The Tower of Babel

[Vicki Q]

I can see why you might have gone there with the question, but it's not the idea. It happens that one of the implications of the story is a constant theme throughout the OT and NT. It is that disobeying God, in general, ends in tears, one way or the other.

Ask Job from the bible or those nine people that Dylan Roof shot down in that church in South Carolina, they'll tell you bad things happen to people who obey god, too. There's no statistically significant difference in what happens to people who obey god and those who don't.

To begin with, couple of minor corrections.

Firstly, because Job stuck with God, his story finished up very happy indeed “the Lord restored his fortunes and gave him twice as much as he had before...The Lord blessed the latter part of Job’s life more than the former part”.

Secondly, on your statistical claim, 
a) religious people live about 4 years longer than their atheist/agnostic peers.  Link 
b) religious people tend to be happier. Link

We may be naïve and deluded, but we're happier and we get to annoy the pensions people more.



However none of that is relevant to the big problem- you've rather misunderstood what I said. To suggest a strong correlation between following God and being fortunate would be obvious nonsense. I did think my explaining skills were adequate, but since people are misreading on an ongoing basis it appears not. So, let's try again:

'Adam' ate at the wrong restaurant and it went badly. Noah obeyed God in building an Ikea ark, and it went well for him. Israel, depending on how well it behaved, kept going through a cycle of sin/exile/forgiveness/restoration.

Following the return from Babylonian exile, it was expected that the Kingdom would be restored to Israel. But along comes Jesus who says, “The Kingdom is no longer about the Jewish people occupying a bit of land, it's going global. This is the new way of obeying God. Follow me, and be part of the Kingdom; you get to be resurrected into a fully functional creation. Don't follow me, and you won't.”


That's what I mean by obeying God ending well, disobeying God not ending well.