Finding Your Golden Calf
There is this scene in the Bible where the Israelite people do something that seems rather comical and silly to us today.
God had recently liberated the Israelite people out of generational slavery in Egypt and began leading them to a new land that they could call their own. Along the way, their leader Moses went up a mountain to meet with God and he was gone long enough – we don’t know how long, but long enough – for the people to get restless and anxious. So they turned to Moses’ brother Aaron and asked him to make them some gods that they could put their trust in and follow.
So, Aaron took up a collection of gold from the people and out of the collection made a statue of a golden calf or several calves and said to the people, “Here are your gods.” Then they made an alter to the statue (which probably wasn’t very big) and began to make sacrifices to it and worship it. See Exodus 32.
How dumb is that right? They began worshiping and giving their hope, trust, and affection to a statue, that Aaron made, at their request, out of their jewelry. It’s a piece of metal. Why would anyone do that? It’s so bizarre right? We’re glad we’re not like these people, right?
The tough news is that we actually are. We are humans just like these people and are wired up the same way. Like them, we are exocentric – we find our center, our sense of identity and purpose, outside of ourselves. In other words we find our god or gods outside of ourselves. Like the humans in this story, we too are idol worshipers. The Golden Calf was just a symbol for the real thing they were worshiping, which happen to be the same things we worship – wealth, success, power, prosperity, sex, etc.
Want to know what your Golden Calf is? Ask yourself these questions:
- My worst nightmare is _______ ?
- I don’t know that life would be worth living if I couldn’t ____, I never ______, or I lost ______.
- What drives or motivates me?
- What is at the root of my darkest emotions (bitterness, anger, resentment, despair, etc.)
- What do I believe will make me okay? What do I believe I need to be okay?
Search your heart for the answer to those questions and you’ll probably find your idol or idols. Most of the time our idols aren’t bad things, but things that shouldn’t be made into ultimate things. Saint Augustine told us that the heart of all our sin is a disordered love. In other words, idolatry.
But you’re a Christian you say? You worship God? So did the Israelites. There was never a time in their history that they completely gave up on worshiping God, they just worshiped other gods or idols at the same time. 2 Kings 17:41 says, “Even while these people were worshiping the Lord, they were serving their idols.”
The claim of scripture and the Christian life is that all idols, the worship of every god that isn’t God, making ultimate things out of lessor things, leads to suffering and death, while a life centered on God leads to healing, wholeness, and true life.
We are all drawn to idols, but the Christian journey is about learning to love and trust God with an undivided heart. May God meet you in that journey today.
“You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you” – Augustine of Hippo
