Where is Technology Leading Us? Rethinking The Tower of Babel in Genesis 11

Babel, the myth of progress, and digital bricks

As a Xennial, I have watched as the world has grown increasingly “plugged-in” through the power of the internet. Today, it is hard to imagine a world without social media and smartphones. We were told these tools were the fruit of progress and would provide unprecedented opportunities for connection, research, and access to truth. We were promised a world where knowledge was at our fingertips and relationships were only a swipe away. And for a while, the glow of screens felt like sunrise. But I have watched as the opposite unfolded: less connection, less critical research, and more lies and confusion; an age in which the internet provides space for people to revive primitive evils, from organizing chaos to acting out our darkest fantasies. Our technology has given us unfettered access to everything we could ever want – information, entertainment, even intimacy – all in easy‑to‑use devices. It has offered free sex without the presence of a person, parasocial relationships in which we know celebrities better than we know our neighbors, and more and more disembodied living. As a follower of Jesus, the Creator who took on flesh, these are troubling developments.

Photo by BoliviaInteligente on Unsplash

A few weeks ago, during a conversation with a friend, we read the tower of Babel account in Genesis 11. Within the narrative flow of Genesis, this story is an account of the generations repopulating the earth after the flood. They attempt to build a tower that leads to heaven as a way of establishing their own progress. But things do not go as planned. In the end, God caused their languages to be confused so they could not complete the project. This left them divided into people groups by language.

Now the whole earth had one language and one speech. And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar, and they dwelt there. Then they said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” They had brick for stone, and they had asphalt for mortar. And they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower whose top is in the heavens; let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth.”

Genesis 11:1-4, NKJV

My friend is new to the Bible and is just learning some of its foundational stories. After we finished, he asked a question I had never been asked before: “Why does it matter that they used bricks and tar?” I had never taken the time to consider that this detail might be more than just a footnote to the story (v. 3).

As soon as my friend asked about bricks and tar, I thought of another place where the Bible takes time to mention a piece of technology: the story of Deborah in Judges 4–5. There we meet Sisera, commander of the Canaanite army, who had nine hundred iron chariots (Judges 4:3). It might read like a military statistic, but iron chariots were the cutting edge of warfare. They outclassed the wooden wagons of the Israelites. The iron was a technological leap forward that made Sisera’s forces seem unstoppable. [God’s Women and God’s Peasants: The Song of Deborah as Heroic Poetry for Marginalized Peoples, by Daniel Rushing]

But then God calls Deborah to lead and Barak to fight. When the battle comes, the sky opens and a storm turns the dry Kishon River into a torrent. The heavy chariots bog down in the mud and become useless. Sisera’s technological superiority is undone by rain and by the courage of a people trusting in God rather than iron. Just as bricks did not guarantee a stairway to heaven, iron wheels did not secure victory. The mention of new technology in scripture is a clue: human progress matters, but it does not lead to the Kingdom of Heaven. Both stories are little reminders that what we create has power, but it cannot save us from the beauty and tragedy of the world, nor can it deliver the transcendence we so desire.

Bricks and Tar

“They had brick for stone, and they had asphalt for mortar” (Genesis 11:3, NKJV). The people at Babel had discovered they could bake clay into uniform blocks and glue them together with tar. At first glance, it appears to be an aside about building materials. But my friend’s question invited me to linger. Bricks are not stones. Stones are taken from the earth as they are; they bear the marks of geologic time. Bricks, on the other hand, are fabricated. They are dried and fired, identical, repeatable, scalable. Asphalt mortar is not the mud of the riverbank but a sticky petroleum compound.

In the narrative, bricks and tar appear immediately after the flood, in a world that is starting over. The people have a blank slate. They discover a new process, and they realize it could change everything. Bricks can stack straighter and higher than stones. Asphalt sticks firmer than mud. All of a sudden, a tower that reaches the heavens feels possible. And the new technology fuels a new desire: “Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower whose top is in the heavens; let us make a name for ourselves” (Genesis 11:4). This is more than architecture. It is theology. It is the belief that human ingenuity will lead to transcendence. Progress becomes a pathway to the divine, to human prospering, and to leaving a lasting legacy.

The Myth of Progress

But the story tells us that their progress did not lead to communion. It led to confusion. Their words turned to noise. Their unity shattered into factions. The very technology that promised to bring them together as a city and as a people became a wedge that drove them apart. Progress invited pride, and pride birthed division.

This theme runs like a thread through Scripture. When Israel demanded a king, it was as much about wanting what other nations had – horses and chariots and armies – as it was about trusting God. Prophets warned against trusting in “chariots and horses” rather than in the Lord (Psalm 20:7). Jeremiah lamented those who “trust in man and make flesh their strength, whose heart departs from the Lord” (Jeremiah 17:5). The pattern is always the same: human tools inspire human confidence; confidence slides into self‑sufficiency; self‑sufficiency calcifies into idolatry. And the result is not the flourishing we hoped for. It is distance from God and from one another.

Our Digital Bricks

This is why my generation’s technological story feels so relevant. We live in an era of bricks and tar on steroids. We carry in our pockets slabs of silicon and glass that can access libraries, markets, and parasocial relationships at a tap. We can send our words to the ends of the earth instantly. We can build platforms with billions of users. Every new app or device comes with the same promise: this will connect you. This will make you safer. This will bring you closer to the truth and to each other. But many of us have begun to realize that these digital bricks are not doing what they promised.

Take social media. It was supposed to let us share our lives and find community. Instead, it often drives us into echo chambers where we are reinforced in what we already believe. The algorithms that promised to connect us deliver addiction, outrage, and envy. Our posts become performances. Our relationships become parasocial. We follow influencers and call it friendship. We block and unfollow rather than reconcile. We scroll and consume rather than converse and contemplate. Our words accumulate like bricks, but they do not create a tower of communion. They build walls.

Consider how pornography and sexualized media have given us the ability to simulate intimacy without presence. It has turned people into pixels. It promises satisfaction but isolates us from embodied love. Our pursuit of connection dissolves into disembodied consumption. We press a button and imagine we are free, but we become more enslaved to our appetites, more numb to real relationships.

Think about misinformation and conspiracy theories. We thought the Internet would democratize knowledge, that truth would rise to the top if everyone could publish. Instead, lies and ragebait proliferate because they are more profitable and more clickable. Truth becomes slippery. Our confidence in institutions erodes. We retreat into tribes that share our version of reality. Like the people at Babel, we find that language itself becomes a barrier. We can speak the same words but mean different things. We cannot even agree on the definition of “truth.”

Then there is the allure of transcendence through science. Gene editing whispers that we might eliminate disease. Artificial intelligence hints that we could solve our problems if only we had enough data. Silicon Valley prophets talk about defeating ageing, uploading consciousness, or building a “metaverse” where we can live beyond the body. The promise is, again, connection and transcending the human condition. But the reality is often further isolation and confusion. We run the risk of building towers that lead nowhere, investing in technologies that do not deliver on their promises, chasing after immortality through code and cells rather than through real community and relationships.

Observing From Here

I see a pattern: when humans discover a new tool, we are tempted to believe it will lift us beyond our limits. We imagine that bricks and tar, iron and silicon, will carry us higher than stones and speech can. We forget that no matter how high we stack, we cannot build our way into God’s presence or into true communion with each other.

I am struck by the fact that God did not destroy the tower of Babel with fire or flood. He simply confused the language. God scatters them, not to punish them but to prevent them from entrenching themselves in a lie. In Judges, God does not invent a bigger weapon to defeat the iron chariots. God sends rain. He uses creation itself to show that no amount of iron can outmatch God’s plans. Deborah and Barak’s victory is a reminder that trust in God, not technological prowess, is what saves.

I also notice that when the Spirit is poured out at Pentecost in Acts 2, the miracle is not a universal language imposed from above. It is the opposite of Babel. People from every nation hear the disciples speak in their own languages, and yet they understand the same message. God honors diversity and brings unity through human voices who speak love and truth, not through technological advancements. The early church did not build towers; it built tables. It gathered around bread and wine, not bricks and tar. It created community through shared life, not shared algorithms.

Reflections for Today

I am not indicating that we abstain from using technology. Rather, the invitation is to examine the technologies we adopt critically. What are our bricks and tar? Where have we assumed that progress alone will solve our deepest hungers? Are we mistaking connection for communion, access for intimacy, data for wisdom? Have we come to believe that something we invent will lift us into transcendence?

Bricks are useful. Iron can plough fields. Smartphones can call grandparents. A vaccine can save lives. But progress unmoored from presence, ungrounded from humility, will not make us more human. It will leave us with more options and fewer conversations; more knowledge and less understanding; more tools and fewer friends.

Maybe the story of bricks and tar is a gentle warning to slow down and remember what truly binds us together. Technology can be a servant, but it cannot be a savior. It can amplify our voices, but it cannot teach us to listen. It can give us new ways to speak, but it cannot give us a new heart. Only God can do that. Only love can do that. Only an embodied, Spirit‑filled community can do that.

So as we scroll and swipe, as we innovate and design, as we stand at this waypoint between past and future, the question is not whether to build but what to build and why. Are we building towers that make us feel powerful but leave us speechless in one another’s presence? Or are we building tables where we can sit and speak and be known?

Perhaps the small detail of bricks and tar is the Spirit’s whisper to us: be careful how you build, and remember that the best things in life are received, not engineered.