When I was 8 years old, I wanted to be a popstar. At 12 years old I felt I could be the Prime Minister of Jamaica. These disparate ambitions reflect an underlying sense I have always had that I was created to be great. That I was meant to do something significant with my life. Whilst I did not achieve either of these childhood ambitions (I did however achieve other more reasonable ones), I still today want to achieve greatness and significance with my life. As an older man, this has more to do with legacy in my most important relationships and through my teaching ministry.
We all want to be great. For our lives to count for something. To be remembered. I think this is because God created us with an inherent self-worth and an understanding that we have been made to do something significant with our lives. So, God is not opposed to our desire for greatness and significance. Rather, He is actually onboard with these desires. The problem is that how we seek to achieve greatness and significance is often at odds with how God intended for us to receive them.
In Genesis 1:26-28, God creates humankind as the apex of his creative activity and makes them in his image and likeness, telling them to rule over and subdue the earth. Essentially this means that humans are to be little living animated statues of God, who are to reflect to all creation God’s rulership and authority in the world. Humans are to be God’s hands and feet in the world, to bring order out of the remaining chaos.
Being made in God’s image is what makes humans great, and this role is what gives them significance. However, in the story of the Tower of Babel, we see that humans develop different ideas about how greatness and significance are achieved.
After going east (= away from God cf. Ge. 3:24 & 4:16), and finding a plain in Shinar (=Babylonia), the humans say to each other, “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” (Genesis 11:4 NIV).
This region of the world (Shinar / Babylonia / ancient Sumer) in southern Mesopotamia, is where the earliest archaeological records of cities in human civilization have been found. A central feature of these cities (walled enclosures) was a temple complex, which included a temple in which the patron deity of the city would dwell, beside a stepped pyramid or tower, called a ziggurat.
Scholars believe that the tower being built at Babel / Babylon in Genesis 11 was a ziggurat. These ziggurats were man-made sacred mountains which served as a bridge between heaven and earth inviting the gods to come from heaven down to earth to dwell in the temple in the city, thereby bringing blessing upon the city and its inhabitants.
At the top of the tower / ziggurat was a room with a bed and food to entice the god to eat and rest before making his way down the heavenly stairway to earth and into the nearby temple that had been built to house him, and in which he would dwell within the city.
Underlying this religious ideology was a symbiotic relationship between the worshippers and their god. The gods needed food and rest and housing, and if the people provided this then the god would bless them with what they needed. The relationship was premised on the notion of quid pro quo / tit for tat / “you scratch my back, I scratch yours”.
This was the ideology behind the search for greatness or achievement in building the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11. The builders sought to make a great name for themselves by building a tower into the heavens by which they hoped to bring their god down into their midst and to secure his blessings in the form of security and well-being.
This is the ideology of all human religion, including unbiblical forms of Christianity. The idea that if we do the things that God / the gods need, He / they will come down into our lives and make our lives great by blessing us with what we think we need for our greatness and significance.
We think, if we serve God in the way we think He wants to be served, He will bless us with a good marriage, successful children, health, wealth and whatever else we conceive of as necessary to make our lives great and significant.
However, the God of the Bible does not descend on man-made ziggurats, and doesn’t play the tit for tat game, because he doesn’t need anything from us, but rather is the one who gives us everything we need (Acts 17:24-25). In fact, God frustrates such human schemes, because they are focused on making a name for humans and not on making God’s name great.
And so, God comes down at Babel not to dwell with and bless the builders, but to confuse their language and confound their plans, thereby putting an end to their building. The problem with the builders at Babel was that they were attempting to build a sacred space in which they could interact with the divine, but it was about their name and not God’s. But sacred space is about God’s name and not man’s name.
In Deuteronomy 12:5ff, in speaking about the temple that God would eventually have the Israelites build, Moses tells the Israelites “… you are to seek the place the Lord your God will choose from among all your tribes to put his Name there for his dwelling. … the place the Lord your God will choose as a dwelling for his Name …” (Deut. 12:5 & 11 NIV). There are in fact several places throughout scripture, where God makes it clear that the sacred spaces in which we meet with him are about his name and not our own (see for example Ex. 20:24; 2 Sam 7:13 & 23 & 27; 1 Kings 8; 1 Ch. 22:7-10; 2 Ch. 2:1 & 6:5 & 33).
God’s name is His character. It represents who He is; so much so that God is where His name is. Contrary to the builders at Babel who were trying to make a great name for themselves, God wants for humans to seek their greatness and significance in reflecting God’s character and exalting His name. In being His image as we were created to be in Genesis 1:26-28. And so, our motive needs to be to make God’s name great not our own.
Our greatness comes from reflecting God and his character. From people seeing his character and name in us as we live our lives in this world. Our greatness lies not in making a name for ourselves but in exalting God’s name in and through how we live our lives in this world.
God’s goal is not to give us what we think will make our lives great in this world, but to shape our character into His image and likeness, because He knows that in this, we will find true greatness and significance. This means that although we serve him, not everything in our lives will go the way that we want. In fact, we will have challenges. But these challenges will be opportunities for us to reflect his name and character in the world, and in this we will find our greatness and significance.
Shortly after the Tower of Babel story, in Genesis 12:1-3, God tells Abram that he will make his name great and bless him (the very thing the builders at Babel were after) and through him God would also bless all the peoples on the earth. And in Genesis 28:12-14, God gives Abraham’s grandson Jacob a vision of a ziggurat / stairway connecting heaven and earth. These incidents communicate that God would in his time and on his own terms build his own ziggurat / stairway from heaven, on which he would come down to bless humankind.
That vision is realized in Jesus (John 1:51) who is the ziggurat / stairway from heaven on which God would come down. In Philippians 2:5-11, Paul portrays Jesus as going the opposite way than the builders at Babel, and for that reason being given the name that is above every name. That name is “Lord”, which in Greek is kyrios, and which was used in the Greek translation of the OT to translate God’s personal name YHWH in the OT. In other words, the name that Jesus was given that was above every name is God’s own personal name! Jesus receives greatness and significance not by seeking to make a name for himself, but by receiving and exalting God’s name!
There is a distinct contrast between the builders at Babel in Genesis 11 and Paul’s portrayal of Jesus in Philippians 2:5-11, as depicted in the below table. I think the idea is that we are to go the way that Jesus shows us, and not the way of the builders, if we are to receive the greatness and significance that only God can give.
Babylonians | Jesus |
The builders are trying to ascend to heaven to bring God down | Jesus who is God in the flesh comes down to us as man of his own initiative |
The builders are selfishly ambitious | Jesus is selflessly sacrificial |
The builders are grasping for divinity and greatness | Jesus is letting go of his divine prerogatives and emptying himself |
The builders are filled with pride | Jesus is empty of self and completely humble |
God humbles the builders and confounds their attempts at greatness because they arrogantly try to ascend to the highest place | God exalts Jesus to the highest place because Jesus humbles himself by going down to the lowest place |
The builders try to make a name for themselves | God gives Jesus the highest name |
There is a lot to reflect on here. If you want to consider these ideas some more, you can click on the video below to watch / listen to a sermon on the Tower of Babel which explores them.
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