ARE YOU BUILDING A MODERN-DAY TOWER OF BABEL? by Adriel Sanchez for Core Christianity
In Genesis 11, we’re given the historical record of an ancient building project organized by migrants in the plains of Shinar. They were probably in the region of modern-day Baghdad, and they set out to build a tower “with its top in the heavens…” Their reasoning was clear: First, they wanted to make a name for themselves. This tower would be quite the accomplishment, they imagined. People from around the world would come to gaze at its grandeur. Secondly, they hoped to settle in one place and not be scattered abroad throughout the world. In the context of Genesis, this was actually an act of disobedience. God had earlier commanded Noah and his offspring to multiply in the earth (Gen. 9:7), but the “Babelites” had other plans.
There’s much to learn from this incident. God responds to the building effort by cursing the whole project. Genesis 11:5 is meant to strike us as ironic, “And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower.” It’s as if Moses (who wrote Genesis) was conveying that man’s greatest monuments are like ant hills to the LORD. He has to stoop down and take up his heavenly magnifying glass as it were, squinting to see man’s effort to reach heaven by means of human wisdom and grit. The whole scene teaches us that we can’t build our way into the heavens, but that doesn’t stop people from trying. There are two approaches people take today in order to “rebuild Babel”: the atheistic approach, and the religious approach. Both are futile.
The Atheistic Approach
Apart from God, if humans are going to “reach the heavens” they’re going to have to rely on technology, science, and medicine. The last year and a half has shone a light on just how much we’ve placed our hope in these things. Of course, technology, science, and medicine are all wonderful things! But if we treat them as bricks with which we plan to ascend the heights, we’ll soon be disappointed. That hasn’t stopped some atheists from trying, though. Consider what one popular Oxford atheist and historian wrote just a handful of years ago:
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Our recent achievements are now pushing humankind to set itself even more daring goals. Having secured unprecedented levels of prosperity, health, and harmony, and given our past record and our current values, humanity’s next targets are likely to be immortality, happiness, and divinity. Having reduced mortality from starvation, disease, and violence, we will now aim to overcome old age and even death itself. Having saved people from abject misery, we will now aim to make them positively happy. And having raised humanity above the beastly level of survival struggles, we will now aim to upgrade humans into gods, and turn Homo sapiens into Homo Deus.1
Of course, all it takes is something like a world-wide pandemic that claims the life of more than four million people to throw this optimism into question. Even this writer had to grapple with the presence of Covid-19, attributing the massive loss mostly to political failures. And that’s just the thing—even if we can cure diseases, we can’t cure the human heart. Human failure, greed, lust for power—sin—will always keep the atheist’s Babel crumbling. Just when we think our scientific and medical advancements are going to usher us into the heavens, we’re confronted by the problem of selfish people. Science still hasn’t found a cure for that.
