In Genesis 11:1-4, the residents on the plains of Shinar built themselves a great city with a very tall tower that was to reach “into heaven.” It was to keep them from being scattered throughout the earth and to “make a name for themselves” that everyone else would have to look up to. Obviously, they wanted to be looked up to! Don’t we all? Larry Richards observes, “It’s a very natural thing to want to be appreciated as men and women of God, and to be looked up to with respect. It’s healthy to want to be a leader.” Unfortunately, many times we want the respect and appreciation of others for the wrong reasons. We want people to look up to us so that we can look down on them. I expect this is one of the many sins at Babel.
For some reason Christians often measure each other by the severity of their lifestyles. We look down on those who eat when we fast. Who’s lives are different than our own and we build our own tower of babel to put ourselves above others. This was the major problem of the religious leaders in Jesus’ day. They practiced a public kind of piety expecting to be honored and respected by the rabble around them. Jesus often confronted the “super-spiritual” for their pride and arrogant opinion of themselves.
Jesus taught us not to call each other exalted names like rabbi, teacher, master or father (Matthew 23:8-12). He did not want us to put others as inappropriate mediators between us and Himself. It’s often been said that the ground is level at the foot of the Cross. And that applies to us all. It should be obvious in church as well for all of us are equal in Christ. When we go to church it should be clear that here “there is no Greek or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, male or female” (Colossians 3:11) and we could go on. You see Christ is all and is in us all. Charles Bugg wrote, “the church exists for everybody because we are brought into the community of faith not by our goodness but by God’s grace and forgiveness. The Bible is clear: “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God” (Rom. 3:23, NIV). Our sins may be different, but we have all sinned. Our failures may be our own, but our faith is the same in Christ. The ground is level at the cross. When we come to Him, we come to each other. That is true community.”