January 4 - Genesis 11:3-4

"Come, let us make bricks ..." 

[So] they had brick for stone ...

Then they said,

"Come, let us build ourselves a city,

and a tower with its top in the heavens,

and let us make a name for ourselves ..."

Genesis 11:3-4

 

A friend recently asked me to listen to a "news program." On it was an old Jewish rabbi, talking about the Tower of Babel.

 

Most of us look at the second "come, let us ..." And that is indeed a powerful tale. Thinking we can reach the heavens is a repeat of the first sin that the serpent presented to Eve, "when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God." Wanting to "be like God" is something we all do all the time -- usually unconsciously. But think about it ... whenever we say, "I want," "I think," "I choose," or "my way," we're in danger of placing our own self on the throne. 

 

That's a powerful, paramount story in Genesis 11. But that's not the story the Rabbi told. He talked about a forgotten phrase with an equal beginning and, therefore, equal weight -- the seemingly innocuous, "come, let us make bricks."

 

Whenever God commanded humans to build an altar, it was out of stones. Why stones? Because God creates the stones ... while humans make bricks. Stones are unique. Bricks are unique-less. They are identical, interchangeable.

 

The Rabbi went on to compare this to philosophies in our world. A Genesis 11, God-ordained worldview, he said, sees humans as unique and irreplaceable. Dangerous, deceitful human philosophies see humans as invaluable, interchangeable, and replaceable. Hitler saw the Jews as a commodity that should be replaced by a better race. Stalin killed ten times as many, viewing objectors as expendable for the sake of the whole. I've wept with many parents who've endured the loss of their baby through the heartache of a miscarriage, yet others view a fetus as an invaluable and non-viable mass of tissue. Others are beginning to view the elderly as expensive and expendable -- a drain on limited resources.

 

When I was a kid, we used to take things to the repair shop and fix them. Now it's more expensive to repair (a hundred dollars an hour plus travel time) than to throw things away and replace them. We're building bricks. We're subtly adopting a Babel-ling mentality. Let's vow never to buy into any philosophy that even subtly extends that to humans.

 

In Christ's Love,

Rocky

(occasionly rough, hard, and oddly shaped,

but uniquely made by God!)