Let’s reflect a little more on the story we read today, from Exodus 32:1-8. Let’s look at it in the Message version:
When the people realised that Moses was taking forever in coming down off the mountain, they rallied around Aaron and said, “Do something. Make gods for us who will lead us. That Moses, the man who got us out of Egypt—who knows what’s happened to him?” So Aaron told them, “Take off the gold rings from the ears of your wives and sons and daughters and bring them to me.” They all did it; they removed the gold rings from their ears and brought them to Aaron. He took the gold from their hands and cast it in the form of a calf, shaping it with an engraving tool. The people responded with enthusiasm: “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up from Egypt!” Aaron, taking in the situation, built an altar before the calf. Aaron then announced, “Tomorrow is a feast day to God!” Early the next morning, the people got up and offered Whole-Burnt-Offerings and brought Peace-Offerings. The people sat down to eat and drink and then began to party. It turned into a wild party! God spoke to Moses, “Go! Get down there! Your people whom you brought up from the land of Egypt have fallen to pieces. In no time at all they’ve turned away from the way I commanded them: They made a molten calf and worshiped it. They’ve sacrificed to it and said, ‘These are the gods, O Israel, that brought you up from the land of Egypt!’ ”
This tragic episode vividly demonstrates the tendency that we humans have - to revise God into being what we want Him to be. Notice that Aaron announced, ‘a festival to the Lord’. In His thinking, even though a calf was being worshipped, that act of worship could be incorporated into the worship of the one True God who had delivered him and the people from Egypt. The calf represented God on their terms. Aaron was so wrong. God had repeatedly made it clear that he would be received and worshiped only on His terms.
Sociologist Emil Durkheim says, ‘Every tribe or society invents a god who reflects its values, standards, aspirations, hopes, ambitions and attitudes and then worships it - thus legitimating its own standards of behaviour’.
The temptation is especially strong in our day, because we live in a relativist culture - where truth is considered to be a personal thing (we talk about ‘my truth’ and ‘your truth’, when in fact there is only truth or falsehood - something is either true, or it is not!
Attempts at being clear about truth are scoffed at. It has been twenty five years since the late Allan Bloom (formerly a professor at the University of Chicago) shook the intellectual elite in the USA with the opening line of his book, ‘The Closing of the American Mind’:
‘There is one thing a professor can be absolutely certain of: almost every student in America believes, or says he believes, that truth is relative.’
At a recent gathering of seminary professors, one teacher reported that at his school the most damaging charge one student can lodge against another is that the person is being ‘judgmental.’ He found this pattern very upsetting. ‘You can't get a good argument going in class anymore,’ he said. ‘As soon as somebody takes a stand on any important issue, someone else says that the person is being judgmental. And that's it. End of discussion. Everyone is intimidated!’
Let’s consider some of the ‘God revisions’ that we can be tempted with. Archbishop William Temple warns, ‘The more distorted a persons’ idea of God, and the more passionately committed they are to it, the more damage they will do…’
- The God of my cause: ’He always agrees with me about what is important!
- The God of my understanding: ’If I can’t understand something about God, it can’t be true’.
- The God of my experience - ‘He only does with others what He has done with me’.
- The God of my comfort - ‘He doesn’t ever make demands on me - He’s always comforting, never demanding anything that might be awkward or embarrassing…
- The God of my success - ‘he only wants me to be happy, rich and healthy’.
So what or who is the ultimate revelation of what God is like?…..it’s Jesus!
Hebrews 1:1-3: ‘In the past God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom also he made the universe. The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word. After he had provided purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven’.
Hallelujah!