God on Our Terms

Today's story in Exodus, where the Israelites make a golden calf and Moses shatters the two tablets written by God's own hand, might be considered a "primitive" story.  God's behavior is very human-like, and Yahweh threatens to wipe out the Israelites in a fit of anger.  Fortunately Moses begs for God to remember the promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. "And Yahweh changed his mind about the disaster that he planned to bring on his people."

But if the story contains some "primitive" notions of God, it also speaks directly to issues that impact faith communities in our day, although people often seem to miss this.  They read the story as an account of fickle Israelites turning from God the moment God isn't there for them.  In the standard telling, the Israelites trade Yahweh, the living God, for a golden calf.  But I think this misunderstands the events.

After Aaron has created the calf and an altar to go with it, he declares, "Tomorrow shall be a festival to Yahweh."  To Yahweh.  Not to some invented god, but to Yahweh.  The Israelites seem less interested in replacing Yahweh than in making God more reliable and available.  This unpictureable Yahweh is a bit too slippery.  They want a god who is available on demand.  They need manageable access to God.  Moses has been their only source of access, and he's gone missing.  They need something that can't run off on them.

It is the perennial religious problem.  We want God on our terms, available on demand, amenable to our requests, sympathetic to our agendas.  We aren't "primitive" enough to cast golden calves, but we have more "sophisticated" methods for creating a god who does as we wish.  And so our idols are more sophisticated, but they are idols nonetheless.

What methods do you use to get God on your side, to make sure God agrees with you, to keep God in your camp?  And more importantly, what methods do you have for letting God shatter your idols?  How are we to open ourselves to God's transforming presence that breaks through our idolatries and recreates us more and more in the image of Jesus?

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