The Babel Paradigm

Last night Si and I snuggled up with a good book and a glass of sparkling white grape juice {seizure meds and the Real Stuff don’t mix} last night in order to wind up Mother’s Day weekend {which, for us, was also birthday and anniversary weekend}. It was a good end to a wonderful weekend.

We read chapter eight {which is the first chapter of part three} entitled Back to Babel and it was fascinating. If you read America Alone, I would highly, highly suggest this book as an expansion of your studies in this area. Though the focus of  The Blood of the Moon is more on the Middle East itself than America Alone {which was more about the Middle-East-meets-West conflict, plus demography and welfare state issues}, the two books are tied back together in focus in this Back to Babel chapter.

Grant walks the reader through “the first concerted effort to establish a new world order,” the building of the Tower of Babel. Babel was, according to Genesis 10, in Nimrod’s territory, and Grant says that Nimrod basically formed a seventy-nation alliance when he attempted to build Babel {I admit: I didn’t bother to go through Chapter 10 and count the nations}. Grant then walks the reader through Genesis 11:1-4 and declares that the building of the Tower at Babel was really to “establish the global enforcement of at least five major objectives”:

1. Institutionalize their cultural unity {homogeneity}, preserve a universal cultural consensus
2. Impose increasing secularization on human society
3. Secure their power base
4. Establish autonomy and self-determination
5. Centralize control over evert aspect of the social structure

If you have never thought about the Babel narrative in this socio-political sense before, I {once again} highly suggest this book as a good primer.

Grant contrasts all of this with God’s post-diluvian command to Noah and his sons: that they should be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. Filling the earth is, according to Grant, in direct contrast of the centralizing efforts at Babel. He writes:

From the time of the temptation in the Garden to the present, the great satanic conspiracy has always been first and foremost to offer some sane, attractive, and wholesome counterfeit to the kingdom of God.

I could go on, but today is my birthday {!}, and I have a babysitter and some errands to run, so I’ll just implore you, if you are at all interested, to read the book.