Law, order and leadership

Every society can be understood by the projects it engages with. When we are thinking of a practical communal project, we imagine things like building new houses, factories, medical facilities, educational institutions, building new and improving the current infrastructure and so on. Although we will have a number of opinions on each and every one of them, we all agree that all of the above are required to run a functional society.

Sometimes projects might be less practical, but very important nevertheless, like say parks, symmetrical walking paths, beautiful flower arrangements and so on. They offer no clear immediate industrial benefits, but they are helping us to enjoy our local community as well as reducing levels of anxiety. These ancillary benefits are very powerful, especially if they are given certain names.

When we think of the Bible times, we can name many projects. For example, we all know that Egypt used to be a great power in the world. There are scientific and archaeological
discoveries that make us excited, puzzled, confused and everything in between. In the Bible, there are many references to a society where law and order were strictly maintained, so slave labour was used to build Egypt. There is a lot to be discussed about that society, which we will address in other blogs.

However, let us view this example as the relationships between leadership and law. As far as we know, Egyptian society had very strict laws, which required courts to pronounce them as well as enforcement branches. The structure is required to keep any country going. It sounds really good to have a sense of security, so why did we see the brutality of such a well scientifically and militarily advanced society?

The main reason is rebellion against One Divine power. You see, once people make a decision that there is any other power than the Creator, they will disregard other people’s freedoms given to us by the Almighty. Therefore, the slaves are normalised, the pharaoh is god, and now the law enforced is just a projection of the pharaoh’s views. So instead of a secure and well-functioning society, they ended up with tyranny and ultimate downfall.

Another well-known Biblical project is the Tower of Babel. As usual, the language in the description of the project is critical, therefore phrases like “let us make ourselves a name” and “build ourselves a city” show the vanity of the project. We have previously discussed how easy people could have been attracted to the idea, but to recap, at the bottom of it is a lack of faith in the Almighty. And it came in a number of different varieties, from full-on denial to a doubt of complete power.

Regardless of the reasons, the big build project idea is formed, and the place is picked. It is important to note that we have a full description of the way the place was chosen. Read carefully “the entire world was of one language and uniform words”, so when “they travelled from the east…they found the valley and settled there”. The whole exploration sounds peaceful; there is no description of hunger or wild weather conditions, and there is a level of understanding coming from the same language and uniform words.

We have never had such a good understanding between people. “Uniform words” is a critical reference to the point at which we can easily and clearly communicate, where we can do great things without any worries of being misunderstood or lost in translation. One might think that this would be an idyllic situation to build a great society and praise the Almighty for His gifts.

Instead, we are learning that the decision to build themselves a name was made. Once more, let us go to the text and read the way they decided to implement the project “make bricks and fire them thoroughly” so “bricks were to them for stones, and the clay was to them for mortar”. Do you see it now? In the valley, there are no stones. This communal project now shows the rebellion against the natural order of things, against the way things are created. They wanted to change the creation itself so they could build the name for themselves.

This massive project needs a very strong and well-organised leader to implement the vision in an efficient and well-coordinated manner. Will this leader be democratically elected, or will it be another tyrant? Let us look further into the story in our future blogs, but as a teaser, let me remind you that the clue is in the descendants of Noah, their blessings and specifically Nimrod as one of our main characters.