Sabbath Devotional :: Beautiful Things That Do Not Transform Us

*The Adoration of the Golden Calf* by Nicolas Poussin (1633), public domain

Many of us recently read the story where the Israelites build a golden calf. Moses is up on the mountain talking with God and receiving God’s words for the people, and the Israelites are at the bottom of the mountain waiting for him to come back down. Or rather, they are sick and tired of waiting for him to come back:

“When the people saw that Moses was so long in coming down from the mountain, they gathered around Aaron and said, ‘Come, make us gods who will go before us. As for this fellow Moses who brought us up out of Egypt, we don’t know what has happened to him.’” (NIV, Exodus 32:1)

Aaron then instructs the people to bring all the gold in the camp to him, which the people do, and he creates a golden calf and places it on an altar. He then says, “These are your gods, Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt.” (v.2)

God, who was still conversing with Moses on the mountain, tells Moses to “[g]o down, because your people [. . .] have become corrupt” and have turned from the commandments God had given them.” (v.7)

When Moses sees what the Israelites have done, he throws down the tablets that contained God’s words and they are broken into pieces (meaning the Israelites never get to learn the full magnitude of what God had in mind for them.) He then throws the golden calf into the fire, and the story goes on from there.

This story can be mystifying for so many of us. God sent down plagues and divided the Red Sea to save them from slavery and oppression. They had a prophet who God made a deliverer for them, acting as a foreshadow of Christ, the ultimate deliverer . . . and they worship a golden calf they made instead?!? Mind-boggling!

I’ve heard a lot of interpretations of this story, but I recently came across Kate Bowler’s thoughts on it, and they have really resonated with me:

“It’s not simply that the Israelites were wildly impatient and prone to epic forgetfulness. It’s not only that they immediately fashioned a golden calf the minute that Moses was ‘too long in coming down.’ It was their defense. They argued that they were still, somehow, not violating the first commandment. After all, they did not create an image of a false God. They created a false image of the true God.”

She continues that we are just as much at risk today of being idolaters as the Israelites were and defines idolatry as “comforting false images of a true God.” She further asserts that rather than betraying God, “we are much more likely to do exactly what the Israelites have done: not to have a false image of a false God, but a false image of the true God.”

She then references the work of Steven Pressfield, about how it is much easier “to pursue a version of something than the real thing.” And much more difficult to leave a substitute of a “safer, lesser goal for the tough and exciting work [we] really ought to be doing.”

And she then concludes:

“We are not apostates. We are idolaters. We fall in love with the things that are almost true. We start taking our gold and pouring it into a cast that we can shape with our own hands, one that inspires us and challenges us, but is not, necessarily, given to us by the one true God. After all, what is idolatry except beautiful things that do not transform us?”

These words have been playing in my mind ever since: We fall in love with things that are almost true. We worship beautiful things that do not transform us. We fall in love with a version of God, rather than the real thing; we worship and settle for safer and lesser goals — perhaps important and good but still lesser than the work God really wants us to do be doing.

I can’t help but wonder how many of us dilute God’s real power in our life because we don’t want to be pushed or challenged or to aspire to more? How many of us say this is enough. This is good. Safe. Important work even. I don’t need or want more. Don’t ask me for more. This path is adequate, beautiful even. Comfortable and familiar. Transformative? No, but it’s nice enough. It’s all I need or want. Don’t give me more.

But we are called to be more than admirers of beautiful things or even creators of merely beautiful things. We are called to know the true God and to be fully transformed by that knowledge. And then, we are called to go out and transform the world.

We are called to be courageous followers of God, to forge wonderful paths, to be doers, not just admirers of scintillating things. To be active in creating the kingdom (the Beloved Community and Zion), not to settle for passable.

We are meant to dare for all God has envisioned for us. To be brave enough to ask is this really the tough and exciting work You really want me to be doing? And then be patient enough to hear the answer and bold and confident enough to heed the call and stick to it, no matter where it leads us.

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Article by Bowler: https://sojo.net/articles/idolatry-most-seductive-sin-town-kate-bowler-jessica-ric