The Tower of Babel is still being built

The once-in-four years religious rite of the Olympics is a continuation of the Babel project... human attempts at peace for our time

The Bible tells us the story of a time in ages past, when the people of the world rebelled against The Maker. They came together to build a tower, with its top to the skies. They wanted to make a name for themselves. They wanted the tower to be a symbol of their unity — to not be scattered throughout the world.

The tower was to be a symbol of their power and what they achieved — not a symbol of what they were given by the good and gracious Maker. They imagined a world without God — without heaven or hell. They imagined a world where only they would live together as one, not acknowledging the fact that they were made, that they were dependent, that they were not The Maker themselves.

Many millennia later, the project still continues.

It is a futile project though.

Here is the cruel futility of it all.

The people of the world come together once every four years singing John Lennon's "Imagine"

Imagine there's no heaven...Imagine all the people living as one...

They come together remembering their accomplishments... Celebrating human achievement and human excellence... All the while, children in Gaza are being bombed... Girls in Afghanistan are denied their rights to go to school... Ukraine and Russia continue to fight...

Like the ancient Israelites, the religious festival of the Olympics is celebrated even while injustice and oppression carries on.

From the very beginning, the tower of Babel has been a futile project.

Peace is not cheap. Neither games nor towers can buy peace. You cannot destroy a man's house and then offer a term of peace by playing chess with him. You got to pay for your crimes. That is the cost of peace. Humans owe a debt to their Maker. The cost has to be paid.

Two thousand years ago, The Maker himself bought peace for us, by paying the cost himself. He himself paid the cost — the cost of death, so that we humans could have peace.

We can continue building our futile towers of Babel, or we can accept the peace offered by The Maker.