Construction and Conceit
Think of all the wacky things car folks have done to big American sedans over the years: Corvette engines, forced induction, trick suspensions, and maybe some fuzzy dice. A couple decades ago, Cadillac recognized the effort and created the first LS1-powered CTS-V. Now, two V generations and an additional 228 horsepower later, they’ve done it again (perhaps for the last time) with the CT5-V Blackwing.
The Big Wing was a General Motors collaboration: GM’s fantastic Alpha platform, which was the underpinning for the previous ATS-V and CTS-V; much of the components of the auto-only 2016 CTS-V (including its supercharged 6.2-liter engine, which is made on the Corvette assembly line in Bowling Green, Kentucky); Brembo brakes; a Tremec manual transmission; model-specific Michelin Pilot Sport 4S tires; Cadillac magnetorheological dampers… and some Chevy Spark interior pieces. The result is a scorching 11.4-second quarter mile run and a 200+ mph top speed, all for around $100,000.
But millennia earlier, when 668 horsepower required 668 actual horses, a different kind of collaboration was taking place, yet with a similar goal of power and domination: “They they said, ‘Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of the whole earth.’” (Genesis 11:4)
The Bible records countless stories of people working together to bring meaningful good to the lives of people around them. The Tower of Babel isn’t one of them. It wasn’t a tower to protect people who had no other means of protecting themselves, or to provide shelter for people without homes. The language actually suggests its able-bodied builders, not content to create mere shelters for themselves, put in extra work to live in luxury and glory. By using their God-given abilities to try and reach God’s level without showing the love and compassion of God, they insulted God.
They got it wrong. God doesn’t ask people to reach him. He comes down to our level, forgiving us and showing us how to live and love. Just 17 chapters later, Jacob dreamed of the stairway to (or from) heaven, where God came to him and promised him just how much goodness he could expect from God (Genesis 28:10-22). In response, Jacob made this promise: “Of all that you give me I will give you a tenth.” (v. 22)
Juxtaposed against the Tower of Babel, Jacob’s stairway shows what collaboration should look like: God collaborates with his people, promising to provide them with more than enough of what is needed to live the life he has designed for them, including more than enough resources to be generous to people who need it. Today, roughly one billion people live on less than $1 a day. Millions die from a lack of basic necessities like clean drinking water and food. Meanwhile, dozens of organizations could improve the lives of every last one of them if people in developed countries were more generous. Imagine if more Christ followers today gave away just a tenth of all God has given them.
Because God came down in love and empowerment, his followers can respond collaboratively and love and empower other people. Without that generosity, any effort to build, create, and collaborate is like the skyscraping idol of Babel.
Cadillac has been quite vocal that future V models will be electrified to some degree (considering the unfortunate ELR, Cadillac’s latest fully electric car, they may want to collaborate with the good electric propulsion engineers within the GM family). Knowing Cadillac, it will be a tire-smoking beast. But for the first time, it will also point toward a future that glorifies God just a little more by polluting just a little less.
