Why Babel And Not The Atomic Bomb?

A beautiful truth of our faith is that God allows us the freedom to choose: to obey His instruction or to carve our own path in rebellion. There is love and beauty in that freedom. Each day, we get to wake up and decide how we will act, and for the most part, we live with the consequences of those decisions, both in this life and in judgment. Yet, there are still moments in Scripture when God decides to intervene.

In Genesis, this happens twice in quick succession. First, God walks with Noah and declares that because the world’s people have rebelled so aggressively, He will begin again. It is the second instance, the city and tower of Babel, that I want to focus on here. God’s decision to halt construction is confusing to many believers. On the surface, it can appear as if He saw a unified, ambitious civilization and put a stop to it because they were too innovative. Why interfere? Was it their desire to “reach the heavens” (Genesis 11:4), their prideful aim to “make a name for ourselves”, or was it something else altogether?

Let’s look at Babel through a modern lens. Every generation inherits technologies. Because of this, those older innovations feel like second nature to newer generations. Gen Alpha, for example, has never known a world without smartphones; they are as familiar to them as beds or breakfast cereal. In Babel’s time, their breakthrough revolutionary technology was - wait for it - bricks. To them, bricks were as groundbreaking as today’s Artificial Intelligence or Quantum Computing. Gone were the days of finding, hauling, cutting, and stacking stone; they were now able to build a furnace and make bricks right at the build site.

Technological progress, however, isn’t the problem. It’s how we respond to it. The question arises: if God stopped Babel from building a tower, why didn’t He stop something like Oppenheimer and his team from creating the first atomic bomb?

The answer is intention, not invention. God doesn’t hate impressive feats of engineering or humanity’s ingenuity. Our creative impulses only mirror His own image. He is sovereign over both creation and what His children create from it. Nuclear fission, for instance, has vast potential for good: it can provide clean, abundant energy when used wisely. At the same time, if used selfishly, it also has the power to destroy cities. The discovery and pursuit of nuclear fission is not rebellion against God. It’s nothing more than an ethically questionable use of our freedom - something we all do to varying degrees every day.

At Babel, though, rebellion was the end goal. The Babelites sought to build a tower as a safeguard against divine judgment – a literal monument of defiance. Having seen what God did in the flood, their plan was to outmaneuver Him by simply climbing the tower if God decided to flood the earth again. Obvious gaps in thinking aside, their construction project was a direct act of opposition, not innovation.

By contrast, the atomic bomb, as devastating as it is, marks just one step in humanity’s long, sorrowful pattern of self-inflicted pain. If we ask, “Why didn’t God stop the bomb?”, we must also ask, “Why didn’t He stop knives, slings, or even baseball bats?” We don’t need to look at invention to find tools for violence; scripture is filled with accounts of people turning simple stones into instruments of death.

The difference between Babel and every other tool and weapon we’ve created lies in the motive. God is not threatened or scared of our ability to innovate or what we create, but He clearly cares about why. We can raise towers higher than the Burj Khalifa, and He may allow them to stand. But if we decide to build in defiance of Him like the Babelites, to exalt ourselves, or to blaspheme the Holy Spirit, we should anticipate some push-back.