Speaking in Tongues and Bio-diversity

Read Genesis 11 and this will make more sense.

I have always loved the multitasking of the Biblical writers. They tell rich stories that make a whole variety of important points, while sneaking in some general mocking of their enemies. Christians, morally above this sort of behavior, like to pretend the mocking is not there, and skip right to the moral of the story. Actually, modern Christianity works a whole lot better if you don't actually read the original stories and just summarize the nice points. More on this later, when we discuss "getting back to the family values of the Bible." Oy.

Anyway...the story of the tower of Babel is a VERY thinly disguised thumbing of the nose at the Babylonians, who take our heroes into exile hundreds of years later in the story. Which makes it a bit of an anachronism, unless you stop to think that the exile was the impetus for writing all these stories down in the first place. The religious tradition and the culture of the exiles was threatened, so they had to be more intentional about passing their tradition and stories along to the next generation.

So...

Babel=Babylon....

Tower of Babel=Babylonian ziggurat tower.

Hmmmmmm. Draw your own conclusions.

But aside from that...you have a story of people banding together in a common effort to prove the greatness of human accomplishment. When we work together with our technology and effort, we can climb to the very heavens! Who needs God?

When the movie "Titanic" came out in the late nineties, it became the Babel movie for me. People, proud of their scientific and engineering prowess, build the humongous and "unsinkable" ship that sinks on its maiden voyage.

Perhaps it is the same people who decorate their children's rooms with Noah's ark who can watch "Titanic" and see only romance and ignore all the drowning. Regardless, it all goes down to a lack of humility ending in disaster.

But lately, I've begun to think there is more to it than just pride.

This summer, having read Barbara Kingsolver's "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle," I am struck more by the similarities between Babel and our food industries. Our great industrial and scientific minds are decreasing the diversity of our food supply. They are engineering the genetics of the plants that we eat, so that we are increasingly dependent on a few companies and their particular seeds. To really think this through, you need to read Kingsolver's book. Don't worry, it is very funny and delightful to read. That helps with the disturbing parts about the narrowing of our biodiversity.

So here's my thought. I have come to believe, partly with Kingsolver's help, that the different languages given to the people at Babel are NOT A PUNISHMENT. Rather, I believe that God digs diversity, and wants us to dig it too.

Look at the plants. God invents hundreds of types of potatos. Hundreds. If you grow hundreds of varieties, letting them mingle happily together, then when blight comes, some 'taters will be resistant to the blight.

Or look at it in the realm of economics, as an argument against monopolies. In fields where you've got lots of competition and lots of different think tanks, people come up with more innovations. Perhaps it was back when I was being brainwashed in high school in my "Americanism vs. Communism" class...but I remember learning at some point that American computer science had progressed more quickly than that in the Soviet Union, because of the competition in the free market.

Anyway, don't sue me because I'm tap dancing in so very many fields where I have only enough knowledge to be dangerous. But think about it. What if the languages are not a punishment? What if they are a return to God's joyful plan for humanity?

Diversity = good.
Babylonian-there-is-no-proper-way-to-think-except-the-way-the-empire-tells-you = bad.

Power to the hack theologians everywhere!