Recently, I listened to Fr. Mike Schmitz's Bible in a Year podcast, where he discussed the story of Babylon in Genesis Chapter 11.
1
The whole world had the same language and the same words.
2
When they were migrating from the east, they came to a valley in the land of Shinar* and settled there.
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They said to one another, “Come, let us mold bricks and harden them with fire.” They used bricks for stone, and bitumen for mortar.
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Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the sky,* and so make a name for ourselves; otherwise we shall be scattered all over the earth.”
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The LORD came down to see the city and the tower that the people had built.
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Then the LORD said: If now, while they are one people and all have the same language, they have started to do this, nothing they presume to do will be out of their reach.
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Come, let us go down and there confuse their language, so that no one will understand the speech of another.
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So the LORD scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city.
9
That is why it was called Babel,*because there the LORD confused the speech of all the world. From there the LORD scattered them over all the earth.
The Babylonians attempted to build a tower to reach heaven, however God prevented them from completing this by confusing their language and scattering them.
Why did God do this?
The primary reason God did this is that there was wickedness and evil growing through the minds of the people, prompting them to build this tower not out of love of God, but out of love of their own selves (pride). Symbolically, building a tower to the heavens can be likened to being equal to God. But, we all know that we cannot be equal to God, and must preserve and follow natural order set forth by God in the first few chapters of Genesis - God will provide everything we need, and our duty is to honor Him and love him all of our days. There is nothing inherently wrong with building a magnificent tower (in fact, for the right reasons, it can be honorable). What God is revealing to us here is precisely that - anything done for the wrong reason, without giving proper honor to Him, is sinful and wicked.
Like Eve eating from the tree, for the purpose of knowing things like God, rather than giving him her full faith that he will give her what she needs, the story of Babylon is revealing a similar message. Those who do not fully trust in the Lord have strayed. God gave us free will to choose whether to honor Him first - it is up to us whether or not to place our daily trust in Him. Do we place our trust in Him, or do we reserve that one piece of ourselves in the false belief that we can do better, or know better, than God? That is what God is revealing. It is human nature to be able to choose to love our Creator, and it is human nature to choose to focus on selfish desires instead.
That said, actions done for the right reason, if not otherwise morally prohibited, are good. For example, giving money to the poor to look good is a good action with a bad purpose. While it benefits the poor, it does not benefit the giver on a spiritual level and corrupts the action of giving, reducing it to a transactional level. But, giving because you intend to help the person, with no further expectation of return, increases the spiritual life and furthers the common good for both parties. Many examples of this can be found in our routine daily lives - it is up to us to realize when we can do better and approach our lives with the deepest sense of love and respect for God’s creation. To truly honor God is to follow his lead revealed in scripture. To honor God is to dedicate the small moments each day to him a little more.
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