COLUMN: From the Tower of Babel to the depths of the Gulf, we must stop playing God

As people migrated from the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. And they said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly”. And they had brick for stone, and bitumen for mortar. Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves...” (Genesis 11:2-4)

I have been thinking about the story of the Tower of Babel from the Old Testament in recent weeks. 

It addresses a condition that has caused untold misery as long as humans have walked this earth — pride. Not the kind of pride which wells up from a heart and acknowledges a job well done, a life well lived. But rather, that which represents arrogance, conceit, boasting, an undue confidence in and attention to one’s own skills, accomplishments, state, possessions or position.

Scripture sees pride as a grievous sin because it describes what happens when a person begins to think and act as if he or she were God. It is the kind of pride that, proverbially, goes before the fall. Even if you can’t easily define it with words, you recognize it when you see it. The hair on the back of your neck lets you know you’re in its presence.

The hair has been standing up on the back of my neck quite a lot lately as various officials have weighed in on the still-leaking oil well in the Gulf of Mexico. 

As I write this, British Petroleum has just finished another failed attempt to stanch the flow of oil and gas into the water from the well site of our own version of the Tower of Babel, the Deepwater Horizon rig which was destroyed following an explosion on April 20. Since that time, depending on whom you listen to, the well has spewed between 19.7 and 43 million gallons into the water. With each new effort, it has become more apparent that oil companies have the technology to drill wells in water a mile deep, but they do not have the technology to fix them if something goes terribly wrong. 

The problem is that no one ever really believed that such a blow-out could happen. But it did, and when it did, the best minds in the world have found themselves stymied at every turn.

As a result, the experts keep working to stop the leak, but officials have made it clear that the only real solution will come when a diagonally drilled relief well finally taps into the original well, perhaps sometime in August. In the meantime, oil continues to foul the beaches of Louisiana and threatens Mississippi, Alabama — and here. 

Of course, that’s the oil we see. Nobody really knows what the underwater scenario looks like, as the dispersant being used to help break up the oil is apparently toxic. 

Everyone involved is busy pointing fingers at everyone else. I will leave assigning blame to those who are investigating. What I do know is that the root of this ecological and economic disaster is nothing less than the same pride that built the original Tower of Babel, and we ought to stop and think about what that means. 

There is a lot of playing God going on around us — from trying to make artificial life in our labs, to playing with human DNA, to developing nuclear bombs, to aborting babies in the womb, to cloning. Closer to home, we do well to confront any sinful pride in our own lives, as a prelude to considering how complacent we have been in the face of the destructive pride exhibited by others — from individuals to corporations to governmental bodies. 

Haven’t we been too willing to assume we humans can get ourselves out of every circumstance relatively painlessly? Haven’t we been too passive in the face of obvious uncertainties concerning some of the things going on around us? Here along the gulf coast, haven’t we taken for granted the sugar-whiteness of our beaches and the clear blue of our water? 

The opposite of pride is the virtue we call humility. That comes with recognizing and honoring what we really can do — and what we really can’t. 

It is wrestling not simply with the question, “Can I?”, but also, “Should I?” It is stepping up to take responsibility for our thoughts, words and deeds. It is also stepping aside to let God be God. In such a time as this, maybe we could all try a little humility on for size. It might just do us some good.

The Rev. Mike Hesse is senior pastor of Immanuel Anglican Church in Destin.