Today’s author is Prince of Peace member, Scott Tunseth.
The story of the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11 has (no pun intended) multiple layers of meaning. Take the Hebrew word Babel itself. It is very similar to the Hebrew word balal, which means “to confuse.” Most commentators believe this is an intentional wordplay. According to Terrence Fretheim in Lutheran Study Bible, this might even “be a bit of sarcastic humor aimed at the later Babylon.”
But what or who is confused? Well, the builders want to eliminate confusion by building their tower to the heavens in order to make a name for themselves but also so they won’t be scattered all over the earth (11:4). That doesn’t logically follow, but the words of God clear things up: “they are one people, and they all have one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do.” The implication is that, like their forebears Adam and Eve, the tower builders want to be like God. But as Pastor Steve has helpfully reminded more than once recently, God is God, and we are not. To be confused about that leads to trouble.
So how does God respond? God says, “Come, let us go down and confuse their language, so they will not understand one another’s speech. And then God scatters them abroad over the face of all the earth, and they stopped building the city and its great tower.
Terrence Fretheim points to another issue with the building of the tower. He claims the builders were challenging God’s command to fill the earth (Gen 1:28), which is necessary in order to be caretakers of the earth. He goes on to say that “God’s action challenges an isolationist perspective and promotes diversity for the sake of the care of the earth and its creatures.”
Commenting on this idea in Working Preacher, Rev. Dr. John Anderson says, “Uniformity, homogeneity, sameness, and siloing is what humanity desires, but it is not an accurate expression of how God wants humanity to inhabit the world God imagines. The scattering of people and confusion of language is not a curse or a punishment. It is God course-correcting the world to be in alignment with what has always been the divine intent and purpose. Toward that end, at Babel God not only blesses and sanctifies diversity⎯God creates it.”
What does this say (if anything) about an administration that wants to delete anything that looks like DEI (diversity, equity, inclusion)? Could there be confusion about what God wants for our world? Could there be confusion about who is God and who is not?
I’ll leave you with those questions.
Merciful God, we give thanks for the rich diversity present in our world. Help us to embrace the other, the one who is not exactly like us, as brother or sister, friend or neighbor, in you. Amen.