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The "whole world had one language and a common speech" (see Genesis 11:1) before they attempted to build the tower at Shinar. The problem was not so much the design plan as the reason for the plan. The builders wanted wanted to make "a tower that reaches to the heavens" and went on to explain, "so that we may make a name for ourselves" (see Genesis 11:4). The people were motivated by fear of being scattered. The solution they proposed was a Godlike principle of unity, a tower, possibly like Babylonian ziggurat, which would be impressive enough to reach up to the heavens.
The people had a desire to do for themselves what could only really be done for them by God. God saw how that this tower could not really function as a principle to unite the peoples of the world. It glorified strength and as a corollary condemned weakness. It glorified work, and as a corollary condemned rest. It really did represent an attempt to organize humanity around much of what was most fallen in the species since sin of Adam. The desire to reach up to heaven rather than to allow ourselves to be lifted there, and the desire to make a name for ourselves, rather than to receive the name given to us by God, represented some of our worst impulses as a species.
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.
Nothing would be impossible for them in the sense that they would be free to continue to pursue this cult of strength according to their own designs, to subjugate the truly human to the demands of what was in effect an idol. They had hoped that this idol would be a principle of unity around which they could organize themselves but God saw that it would not be a true unity. It would not provide deep connection between people who built it or lived under its shadow. Had it any vestiges of unity they would have been of the sort that tyranny creates, sacrificing the diversity of peoples their gifts to conformity with the tower. For example, the brick maker would seem valuable, but the farmer less so, the family perhaps even less so. This was not real unity, and the Lord would not let it stand. He acted so as to reveal what was already true, they were not united, and did not have within themselves a the means to achieve a real and meaningful unity.
Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.
The Lord never desired that mankind be scattered. He desired instead that we be united around him. He did not desire that our names remain unknown to one another but rather he desired to give us the names by which we would be known.
And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit
and began to speak in different tongues,
as the Spirit enabled them to proclaim.
The Spirit was able to reverse the Tower of Babel. He brought about a unity that incorporated the diversity of the peoples and their gifts, that did not require the sacrifice of what made human individuals unique. All other attempts at unity that are not grounded in the unity of between the Father and the Son, the unity who the Holy Spirit is, are attempts that are ultimately going to be incomplete, speaking different languages, calling for sacrifices of conformity with the specific blueprints of the that specific tower, however it is architected.
To each individual the manifestation of the Spirit
is given for some benefit.
Only the unity given by God could be a unity that made allowed individuals to retain what made them uniquely and irreplaceably valuable. The Spirit would even manifest as new and supernatural gifts, not as all the same in everyone, but flowing to be used in service of the bigger plan of which God himself was the architect, a plan for which no part was expendable, no gift without value.
No one can say, “Jesus is Lord,” except by the Holy Spirit.
Rather than a concern for our own names, the Spirit teaches us first to speak the name of Jesus. In speaking that one name we receive the fullness of our identities as individuals. We become Christians, 'little Christs', sons and daughters in the Son, a royal family of priests, prophets, and kings. As all of those realities become true of us we do not become less individual but more. Our own name is not erased, but elevated.
To the one who conquers I will give some of the hidden manna, and I will give him a white stone, with a new name written on the stone that no one knows except the one who receives it (see Revelation 2:17).
The flesh in us still responds to fear by the desire to build towers of our own, to create our own stability in a sea of chaos. When this occurs let us hear Jesus speak to us the peace that only he can give and to open ourselves once more to the breath of his Spirit.
Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you.
As the Father has sent me, so I send you.”
And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them,
“Receive the Holy Spirit.
Rather than building towers of pride the Spirit wants to build us into a temple of praise, as living stones, each unique, each gifted, each glorifying the name of Jesus.
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