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Find the answers to all those questions you were too embarrassed to ask in Sunday School. Welcome to Weird Stuff in the Bible, where we explore scripture passages that are bizarre, perplexing or just plain weird. Hosted by Luke Taylor.
Dive deeper! Sign up for the newsletter (and catch up on past newsletters) at this link: https://weirdstuffinthebible.beehiiv.com/
The Bricks of Babel: Why it’s OK to be a Weird Christian
Genesis 11
Introduction
Welcome to Weird Stuff in the Bible, where we explore scripture passages that are bizarre, perplexing or just plain weird. This is Luke Taylor, and today will be a little different, a little more reflective.
It’s the 150th episode of the podcast; we just had our third anniversary of the show last week, which I celebrated by sharing an interview with Kip Farrar (pronounced Fara like Farrah Fawcett). Today I wanted to give a short Bible study on the bricks of Babel, followed by some reflection on what it means to be a weird Christian.
We’ve been covering the Tower of Babel for the past month on the podcast. The Tower of Babel was monumental to world history. It has ramifications throughout the rest of Scripture.
And yet—the Bible is surprisingly sparse on the details of what’s going on here. It’s the origin of Babylon, it’s a globalist rebellion against God, it’s the reason for all the various languages of the world— and it gets less than 10 verses in chapter 11 of Genesis about this event.
And of what little we are told in the Bible, we’re given this verse:
Genesis 11:3
3 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.
So it talks about the bricks which were used to build both the city and the tower. Whereas I wanted to hear more about how Nimrod became a gigas or giant, that’s not what Scripture focuses on. But it does tell us about the bricks.
But you know what? The bricks might actually be the most applicable verse of the whole story. Turn to Genesis 11 with me to learn about the Bricks of Babel and why it’s OK to be weird.
[theme music]
Motifs of Babel
The Genesis 11 Tower of Babel story is a lot like Genesis 6, which is the chapter where the Bible tells us about the pre-flood world and the Sons of God and all they did.
They’re similar in that they were a watershed moment in human history. They had ramifications throughout the Bible, in our modern world, and even in the end times scenario of the future.
They’re also similar in that we know there was more to the story than what Scripture says. Now, with Genesis 6, at least we have the Book of Enoch to give us more information about what was going on back then. But we don’t have an equivalent account about the Tower of Babel. That’s why I was piecing various things together on the recent episodes of the podcast.
Now, you can go overboard with stuff like that, which is why I was trying to be careful about not taking any extrabiblical accounts at face value. But you do start to see a lot of overlap when you line up various ancient stories about Nimrod and Babel, and that’s what I shared on this past weekend’s newsletter. And for today’s episode, I’ll pretty much just stick to the Bible, because I want to talk about the place of Babel in the story the Bible is telling. It appears that Nimrod was a rebel against God who wanted to take over the world and even overthrow heaven itself.
Now, Scripture doesn’t outright say this, but there are some suggestions or hints. First of all, Nimrod’s name means “rebel.” Now, some might say that doesn’t mean anything because Nimrod didn’t choose his own name, right? Unless he did choose his own name, but most people get their names from their parents. However, it’s often a theme in Scripture that peoples’ names reflect their purpose or characteristics.
So, you know, maybe you’ve seen that Transformers movie where the government is trying to decide whether they can trust the Decepticons. And John Cena is like, “They’re literally called Decepticons.” Well, I think the Bible is similarly trying to clue us in on Nimrod’s character with his name: he’s literally called “Rebel.”
Another reason Nimrod seems to be portrayed as a rebel against God is that he’s not doing what God said to do after the flood. When Noah got off the Ark in Genesis 9, God said to him
(In verse 1)
“Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.”
“Fill” right there means to spread out, expand, grow. And yet Nimrod didn’t do that; he started building a kingdom and tried to unite all people in one place.
So we have the name element, and we have the city element, and we also have the “east” element. Babel’s story begins this way:
Genesis 11:1-2
Now the whole earth had one language and the same words. 2 And as people migrated from the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there.
Another subtle clue there; this phrase “the east.” The east is a motif in scripture relating to estrangement from God. Adam and Eve departed Eden from the East. Cain left his family after killing Abel and headed East. Lot left Abraham and headed East toward Sodom.
And of course, this motif finds its fulfillment in Christ, who ascended on the Mount of Olives east of Jerusalem—and as we’ve covered already this year, He will return to this exact mountain and destroy it when He comes back to deal with rebellion at His Second Coming.
And at the beginning of the Tower of Babel story, it says the people came from the east.
And then it says this in verse 4:
4 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.”
Essentially creating a one-world government. They don’t want to be dispersed or spread out across the whole earth. But, of course, that’s exactly what God told them to do.
Uniting all the peoples of the world is a globalist agenda. And this goes all the way back to Babel.
And it will also be the plan of the future Antichrist in the end times. He will be a globalist. An attempted globalist; he won’t have 100% support of all nations, but he’ll have an empire that essentially rules the world for seven years. And his capital is called…Babylon.
Is that literal or symbolic? Not sure. But either way, the point is clear: this globalist agenda started with Babel in Genesis 11, it will continue until the end of the world in Revelation, and we see it playing out right now among the movers and shakers of the world governments today. The United Nations. The World Economic Forum.
And this brings us back to that verse about the bricks again.
The Bricks of Babel
Genesis 11:3
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.
A couple things going on with these bricks. One, they were burnt bricks. I brought this up a few episodes ago, but God seems to be referring to this when He’s pronouncing judgment on Babylon in Jeremiah 51:25. He says He will (quote) “make you a burnt mountain.”
And yet Babylon has no mountain. The plain of Shinar is a plain. What is the mountain of Babylon? I believe it’s the false mountain or ziggurat of Babel. God says He’ll turn it into a burnt mountain; same Hebrew word for the “burnt” bricks of Genesis 11:3. The judgment that God wants to place on Babylon goes all the way back to this tower.
Another interesting detail about these bricks is the bitumen for mortar. This is similar to the mortar used by Noah to build the ark in Genesis 6:14—even though it’s a different Hebrew word—so some have proposed the idea that they wanted this tower to be tall enough to withstand a flood if God were to ever send another one. I’m not sure if that’s the case, but that’s the idea that a lot of interpreters bring up. The Jewish historian Josephus made that point explicitly.
And then one more thing I’d like to bring up is the motif of bricks in the Bible. The idea of bricks is that all of the pieces are the same. Interchangeable. One worth no more or is no more unique than the other. The motif of bricks in the Bible is the idea that it’s something man is building. Something worldly. Something by human effort.
When the Israelites were slaves in Egypt, they were forced to build bricks (Exodus 1:14, 5:17-19). When Nebuchadnezzar was expanding Babylon, he wanted every brick that was fashioned to bear his name. That idea of using the bricks to make a name for yourself endured.
Now don’t misunderstand me; when I say motif, I’m not building doctrine or moral imperatives on it. I’m not saying it’s wrong to build with bricks or live in cities or move toward the east. These are just literary techniques that the Bible uses to draw our attention to certain details. And we should pay attention to the details because every detail is in the Bible for a reason.
Now let’s go back to talking about globalism. When the EU formed, they created a poster that read “Europe: Many Tongues. One Voice.” And the poster was an image of the Tower of Babel. I’m going to link to this image in the show notes if you’d like to see it yourself; or you can just google “Europe: Many Tongues, One Voice” to pull it up yourself.
https://weirdstuffinthebible.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/europe-many-tongues-one-voice.jpg
But for those who can’t see it: it’s an image of the unfinished Tower of Babel, with a circle of stars above it representing the flag of the European Union, and in the bottom right it says “Europe: Many Tongues. One Voice.”
So here’s what I want to say about this poster. They used this image to promote the new EU. They made it themselves; this is what they wanted to do. This is not a parody by Christians or a fever dream of conspiracy theorists. The European Union literally created this themselves.
How fascinating that the image they chose to use for this poster was a symbol of human rebellion? The Tower of Babel. Now I’ll note: in the poster, it’s not a ziggurat; it’s the design of the Tower of Babel based off of the popular painting from the 1500s, the circular tower that most people imagine in their heads when they think of the Tower of Babel. So they got that detail wrong, but the meaning is clear. It’s a symbol of shaking your fist at God. A symbol of saying, “We don’t care what you say, God, we’ll do what we want.”
Interestingly, the European Union Parliament building in Strasbourg, France, is designed the same way: like an unfinished Tower of Babel.
Not only that, Babel was the place where God mixed up the languages, right? The poster reads “many tongues; one voice.” Wow.
One more thing of note—this is so fascinating to me—the people are made of blocks. Look closely at them if you’re looking at the poster. They look like Minecraft characters. They’re all bricks so they can slide together to build this tower. A tower of pride and rebellion. They imagined the people as bricks. What does it communicate about their view of humans that they imagine them as interchangeable bricks—each one no more unique or special than another?
The spirit of Babel endures, and that’s how Babel sees you.
Jesus Made You Weird on Purpose
My question for you today is this: Are you a brick?
A number? A manufactured piece of construction material. A replaceable chunk of rock. A brick.
That’s how Babel sees you. But is that how Jesus sees you? I don’t think so. I think Jesus sees you as a weirdo.
Now, that sounds negative, because most of us don’t want to be labeled as weird, right? We want to fit in, to be like everyone else. To be accepted.
And yet Scripture says that Jesus did not make you to be accepted or fit in or to be like everyone else. Jesus made you for a particular purpose that’s different from other peoples’ purposes. Jesus made you to be you, and not anyone else.
I want to talk about that today, for those of you who feel like weirdos. I have two simple points I want to make.
#1. Jesus made you weird on purpose
#2. Jesus made you weird for a purpose
First point: why do I say Jesus made you weird on purpose?
Psalm 139:13-14
For you formed my inward parts;
you knitted me together in my mother's womb.
I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
From the time that you were conceived, Scripture says God was knitting you together. He was writing the code of your DNA. No birth is an accident, no matter how you were conceived. God opens the womb. God allows each life to be created.
Jeremiah 1:5
“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,
and before you were born I consecrated you;”
God formed you. God had a plan for you from before you were born. And God set you apart. That’s what consecrated means: set apart. What does “set apart” mean? Different. Unique. Not like everyone else. Weird.
And God forms us in two ways: One is in your physical body. God decided how tall you would be, what color your hair would be, where you’d be born, who your parents would be…
And that brings me to the second way God forms you: through your experiences. God allows you to go through things. They aren’t like what everyone else goes through. Because God’s not using their lives for the same thing He’s using your life for. You’re different. You’re supposed to be. God has shaped you through the things you went through before. And God’s doing that through what you’re doing right now.
You don’t have to feel lesser than others because your experiences may be worse than things other people had to go through.
I get a little down on myself sometimes because I compare myself to others and I say, “Why do they get these opportunities when I don’t? Why do they get away with these things when I can’t? Why do they get to go over there when I feel stuck over here? Why does it looks like it comes so easy for them when it feels so hard for me?” I’ll be honest, sometimes I’ve thought God must not like me very much since my life story feels so derailed sometimes from what I thought it should be.
Those thoughts are wrong. Scripture shows me that my story is not their story. I’m set apart. I’m consecrated on purpose. My life isn’t supposed to look like everyone else’s. God is forming me.
Those thoughts are the voice of the enemy. He is the one who wants us living by comparison. The devil is desperate to tell you who you should be. And too often, that’s the voice we listen to. The devil is the one that wants you to conform to this world. The devil is the one who wants to smash you into a brick and take away anything that makes you special.
But the devil didn’t die for you. Jesus did, and you are who He says you are.
I recently finished Christine Caine’s autobiography Undaunted. She’s a Greek woman who started a ministry to help people escape human trafficking. Christine tells a story about how she found out she was adopted by her parents in her 30s. Her parents had never told her she was adopted because they were afraid it would give her an inferiority complex. But she found out anyway in her 30s. And her mom is standing there begging forgiveness for not telling her sooner.
In her book she says that at that moment, she felt a strong conviction to stand and say, “Before I was formed in my mother's womb…whosever’s womb that was- God knew me. He knitted together my innermost parts and fashioned all of my days before there was even one of them. I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Even though I've only just found out that I was adopted, God has always known, and he has always loved me. And since that has never changed, therefore essentially nothing has changed. I may not be who I thought I was, but I still am who he says I am.” (Undaunted, page 39)
We compare ourselves, often, to other people in our field. If you’re a leader, you compare yourself to the best leaders in the world and you try to be like them. And I’m not saying you can’t learn things from them, but God didn’t call you to be them. He called you to be you.
And if you do have confidence in yourself, it shouldn’t be rooted in comparing yourself to others and thinking you’re better than them. That’s the wrong kind of confidence. Your confidence should stem from the fact that God knows who you are, He knows everything you’ve gone through, and He will empower you to do what He’s called you to do.
Paul said in I Corinthians 15:9
But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain.
You don’t have to be confident that you’re better than others. You have to be confident that God knew what He was doing when He called you to where you are, and that His grace is not in vain.
And once you’re secure in your identity in Christ, you are free to be yourself. We’re often afraid to be ourselves around others because we think, “If I let other people know ‘the real me,’ they’ll reject me.”
And maybe sometimes they will. But often the thing that’s special about you is exactly what other people need.
This podcast I do is not for everybody. And that’s OK. I don’t make it for everybody. Most Christians probably want more typical Bible studies on the parables of Jesus or fruit of the Spirit. And those have their place; I’m reading a book on the fruit of the Spirit right now. Someone’s not a bad Christian if they don’t want this kind of content. But I make this podcast to talk about the stranger parts of the Bible. And that is what some people are looking for.
Many Christians don’t really care about untangling some of the most mysterious passages in Scripture. They’re fine with just focusing on the parts they do understand. That’s great. If that’s how you connect with God, that’s wonderful. For me, it really builds my faith when the Lord leads me to answers that solve these mysteries. And I make this podcast to share the things I’ve found.
I probably shouldn’t throw so many superhero or Star Wars references in here. I’m trying to tone that down a little bit, to be honest. But to some extent, I kinda just have to be myself and who God’s made me to be.
Last year I went through a time period where I was an interim pastor at a local church for a few months. And as I was considering doing this while they were doing a search for their next pastor, I was thinking: I don’t know how to be a senior pastor. This church has hundreds of people. I know my Bible but I’ve never been a leader of that many people before. And I’m kind of a clown. Should I just try to fake it? Should I just try to pretend to be someone I’m not so that they accept me?
And I decided no, that’s too much energy to try to be someone else or fit someone’s mold. God called me. I’m going to be myself. I’m going to say what’s on my heart. I’m going to love them from my genuine heart. I’m going to just chase after God and speak to them out of the overflow of what’s on my heart.
And I probably made too many Star Wars jokes there, too. But you know what? It went great. Some of the best months of my entire life. Jesus made you who you are on purpose. He didn’t create you the way you are and give you all the unique experiences you’ve had just for you to fit some mold. Jesus couldn’t have cared less about fitting peoples’ molds. He wasn’t faking anything. He was Himself. He created you to be yourself. You’re not supposed to be like everyone else. You’re supposed to be weird.
For all the weirdos out there, I want you to know: Jesus made you weird on purpose.
Jesus made you weird For a Purpose
But that’s only half the equation. You are set apart, but you aren’t set alone.
Jesus made you weird for a purpose.
We each have a purpose in the body of Christ. And being part of the body means part of a whole.
Romans 12:4-6
4 For as in one body we have many members [and the use of this word “members” means body parts], and the members do not all have the same function, 5 so we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another. 6 Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us…
Look at that: we are each different. We have different gifts. We have our own purposes as parts of the body.
If you want to grow in Christ, you have to be part of a church. I don’t want to hear that because I’m very individualistic. I’m very introverted. I love the church, but I’d also love to think I can just do it all on my own. I’d love to think I can just hear directly from God and that that’s good enough.
But Scripture shows that God can speak to us directly, and also that God speaks to us through other people. And we don’t get to tell God how He’s allowed to speak to us. We have to position ourselves to hear from Him however He wants to speak. I love this quote from Banning Liebscher’s book Rooted; it says “God doesn’t bypass discipleship just because we don’t want to be in it.” (Page 200). That’s a great quote. God established discipleship for your life. He doesn’t give you a pass just because you don’t want it.
If you try to do it all on your own, you’re depriving yourself of the gifts of others and the way they can speak into your life. You’re only going to hear from God part-time instead of full-time.
And since you’re unique, you’re also depriving them of the things you can speak into their life. And God will judge us for not participating in what He’s called us to. You’re part of a body. We benefit each other.
My pastor likes to say, “If you were walking down the sidewalk and saw a finger lying there, nobody says, ‘oh cool, a finger.’ You say, ‘Where is the rest of the body?!?!’”
We are not created to function by ourselves. Jesus created and formed us to be part of a body.
Not all body parts are the same. A body made out of fingers or eyes or noses would not live very long. And it would look pretty gross. It’d probably look like one of those freaky angels we read about in Ezekiel. We’re all different so we can coexist with and sustain each other.
We are not a tower of bricks; we are a Temple of the Holy Spirit.
I Peter 2:5 says
you yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.
A temple made not with hands but being pieced together by God.
If you’ve been listening to this podcast since January of 2025—then first of all, you’re definitely a weirdo—and second of all, you might remember an episode I did about when Jesus told Peter “You are the rock, and on this rock I will build my church.” And you might remember that there are two Greek words at play there: Petros and Petra.
Christ is the big rock. Peter is a little rock. We’re all little rocks. Built on the big rock.
Michael Lake says in his book The Shinar Directive: “While the Tower of Babel was made of bricks, their use for an altar to God is forbidden in Scripture (Deuteronomy 27:5). God requires uncut stones for His altar because it represents the body of Christ and the power of our sanctified uniqueness in its construction. Nimrod and the spirit of Babylon demand conformity, uniformity, and interchangeability.” (The Shinar Directive, page 111)
We’re not all the same, but we all fit together. We are uncut stones. What is an uncut stone? It means natural stones. Not stones that were chiseled and refashioned to fit together like Lego blocks. Stones that were formed by nothing but the forces of nature; or in other words, God.
You are not a mistake because of your experiences. Your experiences have shaped you and made you the person God wants you to be. You didn’t have control over most of it. But all things work together for the good of those who love God, who are CALLED according to His (what? His) PURPOSE. (Romans 8:28)
Perhaps you say, “Luke, you don’t understand, I’ve done some boneheaded things in my life.” I promise you, God knew you were a bonehead when He called you. Repent of it. Move on. Don’t live in the past but reach forward for what’s ahead.
There’s a lot of people in the Bible who did boneheaded things, and God was still able to use them.
Now, there was this guy named Moses who struck the rock and so he ended up dying; he didn’t get to enter the Promised Land. So I do believe you can strike the rock and blow it. I’m not saying you can’t totally derail God’s plans for your life.
But if you’re worried that’s you, let me ask: how long ago did you strike the rock? Are you still here? Did God kill you? If not, I’d say God has kept you around because He’s not done with you yet.
And maybe your story doesn’t look like everybody else’s, but it’s not supposed to. You’re not a brick.
Jesus made weird you on purpose. And He made weird you for a purpose.
So I hope you’re OK with being a little more weird today, too.
This has been Luke Taylor. God bless you all for listening to 150 episodes. We’ll be back next week with more Weird Stuff in the Bible.
