The Tower of Babel Method

What this is about

The author of this site describes churches that offer a ladder to God. He gave ten examples, in his own words. Come to the midweek service to prove your dedication. Don’t ask questions about theology, and God will open your eyes. Don’t associate with people the pastor does not like. Don’t waste time with people who are “obviously not spiritual.” Spend more time at church and less at work. Give more money without asking questions. Get baptised again, because your first baptism does not count. Pray more eloquent prayers so that others can see your level. Send your children to every church activity. And when an overseas project budgeted at 100k costs ten times as much, don’t ask: agree with the majority, like the crowd in “The Emperor’s New Clothes.”

These are his descriptions, not quotations from a named church, and the page names nobody. It tests the pattern, not any person.

So there are two ways to think about it. On the first, God comes down. He came in Jesus, and he gives Jesus through the Bible preached, Baptism and the Lord’s Supper, the same gifts to everyone. Christians grow, but nobody ranks higher before God than anyone else. On the second, believers climb. They rise by dedication that others can see, and the pastor sets the rungs and judges who is “spiritual.”

The short answer

“Let us make us a name”

Read Genesis 11 slowly. The builders say “let us” three times: let us make brick, let us build a city and a tower, let us make us a name. And they say why: “lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.” God had told Noah’s family to spread out and fill the earth. The tower was a way of not doing that. It was a centre to hold everyone together, around one achievement and one name.

Then comes the turn: “And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower.” The tower that was meant to reach heaven is so small that God has to come down to look at it. He answers their “let us” with his own, “let us go down,” and scatters them. The city’s own name in its language meant “gate of god.” The Bible renames it Babel, which sounds like the Hebrew for “confusion.”

One chapter later, God speaks to Abram: “I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great.” What Babel tried to build, Abram is given. He didn’t build anything. He was told to go, and he went.

One honest qualification. “Whose top may reach unto heaven” can just mean “very tall.” Elsewhere the Bible speaks of cities “walled up to heaven.” So the Bible’s charge against Babel is less about the height than about the name: people making a name for themselves by their own project.

Six clauses from Genesis 11 and 12. Who is acting in each?

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The ladder that comes down

Seventeen chapters after Babel there is another structure that reaches to heaven: Jacob’s ladder. The Hebrew words for “the top of it reached to heaven” are the same as Babel’s.

Look at who Jacob was that night. He had just lied to his blind father and stolen his brother’s blessing, and his brother wanted to kill him. He was running away, alone, sleeping in the open with a stone for a pillow. He built nothing and asked for nothing. God spoke to him from the ladder, and everything he said was a promise: “I am with thee, and will keep thee … I will not leave thee.” Jacob woke up and said, “Surely the LORD is in this place; and I knew it not … this is the gate of heaven.” Babel called itself the gate of god. The real gate of heaven was a patch of ground where a runaway fell asleep.

Jesus later told Nathanael, “ye shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man.” The ladder is Jesus. And he told Nicodemus, a respected teacher, “no man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven.” The only one who has gone up is the one who came down. Paul says Christ “made himself of no reputation,” and that God then “gave him a name which is above every name.” Babel tried to make a name by going up. Christ was given the name after going down.

The fullest Bible text for climbing is Psalm 24: “Who shall ascend into the hill of the LORD? … He that hath clean hands, and a pure heart.” Read on. The one who goes up “shall receive the blessing from the LORD, and righteousness.” He receives it. And the gates in that psalm open for the King of glory to come in. The New Testament says we enter God’s presence “by the blood of Jesus,” with our bodies “washed with pure water.”

Babel undone

At Babel one language became many and people could not understand each other. At Pentecost the apostles spoke, and people of many languages each heard “in our tongues the wonderful works of God.” A bishop named Gregory pointed this out about the year 380: Babel broke up a wicked unity, and Pentecost, “being poured from One Spirit upon many men, it brings them again into harmony.”

Everything at Pentecost comes down. The sound comes “from heaven.” The Spirit is “poured out” on “all flesh”: sons and daughters, young men and old men, servants and handmaids. Every way people rank each other is named, and the gift falls on all of them.

Then the crowd asked, “what shall we do?” If there was ever a moment to offer a ladder, this was it. Peter said: “Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost. For the promise is unto you, and to your children.” Every one. Ye shall receive. About three thousand were baptised that day, and then they all did the same four things: the apostles’ teaching, fellowship, the breaking of bread, and prayers.

Calling the thing what it is

In 1518 Martin Luther set out two ways of looking for God. A “theologian of glory” looks for God in power, success and visible achievement, and expects to find him at the top. A “theologian of the cross” looks for him where God has actually put himself: in a crucified man, where nobody would have looked.

One of his theses fits the tenth example almost exactly: “A theology of glory calls evil good and good evil. A theology of the cross calls the thing what it actually is.” When a budget overrun of ten times is called faith, and the person who notices is called “carnal,” evil is being called good. A question about money is the theology of the cross at its most ordinary.

Another thesis: “The love of God does not find, but creates, that which is pleasing to it.” Human love goes to the attractive. God’s love goes to the unattractive and makes them his. A ladder tells you to drop the “obviously not spiritual.” God’s love went to exactly those people.

Hans Christian Andersen’s story of the emperor’s new clothes, from 1837, has the same structure as the tenth rung. Swindlers sell cloth that is invisible to anyone unfit for his job. Nobody will say he can’t see it, because that would be admitting he is unfit. Swap “unfit” for “carnal” and you have a church where nobody asks about the money. In the story, a child says what everyone can see. He has no rank to lose.

Luther’s theses were about how God is known, not about church programmes, so applying them this way is this page’s own step. But Luther himself made a similar step in 1520, as section eight shows.

Two classes of Christian

The ladder promises things that “nominal” Christians “cannot fathom.” That splits a church into two kinds of Christian. The early Church met this before.

Paul wrote to the Colossians, who were being told there was something beyond Christ for those who went further. He called those teachers “vainly puffed up,” and told the church, “ye are complete in him.” To the Corinthians he wrote, “Knowledge puffeth up, but charity edifieth.”

Around the year 180 a bishop named Irenaeus described teachers who split Christians into classes. They said ordinary church members had “a mere faith” and needed good works to be saved, while they themselves did not. They called themselves “perfect, and the elect seed,” and ordinary members “utterly contemptible and ignorant persons.” Irenaeus answered that the apostles had no hidden mysteries for “the perfect.” Their teaching was public, and “within the power of all … in every Church” to see. Today’s tiered churches don’t teach the old Gnostic myths. But the shape is the same.

The text most often used for two classes is 1 Corinthians 2–3, where Paul speaks of the “spiritual” and the “carnal.” Read on, and see what Paul counts as carnal: “while one saith, I am of Paul; and another, I am of Apollos; are ye not carnal?” His sign of carnality is lining up behind a teacher, even behind Paul himself.

Questions and money

When Paul preached in Berea, the people there “searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so.” They were checking an apostle. Luke calls them “more noble” for it, and many of them believed. The New Testament keeps saying the same: “try the spirits whether they are of God,” “prove all things; hold fast that which is good.” Paul even says that if he himself, or an angel, preached a different gospel, they should reject it.

The strongest verse on the other side is real: “Obey them that have the rule over you, and submit yourselves.” Read the reason it gives: “for they watch for your souls, as they that must give account.” Leaders are to be obeyed because they will answer for how they lead, and the same chapter tells the church to look at its leaders’ lives, “considering the end of their conversation.”

On money, Paul is plain. When he collected money for the poor in Jerusalem, he had a man “chosen of the churches” travel with it, “that no man should blame us,” providing for honest things “not only in the sight of the Lord, but also in the sight of men.” Giving was to be free: “not grudgingly, or of necessity.” And when Moses raised materials for the tabernacle, he stopped the people giving when there was enough, and afterwards it was all counted. The Bible’s great building project had a budget and published accounts.

Five people in the Bible who asked questions. What happened to each?

Work and neighbours

Four rungs say that what happens outside church is lower. Work has “no eternal consequence.” Some people are to be avoided. The Bible says otherwise.

Paul told slaves, the people with the least choice about their work: “whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord … for ye serve the Lord Christ.” He made tents himself. He told Christians to “work with your own hands,” and said that a man who does not provide for his family “hath denied the faith.” No verse sets the hours of work or ranks people by hours given to church.

In 1520 Luther attacked the medieval idea that priests and monks were a higher “spiritual estate” and everyone else a lower one. He called it “an artful lie and hypocritical device,” and said that “all Christians are truly of the spiritual estate, and there is no difference among them, save of office alone.”

As for people: the religious leaders complained that Jesus ate “with publicans and sinners.” He said, “They that are whole have no need of the physician, but they that are sick.” Paul told the Corinthians that if they avoided all the immoral people of the world, “then must ye needs go out of the world.” The Bible does command some separation: from false teachers, and from a fellow Christian living in open sin after the church has tried to correct him. It is public, it is about doctrine and conduct, and it aims to bring the person back. It is never based on a pastor’s private dislike. James calls that “respect of persons.”

One baptism, one bread

Two rungs turn God’s gifts into steps. Paul lists what makes the church one: “One Lord, one faith, one baptism.” Baptism is something every member shares and nobody has more of. A second baptism used as a step up divides the members into those who have done it twice and those who have not. Dossier 21 covers re-baptism in full.

Jesus spoke directly about prayer to be seen: “they love to pray … that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.” Their reward is being seen, and that is all.

He told a parable “unto certain which trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and despised others.” A Pharisee prayed, “I thank thee, that I am not as other men are … I fast twice in the week, I give tithes of all that I possess.” That is a report of his place on the ladder. A tax collector “would not lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven,” and said seven words: “God be merciful to me a sinner.” Jesus said, “this man went down to his house justified rather than the other.”

And at the Lord’s Supper, “we being many are one bread … for we are all partakers of that one bread.” The newest member and the oldest elder receive the same.

Six things. Does the New Testament give each one to every believer alike, or does it only appear as a rung?

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What a ladder costs

No top, so no rest. None of the rungs comes with a number. How many meetings are enough? How much giving? Nobody on the ladder can know he stands well with God. He can only compare himself with others. Jesus said, “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” Rest is the one thing a ladder cannot give. God coming down gives things you can point to: a baptism with a date, a Word that says “for you,” bread put in your hand.

Someone at the top. If questions show a lack of spiritual eyes, nobody with spiritual eyes will question the man at the top. The New Testament names one such man, Diotrephes, “who loveth to have the preeminence,” and who threw people out of the church. When the apostles argued about which of them was greatest, Jesus said, “ye shall not be so: but he that is greatest among you, let him be as the younger; and he that is chief, as he that doth serve.”

Who ends up at the bottom. Not the wicked. The nurse on night shifts. The father with two jobs. The mother of three small children. The man caring for a parent with dementia. The shy believer who can’t pray in public. The accountant who noticed the overrun. A ladder of visible dedication ranks lowest the people doing what God told them to do. Jesus watched people giving at the temple and praised the poor widow who put in two small coins.

The ten rungs, answered

Check it yourself

Five things. The first takes ten minutes. The last is the one that matters.

1. 1. Read Genesis 11:1–12:3. Underline every “let us” and every “I will.” Who says each one?
2. 2. Read Genesis 28:10–22 and John 1:43–51. What had Jacob done before Bethel? What does Jesus say the ladder is?
3. 3. Read Acts 2. Count how many things come “from heaven” or are “poured out,” and note what “every one of you” was told to do.
4. 4. Read Acts 17:10–12, 2 Corinthians 8:16–24 and Luke 18:9–14. Who checked whom? Who carried the money? Who went home justified?
5. 5. Make one list. Do this one. Write down everything your church expects of a committed member. Beside each item, write the verse that commands it. Then mark which are gifts or duties for everyone, and which are measures of how high someone is.