What Makes God, God? His Word
At the heart of humanity lies the desire to know and to be known. Human beings have always striven to increase knowledge, grow awareness, and improve technology. Expanded knowledge comes through experience. Developing awareness manifests from within self. But improved technology represents the application of that knowledge and self-awareness.
The Tower of Babel and the Human Condition
Consider the Tower of Babel as an example. The story of this audacious, man-made initiative is buried between the storyline of Noah and the infamous account of Abraham's faith journey. In Genesis 11:3 we read, "They said to each other, “Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar." One commentator observed that this feat represented a vast amount of applied knowledge to the fields of architecture and construction. "It marks a great progress in the arts of civilization that these nomads had learned that clay when burnt becomes insoluble; and their buildings with “slime,” or native pitch, for cement would be virtually indestructible" (Elliot's Commentary for English Readers).
The Genesis text turns to an apparent smaller sample of people from within the wider global community, who applied their emerging knowledge to new architectural technology, attempting to rival the unique character of God (Genesis 11:6). Their attempt at building a city with a tower that probed the outer limits of the heavens was apparently motivated by an internal drive to make a name for themselves (11:4). That is where awareness enters into this analysis of humanity's drive to know and be known. Though we are not told the underlining issue that prompted the original plan, we can assume that their desire to be known by their name precipitated the design for this monument to immortality.
Was their original motivation as pure as wanting to preserve a legacy for their descendants? General opinion questions that idea. Albert Barnes described the real issue at the heart of this architectural feat. "This is the language of pride in man, who wishes to know nothing above himself, and to rise beyond the reach of an over-ruling Providence." Sure enough, this Genesis text could lead a reader of this story to just such a conclusion.
Then again, the wider context of the Bible and our human condition also corroborate this interpretation (i.e. Proverbs 8:13; 16:18; Jeremiah 48:29, etc.). Even though humanity has always endeavored to know and be known, like floundering in a pitch-dark room we blindly navigate our world with limited knowledge, inadequate self-awareness, and a deluded use of technology.
If you question that premise, there are at least three current examples that illustrate this last claim. Though we have progressed immensely in medical technology, our inadequate baseline of knowledge prompts even more research to expand our limited understanding. It's as if we continually learn how much we don't know. Additionally, the explosive sales of self-help books highlight our preoccupation with fixing ourselves. A few years ago over $18.6 million dollars was spent on self-improvement books and apps presumably to guide us to that esoteric sense of self (Darko Jacimovic, 2020). Finally, if you question our misplaced use of technology, just look at our dysfunctional practices on the internet to satisfy our superficial cravings, ranging from revenge tweets on X to widespread pornographic addictions.
Our key verse assumes the plight of our human condition. We search because we're lost. We long to know because we don't. We desire to be known because we feel insignificant. We grope through life because we can't see past the present moment. Guilt from the past blurs our sight. Fear of an unknown future exposes our ignorance.
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