At church today, the liturgy was Exodus 32:1-14, about the Israelites and the golden calf. Here’s part of it:
5 When Aaron saw this, he built an altar in front of the calf and announced, “Tomorrow there will be a festival to the Lord.” 6 So the next day the people rose early and sacrificed burnt offerings and presented fellowship offerings. Afterward they sat down to eat and drink and got up to indulge in revelry.
7 Then the Lord said to Moses, “Go down, because your people, whom you brought up out of Egypt, have become corrupt. 8 They have been quick to turn away from what I commanded them and have made themselves an idol cast in the shape of a calf. They have bowed down to it and sacrificed to it and have said, ‘These are your gods, Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt.’
9 “I have seen these people,” the Lord said to Moses, “and they are a stiff-necked people. 10 Now leave me alone so that my anger may burn against them and that I may destroy them. Then I will make you into a great nation.”
11 But Moses sought the favor of the Lord his God. “Lord,” he said, “why should your anger burn against your people, whom you brought out of Egypt with great power and a mighty hand? 12 Why should the Egyptians say, ‘It was with evil intent that he brought them out, to kill them in the mountains and to wipe them off the face of the earth’? Turn from your fierce anger; relent and do not bring disaster on your people. 13 Remember your servants Abraham, Isaac and Israel, to whom you swore by your own self: ‘I will make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and I will give your descendants all this land I promised them, and it will be their inheritance forever.’” 14 Then the Lord relented and did not bring on his people the disaster he had threatened.
The sermon, today, started out framing the beginning of the bible as a three act play, starting out in the beginning, where everything’s good – the Israelites get out of enslavement in Egypt. Then in the second act, this idolatry and golden calf situation tangles everything up. The Israelites left the only home they’ve ever known, their leader is gone for the moment, and they’re feeling incredibly insecure. So Aaron makes the calf, and they worship the calf. God is angry, but that idol gave them a sense of security when they needed it most.
Personally, I can empathize with the Israelites. It would be scary to leave everything you’ve ever known – even if everything you’ve ever known isn’t good. They’ve left home and they don’t really know where they’re going, just that they’re never going home again. Of course they’re feeling insecure, and they’re just grasping at anything they can to find security. The thing they grasp onto is an idol, but is that so wrong? After all, worshipping idols like that was pretty common at the time. God gave them the Ten Commandments before that, but if the Ten Commandments are this new thing that goes against what you already know, it makes sense that following the Ten Commandments is not making you feel more secure.
Of course, the next obvious question is “How am I worshipping idols in my life, how are they keeping me away from God?”
I’m not interested in this question. I think that asking it is just starting on a road to a guilt trip. Right now, my job is probably getting between me and God – I spend a whole lot more time and energy working than I do praying or reading the Bible or thinking about God. Sometimes, my desire to sleep in on a Sunday morning is getting between me and God. Sometimes the TV that I like isn’t the most God-like (but I’ve finally finished Mad Men, and the last few episodes are making me feel some things.) And I would sell my soul right now to anyone who would make me excellent at classroom management, but that option hasn’t been available to me yet.
Those things give me comfort, or security, or a mix of the two.
I don’t know quite how to find the balance between being a human who exists in the world and being a human who exists to serve God. I don’t know when to trust myself – trust that it’s fine to sleep in on Sunday mornings sometimes, trust that it’s sometimes okay to throw yourself into work if that means putting my relationship with God on standby for a bit.
After grappling with that question for a while, it’s sometimes easier to just check out. Just embrace the real world and leave the grappling for others.
This made me think of I had to read Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God for an early American literature class I took in college. My whole reaction to Jonathan Edwards at the time was “this man just needs to cool it.” But I thought I remembered some mention of security, and humans finding security away from God.
“Natural men’s prudence and care to preserve their own lives, or the care of others to preserve them, don’t secure ’em a moment. This divine providence and universal experience does also bear testimony to. There is this clear evidence that men’s own wisdom is no security to them from death: that if it were otherwise we should see some difference between the wise and politic men of the world, and others, with regard to their liableness to early and unexpected death; but how is it in fact?”
Basically, Edwards says that people’s own wisdom isn’t security from death and damnation. He takes it to an extreme, because he’s Jonathan Edwards – he’s a little bit obsessed with wickedness, that humans are inherently evil, that kind of thing.
“All wicked men’s pains and contrivance they use to escape hell, while they continue to reject Christ, and so remain wicked men, don’t secure ’em from hell one moment. Almost every natural man that hears of hell, flatters himself that he shall escape it; he depends upon himself for his own security; he flatters himself in what he has done, in what he is now doing, or what he intends to do; everyone lays out matters in his own mind how he shall avoid damnation, and flatters himself that he contrives well for himself, and that his schemes won’t fail.”
Edwards pretty much says that those who trust in themselves over Christ are foolish and damned, essentially. Still, he’s Jonathan Edwards, and that’s kind of his thing.
I’m still looking for balance, still looking for some kind of middle ground between following God and just being a person. I have to be able to carve out some kind of space for myself, someplace to care about God and ask deep questions of faith, and space to care about the ending of Mad Men too.