Read Pastor Meeter’s fascinating thoughts on the moral issues surrounding the Atlantic Yards controversy. Meeter, the pastor of the Old First Dutch Reformed Church, evokes the Tower of Babel, the Garden of Eden, and Naboth’s Vineyard. Read more at Pastor Meeter’s blog, yes he’s a member of Park Slope’s blogging clergy (see Andy Bachman,too).

The moral issue is what kind of country do we want? What kind of
concentrations of power? What protections of private property? Who
determines the public good, especially when the differences in scale
are so great, and the government is drawn to the interests of the
economically powerful? In the Torah, the public good is determined by
the interests of the small piece of private property.

The second Biblical image is the Tower of Babel. It’s in Genesis 11. The Torah is pretty clear on this. God was against it.

Not
because God is against big buildings and skyscrapers as such, but
because of the concentration of power which the Tower represents. Such
concentrations always require hierarchies, and bosses, and dictators,
and centralizations, and the sublimation of the individual to the
vision of the leadership.

The second reason that God was against
the Tower is because it represents the refusal to accept our limits. We
don’t know when to stop. We don’t know how to say No, Enough.

It’s not wholly different from the original sin of Adam in the Garden. The chance to not
eat the fruit is what made Adam a human being, and the opportunity to
say no to the fruit is what gave him wisdom. He had to use his
judgment. He had to accept his limits.