The Necessary Break Up of a Friendship (Genesis 10-11)

Genesis 10-11

Friendships break.  It is hard to watch or to hear about.  But it is true.  It happens.  I have seen friends who pledged that they would be friends forever fall away from one another after a short period of time.  The falling away I'm talking about isn't the typical type where one friend moves away and over time, the lives and interests start to change. 

The falling away I'm talking about is deliberate.  It is predicated on choices made while in a close friendship.  Something begins to creep within the friendship that begins to destroy the bond.  It could be drugs or alcohol and a party life getting more and more out of control.  It could be a destructive girlfriend or boyfriend.  It could be the way that they treat their parents and others around them.  It could even be how they have come to view God and speak down on anyone with a relationship with Him.

Whatever it is...something necessary snaps and for the good of the relationship that was...you just have to move on.  Sometimes...if we are lucky, the wayward friend finds their way back.

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The tower of Babel is this deliberate breaking of a friendship.  After Noah died and the next generations were growing up, they decided that they didn't want to follow God.  They wanted to "make a name for themselves".  They didn't want to "fill the earth" (Genesis 9:1).  They liked the plot of land they were on, so they wanted to build a monument in defiance of God.  They were breaking the bond thinking that if they just had each other, they didn't need God.

But just like a good friend who truly wants reconciliation, sometimes God has to sever the ties so others might be able to see what a true friend He is.  So He leaves them to their own devices and implements one little change.  He changed their language.  Not everyone spoke differently.  But now, instead of the whole world speaking one language, groups of people spoke different languages from one another.  How many languages?  I don't know.

But the changing of languages exposed the fickleness of the human heart.  A group so united to build a monument of defiance toward God was now fractured.  Instead of turning to one another and saying "we will overcome", they turned away from each other and walked their separate ways.  In so doing, they ruined the utopian concept that they would always be there for one another.

While God, in the background, through this necessary break up, hoped that some would come to their senses and find their way back to the only One who would never leave them nor forsake them.  And He wouldn't let any language be a barrier to that relationship.