The Tower of Babel

Genesis 11:4 says: "Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves; otherwise we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth.” " By itself there seems nothing wrong with that declaration.

However, God saw differently. In Gen 11:6 "The Lord said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them." Again, by itself this verse doesn't seem to contain any malicious intent on what man is trying to do.

In the context of what the gospel teaches, God wants us to be one body in Christ, not one body without Christ. By ourselves, through science, human beings can collectively do wonders. Just think how much the internet has accelerated human capacity to gather, and disseminate knowledge almost instantly. It is as if mankind is once more able to gather together in one place (via the internet) and virtually build anything the human mind can imagine. Without God in the picture, this is dangerous.  Many decades ago, we already have enough nuclear power to destroy the whole world. Now, through breakthroughs in genetic engineering, man may soon be able to clone another human being, or "create" new species of animals.

The more we advance scientifically, the more we are led to believe that we can do life without God or that there is no God. Yet all the advances of science cannot solve any of the basic problems that have prevailed since the dawn of time: wars, hungers, diseases, and social ills. People need God and God knows that. So it makes perfect sense to me now that in Genesis 11:6, God took a preemptive strike by confusing the people with different languages as they were trying to build the Tower of Babel . From then on they stopped building the tower and they scattered all over the earth.

The good news is, it was never God's intent to let us be perpetually scattered. God wants us to be united in Christ. Romans 12:5 says "... so in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others."