The Allure of Idols
I’ve always had a weird fascination with motivational posters. Whether it’s a red poster with a crown on top that reads “Keep Calm and Carry On,” or a kitten hanging from a clothes line with the phrase “Hang in There” written underneath. They make me smile.
I think this fascination is partly due to the fact that my childhood coincided with the rise of such posters in classrooms and office buildings. I am a child of Successories – a motivational poster company founded in the 1980s and by the the following decade, was opening up stores in shopping malls. Their products expanded from posters to include mugs, plaques, mouse pads and so much more. During my childhood, Successories products could be found in nearly every office building, doctor’s waiting room, and school building, with their inspirations sayings like, “Teamwork: It is a fact that in the right formation, the lifting power of many wings can achieve twice the distance of any bird flying alone” - This verbiage accompanied by a beautiful photo of geese flying in formation at sunset. Or, a photo of a single drop of water into a pond along with “Attitude: Attitude is a little thing, that affects everything. A positive attitude has a ripple effect. Change your attitude and you change your world."
Of course, with the rise of Successories, came the rise of the Successories spoof. I remember one time seeing a poster that had a picture of a sinking ship accompanied by the caption, “Failure: It could be that the purpose of your life is to serve as a warning for others.” The company, Despair, Inc. also rose to prominence in the 90s with the tagline, “Motivational posters don’t work. But our legendary demotivational posters don’t work even better.” Both Successories and Despair, Inc are still in business today if you are curious about checking out their motivational and demotivational products of all sorts.
I like both of these kinds of posters, depending on the day or the mood I find myself in. Maybe you know what I am talking about. When things are good and you are feeling hopeful, seeing a positive motivational message can just hit you in all the good ways – feeling like a message to you sent directly from God. On the other hand, there is nothing more awkward or unfortunate than having a really bad day or season in life and coming across a motivational saying that hits like a slap in the face. Sometimes a demotivational poster that meets us where we are and elicits a chuckle is medicine for the soul.
This experience of connecting with the inspiring at times and the snarky pessimism at other times is a universal human experience that reminds us that life is a full spectrum of experiences – the good the bad, the joy and grief, the bliss and the pain. It is also an experience that comes into play when we read holy scripture. Sometimes when we read the Bible, we see ourselves in the characters. We can easily imagine ourselves in the shoes of the players, and can see ourselves doing what they do, saying what they say, and feeling what they feel. Other times, we read scripture and wonder things like, “Who are these people?” “What’s wrong with these people?” “Who does that?” “Who says that?” And sometimes, the very same biblical characters that we feel so disconnected from can become our closest connections to the story of God at other times.
Our text today from the Book of Exodus, where the ancient Israelites create and worship the golden calf, is an example of disconnection and reconnection for me. I remember the first time I studied this chapter as a high schooler, and reading about how Moses is away in his visit with God, the very visit where he is being given the Ten Commandments to be able to help lead God’s people. But he’s been gone for a while apparently and so the people start, well, freaking out. They go to Aaron essentially saying “Make gods for us because this Moses guy who led us out here into the desert is gone!” And Aaron, who is a heroic figure in some Biblical stories, agrees with them, instructing them to bring him their jewelry so he can make something to worship.
I remember the first time I read this story and I thought, “What?!” So, God has brought the Israelites out of bondage in Egypt through unleashing plagues, and God has parted the Red Sea and provided Manna as food in the desert, and Moses being gone too long makes these folks decide they need new gods, something immediate to worship? And Aaron goes along with this? What?! I read this scripture and it makes the Israelites sound so fickle, and impatient, and thoughtless. And Aaron, who is more informed about all that God has done comes across as a weak, people-pleasing leader, with very little integrity.
But the more I sit with this text, especially in watching the horrors in Israel and Gaza unfold over the past week, I realize that what the Israelites were, above anything else, is scared. They were scared. Even though God has demonstrated great power and dedication to them as God’s chosen people, Moses was not with them, they were still in the desert, and they were afraid. God felt very far away from them, and they were afraid.
And what do human beings do when they are afraid? We try to calm our fears and create a sense of safety. It’s what we are biologically wired to do as a species (think Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs). Creating a golden calf to worship, as silly as it sounds to us, was about making some notion of the divine feel closer. They were afraid and so they wanted something they could see and interact with so they felt a sense of safety and control.
When we are afraid, when God feels really far away and we lack a sense of safety and control, these can be the hardest moments in our human experience. I have felt some of this during the past week. Seeing images and hearing the stories coming out of Israel and Gaza leads many of us to ask questions like:
“Where is God in this?”
“How can I make sense of these evil and horrific acts in a world where God reigns and all of humanity is created in the Image of God?”
”How can we, all of these players who are members of the Abrahamic religions, do this to one another?”
“Where are you, God?”
So those fickle and ridiculous Israelites creating a golden calf to make some notion of God feel closer seems just a little less ridiculous to me this week. And I realize that while it’s not necessarily a golden calf, we still make idols today. We still create things that we place our hope in and worship as gods, even though they are not God or even of the same essence as God. The world is violent and scary, and so we create idols of guns or militaries, because they make us feel safer. We create idols of politicians, or media personalities or celebrities, who say the things we want to hear to make us feel safer. We create idols of nationalities and borders. We even create idols of churches or pastors who make us feel safer, even if and when those churches or pastors say things that are not Biblical. We idolize people and constructs even when they sit in tension or even direct opposition to God’s greatest commandment to us through Jesus – to love the Lord with all your heart, soul and mind and love your neighbor as yourself.
Idolatry is something we do more than we think, and we don’t usually do it as an act of rebellion against God, or because we are dumb or because we are fickle and faithless. We do it because we are afraid. We do it because God feels really far away and we need something closer to make us feel safe and like we have some sense of control.
Having and keeping faith in God in times when God feels far away or even altogether absent is the greatest challenge of being God’s people, and it’s a challenge we face often. Scan the entirety of the Bible and you will find a constellation of characters and groups who feel that God is far away or who are questioning whether God has forgotten them altogether. So much of the Bible is lament. So much is people crying out to God who feels really far away.
This story in Exodus is an incredible reminder to all of us of how alluring idolatry is because it offers us immediate gratification. When we replace our faith in God with faith in something that we can see right before us, that we can understand, that we can control, it provides us with a sense of certainty and safety in a world that is a very uncertain and dangerous place. But any idol we create and place our faith in is not God, and is doomed to fail us because it is not God. Being people of faith requires… faith. Faith means leaning further into God at the times when the world seems God-less. It means we cry out louder when we think God isn’t close enough to hear, rather than making a god of something or someone within earshot.
So, I offer this as my sincere apology to the ancient Israelites in Exodus 32 that I use to liken to something like the Three Stooges for creating their own idol to worship. I get it now. While not necessarily a golden calf, I see idols created, hoisted up and worshipped around me all the time by people who are too scared to lean into their faith that God is still God.
The New Testament reading this week, from Paul’s letter to the Philippians, is the motivational poster that I need for such a time as this: “Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near. Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”
The Lord is near. And when we lift our burdens and our fears up to God, God will respond with the peace that surpasses all understanding. If we have faith.
And then there’s the second part, which offers a hopeful reminder for the times when God may feel far away. It reads, “Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. As for the things that you have learned and received and heard and noticed in me, do them, and the God of peace will be with you.”
The Apostle Paul is offering us a reminder here. He is saying that even when we are not hearing the voice of God telling us exactly what to do or explaining why things are the way they are, we have more knowledge about God than we often give ourselves credit. Our sacred texts tell us about the story of God. They reveal to us the Truth in the words of Jesus. Paul is saying that we do possess the faithful knowledge to know what is true, honorable, just, pure, pleasing and commendable. If we search our faith we know what is excellent and worthy of praise, and more importantly, we know what is not excellent and worthy of praise. Killing, terror, violence, hatred, and war - We don’t need God to tell us these things are bad. We do not need Jesus to appear before us and remind us that these are not the ways that God would have us interact with one another.
The events of this past week have been awful. Like many of you, I am emotionally exhausted. I’ve been holding space for friends with multiple perspectives, connections and experiences related to the events unfolding in Israel and Gaza. It is all so horrific.
Let’s heed God’s warning to the Ancient Israelites and not turn from God toward other things in these most difficult of times. God doesn’t want that, and our faith is made of tougher stuff than that. Taking a note from Moses and from Paul, let’s lean into God, and to the collective wisdom that we have as followers of God, and hear what God might be telling us to do now. We need that peace that surpasses all understanding in this violent world. Let’s all of us huddle together, lean into our faith as we seek understanding. Let us continue to seek peace together. Amen.
