The Prevalence of Babel

Donald Trump is a simple man, one who in all reality none of us actually know. Sure, we know the image of Donald Trump, the billionaire steak-selling playboy businessman who peaked somewhere between Home Alone 2 and the first few seasons of The Apprentice, but we don’t know the man, we don’t know the person. And so when we look at Donald Trump I might hope that we recall that we are focusing on the problems related to the image, not the problems of the person.

Donald Trump speaks with words that are generally comprised of some strange amalgamation of outright falsehoods and blatant hyperbole garnished with a collection of cherry-picked facts and bullying; and while it would be quite easy to simply name him the source of all our problems, as is always the case when encountering the spiritual forces of wickedness (Eph 6:12) the truth is that this president is more incompetent victim than outright perpetrator as he is a man, in essence, possessed by his own image.

And so when Donald Trump issues statements like human trafficking being “at its worst level in the history of the world,” or that there has “never [been] so many [border apprehensions] ever in our history,” we find highly exaggerated statements that can easily be proven false with no more than a two-second Google search, however what we see happening instead is the same sort of outrage that runs rampant all throughout this administration’s time and the same sort of spiritual malaise that seems to have crept into our culture’s response to such blatant falsehoods. That the image of Trump is a liar is self-evident and not worth breaking down, and yet we’ve reached a point in which there is no true counter to it. What we instead find are either a few other Principalities (Liberalism, the Democratic Party, Progressivism, etc) who choose to argue with the statements rather than shut them down as the falsehoods they are, or a collection of prophets of the falsehoods.

We all know and recognize these prophets too, these are the near constant and revolving stream of figures and talking heads who are continuously clarifying what the president “really means”, these are the figures who are in-and-of-themselves possessed by the image of Donald Trump and who are ultimately comprised of a collection of dehumanized persons who are in turn chewed up and spat out by both the image of Donald Trump and the other Principalities opposing said image and seeking to tear them down. These prophets then are a people whose very humanity is sacrificed (all for the greater good of course) all to promote, not truth necessarily, but rather a heavily edited, propagandized, and marketed version of truth.

quid est veritas?

Perhaps one of the most compelling questions posed in any of the Gospels is the Johannian Pilate’s question posed to Jesus, “what is truth?” (John 18:38), and the problem we face in our postmodern and contemporary world is that increasingly we can no longer answer that. We don’t know. Truth has been packaged, sold, and marketed. Truth has been replaced by babel.

William Stringfellow, lay theologian, Harlem lawyer, political activist, and ethicist, offered one of his best theological concepts in his articulation of babel. In the biblical tradition, Babel of Genesis 11 serves as the scene in which the languages of the world are mixed up, in which people went from speaking one universal language to many. It serves as a scene in which once familiar people speaking once familiar words are suddenly replaced with belligerent strangers speaking indecipherable tongues. It is a world where words have lost their meaning and where a place and neighbor who was once familiar and comforting becomes dangerous and threatening. Where relationships break down and where people are suddenly divided.

In our modern world we find babel alive and well, prevalent even. Babel is the primary tactic used by the Powers and Principalities* to confuse people, to limit the power of others, to create fear and apathy, ultimately to create a world where people are so tired, so disillusioned, so spiritually broken that they may as well be considered dead and unfeeling, a world where the status quo is simply the unquestionable way it is.

We see a similar concept in George Orwell’s 1984, in which he introduces the concept of doublespeak, a language which is part falsehood, part hyperbole, and part cherry-picked fact; it is a world where once familiar words are now dangerous and threatening, a world where “war is peace, freedom is slavery, [and] ignorance is strength,” it is, in short, babel.

Disrupting Babel

It is unrealistic to assume that we, on our own, can truly defeat the methods of babel, for as it currently stands babel is too prevalent, too shifting, too fluid to truly tack down and combat in full effectiveness, and besides, a part of babel’s tactic is to attack those who notice it, those who confront it, those who speak truth to it. When John the Baptizer confronts Herod on his use of babel he quite literally loses his head (Mt 14, Mk 6:14–20, Lk 3:18–20), in the same way when we confront and encounter babel and seek to hold it accountable we too are putting ourselves at risk. And we will face backlash, we will face the curse of babel, the condemnation, the questioning of our own humanity. And what is perhaps most important in confronting babel is remembering that we are speaking out in respect of not only our own humanity, but for the very humanity of the possessed; in this case for the very humanity of Donald himself.

Which that may actually be one of the first steps we can take in this instance of resisting babel, refer to Donald not as President Trump, nor even as Donald Trump or Trump, rather refer to him simply as Donald. This is done to ensure that, at least in common conversation and prayer, we may perhaps recall that there is a person there, held captive by the image, and it is for his freedom and deliverance we pray. Pray for him as you might pray for a friend or someone who is sick, someone who is losing grasp of their humanity.

Lord, you who have sent your Son into the world to destroy the spiritual forces of evil, hear us, we pray. Grant strength to your servants to fight against the evils of our world. May the strength of your right hand make Satan loose your servant Donald, so that he no longer dares hold him captive to his own image and instead remind him that you have made him in your image and redeemed him in your Son: who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, now and forever. Amen.**

*The Powers and Principalities are beings identified in such places as Romans 8 and Ephesians 6, Stringfellow identifies them as Images, Ideologies, and Institutions; in short these make up some of the “higher forces”, those beings which are higher than humanity and yet lesser than God as they are still a part of the creation and thus not immortal, despite their assertions to the contrary.

**A prayer adapted from ancient Christian rites of exorcism as found in the Anglican Bishop of Exeter’s Commission on Exorcism.

For more reading on Babel or the Powers and Principalities try,

• Stringfellow, William. An Ethic for Christians and Other Aliens in a Strange Land. Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock Publishers, 1973. 97–114.
• Stringfellow, William. Free in Obedience: The Radical Christian Life. New York: The Seabury Press, 1967.