Reflections from the Plains of Shinar

Premise: Generally speaking, large groups of people, gathered together, are capable of greater mischief than smaller groups.

Proof: The Tower of Babel

Out there on the plains of Shinar, in the land that would eventually be Babylon - throughout time identified by the Bible as the ultimate anti-God empire - the people gathered.

The Bible tells us that the whole human population traveled east to Shinar and settled down. All together. It was a great crowd of people (Genesis 11) that had gathered - and that gathering was a great problem. By settling down together the people were flagrantly disobeying God’s command that they “be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.” (Genesis 1)

In what may be humanity’s first experience of “group think,” out there on the plains of Shinar the people got a grand idea.

[Genesis 11:3] They said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks and burn them thoroughly.” And they used brick for stones and they used tar for mortar. [4] They said, “Come, let us build for ourselves a city, and a tower whose top will reach into heaven, and let us make for ourselves a name, otherwise we will be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth.”

The group agreed that it would be better to NOT obey God’s command to fill the earth, but to remain together. Theologians are agreed that the people had determined, together, to exalt themselves above God.

Remedy: Think small.

God’s remedy to the situation created by this massive group of people getting into such mischief was to force smaller groupings by confusing their speech.

At Babel, God created the world's various major language groups. This forced a division of the human race and made more likely the fulfillment of His “fill the earth” mandate. As well, by dividing people by means of the language barrier, God created smaller groups of people, who could, together, get into less mischief. A brilliant move.

Such a move was made necessary because of the broken nature of people in the post-Garden of Eden world. With the coming of sin (Genesis 3), the general tendency of all people everywhere is independence from God, not trust. Left to our own devices, we will choose rebellion from God, not worship.

Yes, this is the consistent teaching of the Bible. But you really don’t have to be a biblicist to come to that conclusion. It is also the consistent teaching of history. If we would be honest in our assessment of human history, we will admit that the general trajectory of an impressive technological upward spike is accompanied by an equally depressing downward spiral by most meaningful, personal metrics. With a few notable and welcome lapses, our race's story is one of harsh cruelty, violence, and injustice.

The reason, again, is that individuals are (to use an extremely biblical word) “sinners.” Groups of people gathered together would, thus, be groups of “SINNERS” - hence, more dangerous. Hence, to reduce the danger of the negative AND to increase the likelihood of the positive, reduce the size of the group. That was God’s solution in Genesis 11. I think it still makes great sense today.

Think small.

Rather than think grand thoughts of "megas"...

think of the impact you can have in the lives of your circle of friends when you serve them.
think of the impact you can have when you show love to one, lonely, sad person at the end of his hope.
think of the redemptive influence you and your small circle of friends can have when you join hands to help a struggling family.

“Grand” turned into silly and vain grandiosity on the plains of Shinar. Grandiosity still reigns today, and just look where “big” has gotten us. We are technological giants, tempted to relational dwarfism. We are digitally connected all the time and it is so easy to be regularly disconnected, personally. Sure, “big” is impressive at a distance, but impact is always made "up close and personal."

It’s time to embrace and to celebrate the small. Jesus did and He invites us to join Him.

He applauded the small amount of leaven that leavens a whole lump of dough and the mustard seed of faith that moves mountains.

So, we applaud he the leavening effect of a small group of friends who journey through life together, along with the mustard seed of the family that plays and prays and weeps and laughs together and builds spiritual sequoias, and the church that makes it possible to known and be known, to love and be loved.