Canada, Babel, and the Hope of the World
Gospel hope for the disgruntled, depressed, and generally fed up
“And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonours you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” (Gen. 12:2–3)
Being a conservative Christian in such a time as this, in such a place as this, amid such conditions as these, I am no stranger to the almost daily practice of hand-wringing. I know well the feeling of puttering along in my car and being accosted by “pride” flags on every corner—those damned symbols of civilizational rot and decay. I am familiar with the tragic habit of viewing schoolchildren with a cynical eye, depressed at the thought of what hellish doctrines are being massaged into their supple minds. I know what it is to see the form of a world you once loved appear to your eyes now like a dried-out cicada husk, emptied of all life and vigour and substance.
To live in this world is to live with the ever-present feeling of having been conquered—and not by an enemy you can see, touch, or strike, but an enemy who is at once everywhere and nowhere, who is impossible to touch and yet presses upon you from every side with the force of a boa constrictor. I have heard some compare this to the challenge of winning a fencing match against the morning mist, and I am inclined to agree. All efforts at hindering its advance seem futile in the end.
The effect that all of this has on the soul is quite…unhealthy. And that’s putting it rather mildly. A more honest stab at description would use words like jaded, bitter, despairing, hopeless, fed up, frustrated, angry, and cynical. Annoyed and crotchety could probably also be added, but we have to draw the line somewhere.
The point is this: anyone with a remotely functioning conscience has felt a sense of constant disappointment over the last decade, which, as Proverbs tells us, is the quickest path to a depressed and sickened heart: “Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a desire fulfilled is a tree of life” (Prov. 13:12). The sad reality in Canada today is that most conservatives are moping around with at least some form of heart-sickness, usually demonstrated by a sullen and depressed demeanour or else an embittered, sarcastic shell. In either case, the condition isn’t good.
Now, I should note that we are in good company when I say this. Jesus groaned at the unbelief of his twisted generation (Matt. 17:17) and righteous Lot was tormented in his soul each day by the lawless deeds of his peers (2 Pet. 2:8). So some measure of holy discontent is certainly warranted and even required for those of us engaged in the present struggle.
The needed qualification, however, is that holy discontent can’t be the only thing that distinguishes us. Constant sighing, fretting, and veering off into bitter tirades against the Libs can’t be the only thing we’re known for, however justified those things may be. As Peter says, Christians must always be ready to give a reason for the hope that is within them, not a reason for their disdain of progressives. Hope is the substance of the Christian life. It is the note that must ring out whenever the Christian is struck.
So what I want to do for the next few hundred words or so is remind you, Christian, of your reason to hope. And to do this, I am not going to prophesy to you smooth words about a possible Fall election or chest-thump about how Pierre Pollievre’s common sense campaign will triumph in the end. That would be like trying to start a fire with a glob of mud. What we really need right now is kindling, dry and brittle. You know, the kind that goes fwoof the moment a spark hits it. We need “hot gospel,” as Doug Wilson is fond of saying. And for that, we need to turn to the word of God.
Hot Gospel in Ancient Mesopotamia
“And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonours you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (Gen. 12:2–3).
These words were first uttered to a man named Abram, a pagan at the time, some four thousand years ago, and they came on the heels of what could be described as humanity’s first foray into communism. This way of painting the picture is, of course, slightly provocative—but only slightly. Karl Marx had not yet been born, but the marxist spirit—a spirit of envy, pride, and humanistic zeal—was palpable in the air. This spirit was the one that animated murderous Cain when he built the first city, a project that was driven then, as now, by a desire to obtain through culture and craft “the benefits of God apart from God.”1 It was the spirit that moved Nimrod to found the city of Babel and begin that infamous building project that would forever symbolize man’s rebellion and conceit. Here was hubris at its finest, a desire to “make a name for ourselves” rather than hallow the name of the only true God, our King and Creator.
Man, in other words, has always been a humanist. As the Preacher said, there is nothing new under the sun.
Into this world, however, God condescended with unimaginable grace. Having judged this fledgling utopia, and scattered the nations abroad like autumn leaves on a stiff breeze, He called one man out of this multitude and made him a promise: through him God would make a great and mighty nation; God would give him a great name; God would plant him in the earth like a Muskoka pine and use him to bring blessing and life to the world.
Thus, in Abram—and not Babel—the families of the earth would be blessed. Their strength, wisdom, ambition, and schemes would all have to bow to God’s grace coming into the world through him. Cain and Nimrod have no portion in this new creation; their idolatrous aims are an obstacle rather than a vehicle to true flourishing. If the peoples of the earth are to have any hope at all, it will not come from them: it will come from the kingdom God is establishing, a kingdom brought into being by the sovereign power of His word and founded upon His grace and kindness.
Anything else is vanity and striving after wind (Eccl. 1:14).
From Trickle to Tsunami
As the story of Scripture unfolds, we find (not unsurprisingly) that God was faithful to His word. Beginning small, like a cold trickle from a mountain spring, the kingdom He promised grew and surged through history, until it finally burst onto the scene with cataclysmic force in the person of Jesus Christ. This Jesus, the New Testament boldly proclaims, is the true Seed of Abraham—which simply means that He is Abraham’s offspring and son, the rightful heir of all God’s promises:
“Now the promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed. He does not say, ‘And to seeds,’ as referring to many, but rather to one, ‘And to your seed,’ that is, Christ.” (Gal. 3:16 LSB)
In other words, whatever God promised to Abraham finds its fulfilment in Jesus Christ. He is the rightful recipient of Abrahamic blessing, and He gives those blessings to all who are joined to Him by faith (Gal. 3:29). This is how God’s blessing and salvation are mediated to the world: not through physical connection to the bloodline of Abraham, but through faith-union with the living Christ, Abraham’s rightful heir.
Hence Abraham was promised that he would be “heir of the world” (Rom. 4:13), and Jesus has been named “heir of all things” (Heb. 1:2), with all authority in heaven and on earth being given to Him (Matt. 28:18).
Abraham was promised descendants as numerous as the stars (Gen. 15:5), and those in Christ, John tells us, are a great multitude too numerous to count, comprising those from every nation and tribe and people and tongue (Rev. 7:9).
Abraham was promised that the families of the earth would be blessed through him, and the families of the earth have indeed been blessed through him, having received justification and life through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ (Gal. 3:8ff).
Finally, Abraham was promised an eternal city, a heavenly country, a new world, and Christ the Lord has shed His blood and conquered death to procure just such a reward:
“Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband” (Rev. 21:1–2).
In every way, then, God has fulfilled His promise—on a scale and to an extent that staggers the imagination. He has overcome every obstacle, defeated every enemy, and He has done so in such a way that His power, wisdom, glory, and dominion have been the prevailing theme.
Hence, so far from the lofty aspirations of Babel, the story of human history has not been the story of man’s great conquest and advance nor has it been the tale of our heroic skill and genius. Insofar as we have been involved at all, history has, to borrow Macbeth’s morbid phrase, been a tale of sound and fury, told by an idiot—to an audience of idiots—starring a cast of exceedingly impressive idiots. History does not flatter us. We are certainly the villains rather than the heroes.
And yet even so, none of this has deterred the tender mercies of our God, who has looked down from heaven on idiots like ourselves and chosen, not to condemn us, but to save us—and to save us from the misery and hell our own sin has unleashed. We deserve every bit of God’s judgment, but God, by grace, desires to spare us from it. This is the work He began in Abram’s day; it is the work He brought to fulfilment in the first coming of our Lord; and it is the work He will bring to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.
“And in the days of those kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that shall never be destroyed, nor shall the kingdom be left to another people. It shall break in pieces all these kingdoms and bring them to an end, and it shall stand forever…” (Dan. 2:44).
Conclusion
So here we are, Canada, buried beneath roughly three thousand cubic tons of unbelief and folly. We have coveted our way into economic ruin, lusted our families into devastation and oblivion, butchered millions of precious lives on the altar of sexual pleasure, and happily surrendered ourselves to an army of bureaucrats in a vain attempt to alleviate the consequences of our own irresponsibility. We are a nation of liars and cowards, hypocrites and narcissists. And we have no one to blame but ourselves.
But I said this article would give you reason to hope, so that is where I will end. And that reason is the kingdom of God.
As we have seen, God gives very little weight to the vain scheming of man. In fact, when the big wigs of this present age put their heads together and consider how they might “burst their bonds apart and cast away their cords from us” (Ps. 2:3), the Lord of heaven and earth laughs. He “holds them in derision” (v. 4). He chuckles from His throne and says, with holy wrath and fury: “As for me, I have set my King on Zion, my holy hill” (v. 6).
In other words, God is gloriously unconcerned about the conniving self-exaltation of man. Their strategies and plots pose no more threat to Him than a piece of tinsel does to a castle wall. His kingdom is forever. His Christ has been enthroned. His King has already been chosen and is seated even now upon the throne of heaven, reigning until that day when all His enemies are made His footstool (Ps. 110:1; 1 Cor. 15:25).
The kingdom of God has triumphed over Babel, and it will continue to triumph—over every person, leader, and nation—until every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth comes to acknowledge its supremacy (Phil. 2:9–11). Christ will reign, and He will have the prize for which He died—an inheritance of nations!
Morales, Who Shall Ascend the Mountain of the Lord?, 62.
YES!