What we got wrong about the Tower of Babel

We have traded dominion for domination and cultivation for control.

Public Theology is based on the work of Zach W. Lambert, Pastor of Restore, an inclusive church in Austin, Texas. He and his wife, Amy Lambert, contribute to and moderate this account. Zach’s first book, Better Ways to Read the Bible, is now available wherever books are sold.

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We live in a broken world.

This isn’t news to most of us. Turn on the news, scroll socials, or just walk out your front door and you’ll see pain and poverty, discrimination and dehumanization, and every other kind of brokenness. No human is exempt from the problems and pain that accompany us on this journey through life. We have all been hurt and we have all hurt others.

Contrary to what you may have been taught, our world wasn’t broken by mistake. Many of us think about the world like a snow-globe that was accidentally dropped and shattered into a million little pieces, but that’s not the story Scripture tells at all. God’s very good world was broken by intentional choices, and most of these choices involve an individual or group exerting power over another individual or group, usually through violence and exploitation.

When God created the world, God gave humanity a specific purpose: