PLGRM

Okay, so now we have a grasp of what Sin is. What about Evil…?

One story I’ve always been fascinated by is the Tower of Babel. Like all the other stories at the beginning of the Bible (we call them the “Stories of the Beginning”) their purpose is to explain why things are the way they are.

So, we find a couple different stories of creation (How did all this come to be?), we have stories of the first humans (that try to explain to us why humans live lives of hardship and toil), then we have the story of the great flood (which would have explained a massive event everyone would have known about. Almost all the ancient cultures had a flood story, and several ancient religions specifically mention it in their holy writings).

And then we come to the story of the Tower of Babel. This story is meant to explain why there are so many different kinds of people all around the world. Even in their small geographical frame of reference (the Ancient Near East), there was a lot of difference when it came to human beings. But the Babel story tells us that was not always the case.

After the Great Flood, those that were left migrated West and they came to the plain of Shinar (Babylon) and they decided they were going to rebuild. They said “Let’s make a name for ourselves” as if they had forgotten what God did to the last group of people who had gotten full if themselves. “Let’s make a name for ourselves, otherwise we’ll be scattered over all the earth.”

The story says humans were afraid of being scattered and becoming different.

So, they built a tower with its top reaching heaven. And the Bible says God was nervous about this, because God had just wiped out all the wicked and evil people from the earth and, here they were, starting all over again. So God’s solution was to confuse their language. “Look, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do…”

I love that this is a story about language.

Language is a fundamental human reality. Language sets the basis of our entire existence. We think in language. We understand using language. Our perception of the world arises in language. Our perception of ourselves arises in language. Our perception of others arises in language. Think about this: What is the difference between saying “I can’t do that” and “I haven’t learned how to do that yet”? The difference is stark and fundamental. Both of those realities come into being in language.

The language we use matters. Language defines our reality.

But God said, “We’re going to confuse their language,” and the people were scattered all over the earth and given different languages, different ways of seeing and understanding the world.

God’s solution to evil is difference.

We think the Tower of Babel is a story about the perils of human arrogance. It’s not. It’s a story about the perils of human sameness.

Think about things that humans have done to each other that we would call “evil.”

Not “tragic.”

Not “horrific.”

Evil.

Here’s a short list that I came up with:

• The subjugation of the Korean peninsula by the Empire of Japan
• American Chattel Slavery
• The Trail of Tears
• The Jewish Holocaust
• South African Apartheid
• The bombing of the Murrah Building
• The attacks of 9/11
• The bombing of black churches
• The mass shooting at the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando.

Each one of these examples (and there are countless others) go beyond being “tragic” and “horrific.” We call these things “evil.” And they all share a characteristic with other evil things:

They are about the elimination of difference.

We have a prevailing belief right now that the problem with humanity is that we are “so divided,” and if we could just “overcome our differences” everything would be all right.

I don’t think that’s right.

I don’t think the problem is that everyone is different and divided. I think the problem is that everyone is trying to make other people just like them.

The problem is not that you and I are different. The problem is I’m trying to make you just like me.

So, I use language to make you ashamed of yourself. Or afraid. And if that doesn’t work, I work to convince other people that you are awful and evil and need to be sidelined or eliminated.

Most often, evil does not lift its head by way of a mass genocide like the Trail of Tears or a mass shooting like the Pulse Nightclub. Most of the time, it’s simply talk of “those people.” And, after a while, “those people” aren’t even people anymore.

They are threats to our sameness and we’ve got to get rid of them.

Evil is siren call of sameness.