“The Lord confused the language of all the earth.”
The confusion of language keeps us from building towers of ideological abstraction. In this, we can agree with the ‘deconstructionist’ philosophers who warn us away from discourse that gives no room to the ‘Other’.
‘Mixing’ the language (Hebrew: balal) moves in the opposite direction of purity, which is what God is seeking in our hearts. In this way, we can see that the confusion of languages and cultures is a gift from God to help us see the impurity, confusion and mixed motives of our own hearts. When we are unable to see this, we are overly confident in our ability to conceive grand schemes to unite peoples. But our impure hearts neglect to consider the violence required to do this ‘uniting’ without God.
The fact that others speak unintelligible tongues is an invitation for us to see them precisely as ‘Other’, to recognize that other persons are not projections of my own will. Making others intelligible to me is an invitation to go out of myself, to learn the patient ways of attentiveness. When in public debate all are saying the same thing, this frequently conceals some kind of violence, usually happening ‘offstage’.