This morning I thought some more about the story about the Tower of Babel. I thought about how this story may be an allegory for the way that man and modern society turn away from faith when they think that human accomplishment and reason negate the need for faith.

In the story man thinks he can reach heaven himself by building a tower and bypass the need for God to get there. In the end man is punished for his excessive pride by being cursed to speak many different languages so that he can no longer work together effectively.

As a child I took this story simply to be an explanation for the origin of different languages. When I became educated in the historical and scientific understanding of the origin of languages the story became a tall tale for me as did many of the religious theories and accounts for the origin of natural phenomena, explanation of ancient events in the history of man. Along with the credibility of these accounts went the credibility for the existence of or the need for God. I lost my faith and couldn't see a practical reason for faith until I gained a new reason for faith and a new set of reasons on which to base my belief.

My old belief had been based on a God whose existence was based on evidence from the origin of natural phenomena and the history of man. My new belief was developed on the basis of God's power to save men from his inability to live a truly sane and ethical life on his own power. My old belief was based upon evidence for God in the external world, in nature and the cosmos, while in searching for new belief I was guided to look for evidence for God in the internal world, the psychic realm, the hearts and minds of men including myself.

I looked at the moral of the story of the Tower of Babel and saw that it was about man's pride in his higher knowledge and accomplishments and how when he thought he didn't need God to reach heaven anymore the result was mass confusion, division, ineffectiveness, and a descent into chaos. I thought about how this is echoed in modern society today in how the new atheists believe that man can develop his own effective moral code of ethics and cast off this superstitious notion that we need a daddy deist figure to command us to do good. That human beings only need reason and and logic to develop a secular utopia.

I thought about how I have seen that in many cases atheists have proposed their own moral codes and how these differ frequently and typically include some provision for moral relativism. I have seen where the only atheist societal systems that have been galvanized well enough to succeed on a large scale have been authoritarian systems that developed a moral system based on survival of the fittest and were tyrannical and cruel. Perhaps this is a tangible manifestation of the moral of the story.

In the final analysis for me personally this is a lesson about the evolution of faith. In my personal spiritual journey I lost my faith because I did not pursue new reasons for faith as I grew up. My belief did not make the transition from child to adult. I didn't give faith a chance to grow in me from the primitive conception that sustains the world to the higher conception that sustains the man.

Today I got to go to a meeting. We talked about the benefit of taking self examination, prayer, and meditation together. I talked about my initial skepticism that this would work for me and how I sought out a solution through REBT and NLP because I thought my problem was not moral but behavioral and psychological. I thought prayer was just flattery of God and of no practical use. I thought meditation was just finding serenity, peace, and nirvana and I needed a replacement for getting high. My higher power would be psychotherapy and medication.

I went on to explain that it didn't work. These things were not effective for me and the therapists all told me I needed AA and 12 Step spirituality. I eventually did try this and even though I had the same objections I worked through them. The result was that I found that these practices were actually designed to work in the ways that I needed for recovery. Moral inventory did help me uncover the behavioral and emotional problems I had and make a rational assessment of them. I had had a limited and prejudiced understanding of morality. Prayer and meditation helped me to focus on changing my old behaviors and adapting new virtues and developing new character. Every morning when I said prayers I was essentially working new programming into my mind.

The processes of the 12 Step program did the same thing that the psychological processes attempted to do. The thing that enabled the 12 Steps to work where psychotherapy alone failed was the X factor, the God concept. The belief in God as a power to restore me to sanity added the needed power to make these practices effective. God for me had the power to command my hardened heart, conquer my raging desires, and still my restless mind.

The rest of the day today was a great joy. I had a feeling all afternoon like I really wanted to do a major project. But, I accepted that I didn't get a clear intuition for anything and it was probably because life is currently a big enough project for me right now. I made a nice bar-b-que for dinner and my sister visited in the evening.

I only griped at the kids a little and I showed them all some love.

Thanks be to God.