蜜芽传媒

Like many English speakers, my command of other languages is woefully poor. My conversational French is probably at the level of a five-year-old. Just use an English word with a French accent, I was once told, which is why, looking for the light in a toilet in Paris, I asked a French waiter, ou est le lit? Where is the bed? I鈥檓 humbled by people willing to make mistakes and fumble for meaning, speaking unfamiliar languages in their desire to communicate.

Today, Christians worldwide celebrate Pentecost. The New Testament tells us that the Holy Spirit came upon Christ鈥檚 followers as a rushing wind and tongues of fire, and they all began to speak in different languages. When the crowds from many cultures gathered in Jerusalem heard them, they were amazed to hear their own languages being spoken. Some laughed and said the speakers had been drinking, to which Peter replied that they couldn鈥檛 be drunk, because it was only nine o鈥檆lock in the morning. That always amuses me.

Pentecost is a contrast to the story of the Tower of Babel. The Book of Genesis recounts a time when the entire world spoke with one language. The people said, 鈥楥ome, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves; otherwise we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth.鈥欌�� God thwarted their ambition by confusing their language so that they couldn鈥檛 understand one another,
saying, 鈥淚f as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them.鈥� This suggests a divine constraint on the dangers of unbridled human power.

The story of Babel can be read as a caution against every form of totalitarianism or imperialism that seeks domination through the elimination of difference. The fact that native English speakers don鈥檛 have to bother learning other languages has much to do with the British Empire鈥檚 imposition of a single language on its colonial subjects, which is why English is the most widely spoken language today.

There are still those who, like the people in the story of Babel, seek power through different forms of nationalism and populism that value uniformity over diversity. But such uniformity is not unity, for it can only be achieved by violence and force. Unity can accommodate diversity, for it finds common ground not in the imposition of sameness but in the celebration of difference. Pentecost invites us to enjoy the freedom of allowing ourselves to be enriched by the glorious abundance of the human family in all its colours, languages and cultures.

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