Interesting timing and helpful content, thanks Micah. I just wrote about the exact idea of reversing Babel today--and have the word "audacity" in mind for my next screed.. pairing it with hubris, and "toxicity." Thanks for pointing out the connection to Pentecost which I was unaware of. Have a listen to Cakes "Jesus Wrote a Blank Check" when you have time.

I enjoyed your interpretation, Micah. Thank you.

Great insights with interesting implications for almost any large organization, company, government, church or otherwise.

Great job Micah. I particularly like the drawing the parallel with Pentecost.

Fully agree with you Micah! Thanks.

I never thought of it quite like that. In that time (as in all times) the pride of place could actually rise above the service to homestead that family provides. This is the genesis of extra-local empire rather than decentralized commerce between free people. All their descendants (for some time) could have theoretically merely inhabited the towers (assuming plumbing would eventually become realized) resting on some type of servant labor to draw in resources from the fields. And the tower-mentality would have kept escalating like a manageable anthill drawing all resources and control and pride into one geographical place.

This article has the wow factor! Micah, thank you for this thoughtful piece - I agree wholeheartedly. I wish I saw this kind of article all of the time, in every field. I don't think you'd get any dissent from the conservative quarter. This is what it's about, for the most part. The tension between collectivism and individuality (without losing sight of Jesus and His Spirit and our Biblical moorings) is precisely what most of our present society's tensions are all about.

Our unity is Personal and hence Spiritual and Universal. (So it is open for those who believe that.)
Our service is particular and uses the substance of time and space and effort.
The Spiritual and Eternal governs the growth of service (the technologically specific).
Get this backwards, and you make a visible man the visible head of all visible work.

God is after people in his kingdom (righteousness, peace, joy in the Holy Spirit of course) who are building in a city, New Jerusalem. Yet the New Man is not like the Old Man. The original time of Israel was a decentralized time as God had intended and designed, yet God's people hadn't learned to be obedient enough to understand what their mission was - so every man went his own way and then begged for a consolidated & centralized kingship to captain their need for earthly identity. And their kingship gave way to corporate weaknesses and ungodly compromises (over-taxation as oppression as an example) leading to captivity to foreigners who had the same things going on a grander scale.

This article states very well themes that I've been pondering for some time. 14 years ago, I was re-introduced to the original "Protestant Historicism." In it, I saw the foundational logic of (fallen) human nature throughout history and in every sector: humans tend to build large statist hierarchies that quickly stagnate and become repressive and then collapse even in their own affluence (but not before trying to drag everyone 'down' with them, beneath them).

In the words of Kanye West: "Decentralize." (That was his opening comment before he let loose, causing such a stir a few months ago about individuality and thinking things through for oneself. Rapper "Chance" even intoned 'You don't have to be a democrat.' before backtracking such a radically shocking and oppressive statement.)

Dispensationalists are weighed down by preoccupations and probably won't be able to take in the grand picture for a few years yet, and others are too bogged down in structural hermeneutics to see (or bother to convey at least) the utter beauty and simplicity of the dynamic tensions between God and people.

At the end of the day, it is about learning to live as good & righteous neighbors and father-led family households. Learning to reason close to THAT BASIS and no other. Jesus as the head of those who lead their families, and the Bible as a distinct word-for-word guide to be taken seriously in principle and in history. The problem is: that just doesn't sound "grand" to most at this present time. And every boy and man has an instinct to want to be "great". (That is where I caution about the use of the phrase 'planetary species' by the way. Man was first to cultivate the ground, be fruitful and multiply, and inevitably the earth would be filled as he multiplied. If we get caught up in the greatness or god-likeness of 'humans' … we run the risk of Babel. Read up on Nebuchadnezzar's pride! Yes, his was a pride afforded by pagan corporatism and empire - yet we all have that in seed form, it's natural. God could not have put it there to rebel against Him, so I wonder how such a thing got to be so consistent in human nature...)

Here's an even greater thought, though I am learning to be cautiously skeptical as usual: The word 'earth' may actually be greater than our planet - though any conceivable healthy colonization of outer space is far more difficult than can be imagined at this time. Abraham was promised descendants that numbered as the stars of the sky and sands of the seashore - two sets of numbers that we now know to be potentially comparable. Also, the word 'earth' could be said to represent economy of physical endeavor...in essence most human projects and creations and exchanges. So 'filling the earth and subdoing it' could be said to refer to all of the branches of study and development? I dunno. Just some thoughts.

The Reformation placed some limited faith in the Bible and the Holy Spirit to work in individual people's lives. We got the substance of the better parts of United States of America built on that. A lot of people like to credit the godless ("goddess of reason") Enlightenment for building the social or at least intellectual structure of American freedoms. No, it was actually a diversity of biblical religious opinion & authorities that accomplished that. Thomas Jefferson was originally a fan of the Enlightenment by itself - he believed Americans should emulate the French at the time of their Revolution. The French had run as fast & far away from publishing and believing the word-for-word Bible as they could (a fast break from being "the eldest daughter of Rome" without giving credit to the Reformation for opening the doors). Then their "Revolution" crumbled into a bloodbath and gave rise to a consolidating dictatorship to salvage the revolution from utter meaninglessness. Thomas Jefferson admitted he was wrong. It was the Christians in America who showed more social restraint (and had more of the Providence of God) to know when to stop killing, and to at least TRY to stop lording over people. Many would try to champion "Judeo-Christian" heritage. Yes, it's due some credit. Yet I believe GOD and THE BIBLE working with humanity had more to do with it than anything. And I believe we are about to see the largest and most faithful 'decentralization' of church praxis that history has ever seen within the next 40 years (in terms of tall human hierarchies and sectarianism) within Pentecostal and charismatic circles at least. The Reformation needs to be completed - we need to return to the simplicity of Jesus and the actual meanings of the Bible and apply these to what we already know about the world. Micah, this article helps shine the way! I have THIRSTED for community with people who can think in this manner, while keeping within a Biblical paradigm. I'm cautious, I'm thinking, I'm watching. Maybe in 10 or 20 years, we will have such a robust community.

All communication including verbal is information. And today we live in an "information age." Intentionality is the thing that bridges the unseen spiritual world with the seen physical world. While we all think that seeing is believing, the true nature of our existence is that believing is seeing. A Tower cannot help us see these things. We have to come to see these things both intellectually and spiritually. The Tower story could also foretell the coming forth of man's understanding of quantum collapse and quantum entanglement. These scientific findings about the epiphenomenal nature of reality show that we will not truly understand human personality upload until we get a handle on the consciousness element of materialism and that reality at base is ultimately nothing more than information.

This is why I refer to particle physics, QM, etc. as computational theology. On a parallel track are the assumptions of Josephus, Philo, Paul, Hellenistic Jews, etc. about the 70 nations and their corresponding powers and principalities [Jude, 2 Peter 2, Book of Enoch; see also Kabbalah and Hebrew Astrology].

And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us, for
‘In him we live and move and have our being’;
as even some of your own poets have said,
‘For we are indeed his offspring.’

Read a comment from an Eastern Orthodox who's take was the the Protestant Reformation made everyone their own pope (having personal exegetical authority). My take is that most of the division I've encountered is due to clergy perks and status. My personal experience makes me both ordained and anathema to a wide variety of Jesus believers, while understanding the Holy Spirit is moving globally South, charismatic and ministerially bi-vocational (closer to "the poor" - more in my last link). The internet / social media / virtual seminaries have enabled the global church to co-learn with the global church. Cool stuff recently seen: Alice C. Linsley, is the author of blogs like JustGenesis (http://jandyongenesis.blogs..., Biblical Anthropology (http://biblicalanthropology..., and Ethics Forum (http://college-ethics.blogs... Thought Provoking Stuff. || Max Keiser interviews Dr. Michael Hudson re: “...and forgive them their
debts: Lending, Foreclosure and Redemption — From Bronze Age Finance to
the Jubilee Year.” bit.ly/2xbzASB #PoorPeoplesCampaign || Tangential at best: Just began review of @wilsonhartgrove @RevDrBarber Reconstructing the Gospel | Finding Freedom from Slaveholder Religion bit.ly/2pa9dbT