Ambassadors in Babel

September 2024 Newsletter

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[Carl is a researcher, writer, and lecturer focusing on the paradigm shift sweeping the Western world, including the challenges and opportunities faced by Christians. He has been a frequent guest speaker at TBC conferences, and his talks can be found on our website: https://bit.ly/3LRrmpw]

Best remembered for its remarkable tower, Genesis 11 tells us this was more than just an upright structure; it was a city assembled with a cause.

“Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower whose top is in the heavens,” reads the famous chapter. “Let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth.”
How large was the community and how tall was the tower are moot points. It is the intention that is remarkable: a human agenda of collective aggrandizement, to engage in an act of idolatry that would elevate mankind into the heavens—“let us.”
A parallel can be found in Isaiah’s proverb against Babylon’s king: “I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the Most High” (Isaiah 14:14).

Indeed, the roots of Babel are planted in the lie presented within Genesis 3:5—that in the act of transgressing God, you can be as God. In other words, Babel was an affront against the Lord Most High, an act of unified deception wrapped-up in the greatest of hubris, an unabashed cockiness that goes beyond mere arrogance. It can be stated this way: we are the masters of our destiny, irrespective of what God desires, and we will prove this absolutely. Here is where we raise our pride, here is where we make our stand, here is where we affirm our power. Spiritually, it is collective foolishness, a broad road to destruction.