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For those of you who have not heard this story, I will give you the briefest possible explanation.

Towards the beginning of mankind, mankind got overly proud of their own prowess and decided to build a tower to the heavens to meet God. After they reached a point that was higher than God was comfortable with, he stopped them, destroyed the building, and created hundreds of different languages for the people to speak, so they wouldn’t be able communicate with one another to rebuild it.

I have often heard this story and frequently could only hear the scientific improbabilities. And this exact thing points to the issues I created, in trying to not hear what people said about God. Looking back, I see that my goal in doing so was to NOT hear them. It was not to point out science. It actually gives a poor name to both science and faith.

If I were to alter my goal in that argument to line up with my interests, hear them, and speak truths I see in their faith, so that we can all work together, the story looks a bit different.

Let us start with the idea that this whole interaction is true. I find that no matter what faith you are in, while you don’t have to believe in the other person’s faith, it is important to know that their faith is true for them. With that, I see the story above as being very different.

It seems to me that in order for us to make sense of things, we personify everything. So, while we might have been made in God’s image, I doubt Ze* has our pettiness, frivolousness, or ignorance. What if Ze destroyed the tower and created the different languages, not to STOP people from meeting Hir* face to face, but so that we CAN meet Hir face to face.

The reality, is that God is all around us. No matter how you label Hir. God is in the air, the plants, the trees, and all the beings. What if this tower was prevented because people were under the misconception that you needed to build some remarkable tower to meet Hir. And by destroying that tower, and preventing the communication to recreate it, maybe God was reigning us back in from a humongous Red Herring? What if Ze was both, redirecting us to a helpful place, but also making ‘God’ accessible to everyone, including those who could NOT build a tower.

Food for thought.

*Ze and Hir are gender neutral ways to identify She/He and Him/Her