The Golden Calf, Part One

“So all the people took off the rings of gold that were in their ears and brought them to Aaron. And he received the gold from their hand and fashioned it with a graving tool and made a golden calf.” – Exodus 32:3-4

The story of the golden calf merits regular reading: it’s one of those events that is completely different to hear about versus actually read about. Each time I read it, I feel a sense of incredulity and horror. Aaron called this calf YHWH? The sound of their feasting and play was such that Joshua’s first thought was that they were at war? Moses made them drink gold dust? All Aaron could say was, “out came this calf”? The Levites killed 3,000 of their own men in cold blood? God sent a plague upon them? So many details that get left out of Sunday school class.

If I think about it, though, it’s not all that unimaginable. They hadn’t heard from Moses for forty days, no texts, no updates: that’s a long time. They had grown up under a Pharaoh-god who surrounded himself with gold and gods with bovine heads. Perhaps it is not such a surprise that this was what their imaginations turned to in their newfound autonomy and wealth; it was something they had been excluded from, and perhaps lusted after, in their past. They wanted something visible and immediate. They wanted worship they could get something out of. And so, this grotesque parody: a self-made, self-serving, culturally-relevant idol that they inserted into their newfound identities and stories—giving it God’s name, crediting unto it the feasts and the exodus. 

Don’t we all do that? Don’t we so easily turn our worship to what is immediate, visible, or culturally advertised, and feed it with our imaginations, energies, or thoughts? Jobs, romantic partners, children, fitness, money—any good thing made the ultimate thing, what Augustine called “disordered loves.” The gold in their ears was meant to be a reminder of God’s unexpected grace (Exodus 12:35), not melted down into idols, and when they left the scene, the Israelites no longer took ornaments with them (Exodus 33:5-6).

All of life is a gradual growth in learning to enthrone God, and dethrone idols, in our lives. Martin Luther wrote, “I must take counsel of the gospel. I must hearken to the gospel… that He suffered and died to deliver me from sin and death. The gospel willeth me to receive this, and to believe it… Most necessary it is, therefore, that we should know this article well, teach it unto others, and beat it into our heads continually.” Tim Keller elaborates: “So Luther says that even after you are converted by the gospel your heart will go back to operating on other principles unless you deliberately, repeatedly set it to gospel-mode.” How do you do this in your own life? How do you continually beat the gospel into your head? How do you identify and root out the idols in your life? These are recurring questions for all of us, because it is so easy—like the Israelites, when Moses turns his back, when nothing seems to be happening—to look back to the golden calf.