God Divides People - 11
Language barriers
Today, we know how hard it is for people to share knowledge and create culture when they speak in different languages. The simplest of words: cat, carrot, sky, woman, wind, etc - need to be slowly taught to someone with a different language. Concepts like: freedom, love, federalism, democracy, trinity, and the like - are more difficult still.
At the Tower of Babel the language was one. The people could talk and listen to what one another were saying. That is the great benefit of a shared tongue. It promotes industry. It allows more time for ingenuity. Also, it is not hard to imagine how large populations can be rapidly taught and brought up to speed regarding a need or project. However, a shared language doesn’t mean communication is flawless.
The use of a single language by a people is still loaded with misunderstanding. Communication is difficult work: due to sin, deception, insufficiently shared vocabulary, unlearned grammar, illogical arguments, confusing non-verbal cues, educational discrepancies and contrary lifestyles.
It is possible for a man and his neighbor to have a credible conversation about the weather and lawn care, but can you imagine where communication obstacles might appear if one were a chemical engineer who loved to talk about his work, while the other was an assembly line worker for a toaster company who “worked for the weekends” to watch sports and drink beer?
Add other factors to this already challenged communication - say that one goes to church while the other plays in softball tournaments; one is a reader while the other hasn’t cracked open a book since the 8th grade; one is married with three children while the other does not want children and lives with his girlfriend. You decide which one is which. My point is that these factors all become the ingredients of effective or ineffective speaking and listening and interpreting what another person is trying to say or not to say. Though they share a common tongue, it is as if they are speaking different languages.
Here are two things that all mankind have in common:
1. we are made in the image of God.
2. we are by nature selfishly sinful.
What’s more is that we inherently know this about each other. We don’t even have to say a word and we know it to be true. It is our commonality. We have been created to represent God, and yet we are determined to represent ourselves! It is a stronger bond than a shared language.
So you can imagine the determination of those earlier people who wanted to build a city and a tower. Driven by their sin and gifted by God with some of his amazing characteristics,1 they set out to make a name for themselves and to stay united. Probably never before or since have sinners combined their efforts in a shared cause. Whole households came together and orchestrated a city-wide construction project. Time and effort were exhausted to build a place along with a cathedral. The god of the cathedral was self-determined mankind (autonomy).
This was unacceptable. As we continue to read in Genesis 11, we see how easily God throws a monkey wrench into the machine.
“5And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of man had built. 6And the LORD said, “Behold, they are one people, and 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. 7Come, let us go down and there confuse their language, so that they may not understand one another’s speech.” 8So the LORD dispersed them from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city. 9Therefore its name was called Babel, because there the LORD confused the language of all the earth. And from there the LORD dispersed them over the face of all the earth.”
The judgment of God was simple. Make it nearly impossible for the various families to understand one another and they will no longer work to stay together, but will pull apart and disperse all by themselves.
I’m referring here to what theologians call the communicable attributes of God. These are characteristics that God shares with His creatures. Among them are: wisdom, faithfulness, patience, kindness, love, justice, holiness, grace, jealousy, righteousness, and the like. God exhausts these attributes, whereas man can only share in them. God has incommunicable attributes as well. These belong to God alone. They include that He is: all-knowing, all-powerful, everywhere present, eternal, independent, and more. Humanity cannot grasp hold of these things because we are creatures.