Babel's Failure: A Failure of Self-Efficacy or Motivation?
- Ashley Diehl
- Oct 2, 2018
- 4 min read
This post argues that the descendants of Noah did not fail to build the Tower of Babel due to a lack of self-efficacy or effort but due to their motivations for building the tower in the first place. How can this lesson be applied to therapy?
Genesis 11:1-9, ESV
Now the whole earth had one language and the same words. And as people migrated from the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. 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. 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.” And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of man had built. And the LORD said, “Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do. And nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and there confuse their language, so that they may not understand one another's speech.” So the LORD dispersed them from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city. Therefore its name was called Babel, because there the LORD confused the language of all the earth. And from there the LORD dispersed them over the face of all the earth.
Honest question: How many people can personally relate to the disappointment that Noah’s descendants must have felt after their failed attempt to build the tower of Babel? An odd thought, I know. But those people worked so hard to make their idea a reality. They settled and made a home, they had a plan, they made bricks, and they collaborated with each other. Their self-efficacy ratings were through the roof! But it is clear to the reader that they held misaligned motivations.
Photo by Jeremy Bishop on Unsplash
Self-Efficacy and Motivation
The concept of self-efficacy is a psychology model that fits within positive psychology. It refers to an individual’s belief in his or her capacity to execute behaviours necessary to produce specific performance attainments (Bandura, 1977, 1986, 1997). But as we see above, the outcome of a goal is not solely dependent on a belief or the capacity to execute a behaviour. Motivation, or the reason for acting or behaving in a particular way, seems to have a unique impact on the outcome of a specific goal.
Considering the story of the Babel, how do we as clinicians believe change occurs in therapy? To what end does self-efficacy and motivation for change impact the outcome? Therapy can often have a similar step by step approach, which can be simplified as: Problem + Technique + Effort = Happy Client. We may regard the client’s motivation for change as an afterthought once things do not go as planned.
As a Mental Health Clinician fresh off the boat, I often find myself relating my cases back to the books. “This sounds like a typical case of such and such — how providential! I have just the treatment modality for this very situation!” However, in follow-up therapy sessions the client may not report back with positive news after completing the homework. In fact, the client may return week after week with the same chief complaint. First and foremost I have overlooked the reality that my client is not a sample textbook case. But even further, I have not examined my client’s self-efficacy in relation to their motivation to come to therapy in the first place.
What can we learn from the descendants of Noah?
Scripture is not shy about the subject of motives of the heart. The Bible speaks about how man’s motivates, even with the best intentions, may be short sighted (Proverbs 16:2). The thoughts and intensions of the heart are not always clear, and often are misaligned with God’s (Hebrews 4:12). And like the builders of the Tower of Babel, perhaps the underlying motivation for accomplishing a goal is directly in opposition to the Word of God. There is no doubt that the descendants of Noah had the self-efficacy to believe that their efforts would end in tangible results. It wasn’t for their lack of effort or lack of skill that caused them to fail; but what we see in Scripture is that despite their self-efficacy, their motivation was wrong, and ultimately that was what determined the fate of their tower. Similarly, every client has different motivations and those motivations have a significant impact on the success of their therapy - despite the formula, change is ultimately determined by motivation.
How could we apply this to our counseling practice: both in regards to the motivations of our clients and to our own motivations as clinicians? This prompts me to ask, what towers have I built out of misaligned motivations?
References
Bandura, A. (1977). Self-efficacy: Toward a unifying theory of behavioral change. Psychological Review, 84 (2), 191-215.
Bandura, A. (1986). Social foundations of thought and action: A social cognitive theory. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Bandura, A. (1997). Self-Efficacy: The exercise of control. New York, NY: W. H. Freeman.
Motivation | Definition of motivation in English by Oxford Dictionaries, (n.d.). Retrieved October 1, 2018, from https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/motivation
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of other Therapy and Theology contributors.
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