This story comes from the Old
Testament of the Bible. It’s a story people told to help them think about what
they did.
A long, long time ago, when
the world was new, there weren’t many people around. But gradually people had
children and they grew up and had more children, and they grew up and had more
children, and soon there were people everywhere. And some of those people came
together into a great city called Babel. And they were very clever and very
powerful, and they knew it. They learned to do lots of things. They all spoke the same language, and that
meant that they could understand each other and teach each other what they had
learned.
Now that would have been great
if all the things they said to one another were good things, if all the ideas they
shared were good ideas, ideas that would help people. But they weren’t. What
they mostly talked about was how powerful they were, and how to make sure
everyone knew it.
“We can do anything !” they said to each other – “ so we will!”
One day someone had an idea. “Let’s
build a tower, the biggest tower in the world, a tower that will reach far up
in the sky.
Everyone will think we are
really important, really clever, really powerful. No one will ever dare to
argue with us, because they will see how strong we are. Not even God will dare
to argue with us…”
So they started to build.
They weren’t building a place to live, or a place to work – they were just
building. Taller and taller and taller the tower grew. (The children joined
in with some building actions with enthusiasm) Higher and higher and higher
into the sky it went…
But God saw what they were
doing, and he wasn’t very pleased at all. “They are just building so that they
can impress others, so that others will be frightened of them – never mind how
much it costs, or what a waste of time and effort it is… I can’t let this go on
…”
And God had an idea. All of a
sudden, the next day, while they were all busy building their tower, God made
them all speak different languages, languages they didn’t understand. One
person would be talking to a friend, and suddenly he found that he was talking
in French, but his friend was talking in Spanish. Another would be talking in
Arabic, while her friend was talking in Polish. And no one could understand
anyone.
They tried to carry on
building, but no one knew whether the other one was saying “up a bit” or “down
a bit”, no one knew if their mate was asking for more bricks, or whether it was
time for dinner yet. You can’t build much like that, and pretty soon they had
to stop, and there stood the tower, half-finished while they all babbled away
at each other…
And the Bible says that the
place where all this happened was called Babel – which sounds a bit like
babble, because that’s where different languages started.
The people of Babel learned
that just because you can do something, it doesn’t mean to say you should. We’ve
got lots of power, but we have to think carefully about how we use it. The
people of Babel also learned that often words are the most powerful things we’ve
got. Just because we can say something, it doesn’t mean we should.
We can do almost anything with words – have an
argument, make up after an argument, persuade someone to something they
shouldn’t, or encourage them to do something they should.
Hand out strips of OHP acetate
with the following statements on them.
“Thank you”
“Would you like to play with
me?”
“You can’t share it, it’s
mine”
“Let’s all gang up on her”
“He looks really stupid –
pass it on…”
“I’m sorry I hurt you.”
Get the children to read
them out, and then say whether they think they are kind or unkind – words that
we should say or words that we shouldn’t…
Arrange on an OHP sheet
with Kind and Unkind printed on it. This could just as well be done using cards
and a large sheet to stick them on.
The people of Babel learned
that just because you can do something doesn’t necessarily mean you should do
it. We need to think carefully before we do something or say something and ask
ourselves whether it is kind or unkind, whether it will build something good or
bad.
Prayer – that we should remember that just because we can do
something doesn’t mean we should. That God would help us to think about the
things we say to make sure they are kind and not unkind.
Following the assembly,
the deputy head said to the children that she hoped during the day that
children would come to her to tell her the kind words other children had said
to them (which some did straight after the assembly. One little boy came up to
me to tell me that it was a good story, which was kind of him, so I told him
so!)
We also had a very
remarkable question from one Y1 child who asked, and I quote, “Where was the
city of Babel located…?” I explained
that we didn’t know whether there ever was a city of Babel, or whether it was
just an imaginary city, and that people might have been thinking of the city of
Babylon, because it was very big and powerful. I also explained that the
stories in the Bible weren’t all things that actually happened, but that some
were just told to help people think about important things. It was an
extraordinarily perceptive and intelligent question from a child of 6! I hope
he was satisfied with the answer…
