A World Divided, a Church United
The Universal Translator is the main piece of technology from Star Trek I wish we had today. The USS Enterprise would encounter an unknown alien lifeform and be able to communicate quickly and effectively because of a database of millions of known languages from throughout the galaxy. It would be revolutionary and life-changing…
Back to our own century. Three years ago I began studying Spanish again after a ten-year hiatus. Learning a language is tough! There’s the vocabulary and grammar side, but even harder are the unwritten rules—body language and inflection and words that mean something other than how they are translated in the dictionary. There’s phrases that are ingrained in their society and culture, as well as inherent ways of seeing the world, that simply don’t come across the same for a second-language speaker.
Language shapes our cognition and perceptions, directly impacting the way we view the world and understand what is real. [1]
The Bible has an interesting take on language. Genesis 11 tells a story of how language differentiation came to be. It describes the hubris of a group of people who decide to build a tower to reach to the heavens, ascending to the place of God or the gods. God confuses their languages to stop their endeavor—not because their architecture is evil, but because a sinful people should never try to elevate themselves to “divinity” in their fallen state. The people divide based on their languages and spread out into all the earth, fulfilling God’s original mandate.
The Bible then shows how these divisions continue and multiply. First, it was Israel vs. the Gentiles, us versus them. And then later, after the Kingdom fractured under Rehoboam, it became Israel vs. Judah vs. Everybody Else. We are holy; they are not. We are God’s chosen people and his royal priesthood (Exodus 19:5-6; cf. Genesis 12:1-3), and they are not. Later, we see numerous prophets detailing the woes against “the nations,” and you can imagine the listeners saying, “Yeah! You tell them where they are wrong!”
And so Israel alienated themselves from the nations around them. They were distinct in terms of language and purity laws and worship. They had distinctions of dress and greeting and food choices and ways of living.
But they forgot their calling. Priests don’t exist just to be holy; they exist to help sinful people encounter the holy God. They are intermediaries, agents of reconciliation. And God called their descendant Abram not because he was holy and not just to bless him but so that the whole world could be blessed through him (Genesis 12:1-3).
Christopher Wright, in his book The Mission of God, argues that the declared mission of the God of Israel was “to make himself known to the nations through Israel.” That was God’s goal and mission. And God invited Israel to be agents in that mission. “In short, Israel’s identity (to be a priestly kingdom) declares a mission, and Israel’s mission demands an ethic (to be a holy nation).” [2]
Those same kinds of divisions have continued right down to today—cat people vs. dog people; nerds vs. jocks; blue collar vs. white collar; ethnic divisions; prejudice; classism, sexism, and racism. We live in a world full of division.
But what we see as we move towards the New Testament is a redemption of this division, an undoing of the effects of Babel. When Jesus came, although his mission was primarily in Israel to the people of Israel, he made significant forays into Gentile areas like Caesarea Philippi and the region of Decapolis on the eastern side of the Sea of Galilee. “I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me. … I have other sheep that are not of this sheep pen. I must bring them also. They too will listen to my voice, and there shall be one flock and one shepherd” (John 10:14, 16).
And when Jesus died and was resurrected, he met with his disciples and he commissioned them—a co-mission with God—“All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you” (Mt. 28:18b-20).
And then we come to the Day of Pentecost. It was already one of the three most important festivals of Judaism, drawing people from all over the known world. On that day the Holy Spirit descended on the disciples so that they were able to speak in tongues, and people from all over the Roman Empire were able to hear the Gospel in their own languages.
People from all over the world have come to Jerusalem. Once again, a large religious structure has drawn people together in one place. But now Babel’s confusion turns into Pentecost’s comprehension. Now misunderstanding is replaced with missional communication. And where Babel brought division, Pentecost brought reunification.
Babel is undone by the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. Not through the reunification of all languages, but by creating the ability for the Good News to be spoken in all kinds of languages to a diversity of peoples from all walks of life as God uses this moment to bring about the creation of the Church and the renewal of his people!
In a world in which people are judged by the languages they speak or the country they come from, the Church is called to be the people united through the Spirit to bring about unity, peace, and reconciliation in a world rent asunder by division. And any division should be put to death in the Church by laying it at the feet of Jesus in repentance.
[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/psychology/sapir-whorf-hypothesis. “The Sapir–Whorf hypothesis, also known as the linguistic relativity hypothesis, is defined as the proposal that the language one speaks influences the way one thinks about reality, emphasizing that different languages reflect distinct interpretations of experienced reality and can affect cognitive patterns at both individual and cultural levels.”
[2] Christopher J. H. Wright, The Mission of God: Unlocking the Bible’s Grand Narrative (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2006), 124, 375. A good Scripture on this matter is Isaiah 49:5-6.
