“So the Lord scattered them abroad from thence over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city.”

Genesis 11:8

The crisis in our nation today is centered in the crisis of the American city.  Whatever has happened to the proud optimism that only a few years ago swept over the secular city, when politicians and theologians and sociologists and industrialists joined in the mighty chorus of praise for the modern city – “megapolis” – as God’s best gift to man?  What has happened to that rosy faith which counted as our country’s richest blessing the rapid urbanization of our culture?

A feature story in our recent issue of Time magazine pointed out some of the things that are causing New York City, “The Big Apple,” to become rotten to the core:  street violence, drug trafficking, Mafia corruption, fraud in business and government, appalling failure by public education to educate the youth of the nation.

Yes, sad to relate, all our American cities have been erupting in class and race struggles and exploding in riotous demonstrations of rival pressure groups.  Now we are discovering that our long neglected and poorly financed municipal services in the American cities are breaking down.  Now communications between the various segments of cities’ populations are proving more and more difficult.   Now as the crisis mounts and frantic attempts are made to get these composite parts of a city’s governmental, educational, business, labor and religious sectors to pull together on common programs, it becomes increasingly apparent that people aren’t hearing one another.

The old Biblical story of the builders of Babel has an awesome timeliness and a chilling urgency for city dwellers and those who work in or live near the city, who feel the tensions, fears and frustrations of our day.

In the early dawn of human history so the Bible story goes, the sons of men took counsel together, saying: “Let us build us a city, and a tower which will reach unto heaven.  Let us make a name for ourselves, that we may not be scattered abroad upon the face of the earth.”  So they burned brick and mixed mortar, and went industriously about their task.  The walls of the city rose, buildings were fashioned, a great tower ascended toward heaven.  But, in the midst of all construction God noted their pretentious efforts and brought an end to their monumental enterprise.  In the twinkling of an eye God caused a confusion of tongues among them.  He confounded their language so they might not understand one another’s speech.  Thus ended the fiasco of the building of the Tower of Babel.

This quaint story, which we all have known since our primary days in Sunday School, was told by the primitive Hebrews to explain how they thought the various languages of different races and nations had come about.  But, for us, even more important than this, it contains certain eternal spiritual truths – truths which have apparently been evident to most people from the beginning of time – concerning the nature of man, the nature of God, and the nature of God’s ways with men.

Of primary interest is the character of these people who caused the unity of human life to fail.  What were they like?  They had many fine qualities.  They were people of ideals and ambition, for one thing.  They had visions of creating a fair city, of fashioning a tower which would be, at once, a symbol of and instrument for creating human unity.  They were also industrious.  With a will they went to work burning brick, mixing mortar, and erecting the material structures of civilization.  They also possessed that noble quality of co-cooperativeness.  They got together in their plans and unanimously put their hands to the work.  Yes, these builders of Babel were in many respects people of laudable character.  Yet, their work failed.  They were brought into the very confusion they sought to avoid.  Why?

The builders of Babel were doomed to failure by Almighty God because they engaged in their enterprise for the sake of self-glorification.  “Let us make us a name,” they said.  Their overweening pride was the incentive which impelled them to their labors.  The purpose of their building was to construct a tower which would reach even to the heavens.  They would make themselves equal with God.

Reinhold Niebuhr, generally acclaimed the leading American theologian in this century, saw in man’s pride the very basis of all his sinfulness.  There is that element of transcendence in man, said Dr. Niebuhr, which is at the same time his glory and the basis of his sin.  It is the source of his kinship to God and the cause of his desire to make himself equal with God.  Man aspires to be more than he is.  He desires to put himself above his fellows, to make himself the center of life, to make all things and all people revolve about him.  Man sets himself up as the center and meaning of the world, and thus make himself God.  As Maister Eckhart says: “We, who are not the center of the universe, seek to make ourselves the center of the universe.”  This pride, this sinful pretension, this putting oneself higher than God, was what the builders of Babel were attempting to do.  They said, “Come, let us build us a city, and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven, and let us make us a name.”   Such overweening pride God judged as the very essence of sin – as rebellion against Him.

The character of these people who caused the unity of human life to fail is seen to be all the more appalling when we come to realize that the builders of Babel are not an extinct race of prehistoric men, like the pyramid builders of Egypt and the mound building Indians of North America.  Oh no, people of the temper of Babel’s builders are all about us yet, still destroying the unity and blessedness of human life.

Who are the modern builders of Babel?  They are the leaders of states and nations who say: “Come, let us build us an empire which shall encompass the earth.  Let us make us a name.  Let us make for ourselves a place in the sun.  We, the leaders, shall determine what the people shall hear and believe; we shall control their conscience; our word is law, our will supreme.”

Who are the modern builders of Babel? They are those tradesmen and professional people who say in their hearts: “Come, let me build me up a trade or a practice which will bring me honor and wealth.  Thus can I gain power and influence.  I shall make myself a name. Whatever methods are necessary for attaining such a success shall be the law of my life.”

Who are the modern builders of Babel?  They are even in our homes, and show themselves in young and old, great or small personalities, who set themselves up as the sole rule and reason for that home’s existence and assay to make themselves the center or meaning of life for the whole family.

Such is the character of Babel’s builders in all ages, the men and women, in high places and low, who by their overweening pride and selfishness set themselves up as the center of the universe – as though they were God Himself. And they are the ones, today as in the ancient past, who cause the unity of human life to fail – who are responsible for the major part of the world’s strife, warfare, oppression and misery.

But the building of every Babel is doomed to failure because God is the Almighty and He resists man’s self-exaltation.  Man’s chief end is to glorify God – not himself through conquest, business and professional skill, or personal attainments.  It is by no arbitrary act that God smashes the one who would make himself the center of the universe.  The universe happens to be set up with God as the center.  It is just made that way.  To attempt to set oneself up as another center is self-annihilation.  God is the center and meaning of life.  That is the very core of meaning of the system of the universe.  Failure to fit into this scheme of things brings ruin.  The building of Babel can never succeed.

Victor Hugo’s comment on Waterloo in Les Miserables is pertinent: “End of dictatorship,” he wrote.  “A whole European system crumbled away.  Was it possible that Napoleon should have won the battle?  We answer, no.  Why?  Because of Wellington?  Because of Blucher? No.  Because of God.  Napoleon had been denounced in the infinite and his fall had been decided upon.  He embarrassed God.” And a modern Victor Hugo could write the same of Hitler and Stalin and Manuel Noriega and Saddam Hussein.

But let us not content ourselves with the contemplation of the doom God visits on the power-mad rulers, those Babel builders who in a very ostentatious way try to make themselves the center of the universe, to set themselves above God.  It is just as possible to seek to make oneself the center of the universe in the schoolroom, the business office, the pulpit, or the home, as it is upon a throne.

Thomas Carlyle has a dramatic passage in which he conducts the heedless Louis XV of France to the judgment-seat, and says: “Yes, poor Louis, death hath found thee.  No palace walls, or gorgeous tapestries, could keep him out.  Time is done and all the scaffolding of the time falls wrecked with hideous clangor round thy soul; the pale kingdoms yawn; there thou must enter naked, all unkinged.”  Then with sudden change of front Carlyle turns upon his readers to say: “And let no meanest man lay flattering unction to his soul.  Louis was a ruler; but art thou not also one?  His wide France, looked at from the fixed stars, is not wider than thy narrow brickfield, where thou too doest faithfully or unfaithfully.”  Ah, yes, it takes no wide expanse of land, no great amount of capital, to enable a man to build his Babel and seek to set himself up as the center of the universe, and effect his arch rebellion against the Almighty.  The doom of selfish pretensions falls to lord and peasant alike.  They both embarrass God.

We have spoken of the character of those men who, by seeking to set themselves up as the center and meaning of life, cause the unity of human life to fail.  We see their true nature.  We recognize with regret our kinship to Babel builders.  We have also observed the inevitable destruction which Almighty God brings upon all Babel building.  Let us now investigate the true basis for human unity and well-being and inquire into the character of those people who foster it.

One of the avowed purposes of the builders of Babel’s tower was to erect something which would be a symbol of and instrument to human unity.  They said: “Come, let us build us . .  a tower . . . lest we be scattered abroad upon the whole face of the earth.” But their attempt failed. Actually, the building of Babel was the direct cause of greater confusion and disunity.  The foundation for human unity is faith in God and obedience to His will.  For our time, in the Christian era, this foundation for all human unity is summed up in Christ.  As Paul puts it: “Other foundation can no man lay than that which is laid in Christ Jesus.”  The only abiding basis of human unity (and it is now apparent in our world that we must have unity of all races and nations or we all perish) is the gospel of Jesus Christ.  The human brotherhood can become a reality only through Him.  All manmade attempts for unity which leave Jesus Christ and His gospel out of account are just so many more Babel blunders which will only multiply confusion, whether they be of an empire founded on the strong, sword arms of a conqueror, a pipe dream of a unified humanity through spread of education and knowledge, or an internationalism built on scientific developments in transportation and communication.  Only God in Christ is humanity’s unifying principle.

The Bible accounts of Babel and Pentecost and the heavenly Jerusalem in Revelation will bear careful comparison.  When, at Babel, men gathered together to make themselves a name and set themselves up as equal with God in a common enterprise to effect some human unity, the result was greater confusion and disunity.  On the other hand, when at Pentecost men joined forces to serve the will of God, to submit their lives to the influence and commission of Christ, a wonderful understanding springs up among men of various languages and races.  They understand each other.  They find the true basis of human unity through Christ. In the pictorial Revelation account of the New Jerusalem, the ideal heavenly city, redeemed and transformed humanity is not atomized and de-urbanized and scattered across infinite space in solitary units, but gathered together in joyous community about the throne of the Crucified and Risen Lamb who is their bond of unity with each other throughout eternity.