Babble

Now the whole world had one language and a common speech. As men moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there. They said to each other, "Come, let's make bricks and bake them thoroughly." They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar. Then they said, "Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of the whole earth."

But the LORD came down to see the city and the tower that the men were building. The LORD said, "If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other."

So the LORD scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. That is why it was called Babel—because there the LORD confused the language of the whole world. From there the LORD scattered them over the face of the whole earth. (Genesis 11:1-9)

Ray Kurzweil predicts that sometime in the next century humans and machines will merge in a way that will extend our intelligence and life expectancy beyond our imagining. Kurzweil, a genius with an uncanny knack for inventing and predicting the growth of technology, calls this event “the Singularity”, and claims it will occur by the year 2045. The mechanism by which this merger will occur, according to Kurzweil, is “nanobots” – microscopic robots that will traverse our bloodstreams and neural pathways eliminating waste and pathogens and enhancing the flow of information.

Needless to say, not everyone’s excited about Kurzweil’s grand vision. Many imagine a world in which such technology, far from “perfecting” us, corrupts or turns against us. There are also skeptics who simply identify the obvious limitations of human technology. In the Rolling Stone article detailing Kurzweil’s predictions, one theorist suggests that if we can’t even develop a PC-compatible operating system that doesn’t crash, we’re unlikely to perfect our species using technology.

The tension between human ambition and human limitation plays out marvelously in the story of the Tower of Babel. In it humanity has mustered its best resources in an endeavor to reach heaven. God confounds their efforts by “confusing their language” – a move that at first seems capricious and unfair. But this story underlines an essential truth: God is God and we are not. Throughout history people have attempted to co-opt God’s turf, claiming degrees of knowledge, power, and authority that belong only to God. Periodically as societies, and as individuals, our attempts to overextend our control are confounded. We’re reminded that we are still just people.

Although it is our instinct, during these interruptions, to shake our fists at God and say, “No fair!”, we’re reminded that God’s authority is mediated by God’s infinite wisdom and mercy. In the story of Babel, the people are scattered and sent out across the world. Language expands and blooms, and human civilization traverses the world. God achieves his greater purpose, even as God confounds humanity’s ambition.

So it is in our lives. Confounding and unexpected circumstances force us to learn, grow, and move on. God unsettles us in order to move us on in our personal, and spiritual, journeys. God is God, and we are not. And what great comfort. Who of us really wants God’s responsibility? And how many of us, when we reach our limits, hope that someone greater than us is handling the bigger picture? God’s plans encompass, and include, the experiences that shake us up and turn us loose.