The Day the Doubting Began

My first mind-blowing experience came in February 2008. That was the day my life began to change. However, before I tell you the events of that day, a little background is necessary.

My childhood was idyllic. I grew up in a wonderful, loving environment. My parents raised my siblings and I as conservative Christians. Going to church was part of our way of life in the south. We knew God was our loving creator and Jesus was our savior, who sacrificed his life for our sins. After my wife and I married, we were very involved with our local church as youth pastors. I was also a member of the church board. Even though we eventually were forced to move due to my being laid off, we carried our love of God, Jesus and his Word to our new city. It was during this time that I became even more conservative in my views. There was no doubt that the Bible was the infallible, everlasting Word of God. I often listened to well-known ministers on CD in the car during my commute and while sitting at my desk at work. I loved talking to my coworkers about Jesus. I felt he was using me as his servant, doing the work of the Lord. It was during this time in my life, when my relationship with God was at its peak, that my beliefs were shaken.

One day in February 2008, I was listening to a minister’s message online. I did this nearly every day. I believed there was no better way to spend my time while I’m working than to bolster my faith by listening to good, solid bible teachers. The minister’s message focused on the passage concerning the Tower of Babel. Early on during his message, the minister read the passage in its entirety.

1Now the whole earth had one language and the same words. 2And as people migrated from the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. 3And they said to one another, "Come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly." And they had brick for stone, and bitumen for mortar. 4Then they said, "Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth." 5And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of man had built. 6And the Lord said, "Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do. And nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. 7Come, let us go down and there confuse their language, so that they may not understand one another’s speech." 8So the Lord dispersed them from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city. 9Therefore its name was called Babel, because there the Lord confused the language of all the earth. And from there the Lord dispersed them over the face of all the earth. (Gen 11:1-9).

After hearing the minister read the story of the Tower of Babel, I sat there, eyes wide, in stunned silence. It hit me like a baseball bat in the chest. Sitting at my desk, I said “This sounds like a children’s story I would read to my son before he goes to bed”. The realization slowly sank in. I must’ve sat there, immovable, for a minute or two. I continued to say over and over in my head “This sounds like a fairy tale, a fable, a kids’ bedtime story”. The reason I was in shock is because I considered the Bible to be completely true, down to the last letter. In my mind, there was no doubt it was the infallible Word of God. Yet, there I was, faced with the sudden realization that something in the Bible was possibly not true. My long standing faith told me it was true, but my rational mind was saying something else. It was too simplistic. For the first time, it sounded allegorical. I realized the Tower of Babel was a story, something made up to teach a lesson.

Anxiously, I began to search the internet, looking for proof that the Tower of Babel was a legitimate historical event. I visited every reputable Christian website I could think of but none of them provided what I was hoping for: solid proof that the Tower of Babel story was a real historical event. Unable to find what I wanted, I went back to the Bible itself. I read and re-read the passage. Instead of providing answers, I came up with more questions. Why was God afraid that “nothing that they purpose to do” will be beyond their abilities? Did God believe the people could actually build a tower to heaven? How is that even possible when the sky doesn’t have a “roof” but it is limitless? Didn’t God know these things? The more I read the passage, the more it seemed that the story was there to describe how people should serve God instead of try to be like him. It also began dawning on me that the whole point of the story may be to explain how different groups came to speak different languages. After all, the very first verse in the passage mentions that the whole earth had one language and the passage ends with God confusing the people’s language and dispersing them over the earth. It became more and more clear to me that the tower of Babel passage was written as a simple story to explain how the different people groups had different languages.

Over time I was able to answer my own questions. The Tower of Babel story can’t be true because we know that the sky doesn’t have limits. There is no ceiling to reach where heaven is located. Different people groups couldn’t have received their different languages all at once from God because we know languages and forms of writing develop over thousands of years. I realized the Tower of Babel story was just that: a story to help explain the unknown to an ancient people.
This discovery devastated me. If the Tower of Babel story wasn’t true, were there other stories in the Bible that weren’t true either? This began my passionate search for truth and my determined attempt to prove the validity and infallibility of the Bible.