As Moses came down from Mount Sinai, with the Ten Commandments in his hands, he was horrified to see a wild orgy down below. I can picture it now: young girls dancing wildly as though they were on drugs, garlands of flowers being flung on the idol, men eating and drinking and running around in frenzy. They hail the golden calf as the god that brought them out from slavery in Egypt. If the episode were set in the twenty-first century, perhaps the crowd would be cruising around the idol in convertibles with spinning hubcaps and the stereo turned way up, open bottles of liquor would be being chugged down in the back seat by far too many half-naked, unmarried people with no desire for privacy. In other words, when I visualize idolatry, I see people who are unlike myself, busy doing forbidden things that do not tempt me.
What is generally missing from my recall of the Sinai scene, or from my transposition to the contemporary world, is Aaron. Aaron the brother of Moses, his deputy. There’s no doubt that Aaron is a significant character in the story, but truth is, I’d rather remember the orgy scene for its party animals than for the religious leader who made it all possible. If I look too closely at Aaron though, I might also have to look at myself. I might have to consider the possibility that idolatry starts with I.
The call to ministry
Considering the story of Aaron, we can trace parallels between our calls to ministry and Aaron’s, and between his yielding to idolatry and our own. But just as the Almighty didn’t give up on Aaron, I am confident God can do the same with us.
God called Aaron within the context of already existing relationships. Aaron didn’t initially get his calling directly from God; he heard it from his brother. The Lord told Moses that Aaron had a gift for public speaking and that it should be used to accomplish divine purposes. How many of us first had an inkling of God’s call to ministry, not when a big hand came out of the sky, but when someone from within the community of faith spoke God’s call to us? How often, during our years of preparation and subsequent ministry, have we experienced the encouragement or correction or confirmation of the Holy Spirit through another person? God called Aaron through another servant, Moses. And Aaron got into trouble—into idolatry—when he did what seemed right and expedient in his own eyes, without reference to Moses.
We are called into God’s service, and like Aaron, we have a message entrusted to us. Yahweh’s instruction to Aaron was “go tell Pharaoh to let the people of Israel go out of his land.” The same Lord has entrusted us with a more glorious message: to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ to every nation. God gave holy, supernatural power to Aaron so that he could bear witness that his message was indeed from the Lord. You and I have been given power and authority as ministers of the Word.
God loved Aaron, called him into His service, and had a special plan for Aaron and his descendants. On Mount Sinai, the Creator spoke to Moses of this plan, saying, “ ‘Make holy garments for Aaron your brother, for glory and for beauty’ ” (Exod. 28:2, NKJV). These were to be of fi nest quality: gold, blue, purple, and scarlet, and fine twined linen. There was to be a plate of pure gold, with “holy to the Lord” engraved on it, and it was to be fastened to a turban and resting on the forehead. Can you imagine walking around with a badge on you that reads “holy to the Lord”? And God said Aaron and his sons were to be anointed and consecrated that they might serve God as priests. They were to serve Godas priests—not serve the people. That’s not to say that they kept themselves apart from people; on the contrary, they were to lead Israel in the right worship of Yahweh. They would make sin offerings and peace offerings and burnt offerings to God on behalf of the people. They were to keep the laws of purity that the Lord gave Moses. They were to be “holy to the Lord.”
Of course Christians do not have a Levitical priesthood, passed down from father to son, and we don’t sacrifice animals in church. Some of us are in traditions where vestments are worn, but others of us are not. I tell my students that whatever you wear to lead worship will take on “official” status and be subject to theological interpretations, even if it’s the same dark suit every week. It will be taken as a statement of your religious convictions, and those convictions may or may not be received well. Whatever color or fabric we put on our bodies, though, we’re like Aaron in that God has called us to wear a sign that says “holy to the Lord.” God didn’t suggest to Moses that Aaron take a survey among the people, asking what sort of clothing they’d like him to wear, or what sort of animals ought to be offered up. Of course not; being “holy to the Lord” means looking to God for the standards for our calling. Always has; always will.
God called Aaron, and God calls us. The Maker of heaven and earth knew what He wanted His priests to be, what He was calling them to do. God had already placed a hand on Aaron and done mighty works through him and Moses, and Moses reaffirmed Aaron’s position of leadership among the covenant people.
Aaron’s idolatry: one step at a time
But Aaron bowed to market demand. Perhaps he said to himself, “I’m a pastor; I should try to meet people’s felt needs. I’m supposed to serve this congregation, facilitate laity in spontaneous religious expression, not be a prophetic killjoy. Shouldn’t theology and worship be indigenous? Shouldn’t I take our socioeconomic context seriously? I’m on my own here. If I want to survive in this wilderness, I’d better go along to get along.” We can’t be sure. His descent into idolatry was not a deliberate, dramatic rejection of the God of Israel. No, it was more like C. S. Lewis’s description in The Screwtape Letters: “The safest road to Hell is the gradual one—the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.” Aaron’s idolatry happened one step at a time, as I suspect it does for many of us.
How did it happen? Well, first Aaron failed to set the record straight with the people waiting for Moses to come down from the mountain. “Make us gods who shall go before us,” they clamored. Just who did they think had been going before them in a pillar of cloud up to this point? Aaron should have reminded them. “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” (Exod. 32:1, NKJV). They’d already forgotten the opening words of the Ten Commandments: “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.” Moses was God’s instrument, but it was the power of God that got them out of Egypt. And what about Moses’ parting instructions, telling them Aaron and Hur would be in charge until he returned(see Exod. 24:14)? But it appears that the people and Aaron had selective memories, or they twisted their recollection to suit their desires of the moment.
Aaron should have uttered a prophetic word, holding fast to the divine covenant, but he didn’t. Instead, he tried to compromise and maintain the security of his position. If you look closely at the text (see Exod. 32), it appears he was pretty sneaky and calculating in the entire chapter. He didn’t say he was throwing off Yahweh to practice idolatry; he just let others utter the words unchallenged. “Give me your golden jewelry,” he commanded, and then fashioned it into a bull, which was a popular symbol in ancient near-eastern nature religions. The crowd loved it, and they cried out, “These are our gods!” When Aaron saw their enthusiasm, he built an altar before it. And then, trying to have it both ways, he declared, “Tomorrow shall be a feast to the Lord!” I’m sure his ratings were sky-high by then.
Well, you know what happened next in the story. Moses came down from the mountain. His anger burned hot. He broke the tablets at the foot of the mountain, burned the calf and ground it to powder, mixed it in water, and made the people drink it. And Moses turned to Aaron, to God’s chosen priest, and said, “What did this people do to you that you have brought so great a sin upon them?” (Exod. 32:21, NKJV). Aaron’s answer was as bad as what he’d done. He blamed his congregation. “Don’t be mad at me. These people are set on evil. I just collected their gold and threw it into the fi re, and there came out this calf!” His attempt to justify himself is incredible.
What are our idols?
How often do we scapegoat the people in our churches and communities rather than own up to our own failures in leadership? When have we shed the prophet’s mantle in favor of a security blanket? I’m convinced that we are also tempted to remember selectively God’s claim upon our lives and ministry. We, too, minimize or simply deny our complicity with the idolatries of our culture.
Paul K. Moser, head of the Department of Philosophy at Loyola University, has summarized idolatry as the universal human tendency to value something or someone in a way that hinders the love and trust that we owe to God. It is an act of theft from God whereby we use some part of creation in a way that steals honor due to God. We stand with Aaron in seeing people around us use earthly things in a way that steals honor due to God. We also stand with Aaron in wanting to see idolatry anywhere except in ourselves. We do this in many ways:
1. We commit idolatry when we have an eye to pleasing humans rather than God (see Eph. 6:6). Of course, we rationalize it by thinking of it in terms of “meeting people where they are” and reminding ourselves that you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. We fail to see that what looks like honey is an offense to God and is deadly poison both to us and to those to whom we offer it. We hunger for the applause and approval of those entrusted to our care, rather than for the approval of the One who entrusted them in the first place. And what are the ways we do this? By turning a blind eye to things in the congregation and community that would trouble our conscience if we looked at them squarely. By deleting any reference to Jesus Christ when leading prayer outside the walls of our churches. By failing to speak a prophetic word and take a prophetic stand if it would displease people who matter to us. By avoiding hard choices in our discipleship.
2. We commit idolatry when we evaluate our work—and our colleagues’ work—in terms of success rather than of faithfulness. By this measure, the zenith of Jesus’ life and ministry was the Sunday before crucifixion. John’s Gospel has the Pharisees remarking, “ ‘Look, the whole world has gone after Him’ ” (John 12:19, NKJV). That’s success! Many years ago I was associate pastor at a church that reported a net loss of a few members at the end of the year. We’d had the usual number of baptisms and confirmations. Several elderly members died, and perhaps a few less new members were received, but on December 31 we were down by a handful. The senior pastor wrote in his annual report, “This has been the poorest year of my ministry.” This was a deeply committed and pious Christian, working hard as ever and supporting the laity in all the ministries the church had going, but he was judging himself in terms of success rather than of faithfulness. That’s idolatry; it’s looking to market forces rather than the Master as its standard. That pastor’s frame of reference was “my ministry” rather than “what God is doing here, and how I can be a faithful part of that work.”
I fall into this idolatry all the time. You see, even though I don’t serve a local church, I am prone to compare myself with peers and calculate whether I’m getting enough speaking invitations, how many books and articles I should have published by this stage in my career, what sort of reputation I’ve established in my field. Fixating on those issues is idolatry, because the real question is whether and how I am being faithful to my calling to serve God and proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ.
3. We commit idolatry—perhaps the worst kind, because it does the most damage—when we assume our words for God’s words, and our ways for God’s ways. For a couple of years I attended a church where the pastor did all kinds of troubling and sometimes alarming things: slandering members she wanted to get rid of, giving partial or falsified reports, changing the divine service beyond recognition. When questions were raised about any of these matters, the minister would quote a Bible verse or shout the person down, claiming that, as pastor, she had a right and power to do these things. This minister’s idol was herself. Her postmodern mindset dates back at least to the book of Judges, when every man did what was right in his own eyes (see Judg. 21:25). This form of idolatry manifests itself in other ways, too. I remember reading about a minister who got involved in an adulterous affair. When questioned, the man said he still believed firmly in the words of Scripture and all that the Bible says about extramarital affairs; he simply believed that his were special and unusual circumstances; an exception to the rule, if you please. Self-justification is self-deception. Manipulating God’s word to accommodate our words and wishes is as old as the Garden of Eden. It is the sin of idolatry, and we will be judged for it.
What are we to do?
Well, we can engage in examination of conscience, come to recognize the idolatry in our own lives and ministry, and repent. That’s not a bad place to start, but a resolution to turn away from this sin will almost certainly not keepus away. John Calvin is famous for saying that the human heart is a factory for idols. We churn out new ones as quickly as we throw out old, and once we have made them, the desire to serve and worship them is almost irresistible. Remember Naaman the leper. After confessing, “Behold, now I know that there is no God in all the earth, but in Israel” (2 Kings 5:15, KJV), in the next breath he asked for a dispensation to continue bowing in the tent of Rimmon (see 2 Kings 5:18).
Nature, or perhaps I should say humanity, abhors a vacuum, so the only effective and lasting way to rid our lives of idolatry is by replacing it with something else. The great Scottish preacher Thomas Chalmers (1780–1847) wrote about the expulsive power of a new affection. He explained that the way to disengage the heart from the positive love of one great and ascendant object (that would be an idol) is to fasten the heart in positive love to another, coming to recognize the latter’s superior worth and excellence. Of course, we as preachers are talking less about a new affection and more in terms of rediscovering and reclaiming “our first love” (see Rev. 2:4).
So we turn to our Lord, not so much asking for strength to resist idolatry as praying that the rediscovery of the glory of Christ’s love for us and ours for Him will render idols irrelevant and powerless. When your heart goes into the sanctuary of God, when you allow yourself to fall in love with Jesus all over again, you can say with the psalmist, “Whom have I in heaven but thee? and there is nothing upon earth I desire beside thee” (Ps. 73:25, KJV).
It has become customary in recent years for couples to repeat their wedding vows on milestone anniversaries. It doesn’t make the marriage more valid than it would be otherwise, but there is power in affi rming the love and exclusive commitment the man and woman made in the presence of God and human witnesses years earlier. Preachers, there is power in saying, “Lord, I love You and I thank You for the claim You placed on my life. Let me experience Your great love anew, as I recommit all that I am and all that I have to Your glory.”
When you remember your first love, when you rediscover the surpassing worth of the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, things happen. The fresh wind of the Spirit blows away the old idols, extinguishing their glow and allure; the Holy Spirit also fills us with God’s own self.
It is said that Michelangelo used to carry a candle on the front of his cap while he was working, to keep his own shadow from falling on his work. The light shone on his masterpieces because the artist did not get in the way. Even so, when we keep the light before us, the tasks God has called us to do will be more glorious, more true to our Lord’s purpose, and those who witness it cannot help but recognize the touch of the Master’s hand. No idol can deliver that. And our ministry will be an acceptable offering to God.
Idolatry? It starts with I, for preachers as for the rest of humanity. But it can end through the power of Jesus Christ at work within us. Thanks be to God.
