Thursday, May 20, 2021

The Tower of Babel - Daily Bible Reading - Genesis 11: 1-9

 Genesis 11: 8

But when the Lord came down to look at the city and the tower, he said:

These people are working together because they all speak the same language. This is just the beginning. Soon they will be able to do anything they want. Come on! Let’s go down and confuse them by making them speak different languages—then they won’t be able to understand each other.


I always saw this as "collapsing inward" and that a people/nation that collapses inward can not survive. Fresh blood is always needed to enrich a society and make it all the more productive. The Bible, many parts of it, was written in a bygone age but many of its passages continue to be relevant and timely as we pass through life. 

For myself I love to have a Bible Reading in my mailbox every morning. Reading the Bible from cover to cover is something that I did as a child and it was wondrous to do that. I loved all the stories and probably did not truly understand all that I was reading but it gave me a familiarity with the Bible that is my constant friend and companion through life. My husband and I did talk about the Bible. We had different concepts of religion and I understood his, my mother was raised in the Methodist Church (later United Church) and some of her thinking continued to be in that tradition even after she decided to be confirmed in the Anglican Church of her ancestors. My mother's mother was raised Anglican as well although my mother's father's parents did attend the Methodist Church as well as the Anglican so he was raised in a mixed religion household. But Edward did not understand Anglicanism; too rigid perhaps and too much symbolism with which he was not comfortable. I always respected that and did not expect him to attend my church. I also agreed to take our children to his Church but must admit honestly that they were really closet Anglicans because their daily life included my teaching them their Catechism and singing hymns in the Anglican tradition and praying daily. Since I was home with them that was just part of my natural day which tended to be full of hymn singing and prayer which they enjoyed. 

But back to the story of Babel. What did it all mean? This is my interpretation. Seeing that mankind was about to circle the wagons and cling together God knew that the survival of man depended on his ingenuity and sense of wonder at what was in the world around him (I still tend to use the male terms to express humankind and probably always will). Man and woman had to go out and discover this world of ours; populate it and develop it in a sustainable way for the care of future generations. I do not think it meant anymore than that. Clustering people together generation after generation does not work well and we have a tragedy unfolding in front of us in the Middle East because of that. The more fluid borders become and the more transitory people become the greater likelihood of good coming to the world. Canada and the United States are an example of people coming together and building two great nations full of enterprising people who have produced many of the great inventions of the past couple of centuries. Most of these people came as immigrants to this hemisphere. Not everything has been good because people start to form tight groups that lock others out and demand surrender of personal liberties in order to control and wreck havoc on a system that doesn't support their outlandishness like the attack on the Capitol in the United States. 

So that is my interpretation of Babel; I love that story because it shows a very caring God who actually wanted us to be successful and to care for the land he gave us.

No comments:

Post a Comment