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The Question Of Power

One could lay blame at God's doorstep for the oppression of men by other men. The account seems also to be scant on detail, some may take it at first glance that God Himself refuses men the ability to form together in any sense to become powerful, that men assembled are somehow seen by God as a threat and human power structures were verboten and to be kicked down. All this is opposed to the facts - that the truth, which is that man is no threat to God at all, is in view.

God had wiped the earth clean of men, and stepped in here to put an early stop to an evil that was being created. There is no mention of "other gods" or worship of the host of heaven in the passage. The account is not concerned with this. Also there is no sense of God knocking down the tower as if it were an affront: men simply left building it and left the plain scattered into tribes.

What the object of God's work concerned, was the ongoing work of the tower as a cause of oppression and evil, and the direction men would employ elsewhere in neighbouring places and also further into "history" as men made "names for themselves", mimicking this work of Babel, leading to worse and harder labour for far too many.

God's power was never threatened: There was no sense of Nimrod firing an arrow at God from the top of the tower (As in John Huston's film "The Bible") God stepped in to stop such suffering once, and here only once - (whilst He also liberated the hebrews from bondage also.) However this Babel account is "pre-emptive" of future suffering: why do complainants of God's so called 'injustices' gloss over these passages?

God's ways are just: That God steps in to correct evil in a physical and real intervention indeed puts a stop to that evil for a season, but man is evil and immediately returns to his own vomit like the proverbial dog. God Himself has learned that if man will not believe the bible's account of God's disapproval, they would not listen to God Himself should He intervene. God has reserved all right to judge before His own throne, the power of God will not be ignored. Whether the record of God's disapproval was one generation ago, or a hundred and only recorded in the scriptures does not change the fact that God states it is an evil. Men will return to their evil in willful ignorance of God's power. They do so because they love their own evil works.

Why do men ask why God permits evil, when men do so every day? God does not permit evil. He acted against it and showed that men return to it on their own. God does not permit evil, evil will have to be answered for at the judgement. The suffering of the innocent and in the animal world is the concern of many, but when there is no God there is no "evil" in the suffering of the prey - adding in God somehow makes Him evil - such hypocrisy then to state that though God's long term goals were begun in earnest with no suffering - (and only man added that suffering) that suffering is somehow God's fault.

man + God = evil.

man = evil - God = good ? Hmmm.

Whether one factors in the devil as the source of suffering or not - the result is that iniquity does not belong solely to him. Men have iniquity but God not so. If God's own long term goals factor in the presence of current suffering in a fashion that the result is long term and lasting good, does that make God a hypocrite for acting to put a stop to the work of man at Babel, in their city building exercise?

Clearly not if God is indeed a perfect and just God.

However we look at it, man is imperfect and their exercise at Babel was flawed as a consequence. God did not introduce the evil of men into the environment, irrespective of the existence of the food chain. The creation was "good" then and that now men point the finger at a supposedly unjust God shows they themselves can imagine the existence of a creation that is "good". The problem is they place themselves necessarily within it.

The creation is "good" from the point of view of its creator, not the food on the table. If creation was good for God and only man was made in His image, then it was also made "good" for us - as man was placed above the animals and we sit (or are supposed to sit) at the very top of the food chain. The bible states we were not initially meant to be carnivorous, that at least made us innocent of causing any suffering, if that is what it is to be good - to be good in a sense that is an improvement on the norm.

The question of power is then whether God should act to put an end to evil. He has clearly spoken that He has, without lasting success (due to us) and that He will intervene to end it- it is promised in scripture. God does not enslave man to evil in a never ending system of toil and hard bondage without offering a free, and truly free escape from evil. (and from the consequences of mans own evil.) God's work is indeed a long term lasting good: We are actually the antithesis of that long term goal, we have become the prideful creation that writes itself into the paradise offered by God. We would make a slave of God for our own freedom, and not as God took offence at the tower: as a long term project to never miss an opportunity for evil in taking men's freedom away.


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