Reasons behind our actions

Every day living consists of us taking actions and all of them impact ourselves, our families, our local communities and our society as a whole. It sounds like a big statement; however, it is easy to see once we actually look into them. Reasons like hunger or thirst can trigger actions of eating and drinking. However, since the existence of food in our fridge requires us to purchase ingredients or take away, we need money to purchase.

To get money, ideally, you have a day job or receive money from the taxpayer’s purse. Add to it our choices made during acquisition of the produce, all the steps from growing it on the farm to delivery to the supermarket and hiring staff to ensure the availability and functionality of it or support of your favourite restaurant, all the banking transactions and much more – and the seemingly simple reason of hunger ended up to have a string of actions which impacts us and the society as whole.

However, in any functional society, there are national interests. Notice that when we say functional, we are talking about all different types of it. It is happening regardless of the size of the government and the time period we are looking into. The Tower of Babel was not an exception.

So let us have a quick glance at the reasons behind the project. The way it is written, people said to each other, “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower whose top will reach the sky. Let us make ourselves a name”. However, the most confronting point is the following: “so that we will not be scattered all over the face of the earth”.

Let us ask one of the most obvious questions: if you do not want to be scattered all over the place, what do you need a tower for? Just live close to each other. If this is the case, why are they concerned that they would not be able to do it? The answer is clear – they do not want to be scattered by the Almighty. Now, let us think back. The only reason they would be concerned about having some kind of punishment is the knowledge of the flood. The flood itself saw the whole creation hitting the reset button. After all, the whole population of the earth was wiped out with the exception of one family.

We all know the reasons for it. As it is clearly written, the world was filled with hamas (we discussed the meaning of it in our previous blogs). However, now the people were reassured that the punishment of that multitude would not happen again, as the Almighty had promised it. We were even given a sign of the rainbow as a covenant.

Obviously, people returned to their sinful ways. They are not afraid of full destruction, but know they are not achieving their potential. Instead of seeking ways to improve their behaviour by following the laws given to Noah, they are looking for a way to go about their everyday lives without implementing a positive impact action.

Furthermore, notice that the tower they wanted to build was supposed to be high up in the sky. This shows that they thought the Almighty was in the sky and not involved in the running of the earth. It is both an inability and an unwillingness to relate to the Divine, Who is creating and recreating our world all the time.

So the whole thing is turning into one project, where people were ready to unite and forgo all personal liberties just for the sake of rebelling against the Creator. As a result, they wanted to have a personal legacy of creating a name for themselves.

Every idea needs to have a leader, someone who is there from thinking to marketing to the implementation of it. We will return to the leadership character of Nimrod in our future blogs. For now, we see how the very idea was a rebellious one with far from the best intentions.

Let us return to the story soon to see and continue to learn the lessons from it relevant to our present time.