Age of Abundance

In 1858, when President James Buchanan and Queen Victoria exchanged the first official transatlantic telegram, a Georgia newspaper declared with breathless optimism: "The East and the West are one. And with the spread of universal intelligence through the telegraph, good men may hopefully look forward to the dawn of a perfect age." The technology was new. The hope was ancient. And the disappointment, as history would show, was inevitable.

We have always believed that the next great invention will be the thing that finally fixes humanity. If we could just communicate faster, build bigger, travel further, know more, accumulate enough power — then we would solve what is fundamentally wrong with the world. Today, that hope has a new name: artificial intelligence. Visionaries promise a coming age of abundance, a world where no job is necessary, where goods and services flow without limit, where ancient problems dissolve in the light of human ingenuity.

But this is not a new story. It is, in fact, one of the oldest stories ever told.

Moving in the Wrong Direction

Genesis 11 opens with a detail that readers of the early chapters of Genesis would immediately recognize as ominous. After the flood, as humanity began to spread and grow, the people moved eastward. Throughout the opening chapters of Genesis, east is the direction of departure from God. Adam and Eve were sent eastward out of the garden. Cain traveled east to the land of Nod. And now, humanity moves east again and settles on a plain in Shinar.

What happens next is remarkable not because it is evil in an obvious sense, but because it is so recognizable. The people discover a new technology — fired bricks and tar mortar — and they begin to build. There is nothing inherently wrong with creativity or construction. Human beings are made in the image of a creative God, and making something of the world is a deeply good impulse. The problem is not the bricks. The problem is what the bricks are for.

"Come," they say to one another, "let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves; otherwise we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth."

Two motivations surface in that single verse, and they are worth sitting with: self-glory and self-sufficiency.

The Architecture of Pride

Self-glory is the relentless pursuit of recognition, the hunger to be seen and celebrated. It shows up in obvious ways — the need to be noticed at work, the careful curation of an online persona, the quiet satisfaction of being praised — but it also shows up in subtler ways. It lives in the comparisons we make, the credit we keep track of, and the resentment we feel when someone else receives the applause we wanted.

Self-sufficiency is equally familiar. God had commanded Noah and his descendants to be fruitful, multiply, and fill the earth. The people at Babel looked at that command and effectively said, "No thank you." They liked where they were. They liked the comfort and control of staying put. Going out into the unknown, trusting God with the details of an uncertain future — that held no appeal. Better to build something permanent, something impressive, something that would guarantee their security on their own terms.

Does any of this sound familiar? The Tower of Babel is not an ancient curiosity. It is a mirror. Every generation builds its own version of it — with different materials, different language, different technology — but with the same two blueprints: make a name for myself, and stay in control.

And every generation discovers the same truth: pride does not build an age of abundance. It builds systems of oppression. It breeds corruption. It leaves bodies in its wake. The history of the world is, in large part, the history of towers that promised everything and delivered ruin.

When God Comes Down

Here is where the story takes a turn that is both humbling and unexpectedly beautiful. The people build their tower to reach the heavens, and the Lord — in a moment thick with irony — comes down to see it. The tower meant to bridge the gap between earth and heaven cannot even be seen from where God dwells. He has to descend to find it.

And yet God does not simply destroy it. He does not send another flood. Instead, he gets creative. He confuses the languages of the builders, and in the resulting disorientation, the project collapses. The people scatter — which is precisely what God had told them to do from the beginning. His discipline is also his redirection. What looked like judgment was also, in a real sense, grace.

This is what Scripture means when it speaks of God's providence. He is not a distant clockmaker who wound up the universe and walked away. He is a God who comes down, who gets involved, who intervenes — sometimes through a friend's honest word, sometimes through frustration, sometimes through circumstances that simply refuse to cooperate with our plans — and redirects us toward his purposes.

The Name We Were Always Looking For

The deepest irony of Babel is that the people were searching for something God had always been willing to give them freely. They wanted a name. They clawed for significance, for permanence, for a legacy that would outlast them. And in doing so, they walked away from the only one who could actually provide it.

Philippians 2 describes how Jesus, the Son of God, did not grasp at glory or seek to make a name for himself. He humbled himself, took on human nature, and became obedient even to death on a cross. And because of that, God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name above every name — the name before which every knee will one day bow.

Here is the staggering gift of the gospel: everyone who belongs to Christ receives that name. Not a name seized through pride or constructed through achievement, but a name given freely, as grace. You do not have to build a tower. You do not have to claw your way to significance. The name of Jesus is placed upon you as a gift.

Babel Turned Upside Down

When the Holy Spirit descended at Pentecost, a remarkable sign accompanied his arrival. People from every nation heard the gospel proclaimed in their own languages. The confusion of Babel — languages scattering people apart — was reversed. Now language became the vehicle through which God gathered people back together, not into one proud city, but into one body, drawn from every tribe and tongue and nation.

The church exists as the ongoing reversal of Babel. Rather than gathering to make a name for ourselves, we are scattered — intentionally, joyfully — to carry a name that was given to us. Rather than building towers to reach heaven, we announce that heaven has already come down.

Revelation 5:9 describes the culmination of this mission: a multitude from every tribe and language and people and nation, gathered around the one who was slain and who lives again.

The age of abundance is coming. But it will not arrive through technology or human ingenuity. It will arrive when the one who came down at Bethlehem returns — and until then, it advances one life at a time, as people turn from self-glory to the glory of God, and receive the name they were always searching for.