Saints: Life & Times

Lesson 1: Holiness

Confusion and the Hour Glass Effect

Generations went by after Noah, generations which knew both good and evil, some remembering the God of the rainbow, others increasingly absorbed in self-aggrandizement. People multiplied and dispersed out from Armenia, from Mt. Ararat, the landing site of the Ark, first heading south along the course of the Tigris, then crossing the Tigris to the west, and there they found a level plain called “Sennaar” or “Shinar.” They determined to raise some monument to themselves. “They said, “Let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens; let us make a name for ourselves lest we be scattered all over the earth.” (Gen. 11:4) God, who knows the hearts of men, appraised their undertaking as “. . . The beginning of what they will do. Hereafter they will not be restrained from anything which they determine to do.” (Gen. 11:6) The tower became the new Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil; it signified another attempt to equal God, to reach up into the heavens and challenge Him. “Let us make a name for ourselves” indicates a thrust for power, since to ancient peoples a name contained the essence of the person, place or thing named. These Sumerians, as we may suppose them to be, determined that their name would contain the essence of their city and tower, a structure that raised them to the heavens. What would be next? Conquest and subjugation of nations? Imposing the adoration of their images? The city would go mad with imagined power. To save them (and their neighbors) God confounded their speech. Not one could understand the other; they could not possibly agree on a name. And who could live in a city with as many dialects as there were families? The tower was abandoned and so was the city. “From there the Lord scattered them all over the earth.” (Gen. 11:9) The tower came to be called the Tower of Babel “because there the Lord confused the speech of all the earth.” (Gen. 11:9) Another Eden, this time man-made, begun and lost. It wouldn’t be the last.

A few generations later, mankind once again found itself approaching an hourglass effect. From Adam came forth all the people of the earth, who were reduced to just Noah and his family. From Noah’s sons came forth the people of the first covenant, and they soon showed the effects of Adam’s sin, adding some of their own. Idols were made and worshipped (the ancient serpent never missing an opportunity to advance its own cause) and the fruit of Pride was again confusion and discord. Mankind was miserable. All its schemes for happiness sprouted and withered in a day, like the grass in the parable. Nothing could permanently slake its thirst for God except God Himself, a wisdom which still eluded the human race. But “God the merciful, God the compassionate,” as St. Paul of the Desert proclaimed Him to be, yearned for His children. Despite all their willfulness and self-generated blindness, they were still His, created to know, love and serve Him in this life and be happy with Him forever in heaven. As He did with Noah, God would once more narrow the human race and choose one just man with whom He could make a new covenant.

Image above: Repentance by Henry Peacham. Photo from The Minerva Britannia site. Photo is in the public domain.

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