Building up Babel

January 6th, 2009

Reading: Genesis 11-12 and Matthew 5

Yes, I am late in today's posting, and I'm now playing catch-up instead of being a few days ahead. All I can say is that I am on a business trip in Las Vegas, in town for CES 2009. In the last two days, I have been traveling and going to conferences.

The day before I left for Vegas, TCM was showing Vegas Vacation. I don't know what it is about TCM, but they are always showing some Vegas-themed movie before I leave for CES. Last year, it was Ocean's 11. It's always weird when the world of television intersects with my reality.

Anyway, in Vegas Vacation, there is a scene where a hotel clerk tells Chevy Chase where his room is. Her directions are quite complicated with "go down the hall, past the casino, right by the blackjack tables, ignore the first set of elevators, then continue on to your elevators". I laughed out loud when I saw that, because I know it is very easy to get lost inside a Vegas hotel/casino.

That is exactly what happened to me yesterday. I lost a half-hour's worth of time getting from the parking lot to the hotel. What seemed like it would be a straight path to my room ended up being a complete waste of time. I finally just had to leave the building and walk outside until I found the lobby.

Today's reading in Genesis about the tower of Babel reminded me of Vegas. As you might have seen from my past entries, I tend to use my imagination a lot and create hypotheticals, and here is today's: "What if God never tried to stop the building of the tower of Babel?"

I suppose mankind would have continued work on this tower to the heavens. However, a tower that is too high would never stand, so the foundation would have to spread out. The end result would be a city that is one gigantic building.

If you can't imagine that, try pulling from science fiction dystopian worlds like Blade Runner, where there isn't a green piece of Earth to be found. Better yet, think The Fifth Element, where buildings are so high that they block out the sky.

In short, all of humanity would be squashed together inside a labyrinth of a building that would probably be a lot like living inside of a Las Vegas casino. We weren't meant to live this way, but to be fruitful, and go forth into new lands and have dominion over the entire earth. Babel was a way of saying, "let us unite against God". I believe this is the only time in history this has ever occurred.

No wonder why God had to curse everyone with languages. I suppose it was his way of saying: "if you're going to go against me, then you had better be prepared to go against each other". Can you imagine what it would be like to be working on the tower of Babel and suddenly speak some other language?

"Hey, brother, can you hand me that...schmehay."

"What the mookalah did you just dekah-yay?"

"I don't juko my kopob!"

"May kooska hookah wooka!"

Even today, we have to always deal with the language barrier, and we could certainly communicate a whole lot better with anyone in the world if we all spoke the same language. However, like Adam and Eve's sin, some consequences are unintended, and last until the end.

If we don't have God, we will never get along with each other. This is why we can't get along even though we are spread apart over the Earth. This is why peace is so unattainable.

So where does that leave us? In a place where all of humanity must turn to God, all at once. I can't help but wonder if this is even possible. I think it starts with us all following the precepts of Matthew 5.