Idolatry is fundamentally the worship of self.
When we think of the ancients grovelling before groves and
altars, we may be inclined to envision them as essentially religious people
with errant theology. That is easier to do when we picture pagans with no
knowledge of the true God beyond that which they might intuit from nature and
the cosmos.
But then how do we explain the nation of Israel after the exodus?
The first clue something is off about this request is that
it’s not the individual qualities of the gods themselves that drive the people to
seek after them. Of course there is the requisite veneer of religiosity, but it
doesn’t seem to make any difference to the people which gods Aaron fashions for
them or what specific horrors form part of their required worship. The
character of the gods, whether benign, obscene or ambivalent, is apparently not
at issue. It’s just “make us gods”. Presumably it could be Baal, Molech or
Ashteroth. The people of Israel are not theological connoisseurs. Like true alcoholics, they’ll
take whatever’s available.
The second clue is that they say “gods”, not “God”. They
are not looking to replace Yahweh, who in their view has gone missing. There
seems to be a nationalized gut instinct at work that rejects fidelity as too
stringent or singular, like being forever under the microscope. Better “gods”,
the amorphous mass of pseudo-deity that comes without all the moral obligations
and duties inherent in the worship of the One God.
The Real Motive Laid Bare
The Real Motive Laid Bare
Still, without what immediately follows, we might be fooled
into imagining they reconsidered their belief system and opted for a more
compelling and plausible theology. But the truth is recorded by Moses and reiterated by Paul to the Corinthians:
“And the people sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play.”
Here, after all, is the real motive laid bare.
Brian Rosner says this:
“The verb ‘to play’ in Hebrew is clearly a euphemism for sexual activities. According to both pagan and Christian writers feasting and sexual immorality inevitably went together.”
Let’s face it, the celebrations associated with the gods of
the nations came packaged with dancing, alcohol, excitement, and even ritualized
prostitution. Oh, and a little bloodshed now and then. Such “worship” had to be
a lot more exciting than the chaste, practical and comparatively austere
service of Jehovah.
The request made to Aaron at Sinai was not a reasoned,
theological swap-out of one deity for another. It was the exaltation and
deification of human desire.
We Have Become Our Own God
We Have Become Our Own God
Human beings have not changed significantly over the
centuries. The ways desire manifests itself today are occasionally more nuanced
and refined, but the essential self-interest is just as prominent,
notwithstanding whatever flimsy religious patina adheres to it.
In his book “Facing Truth: The Tale of Two Gardens”, Patrick
J. Tabor says this:
“Idolatry fundamentally means to worship or serve a false god. Worship literally means to prostrate oneself or bow down to someone or something. The idea comes from going before a King and bowing down before him and placing yourself at his service. It is acknowledging his authority over you and your submission to it. You are saying to the King, ‘what is it that you require of me’ and you are submissively acknowledging his right to tell you what to do and how to do it. This is why I say we have become idolatrous. In our modern western cultures, we bow to ourselves. We do whatever we want with our life only serving ourselves. In only serving our own self-interest, we have become our own god.”
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