Brick and bitumen. Steel and glass. Man really doesn’t change, does he?
The year is 2023 A.D. In nearly every continent, a thousand Babels burst from several hundred artificial plains of Shinar, “scraping the sky” as men call it, because “scraping the heavens” might give them PTSD. Hey, it wasn’t that long ago. Especially since scientists keep upping the time St. Darwin needs to do his thing.
Humanity stubbornly fools itself about why they never finished the first time. “We weren’t nearly advanced enough back then,” they protest. “Technical difficulties,” they say sheepishly. Admitting that God crashed their Pretending to Be God party hurts too much, in part because that means He exists, and in part because that means they aren’t god.
Add to that how funny God’s easy dispersal of all humanity was, and that the whole episode lasts less than ten verses in Genesis, and it’s not surprising that the human race is so uptight about the whole situation.
Man wanted power. Man wanted to dominate the earth. Dominion under God was too boring; Man wanted to be God. “Let us make a name for ourselves,” they said. “Let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens.” God gave them a name instead: “Babel.”
Now a prominent language-learning app bears homage to one of humanity’s worst moments. Do they notice the irony? Did the creators of Babbel.com add an extra “b” to distance themselves? Because it isn’t working.
Since God royally scrambled his languages, humanity has been trying to regain its power. After all, even God said, “They have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do. And nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them.”
In this age, the curse of Babel has been reversed. Man has conquered the shattering of his language. A globalist society dominates nearly all the Western world, where many know the main language, English, a large section of the remainder use Spanish, and Google Translate helpfully covers the less obscure languages. With this capacity for communication, man has built the dream of the first globalist alliance a thousand times over.
In many cities, more than a dozen Babels reach toward heaven. And so this race cries, “Where is God? If one Babel was enough to bring judgment, why has not judgment come a thousandfold?” They conclude that God is dead, and that they alone are the gods of their universe.
The skyscrapers of this age stand as monuments to man’s belief in his godhood. Howard Roark, the incarnation of Ayn Rand’s philosophy and the protagonist of The Fountainhead, exemplifies the humanist impulse to build skyscrapers. His infatuation with the steel girders of the skyscrapers he designs is ultimately an infatuation with himself. Building ever higher, men like Roark and the original builders of Babel strive not for efficiency – their projects require enormous resources and manpower – but for godhood. These buildings that seem to defy reality say that man can shape the world to his will, that he is bigger than his puny flesh-bound form.
Tall buildings are not evil in themselves. Neither is the gift of human communication. God shattered man’s unified language because it united rebels. God rendered Babel to rubble because man erected it in defiance against Him.
Long before this New Age of Babel, God came down in human form to reverse the curses. God became incarnate to bring humanity heavenward. At Pentecost, Babel’s curse was reversed, and cultures conversed without the barriers that held them apart for millennia. By their speech God was glorified, not man. In centuries after, the Church catholic erected cathedrals throughout the Middle Ages; wonders of architecture that towered toward heaven, cross-shaped to remember the God who came down to save. God long ago broke Babel’s curse, so man might build and speak to His glory.
Now, in defiance of Christ’s reign, man rebuilds Babel. Like the kings in Psalm 2, the rulers of this age unite against the Son of God. Wielding sway over creation by science, they burst apart the bonds of their Creator instituted in the created order, making men women and women men. They cast away the cords of morality, erecting altars to Baal and Molech and slaughtering their offspring in every city. They scrape the heavens with behemoths of steel and glass, setting themselves against the Lord’s Anointed, and joining together by globalist unions with the power of a united tongue.
Still God comes down. God stoops to see the Babels man has erected on this speck of dust.
He comes down wreathed in the glory of the heavens man tries so hard to reach, rumbling laughter at the kings who raise puny fists in hatred of their Maker. No oath binds Him from a second curse of Babel; rather, His promises demand a flood of fire. And the final scattering of God’s enemies will not be done by a shattering of tongues, but by a rending rod of iron in the hand of the Risen Lord.
So pick a side. You will use your intellect, strength, and tongue for someone. You will either serve with the confederations of Babel throughout time, or the universal Church bound in the blood of Christ. You will either erect skyscrapers for man or cathedrals for God.And when Christ descends again, buildings will be razed.
