world so that they might learn to respect the other and to learn humility. John Howard Yoder observes that the “confusion” of Babel is such only when measured against the simplicity of an imperially enforced uniformity: “Thus the ‘confusion of tongues’ is not a punishment or a tragedy but the gift of new beginnings, liberation from a blind alley” (1994a, 63). Yet the gift of difference was, like all gifts, capable of being perverted by us. The humility required to know others like us but different
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