The Shepherd's House

Blessings in our Diversity

By: Pastor Moh

Lessons from the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11:1-8  Crowds tend to have the effect of making the individual lose his or her independent judgment, and instead simply follow what others are doing. We call this “herd behavior.” People in a crowd become anonymous. Most times their conscience is silenced, and they also lose a sense of personal responsibility. Large groups are prone to regressive behavior, primitive reactions and instinctual actions. Crowds are easily led by exploiters and manipulators, who may play on people’s fears and sense of victimhood and incite them to hate and attack other groups. Judeo-Christianity encourages us to never lose our individuality in the crowd. We believe that every human being is created in the image and likeness of God. Hence, diversity is a sign of strength, not weakness! That’s the ultimate lesson from the Tower of Babel. The tower or ziggurat was the great symbol of the ancient Mesopotamian city states of the lower Tigris-Euphrates valley, the cradle of civilization. It was there that human beings first settled, established agriculture, and built cities. As the Torah makes clear, one of the great discoveries of Mesopotamia (along with the wheel, the arch and the calendar) was the ability to manufacture building materials, especially bricks made by pouring clay into molds, drying it in the sun, and eventually firing it in kilns: “And they said one to …Read More