Babel, AI, and Covenant: Preserving Human Formation

Churchill’s line, “we shape our buildings, and afterwards our buildings shape us,” sets the frame, but the argument presses deeper: before any tool is built, an anthropology builds the tool. Genesis 11 shows a people settling on a plain and resolving to “make bricks,” “build a city,” and “make a name” to keep themselves together on their own terms. The tower embodies an invisible conviction that life can be constructed without reference to God. God does not come down because the tower is tall, but because the project is proud. Autonomy promises to make a people; ambition ends up unmaking them. Language fractures, community splinters, and a self-made name proves too thin to bear the weight of a soul.

The modern age retells Babel in subtler ways. After the Enlightenment, authority slides from God to the autonomous self. Augustine’s Confessions look up from a restless heart to God; Rousseau’s Confessions look inward to a self presumed innocent and original. Charles Taylor’s “age of authenticity” enthrones expression, so ethics become procedural, community optional, and personhood reduced to function. That is a woefully efficient anthropology, defining humans by cognition and output. Into that thin vision, AI arrives not as an alien invader but as its logical extension. Because it performs near the human mind’s work, it will not only produce outputs; it will produce habits and dependencies. The real danger is not drudgery removed, but formation removed. Struggle is not a bug. Friction is formation.

Sanctification confirms it. Prayer is wrestling. Obedience hardens under heat. Love deepens through endurance. The autonomous self seeks connection without vulnerability and formation without friction, but growth in Christ comes slowly, communally, sacramentally. Even sacred practices bend when autonomy governs: a hand raised in 1650 for communal discernment becomes, by 1850, an insistence on counting one’s individual vote; the Lord’s Supper turns from a shared feast of union into a private performance review.

Acts 2 answers Babel. Power descends rather than humanity ascending. Scattered languages are heard as one gospel. A name is not made but given, and it is the name of Jesus. The Spirit gathers a covenant people who devote themselves to the apostles’ teaching, fellowship, the breaking of bread, and prayers. Membership is not consuming religious products but belonging for mutual formation. As Alistair MacFadyen argues, persons are constituted in relationship. Identity is received, not invented. God says, “I have called you by name.” So three questions remain: What practices are forming a life? Which relationships are being strengthened or thinned? And is life being lived as an autonomous self or as part of a covenant people? The calling in an age of powerful tools is simple and costly: remain profoundly human by the Spirit who names, gathers, and forms in Christ.

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Key Takeaways

• 1. Autonomy builds Babel in the heart Autonomy promises security, fame, and control, yet it shuts God out and leaves people unable to hear one another. The drive to “make a name” apart from God becomes its own judgment, thinning community and thickening pride. God comes down not to swat a skyline but to rescue a people from their self-invented ruin. The antidote is received identity, not manufactured meaning. [36:09]
• 2. Friction is God’s tool for formation Struggle in prayer, obedience under pressure, and love that costs are not glitches to be optimized away. When tools offer to remove the very frictions that make wisdom, souls are streamlined but not strengthened. Formation is slow and communal, not instantaneous and solitary. Resist shortcuts that keep people productive yet unwise. [47:19]
• 3. The Spirit gathers a covenant people Pentecost is the anti-Babel: power descends, languages serve the gospel, and a people are formed around the name of Jesus. The Spirit gives a name and a body, then binds believers to practices that shape desire and judgment. Local church membership becomes concrete belonging for shared discernment, mutual responsibility, and ordinary faithfulness. [54:50]
• 4. Identity is received, not invented A biblical anthropology says persons are constituted in relationship to God and one another, so to belong well is to become deeply human. Thin bonds make thin souls; deep bonds shape durable persons. God names before people perform, and that grace anchors vocation, limits, and joy. Receive the name God gives rather than chasing one that cannot hold. [58:22]
• 5. Use technology without losing humanity AI magnifies an already thin view of the human by rewarding output over wisdom, speed over formation. Tools must remain tools, or they will quietly define who people are and what relationships are for. The charge in an AI age is not fear but fidelity, to remain profoundly human by the Spirit’s forming work. [61:15]

Youtube Chapters

• [00:00] - Welcome
• [29:41] - Gratitude and honoring formation
• [30:27] - Prayer and turning to Babel
• [30:57] - Churchill’s line and shaping tools
• [34:15] - Babel as climax of rebellion
• [35:27] - Reading Genesis 11
• [36:09] - Making a name without God
• [39:55] - Augustine vs Rousseau on the self
• [43:07] - AI as formative technology
• [46:15] - Friction is formation, not a bug
• [49:28] - How individualism reshaped church life
• [53:29] - Pentecost as anti-Babel
• [55:49] - Covenant belonging and membership
• [58:55] - Three questions for discernment
• [61:15] - Called to remain profoundly human

Bible Reading
Genesis 11:1-9 (ESV)
Now the whole earth had one language and the same words. And as people migrated from the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. And they said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly.” And they had brick for stone, and bitumen for mortar. Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth.” And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of man had built. And the Lord said, “Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do. And nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and there confuse their language, so that they may not understand one another’s speech.” So the Lord dispersed them from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city. Therefore its name was called Babel, because there the Lord confused the language of all the earth. And from there the Lord dispersed them over the face of all the earth.

Acts 2:1-12 (ESV)
When the day of Pentecost arrived, they were all together in one place. And suddenly there came from heaven a sound like a mighty rushing wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. And divided tongues as of fire appeared to them and rested on each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance. Now there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, devout men from every nation under heaven. And at this sound the multitude came together, and they were bewildered, because each one was hearing them speak in his own language. And they were amazed and astonished, saying, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us in his own native language? Parthians and Medes and Elamites and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabians—we hear them telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God.” And all were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, “What does this mean?”

Isaiah 43:1 (ESV)
But now thus says the Lord, he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel: “Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine.”

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Observation Questions

1. In Genesis 11:4, the people say, “Let us make a name for ourselves.” What specific fears or desires might have driven their decision to build the tower and city? [36:09]
2. How does the outcome of Babel (confusion and scattering) contrast with the outcome of Pentecost (understanding and gathering) in Acts 2? [53:53]
3. What practices did the early church in Acts 2 prioritize after Pentecost, and how did these practices shape their identity as a community? [54:50]
4. According to Isaiah 43:1, how does God describe His relationship to His people, and how does this contrast with humanity’s attempt to “make a name” in Genesis 11?

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Interpretation Questions

1. Why did God consider the tower of Babel a threat even though it was not yet completed (Genesis 11:6-7)? How does pride in human autonomy undermine God’s design for humanity? [36:37]
2. The sermon argues that “friction is formation.” How do struggles in prayer, obedience, and relationships actually strengthen faith rather than hinder it? [47:19]
3. Acts 2 describes the church as devoting themselves to teaching, fellowship, breaking bread, and prayer. Why might these practices be essential for resisting the individualism of modern culture? [55:49]
4. How does the idea that “identity is received, not invented” (Isaiah 43:1) challenge the modern emphasis on self-creation and expressive individualism? [58:22]

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Application Questions

1. What daily habits or technologies in your life might be “removing friction” in ways that could weaken your spiritual growth (e.g., outsourcing decisions to AI, avoiding hard conversations)? How could you reintroduce healthy struggle? [46:15]
2. The early church prioritized shared meals, prayer, and learning together. What practical step could you take this week to deepen your participation in a covenant community (e.g., hosting a meal, joining a small group, serving consistently)? [56:13]
3. Reflect on a relationship that feels “thin” or superficial. How might intentional presence (e.g., handwritten notes, face-to-face time, unautomated communication) deepen that connection? [59:48]
4. In what areas of life are you tempted to “make a name for yourself” (career, reputation, social media) instead of resting in the identity God has given you? What would it look like to surrender that ambition to Him? [36:09]
5. The sermon warns against reducing ethics to “rules of engagement” rather than a shared mission. Where have you seen this play out in your workplace, family, or church? How could you model a different way? [41:47]
6. Are there areas where you treat faith as a “consumer choice” (e.g., critiquing worship styles, prioritizing preferences over presence)? What would it look like to approach church as a covenant member instead? [52:08]