The People of God Scattered and Confused

            To better understand the dynamic that exists between God’s will for humanity, and the natural way of humans, it is important to examine the struggle involving the natural reluctance of humans to commune intimately with those of other races or cultures, their innate tendency to colonize themselves in tribes, and God’s early efforts to scatter humans throughout the earth. The Genesis story of the builders of Babylonia illustrates this tension between God’s will and natural human inclination. This story gives the account of a community of people who wish to build a city for their self-preservation and glory, and God’s actions to squelch their efforts.

            When one reads the Genesis account of events immediately following the great flood, it becomes apparent instantly that God’s will was not that humans should gather themselves in tribes in one place, but rather that they should scatter themselves throughout the creation.¹ Whether to prevent immoral breeding practices like those recorded in Genesis 6, or the fact that Genesis 10:18 tells us in that the Canaanite clans scattered themselves throughout the area, God’s clearly stated will for the survivors of the flood was for them to be fruitful and increase in number and fill the earth (Gen 9:1b).² Regardless of God’s will for them to scatter themselves and “fill the earth,” chapter 11 makes it clear that the generations that followed the survivors of the flood had no intention of doing anything of the kind. In an effort not to be dispersed, they sought to settle down and build a city for themselves, for protection and glory.

            Because they were all of one language, and all understood one another clearly, it was more likely that they would love and get along with one another, and more likely that they would help one another, and, thus, they became less inclined to separate one from another. They were in a safe and spacious place, well able to prosper where they were, and their God-given duty to scatter and replenish the earth notwithstanding, they refused to disperse. In Genesis 11:4, they declared, “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.” According to Matthew Henry, “The sons of men, it should seem, were loth to disperse into distant places; they thought the more the merrier and the safer, and therefore they contrived to keep together, and were slack to go to possess the land which the Lord God of their fathers had given them (Josh. 18:3), thinking themselves wiser than either God or Noah.”³

            The people insisted on banding together and settling in one body. Henry adds, “Instead of coveting to enlarge their borders by a peaceful departure under the divine protection, they contrived to fortify them, and, as those that were resolved to wage war with Heaven, they put themselves into a posture of defense.”⁴ They desired to grow, grow even to God, but while their aim was admirable, their purposes were fatally flawed. Their objective in building this tower in the extensive plain of Shinar, to which they had emigrated from the uplands of Armenia, was to affront God himself, to make for themselves a name, and to prevent their being scattered abroad.⁵ They wanted to come to God by their own efforts, not enter through the door provided, which bespeaks of a defiance of God. They wanted to make their own name great, not glorify the name of the Lord. They desired to stay together; even against God’s will that they disperse. Their desire to seek the sanctuary and safety that common acquaintance and community provides, rather than relying on the protection and provision of God, is obvious in their decision to build not only a city, but a city with a tower that reached to God.

            According to Ken Hemphill, the innate desire toward tribalism described here in the builders of Babylon still abides in most people today. “Building and maintaining intimate community relationships in your church will not be an easy task. Larry Crabb and Jeff Jernigan warn that people enter our churches with built-in barriers to genuine community.”⁶ Modern believers, like these of this ancient Babylonian community, still demonstrate the determination, by their bent toward tribalism, to come to God by their own efforts and not enter through the door provided. Many still desire to make their own name great, not to glorify the name of the Lord, to protect themselves rather than trust God for that protection. The inclination is still to gather together in tribes even against God’s will that we disperse.

            If indeed these “barriers” are built in, innate, connatural, and unconditioned, yet outside of the will of God, then they can only be attributed to the unregenerate nature of humans, and can, therefore, only be addressed by God. That which is innate, a crystallized part of human nature, cannot be altered by humans in any significant way. A change of such import in the natural makeup of humans can be affected only by the supernatural intervention of God in Jesus Christ, so says the Apostle Paul:

For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do–this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it. So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God–through Jesus Christ our Lord! (Rom 7:18-25).

To overcome the natural inclination toward tribalism without Jesus Christ is impossible.

            Most often, humans are unable to recognize that what comes so natural to the mind could be outside the will of God, not beneficial for an efficacious life, and detrimental to a fulfilling relationship with God in Jesus Christ. Behavior and ideas so prevalent and powerful in the human may, because they are so, be regarded as good and attributed to the fact that humans are made in the image of God. Such thinking dismisses the biblical revelation that human nature has been fatally affected by sin, and that those who rely on it for their direction will be led astray: “Those controlled by the sinful nature cannot please God” (Rom 7:9). Paul points out that, even when humans are aware that their behavior is not healthy and is outside the will of God, it is still difficult, if not impossible, to alter that behavior in and of themselves, “when I want to do good, evil is right there with me” (Rom 7:21). To this point, Millard Erickson writes,

There is nothing inherently evil about man’s bodily makeup. Rather, the term (flesh) designates the self-centered life, denial of or rejection of God. This is something that has become a part of human nature–a bent, a tendency toward sin and away from doing God’s will. Accordingly, man is now less able to choose the right than he originally was. It is even conceivable that his natural desires, which are good in themselves, may have undergone alteration.⁷

The total and complete transformation of the sinful nature, the rescue from the body of death, thankfully, can and will only be accomplished through Jesus Christ.

            The result of the attempt of the builders of Babylon to find what they considered to be the “good” for themselves, as opposed to what God had declared as good for them, is described in Genesis 11:5-9. God supernaturally intervenes to scatter them. After having allowed them to start their project, and perhaps allowing them to get much of it done, God lets them know just what he thought of their enterprise. Yet, in an obvious example of his mercy, he did not destroy them for their insolence and arrogance. Instead, he interrupted and defeated their plan by confounding their language, and hence the name Babel, meaning “confusion.”

But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower that the men were building. The Lord said, “If as 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. (Gen 11:5-9)

            Those who will not be led of God, those of his chosen people who will not heed his admonition to cease to be “stiff-necked,” especially as it relates to his sovereignty and his impartiality toward all people (Deut 10:16), will feel the power of his presence in their affairs. When the affairs of men and women demonstrate that they believe what they want for themselves is superior to the will of God, in his own time, he will offer correction. Whenever humans will not do God’s will voluntarily, he will do it providentially.

            To note that God did not make those building the tower of different races to confound them is significant. Human racial distinction does not decry the fact that all humans are of one blood, and despite different ethnicities, are all of the same Creator. He who had taught them to speak simply made it impossible for them to understand each other within their own community. When humans, as did Adam and Eve in the creation story, seek access to innate knowledge of the good for themselves, God providentially denies access to that knowledge. Such knowledge of good and evil hinders the need to rely on God’s guidance, and results in humans setting themselves up as their own gods, or seeking other gods for instruction.

            As illustrated in the case of Moses and his Ethiopian wife (Numbers 12), God has never used race as the delineation for human separation. Humans did that themselves as a result of an unregenerate nature. As the account of how God dealt with Moses’ relatives for their reaction when they learned of Moses’ wife suggests, such delineation is outside the will of God. God has never forbidden intimate interracial fellowship, only intimate interreligious association. God’s admonition for his people to separate themselves from certain tribes was not because of their race, but because “they will turn your sons away from following me to serve other gods” (Deut 7:4).

            From Uriah the Hittite and Zephaniah the Cushite prophet in the Old Testament, to Luke, Titus, and Timothy in the New Testament, and many in between, the biblical revelation is that the only requirement for people to be included in the family and community of God, no matter their race, is that they submit themselves to the one true God of the universe. God’s Word is clear, and his reaction to those who will not hear and heed it is well-documented. As his displeasure is demonstrated so graphically in the account of Moses and his Ethiopian wife, in the same way, God shouts the truth of his will for humans to assign racial distinction its proper value in the genealogy of Jesus, in which he includes many who were not Hebrews, including Rahab, Bathsheba, and Ruth (Matthew 1).                                                                                                                                      

            The inclination for the people to remain together, and God’s will to scatter them as outlined in the Old Testament, is virtually reversed with the coming of Jesus Christ in the New Testament. Contrary to the attitude of the people in the story of the builders of Babel, to remain together in one monolithic tribe, the New Testament describes a community of people nearly unanimously bent on separating themselves by gender, nationality, social strata, race, religion, and even physical condition. Access to the Temple, the place where “God lived,” was denied to women, foreigners, the poor, those who did not fit into the strict, restrictive ways of Jewish leaders, and those whose physical condition rendered them “unclean.” If access to God in heaven is denied, then surely no admittance into the community of God on earth is possible. No intimate interaction, physical or spiritual, with any of these “undesirables” could be allowed. Even Hebrew women, women of their own race, were considered little more than property to be used and discarded at their whim.

            Into this culture Jesus arrived.  This Jesus, according to Ephesians 1:10, was the fulfillment of the Father’s intention to bring all things in heaven and on earth together under one head, even Christ. Paul tells us, “And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way” (Eph 1:22-23). The culmination of God’s efforts would result in a “new song,” a song to be sung to Jesus, by all those whom he has set free: “And they sang a new song: ‘You are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals, because you were slain, and with your blood you purchased men for God from every tribe and language and people and nation.’” (Rev 5:9-10). People of every tribe, every language, and every nation are made one in Christ.  According to Richard Hays,

The church is to be a sign of God’s eschatological reconciliation of the world, and therefore a community in which “there is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male or female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus” (Gal. 3:28). Thus the church’s unity at the table across ethnic boundaries is an outward and visible sign of the breaking down of these barriers, a prefiguration of the eschatological banquet of the people of God.⁸

It seems clear from Paul’s declaration in the above verse and in other New Testament writings that God intends for his church, the people of God in Christ, to reflect his vision of what the world is to be, not of what the world has become. According to Hans Betz, there can be no doubt that Paul’s statements have social and political implications of even revolutionary dimension. The claim is made that very old and decisive ideals and hopes of the ancient world have come true in the Christian community. These ideals include the abolition of the religious and social distinctions between Jews and Greeks, slaves and freemen, men and women. These social changes are claimed as part of the process of redemption and as the result of the ecstatic experiences which the Galatians as well as other Christians have had.⁹

             Throughout the centuries misguided and even evil people of all races have made misguided and even evil decisions, often in the name of God. Since the time of Christ, a continually stubborn resistance to embrace this New Testament ideal of Christian community has existed. The results of these decisions are reflected in the attitudes and actions of Christians all over America as they still must admit to the truth of King’s declaration that Sunday morning at 11:00 A.M. is the most segregated hour in America.¹⁰

            The problem with the aforementioned assertion is that, while it was obviously true in 1963 when it was first spoken, it is still true today nearly fifty years later. Despite the New Testament’s call for the brotherhood of man and the unity of the church, the tendency toward tribalism and the stubborn refusal of the people of God to relate intimately to one another is, shamefully so, more prevalent within his church than it is in the larger society. People of faith but of different races or cultures, who live harmoniously in the same communities, attend the same schools without incident, work for the same companies in peace, eat joyously at the same restaurants (often at the same table), and fellowship socially with one another without hesitation, even when they are of the same denomination will often still balk at the idea of worshiping the same God together under the same roof. Why so? Because the people of God are still scattered and confused.