Digital technology
We can now translated any language digitally with our mobile phones and other devices, but can we achieve genuine understanding?
According to Hebrew Scripture, in the earliest of times human beings could all talk together and understand one another. With this gift in their favor, they began to build a tower. They liked the tower so much that they wanted to build it higher and higher. Maybe this was because they liked the idea of working together and understanding one another so much.
But they took things too far. Their Tower of Babel - their human achievement- would not be enough for them until it reached the heights of God. So they kept building higher. They wouldn’t accept that there are limitations in all human striving. They thought they were undeniable.
With such hubris, they were bound to fail. And they did.
As a result, the group that built the tower split up in many directions. They spoke a variety of languages. Uniform understanding among people was no more.
In the second Biblical testament, a story that sort of reversed the Babel moment occurs. After Jesus’ resurrection and ascension, the disciples spoke to a great crowd of people. Reports from the crowd confirmed that people understood them to be speaking in a host of languages. Everyone there, regardless of their native tongue, understood every word of the message.
The disciples were unschooled men, speaking in Aramaic or Hebrew. However this miracle of translation occurred, it was not due to human achievement. In fact, no one even expected or prayed for such “translation” to happen.
Without hubris, without the idea that “we know best,” the gift of understanding returned.
Here in the 21st century, we can translate nearly anything using our phones. And there are many other marvels - too many to list. So human achievement again seems undeniably ascendant.
And, again, we have trouble understanding one another. We can’t agree on what socialism is (or isn’t). We can’t agree on what a conservative is. We can’t agree on what facts are. (Is the term “alternate facts” oxymoronic?) Notably, a former president couldn’t decide what the meaning of “is” is.
It’s not only a few politicians and other leaders creating a new Babel, the rest of us use the same words to mean very different things. We may all be speaking English, but the same words are received in very different ways. While we have accomplished so much in the field of communication technology, our ability to express and understand clearly is waning.
Like the host at Babel, we have divided into camps. And that means the hope of understanding one other is only getting dimmer.
What is the corrective?
The Bible testimony suggest two things to me:
1 - Working with our hearts, with what is best and most human about us, will bring us together where all the -ologies and -isms have not. If we insist that any human construct (say capitalism or socialism)!can be the total answer for human needs, we are putting ourselves back in Babel building an ungodly tower.
Let’s put the next person we meet, each one we meet, ahead of our ideologies, and see how that works out.
2 - Have good faith. Faith in God is a good thing, but faith in others is too. I may disagree vehemently with someone about an issue, but that doesn’t mean I have to think they’re a bad person, or that they’re not very bright, or that they will always be wrong about everything. I can have good faith that another person is trying their best to understand and to live.
Sure there have to be boundaries. A good boundary is not to intentionally hurt others. And I think all decent people would agree with that. In fact, I think most of us would agree on a set of boundaries that we still hold in common.
Our test will be, as it’s always been, in the day to day living. There’s nothing inherently wrong with building a tower, it’s the wrong assumptions and injustices that happen during the process that are wrong. And those problems are with humanity in everything we attempt.
So have good faith that even in the midst of today’s falseness, injustice, and division, we are not on new ground. And having been here before, we know the way out is to return to a world where we desire to reach people out of love, and our professions of that love come in ways that require no translators.
Chris Weitzel is a retired United Methodist pastor living in Richmond, Va. This post is republished with permission from his Facebook profile.