God Breaking Consensus

Genesis 11:

1 The whole earth was of one language and of one speech. 2 As they traveled east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar, and they lived there. 3 They said to one another, "Come, let's make bricks, and burn them thoroughly." They had brick for stone, and they used tar for mortar. 4 They said, "Come, let's build ourselves a city, and a tower whose top reaches to the sky, and let's make a name for ourselves, lest we be scattered abroad on the surface of the whole earth."

5 Yahweh came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men built. 6 Yahweh said, "Behold, they are one people, and they all have one language, and this is what they begin to do. Now nothing will be withheld from them, which they intend to do. 7 Come, let's go down, and there confuse their language, that they may not understand one another's speech." 8 So Yahweh scattered them abroad from there on the surface of all the earth. They stopped building the city. 9 Therefore its name was called Babel, because there Yahweh confused the language of all the earth. From there, Yahweh scattered them abroad on the surface of all the earth.

I'm not sure if human civilization is attempting to do the exact same thing as the people in this story. But I can see us trying to form a unity within ourselves that excludes God. If everybody agreed that there was no God, or that God didn't really matter, then what could get us to change our minds? If the things we make satisfy us more and more, then why would we seek God? Our ability to make a structure (and before that, or at the same time, a consensus) that satisfies us as we are, is perhaps the fastest route to happiness. And why wouldn't we take the fastest route to happiness? Arguably, it's immoral not to.

Anarchy is an obvious problem, when it goes wrong. But order is a subtler and more seductive problem, when it goes wrong. Likewise antisocial behavior is an obvious problem that every society has some compensating response against. But consensus is a danger we don't have much experience with, don't have as many built-in safeguards against.

We can have a consensus someday, but whatever that consensus is, it has to include God as someone with a voice in it.