THESE ARE DISCUSSION NOTES FROM OUR COMMUNITY AROUND PART 2 IN THE SERMON SERIES TITLED “MONDAY MATTERS”, AN EXPLORATION OF WORK, VALUE AND LIVING OUT GOD’S CALL.
The Tower of Babel, and the lessons it holds for our work lives
“1 Now the whole world had one language and a common speech. 2 As people moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there.
3 They said to each other, “Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar. 4 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; otherwise we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth.”
5 But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower the people were building. 6 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. 7 Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.”
8 So the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. 9 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.”
As we look at the passage above, some phrases leap out at us that show they’ve gone off task in the building of this tower: “common language”, “build ourselves a city”, “same language”. Consider also their objective for building the tower: to “make a name for ourselves”. There’s a quest for independence, a desire to build up their reputation, to seek collective identity, to build a representation of their work together, and a fear of being scattered over the face of the whole earth
If you look back at Noah though, God made a covenant with the relatives of Noah to actually be scattered across the face of the earth. That literally was their calling. In trying to prevent this, they were going against God’s will directly. If you look at the Tower of Babel, historians tell us the ziggurats of yore are similar to the Tower: towers built to reach the skies in the worship of false gods.
The bricks were not wrong, the motivation was.
Look at verse 3: they start off very simple. “Let’s make bricks, and bake them thoroughly.” A technological improvement that’s not wrong in and of itself. But what they end up doing with it shows that their motivations went wildly off track.
What are some of the ways we can have the wrong motivations? How can we go off God-centred motives and chase other things?
Recognition, fame, legacy, leisure, wealth, acceptance are things we chase
Then there’s “make a name for ourselves”. A collective identity, a group identity. Look at the clubs and groups where the core motivation is to help those in need. Over time, membership to these clubs become identity, and it becomes a badge that’s flaunted.
This desire, to “make a name of ourselves” is one of the strongest desires we have that’s connected to our work. If you do good work, you automatically create a good name for yourself. That but itself as a motivation though, now that is a problem. Trying to build reputation eventually becomes an idol that we make for ourselves. That we make/fashion for ourselves, and eventually end up worshipping.
“We’ve made something of ourselves”.
Even at church, we see so much empire building. Even in a place where our one job is to reveal God’s character. An identity can itself become a “righteousness” that takes away our focus from Christ. Taking pride in good things can automatically start us along the track of building empires, specifically in a place we shouldn’t be building empires.
Having an identity is not bad, but chasing it in exclusion to God, now that’s bad. And it’s so easy to cross the line from having Christ as our cornerstone to having our identity as our cornerstone; that’s the Tower of Babel moment. “So many people live their lives to build their visiting cards”, as one member of the group said.
Who is getting glorified with our actions at work? Is it God? Or is it us? One member of our community remarked that it’s easy to fall into this trap even when you’re part of a human rights organisation. You should question yourself: for whose glory is this work being done? Why are you building this tower? For whom?
A playwright in our group mentioned that he begins all this plays with a showing of Philippians 4:13: “I can do all this through him who gives me strength.” And it’s not done for the team’s glory, but for God’s. This simple exercise has given the playwright an opportunity to talk to someone, anyone, over the years. The core attitude is important: why am I building what I’m building. The bricks aren’t at fault, neither is the mortar.
One of our pastors spoke of his experience: if we make more money than our peers, do we flash it in front of them? Even in front of our friends? That’s us trying to make a name for ourselves. No longer does our work continue to be a way for us to serve God through the work of our hands. These things are very sly, very subtle, and lie at the depth of our hearts.
Another remarked that even something as good as pastoring can go down this route. DL Moody famously said, “preach, and if necessary use words”. Most of the time, we have the luxury of preaching through our lives, not our words. The glory to God we show even in the peeling of potatoes, now these are the things that preach his Name perfectly.
It’s not about the context. We spoke of a story last week, where one of our members talked to us about her experience as a bartender: she told us that serving drinks can be a bigger opportunity than we imagine it is. That’s the challenge: to work outside the context and not look to exalt ourselves. It is very difficult.
It seems to me that the Tower was being built for people far away to see it. Not the people in the city, not the people who were building it, but for people far away to see it, and to recognise their worth, their stature, their power, their ability, all of that. Why are we building this Tower that we are building? Who are we trying to impress? And is this really something that’ll further our calling, to be an image bearer of God?
And something else stands out to me: it’s not the bricks, it’s not the mortar that’s the problem, see? It’s the building of the Tower that took them off course. What they were building was a temple to a false God, an actual idol that they were building. The gold was not the problem, the golden calf was. Think of a relationship like a marriage, which can be a beautiful thing. But if you fashion an obsession out of it, that’s the wrong motivation, and that takes us off being God-centered. Remember, money is not the root of all evil: the love of, and the ways we use money, now that’s the root.
Membership as identity, and how this idea cuts through our lives.
The Tower of Babel is a tale of people who desired to be part of a group, a desire to fashion identity out of it. Have you noticed in yourself this desire to be seen in the right group/crowd? And are you aware of how important this need is for you? And are you aware of how strong a force this can be, and how strongly it can push God off the center of your life?
Look at major cities, and how ghettoised they are. Different parts of major cities won’t speak to people from other parts. When you add money and society to this mix, it is even more powerful. Can you see how this is there in this story as well? And can you see how this plays out in your own life? Think back to school (think “Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikander”, for example): it’s everything to be part of the in-crowd. It can be devastating to not be part of that crowd. It can have a major impact on your life much later if you’re not.
It’s important to note at this point that collective identity by itself isn’t bad. Think of it: being part of the church is a collective identity we share. The motivation behind using it to show how we are better than someone else, now that’s the problem. Apple users, hello? College-goers, hi. The niches that we want to be part of so that we aren’t part of the herd, that’s what this is about. It’s a mixture of things: pride, identity, belonging and acceptance. We want to be proud of what group we belong to, we want to derive our identity from it, we want to feel like we belong to something, and we want to feel accepted.
Note also that the world likes to use criteria to exclude people, not just include them. Trying to make sure you’re not excluded from groups you want to be part of: that’s a sad motivation to live your life by. The intolerance of being rejected can drive us down roads we shouldn’t be on. “I’ll show you now”, “I’ll prove you wrong”. These are words we carry from childhood into our adult lives. Sibling rivalry, our relationship with our parents, what we experienced at school; all these can leave long lasting scars that create motivations that infiltrate all areas of our adult life. These are clearly places where Christ is not at the center.
Whose approval do we seek, and why.
As one of our pastors reminded us recently, “if we live for the approval of man, we die by their rejection”. If I’m not doing what I’m doing for the approval of God, I can end up very bitter with life. Whose approval I seek can change the very nature of the things I do. And as CS Lewis wrote, “pride gets no pleasure out of having something. Only out of having more of it than the next man”. Both the issues we see at the Tower of Babel: both can come under the category of pride.
In the book “Every Good Endeavour”, Tim Keller writes this: Lewis shows us that we can either build a better mousetrap (taller building, faster computer, cheaper airline, more luxurious hotel) out of interest in excellence and service to human beings, or we can do so in a race to move our organization and ourselves into a position to look down on others. The latter leads to ethical shortcuts and the oppression of those who get in our way.
A key conclusion here is that it’s super important to bring our challenges to God on a daily basis. I might start off wanting to be the best, and that’s not bad in and of itself (like bricks and like gold), and I might intend to get to the finish line with the help of God. As the goal keeps getting closer, maybe the goal takes over and becomes the idol I’m chasing. Checking my heart daily is the only way, taking it to the cross every day is the only way. We are forgiven already, so we should have no issues taking it to God every day.
Read part one here: Monday Matters
Read part three here: Shaped by the Gospel
How does love affect our work, and what are the deeper implications of this? The implications of love on our work go beyond ethics and morality, beyond the right and wrong of the matter.