"It seems from my point of view, God is a little selfish. He constantly puts Himself first. Please explain to me the moral of the story of the Tower of Babel?"
This would have mirrored my thoughts several years ago, then I met Jesus and he explained it to me. Let us walk through the story of the Tower of Babel.
It starts with the first couple verses of the eleventh chapter of Genesis:
"Now the whole world had one language and a common speech. As men moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there."(Genesis 11:1-2, NIV)
So at that time the entire world spoke the same language, so there wasn't a market for translators yet. Moving on:
"They said to each other, 'Come, let's make brick and bake them thoroughly.' They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar. Then they said, 'Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of the whole earth.'"(Genesis 11:3-4, NIV)
So these guys decided to make an empire with the cheapest materials possible and have a tower that's supposed to reach Heaven. Let's see what God thinks about this.
"But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower that the men were building. The Lord said, 'If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.'"(Genesis 11:5-7, NIV)
So God didn't like the people building a tower to Heaven, but why? We now know that Heaven isn't inside this universe (as far as we can tell at least) so why did it even matter? What mattered was what was inside the hearts of those people. They were going to build an empire with a tower up to Heaven so they could be superior to everyone else. They were going to build themselves up to look as powerful as God. It wasn't long before them that Adam and Eve munched on the no-no fruit and brought sin into the world, they totally wrecked man's relationship with God because of their pride. Now these dunderheads are potentially trying to restore their relationship with God with the same pride!
Whether they actually thought they were actually getting to Heaven or not, they still were building an empire so they wouldn't have to be scattered over all the earth like God commanded mankind to do at the begining of time. Before the fall of man God commanded this:
" . . . 'Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it'. . ." (Genesis 1:28, NIV)
There weren't a lot of people of earth at the time Babel was being built so there was still a lot of fruitful increasing and subduing to do. God could have detested the tower because it would have turned out a lot worse if he hadn't confused the languages of those people, you never know.
Now for the rest of the story:
"So the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. That is why it was called Babel--because there the Lord confused the language of the whole world. From there the Lord scattered them over the face of the whole earth." (Genesis 11:8-9, NIV)
While thinking about this the other day I had a little epiphany. The word "babel" was brought into the English language from the Bible. Babel means a scene of noisy confusion, that's exactly what God turned that city into!
God had a just reason for stopping the construction of Babel whether it was a disobeyed command or too much pride on our part. My life today is fine without Babel, I'm sure they got over it too.
Our God isn't a selfish one, He is a selfless one. He wants what is best for us, which is being in a relationship with Him, we messed that up because of the fall of man, He could have just left us then. But He didn't. Our God stayed with us and even sacrificed His only son for our sake. This is why we are in such debt to Him. This is why we don't have to pay it. God gave us everything for nothing. Eternal life for accepting a savior. Our God is not a selfish one at all, aren't you glad?
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