What’s the most resilient parasite? An Idea. A single idea from the human mind can build cities. An idea can transform the world and rewrite all the rules.
How many times have you stopped and wondered how there can be so many different beliefs about a single collection of writings? Or, why there are so many Christian groups, all calling themselves by different names, all believing that they’re the ones that are right—after all, if they didn’t believe they were right, why continue with a given religion or denomination? Of course, some Christian groups pride themselves on being the only Christians that possess The Truth, which in itself seeds the corrupting influence of self-righteousness.
Somehow, this fact continues to escape our notice: that every time Humans band together around an idea or purpose, we invariably repeat the pattern warned against in the Biblical story of the tower of babel. The idea or purpose becomes our Truth, and with it we form the building blocks that compile our own tower. And just as occurred in that Hebraic account, God introduces confusion into the mix, and the builders come to a point where they can no longer speak in a language that everyone else can understand. Eventually, the makers abandon the tower building which they had intended to use to get them into the heavens, and go off to band with others once again, and start building yet another tower of babel.
This is nowhere more self-evident than in the three most powerful influences of the Human experience: government, commercial, and religion. Each is a means by which the promise is held out to result in lasting happiness and abundance. Even modern-day Christianity in all its shapes and sizes has made itself over into Christendom. Each exercises influence over Humans at varying degrees down through the ages.
Groups that pride themselves on being the only true religion that “has it right” are perhaps even more Babelish than other Christian groups—especially since there is an inborn tendency towards Pharisaism in due course. There have been no exceptions to that rule for as far back as we have recorded history to review. Even the simplicity of Jesus’ message gave out under the pressures of orthodoxy and the eventual rise and incorporation of Catholicism. Today, although we now have a splintered Catholicism via Protestantism and its subsequent daughters such as Adventism, Pentecostalism, even Watchtowerism, the influence remains the same, as does the tendency. “Come let is build a tower” which will be the bridge between Heaven and Earth, that we can “reach” God. In due course, it becomes more about building the tower or bridge than about the reason why we need that bridge in the first place.
Seriously! Can you actually name a Christian group who teaches that murder is fine, that adultery is fine, that covetousness is fine, that taking up or invoking our Father’s name in a worthless way is fine, that we have no obligation to a fellow human? These are common building blocks of all Christian groups.
But then comes the Idea.
Surely it’s more complicated than that. Surely if it was that simple, then everyone could call himself a Christian—and that’s preposterous, they tell themselves. Someone has to be right. Someone has to understand the parts that everybody else has wrong.
And thus Christianity is made complicated, so that a person must be fashioned after the Idea to the point of relinquishing even their own God-given conscience for the sake of a greater Purpose: the glorification of the particular tower of babel being built. So devoted do the devotees become that they one day can no longer communicate with anyone apart from themselves. They have taken to speaking their own “language” that only others of their group understand and speak. And thus babel exists once more.
So, if serving God is complicated, it’s because Men have made it so through the institutionalization of Doctrine—the one single corrupting factor that ensures a lasting separation within the Body of Christ.
Why was Christianity so difficult for Jews to accept—apart from the fact that Jesus was put to death although insisted on being the prophesied Messiah? It was the longheld conviction that the Jews alone were God’s holy people, set apart from the nations around them. They were the chosen ones, the heirs to the kingdom. And that separation was defined by the Law of Moses for centuries! But when God tore down the symbolic Curtain of the Temple to demonstrate that the barrier between Jew and non-Jew was no more, that now God would become all things to all sorts of Men, it took less time than a generation of Men to put another Curtain back up, starting with Orthodoxy. And every time a subsequent Curtain is raised up, God tears it down just in time for yet another Curtain to be raised up in its place.
A message is only complicated for the purpose of keeping it un-understandable by the average person, and entrusted exclusively to the “Elect,” those who claim to have been assigned and authorized to impart the proper understanding to you or I. Apart from them, we could never understand it all—except we forget to discern that they’re not talking about the simplicity of Jesus’ ministerial theme, they’re talking about the tower of Doctrine that they’ve built which will bridge the gap between you and God.
Even today, scientists and archaelogists marvel at how the pyramids of Egypt were built. We have theories, of course, but really nobody is clear on how the building was achieved. It’s often the same when it comes to Doctrine. Someone has to explain to you how it works, how to understand it, and how to explain it to others.
The influence of Gnosticism started with a simple Idea: become a part of a group that understands what’s really going on in the world and where the world is headed. Your family and relatives will probably mock you and reject you, but the reward in being part of something special and unique will surely make any temporary travails more than worth enduring, Gnostics promised. We’re told “You will finally know the “Truth” and be set free of the encumbrances that burden everyone else around you.”
Sound familiar?
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