Life after the garden is bizarre. I think I had always thought of it as a before-and-after scenario. In the garden was the perfect life of communion and relationship with God, while after is the life we keep making and breaking for ourselves away from God.

It’s not too long in the story that we get to Noah—the road leading there is summed up in 6:5,

With the flood, everything is wiped away, and the story resets and continues with Noah. Shortly after, we’re told that Noah plants a vineyard (basically, another garden) and we read that some serious problems arise again. The story proceeds in genealogies that lay out how all these different people groups throughout the Bible, and even today, hate each other, and war with one another, all having started from the same family.

Here in Genesis the story continues to a first culmination point at the tower of Babel. Everyone was the same, particularly in language, and it seems that when we’re left to ourselves in a perpetual echo chamber of self-confirmation, our ‘unified’ desires lead to very bad things. Why was the tower bad? I don’t fully know, to be honest. What I do understand from the narrative is that God sees what they’re doing and understands that it’s a very bad path for humans. And it was a starting point that would only lead to greater evil.

I keep thinking about that.

When we gather ourselves in groups where we are surrounded by the same thinking and desires, we amplify the worst in ourselves and tend to grow in that wickedness. Do we collectively bring out the best in ourselves or rather is it the worst in us that has generally shaped history?

How does it usually play out on the internet?

Leading up to Babel we were unified in our desires to elevate ourselves and be in opposition to God. Apparently, speaking the same language was a big factor in pushing that along. The only action at the end of this story is God separating everyone with different languages and scattering them on the earth. The problem is resolved, but we’re good at returning to and recreating our problems.

A lot of Genesis is sharing origins and histories of so many people groups, born from bizarre circumstances, after doing inexplicable things. Noah’s sons are the start of all the warring groups throughout the Bible, history, and even today. Abraham’s two sons diverge into hostile groups too. Even Lot brings forth children that go on to cause trouble down the line.

Canaanites, Egyptians, Ishmaelites, Israelites, Moabites… so many groups that stood against each other, all sharing the same lineage.

There is something in our nature that inevitably stirs us up against others. From the moment we took of that fruit in the garden, we’ve continually stood in opposition—first to God, and then to one another. The devil is in the opposition.

Help me, Holy Spirit. Even as I think I understand and strive to walk in reconciliation, I know that every day is a battle that I feel I keep losing. Strengthen me, Jesus, to walk in your ways and abide in you, especially when it feels easier to give up and give in.