The story is found in Genesis 11:1-9 as follows: 1 Now the entire earth was of one language and uniform words. 2 And it came to pass when they traveled from the east, that they found a valley in the land of Shinar and settled there. 3 And they said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks and fire them thoroughly”; so the bricks were to them for stones, and the clay was to them for mortar. 4 And they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make ourselves a name, lest we be scattered upon the face of the entire earth”. 5 And the Lord descended to see the city and the tower that the sons of man had built. 6 And The LORD said, “Lo! [they are] one people, and they all have one language, and this is what they have commenced to do. Now, will it not be withheld from them, all that they have planned to do? 7 Come, let us descend and confuse their language, so that one will not understand the language of his companion”. 8 And the Lord scattered them from there upon the face of the entire earth, and they ceased building the city. 9 Therefore, He named it Babel, for there the Lord confused the language of the entire earth, and from there the Lord scattered them upon the face of the entire earth.

I have always wondered about this story in Genesis as many a Sunday school teacher has used it to prove the following points:

1. Don’t rebel against God (i.e. God said to multiply and fill the earth and these people wanted to ban together, stay in one place, and “make a name for themselves”).
2. This is the beginning of what we see today around the world with many different cultures & languages.But did more happen at the tower of Babel? Up until this time all of mankind would have spoken the same language, had relatively the same culture, more than likely looked the same (middle eastern), which means there was little difference in skin color, eye color, hair color, etc. etc. And then God intervenes and decides to do much more than just change their language; He creates racial boundaries. According to Wikipedia: “A race is a population of humans distinguished from other populations. The most widely used racial categories are based on visible traits (especially skin color and facial features). Conceptions of race, as well as specific racial groupings, vary by culture and time and are often controversial due to their impact on social identity hence identity politics.”

I saw the movie “Crash” a couple of weeks ago, and I can’t stop thinking about the racial, social, and economic boundaries that we have in each of our communities. I’m not going to pretend to have any answers; it just saddens me. I do think that if God did not do what He did at the tower of babel, we as humans would figure out our own ways to classify one another and we would still be in the same situation that we find ourselves in today. That situation seems to be the following: We don’t like people who are different than us (so we call them names, classify them, judge them, and imprison them). We don’t trust them around our belongings (so we lock our doors, alarm our cars, and grab our wallets when we walk by them). We are jealous of things that people have (so we kill and plot and steal from them so that we can have it too). We want our stocks and our wallets to be fat and happy (so we use people, and send jobs away, and sell early, and don’t pay them a livable wage). We undercut, lie, cheat, and………………………………are doing exactly what we are supposed to do as sinners who are separated from the God who created them. Never mind. I’m not shocked by the movie. I am shocked that we don’t all kill each other today. I am shocked that somehow we are able to live together at all because each of us looks after our own interests instead of the interests of others.