Diversity and (TRUE!) Unity: Lessons from Babel

Diversity sure is misunderstood! In some corners, it's almost a dirty word, while in others, it is venerated as a
holiness above all others. Cultural diversity is a wonderful thing. Our world is made richer because of the various cultures represented throughout. When it comes to celebrating cultural diversity, we most often have a view to a kind of unity among all people. By saying we're celebrating our differences (for that's what diversity is), we're really seeking a kind of common ground.

And that's noble.

But I can't help but think, as good a goal as unity is, it would be good to consider why there's all this diversity in the first place. If a structure collapses, it just makes good sense to investigate why it did so before building it again. In the same way, it seems to me that, if our goal is unity, we ought to look first at the reasons behind our separation.

Now the whole world had one language and a common speech. As people moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there.

They said to each other, “Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar. 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.”

But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower the people were building. 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. Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.”

So the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. That is why it was called Babel—because there the Lord confused the language of the whole world. From there the Lord scattered them over the face of the whole earth. (Genesis 11:1-9)

So, God Himself scattered humanity -- and the reason is really pretty simple. He did it as a way to keep man reliant on Him. Man was originally created to be in relationship with God; but man's ambition was to elevate himself to God's level. We know from the New Testament that God does indeed desire unity among His children -- but that Unity must be founded on a relationship to God. 

Put another way, the unity Man wants is a false unity, because it fails to recognize who we actually are to each other. We believe we ought to be united because we are of the same species. We want to believe that we can become one Human Family, without God, by virtue of nature and good intentions. But without recognizing who -- and whose -- we really are, that unity is a fiction. 

It is only through our relationship with Christ -- and our recognition that we are, all of us, children of God -- that we can gain the true Unity He has in store. That of a single, loving, family, gathered under the roof of our Heavenly Father.

Ten Thousand Years, And We're Still Building Babel

Felix Baumgartner doing a test at 71,000 feet.
photo by Red Bull Content Pool

I was one of thousands -- perhaps millions -- whose computers were locked to the Red Bull Stratos live feed yesterday. If you don't know what that is, here's the gist. A world-famous skydiver was to climb into a capsule to be lifted by balloon -- the largest human-bearing balloon in history -- to the stratosphere, 120,000 feet straight up. He would then, with the help of a specialized space suit and parachute, jump from that perfectly good capsule, breaking the record for the highest skydive and, hopefully, the sound barrier.

As a space enthusiast, I was excited -- am still excited -- by the testing of new technology as we advance both federal and now private space programs. And, you have to admit, it's just pretty doggone cool.

As time ticked by yesterday, the launch kept being postponed. Weather troubles, communication issues, and finally the determination that with the high gusts of wind, it just wasn't safe to do. Because free-falling 120,000 feet is safe. The announcer explained the scrubbing of the day's mission, saying that, because of the balloon, the wind at higher altitudes had to be "negligible" -- about 2 miles per hour, tops.

It's a fragile thing, human ambition.

Paul spends a large portion of 1 Corinthians comparing God and Man. In chapter 1, verse 25, for example, he writes, "For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength."

In other words, when you compare it to God's will, our human ambition doesn't amount to so much, after all. Remember the Tower of Babel? An historical achievement of human ambition -- a massive tower, reaching to the Heavens. And God simply waved His hand and rendered the whole thing undoable, changing the social construct of the entire world, while He was at it. 

As the old saw goes, if you want to hear God laugh, tell Him your plans. Our ambitions, driven as they are by ego,  or by the desire for more money, or more sales of bad-tasting energy drinks, or by whatever, are ultimately meaningless. Only God's ambition for us counts. Only our desire to do His will.