Golden Calf on a Rock iStock

I’ve been thinking about idolatry lately. The question that prompted this was, “What is the difference between idolatry and mere distraction.”  I know my cell phone is a distraction, but when John Mark Comer or Darren Whitehead makes me feel like I might be worshipping an idol, my discernment hackles get raised, and I start being skeptical. So, I decided to settle this for myself by doing some deep thinking about idolatry and just what it amounts to. For me, the best way to do that was to do a sermon series on Idolatry to figure out what the scripture says it means to worship an idol. I won’t talk about the difference between idols and distractions in this post. I still haven’t quite worked it out, but I discovered two ways to engage in idolatry.

I was helped in this by G.K. Beale’s book We Become What We Worship: A Biblical Theology of Idolatry (IVP). It is a great book that traces the concept of idolatry from Genesis to Revelation. It’s one of those books that gives you a bird’ s-eye view of the scholarship while providing invaluable footnotes if you want to get into the weeds.

So, let’s look at one of the most important scenes in the long, long history of Israel’s foray into idol worship. Exodus 32

When the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain, the people gathered themselves together to Aaron and said to him, “Up, make us gods who shall go before us. As for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.” ² So Aaron said to them, “Take off the rings of gold that are in the ears of your wives, your sons, and your daughters, and bring them to me.” ³ So all the people took off the rings of gold that were in their ears and brought them to Aaron. ⁴ And he received the gold from their hand and fashioned it with a graving tool and made a golden calf. And they said, “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!” ⁵ When Aaron saw this, he built an altar before it. And Aaron made a proclamation and said, “Tomorrow shall be a feast to the Lord.” ⁶ And they rose up early the next day and offered burnt offerings and brought peace offerings. And the people sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play.

A couple of observations:

First, notice that the trigger for idolatry was uncertainty. Moses delayed. The last the people had seen Moses, their fearless leader, had disappeared in a cloud of smoke and fire. They don’t know what happened to him. God could have consumed him. They would then be all alone without a leader.

Second, notice that it was the “They,” the Israelites, who said, “These are your gods,” when they were ready to worship the golden calf. Aaron, however, is the one person who makes a proclamation about a feast to Yahweh. Aaron makes a graven image of a calf. The image is associated with the Canaanite god El and also with the Apis bull in Egypt. So the crowd associates the calf with the gods who brought them out of Egypt, but Aaron associates it with the God of Moses up on the mountain. Both of them are guilty of idolatry. They are just different kinds.

For the Israelites, the golden calf was a rival god to the LORD. For Aaron, the golden calf was an image of the LORD that wasn’t supposed ever to be made. In other words, the people were guilty of breaking the first commandment, “You shall have no other gods before me” (Exodus 20:3), but Aaron was guilty of the second commandment, “You shall make no graven image . . .” (Exodus 20:4)

When we think of Hebrew idolatry, we tend to think of worshipping another god. However, another form of idolatry is making a version of the Lord and then substituting that image for the true Lord. We do this when we form an image of the Lord in our minds, a god who winks at our sin, or isn’t jealous, or fits into our box. We do this with bad theology, making God into something he’s not. I think of old Screwtape, the demon in the Screwtape letters telling his apprentice Wormwood that he had a patient whose “god” was on a wall two feet from the ceiling in the corner of his bedroom.

Don’t get me started on T.D. Jake’s or Joyce Meyer’s image of God. Norm Geisler, when I was in his classes, used to say that we may not worship metal images, but we still have mental images of God that are just as bad.

The fact that should bang against our chest every time we enter into worship is that God simply will not tolerate any rivals for the worship and love of his people. Whether those rivals are another god or your own graven images of what we think or hope God is.Ω

Jonathan Miles is husband to Stacie, dad to Wesley, Gloria, and Caroline, professor of philosophy and ethics to his students, and teaching elder/pastor to the wonderful folks at Faith Journey Church. He lives in Quincy, Illinois

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