0157 What is proposition eighteen?

Jesus is the cornerstone of God’s plan.

The issue is not only order and disorder.

The issue is also truth and deception.

Accountability results in order.

Accountability demands truth.

0158 Jesus is crucified by a Roman regime fixated on order and a Jewish regime fixated on its ownership of the “truth”.  Pontius Pilate testifies to the Roman fixation by placing a placard on the cross, saying, “King of the Jews”.  The Jewish religious elite testify to their fixation by complaining that the placard should read, “He says that he is the king of the Jews”.

0159 It is no irony that Walton follows with a discussion of the Tower of Babel.

The Tower of Babel paints a picture of the end of a cycle of settling, gaming, and going insane.  The city is settled.  It is so rich that it is full of games.  Lots of people make their living using speech-alone talk.  They hit upon a vision.  The city drains its finances in the single-minded pursuit of making a name for itself.

They start of build a ziggurat, a tower to the heavens.  This requires experts.  The experts are so specialized that one specialty does not really understand what the other specialties are doing.  On top of that, the planners speak one tongue and the laborers speak another.  Imagine the graft!  The project ends in disaster.  The elites do not think that they will be held accountable.  Eventually, they are, especially when God says, “Enough”.

0160 Surely, this sounds familiar to Americans in 2022.

0161 In the telling, Walton makes a notable connection.  The ziggurat is designed to allow the city deity to descend from the heavens to the earth.  The city god descends down the ziggurat then enters the adjacent temple.  Often, the temple has a garden.

So, the ziggurat is the stairway down to the city god’s little Eden, the center of order of the entire urban region.

0162 Clearly, these are the plans of people, not of God.

The confounding of the languages turns out to be God’s response.