
So then, we should not be surprised, nor troubled by God’s action at the tower of Babel, but instead thankful for His grace to a fallen creation.
Fast forward several thousand years.
For the first time since the tower of Babel, the world is seeing the re-combination of genes that have been separated for 4000 years. In the great experiment in freedom, more commonly known as the USA, races (a common misnomer since there is only one race, genetically speaking – nations is a better word, and is more Biblically sound) are beginning to marry and procreate, producing such marvels as Tiger Woods. For the first time since the tower of Babel, humankind has an opportunity to regain all the genetic information that was passed on through Adam and Eve. Does this mean that the world is returning to a condition similar to that of Babel?
Perhaps, but it is not our genes that I would like to discuss, but rather our language; since it was our language that God confused so long ago.
I feel most fortunate to be a member of my generation, in that I was able to personally witness and take part in the rise of the computer. Though computers were already being developed before I was born in 1971, it wasn’t until I was in junior high that computers made their advent in classrooms, and in the affordable marketplace. I remember the great excitement a few of us new programmers felt as we saw our name scroll down the screen: 10 PRINT “JO”; 20 GOTO 10. We had that mammoth PET computer mounted upon its own desk, screen and keyboard molded into one gigantic unit, that at the time, seemed miniscule next to the accounts of computers that took up entire rooms. I remember too, the first disk drive. Oh what a thrill! We could actually put our small programs on a portable device and carry them around with us – kids today wouldn’t recognize the tank of a box that we were hardly able to lift, called a “disk drive”. To us it was a modern marvel. And the storage space! Why, we could hold 3 or 4 programs of 100 lines each on one disk! It was incredible.
A few weeks ago, at a staff training, our IT person gave each of us a hard drive to store our work on. It’s a little blue plastic thing, half the size of a cigarette lighter, and it can hold 64 Megabytes. 64 million bytes! I remember when a kilobyte was a lot of information; this little blue thing holds 64 000 times more! I was further surprised to learn from one of my kids that you can buy the same kind of hardware that holds gigabytes of memory – add another 3 zeros.
A few decades back, linguists were researching the possibility that all languages on earth could be traced back to a single original language. Some in the Christian community were excited by the prospect that linguistic evidence could be found to support the Babel story. Others were nervous about the agenda of some linguists: to discover a language which incorporated all peoples, so that all the earth could communicate with one language, in a move to support a one world government and society. This smelt too much like an end-times scenario for some.
It seems to me, though, that we’ve been concerned about the wrong language, for it isn’t some spoken dialect that has unified the world, but a mathematical language, a binary language. Computers have linked all peoples of the earth together, allowing us to communicate with anyone, any distance away, in a matter of seconds. Computers allow for peoples of different nations, with different languages, to easily communicate.
So where are we headed? Is it back to the tower of Babel? Certainly no period in history has seen such a dramatic increase in technology as has the present world. A large part of our technological advance is directly related to the computer. Striding – or perhaps leaping is a better metaphor – boldly forward, the computer’s growth has been exponential. Science fiction is becoming science fact. Is a Butlerian Jihad in our near
Babel has risen again, composed of zillions of logic gates all posted on chips the size of fingertips, orderly silicon rising up out of the depths of simplicity, growing higher and higher by the second. We reach for the heavens from flat screen windows that give us the drop down menus suited to meet our desires. The real question is, what will God do this time?
