One or All?

Whether we play poker in person or online, "English-only" rules seem to dominate.  It's the only permissible language at the table.  The wrong words in French, Japanese or Swahili could lead to your removal.

 

As it happens, last week's poker-table discussion of the things man can do led to a place where one language dominated.  A man predicted humans someday will be able to fill the hole in the ozone layer -- and based it in part on the tower of Babel.

 

"Why did God confuse their languages," a man asked, "saying nothing will be impossible for them?"

 

We didn't remember the Bible putting it exactly like that, and another man at the table agreed.  So when we walked home, we opened a Bible and checked:

Now the whole world had one language and a common speech  As men moved eastward they found a plain in Shinar and settled there.... Then they said, "Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens...."  The Lord said, "If as one people speaking he same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them.  Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other." - Genesis 11:1-7

Our man at the poker table actually had it right, based on the New International Version.  Our mind was more on the King James Version of verse 6: "....now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do."

So was God really afraid of what humans might do?  Does this passage show God is against team efforts and working together -- and really for "self-reliance" and individualism, the sort of thinking that can dominate the minds of poker players?

We know believers on both sides of this issue.  One side laughs at any mention of the "It Takes a Village" philosophy.  The other supports and encourages a sense of community and togetherness.  But we think there's a middle ground here -- with God bridging the two sides.

Why was that tower built at Shinar, anyway?  We left out one key section which answers the question....

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 and not be scattered over the face of the whole earth." - Genesis 11:4

The crowd wanted self-promotion -- and to get it, it was resisting God's instructions to "fill the earth" (Genesis 9:1).  So God really responded to selfishness and disobedience.  By comparison, one person obeying God can do amazing things.  For instance....

For no one has ever shown the mighty power or performed the awesome deeds that Moses did in the sight of all Israel. - Deuteronomy 34:12

And Jesus wants believers today to join together in a project which proclaims "good news."

And He said to them, "Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation.  He who has believed and has been baptized shall be saved; but he who has disbelieved shall be condemned," - Mark 16:15-16 (NASB)

(NOTE: We have more to say about this discussion of Babel.  Watch for it in a future post.)