The Golden Calf and our Octo-Man

The other day I was listening to a pastor speak about this one fictional book that used a metaphor to describe God by portraying her as an old woman. The pastor called this idolatry and the equivalent to making a graven image. Which led me to start thinking about that story in Exodus when the Israelites create the Golden Calf to signify God. Which led me to start thinking about some recent conversations I had with an old friend where he stated that if certain events described in the Bible didn’t ACTUALLY happen, then he would stop being a Christian and renounce his faith. This of course made me imagine a statue of a giant, transparent man with long, writhing, octopus tentacles as arms with a small plaque at the bottom labeled “God.”

And we’re off.

Exodus 32. Let’s set the stage. YHWH (God) has delivered the Hebrew people from their Egyptian enslavers and is now leading them through the desert to “The Promised Land.” At some point, their leader, and the man most responsible for their release from captivity, goes up a mountain to convene with YHWH and get the law. But he is up there for a while and the people get antsy and decide to build an image of God to worship. So they pool together all the gold (where do slaves get gold?) and craft a golden calf to which they begin sacrificing. This, of course makes God super angry and Moses has to talk him down from total annihilation. But then Moses goes down and gets pretty wroth himself. (For the curious, he burns the idol, grounds it to a gold powder, sprinkles it in the water and makes everyone drink it. Then God sends a plague on everyone. He was mad, you guys.) Yada yada yada. God issues Commandment #1: You may not have any other gods. Commandment #2: You may not create and worship idols.

These laws were literally etched in stone. Twice. Serious stuff here.

But there are several crazy things here to think about. Firstly, God wasn’t called God, or any of the many words that people called gods back in that day. Earlier in the story, Moses asks this supernatural, powerful being that was talking from a bush on fire, “¹³If I come to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your ancestors has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?” The burning bush responds, “¹⁴I am who I am.” Or “I will be what I will be.” “Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘I am has sent me to you.’” ¹⁵ God also said to Moses, “Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘The Lord, the God of your ancestors, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you.’" (Lord here is the word YHWH which is connected to the word hayah which means “to be.”) 

So… God wasn’t even God. Or she wasn’t called God.

He just was. She was what would she would be. He is. Or maybe just… Be.

Secondly, God wasn’t completely invisible according to the myth. He led the Israelites through the desert in the form of a pillar of fire. A GIANT COLUMN OF FIRE! When they arrive at Mt. Sinai, the mountain Moses ascended for a time, he coalesced around the top of the mountain as clouds, thunder, lightning, fire, and loud trumpet blasts. Not to mention that they had just been delivered from Egyptian slavery by supernatural plagues and crossing a sea that swallowed the army pursuing them. Yet even still, they decided that a Golden Calf of their own creation was probably a better projection of YHWH, and worthy of their obedience and reverence.

These two things are important. We will return to them.

My friend. We are talking about the Bible and the claims it makes about the world, history, etc., and how we talk about those things with people who don’t share the same faith as us, especially faith in the Bible. I say it might be a more genuine conversation if we use language that concedes we can never KNOW whether or not any of those things actually happened, but that we trust they did. We have faith in that. I say, “Otherwise, we are playing some game of ‘Christian Chicken’ with history.” Nothing can be proved now, so we are comfortable betting the farm. And I challenge him. I say, “If tomorrow, as unlikely as it is, someone comes out and can without a shadow of a doubt offer proof that some major event listed in the life of Jesus did NOT happen, neither you nor I would forsake our faith because we have experienced something real, now, in our life. Here. Our faith is more than just a belief in history but an experience in the present.” He tells me that if someone could disprove the resurrection, he would “hang it all up.” Hang it all up.

Still chills me.

Hang it all up.

Anyway. This, of course, led me to imagine a giant glass statue of a man with octopus arms – with tentacles and all – hanging out in front of every church building in the U.S. Because this is our modern day “Golden Calf.” God is a man with tentacle arms that lives in the sky and reaches those arms down to deal with his creation in history from time to time. Is this the God we worship? Is this the God we are telling people is worthy of reverence and obedience?

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a theologian in the early 1900s and was executed by the Nazi government in the 1940s for his involvement in the assassination attempt of Hitler. He wrote during a time when the culture around him (Nazi Germany) and the Second Industrial Revolution and scientific discovery (including nuclear physics) were becoming the dominant narratives overpowering the Christian faith which had ruled Europe for thousands of years.

But Bonhoeffer didn’t blame science or culture. Instead, he saw that Christians had started using God as a stop-gap for the incompleteness of our knowledge. God was only the mysteries, the unexplainable, the parts of our history and culture that only interacted with the fringes of our modern every-day thought and experience.

Bonhoeffer’s prescription:

“We are to find God in what we know, not in what we don’t know; God wants us to realize his presence, not in unsolved problems but in those that are solved. … God is no stop-gap; he must be recognized at the centre of life, not when we are at the end of our resources; it is his will to be recognized in life, and not only when death comes; in health and vigour, and not only in suffering; in our activities, and not only in sin. … Redemption myths arise from human boundary-experiences, but Christ takes hold of man at the centre of his life.”

What Bonhoeffer is saying is that God is something we experience every day. His presence intermingles with every small, seemingly insignificant moment of our life. As the prophet Isaiah said, “The whole earth is full of his glory.” God is not somewhere else. God is here, now. Christ doesn’t become relevant because of death; Christ is relevant because of life.

There are experiences in my life that feel so infused with the presence of God. Every night at dinner with my host family (my “apa” and “karandash”) in Kyrgyzstan – laughing and learning about each other and each other’s culture – sharing life in a very meaningful way. Giving rich people’s water and newspapers to my homeless friends when I worked at the fanciest hotel downtown. Having the honor of telling suicidal teens that they are worth living. Marrying my wife and getting to hear her laugh every(!) single(!) day(!). Watching my friends raise their children. Looking at the majesty of our earth and the diversity of life in it. Bumping into someone in public transportation and both of us responding with grace and a smile. Hearing an astrophysicist lecture about the beginning of the universe and the marvel of her research. Eating dinner with a monk, a priest, and several regular folks – all of us discussing the deepest parts of our human existence as equals in a way that invites understanding and introspection. Closing your eyes and being a part of a crowd of people all moving simultaneously to the most beautiful piece of music the world has ever heard. And a million other mundane, catastrophic, insignificant, or tectonically world-shattering experiences.

But the God I hear lately, and grew up hearing, was a God that lives far away and chose to come to earth thousands of years ago. Since then, he shows up periodically, reaching his tentacle arms down capriciously. Sometimes miraculous healing someone. Sometimes helping someone remember where they left their keys. But nevertheless, sitting somewhere else on his heavenly throne. Judging us. Waiting on us.

This is not the God of my experience. This isn’t the God that our spiritual ancestors described in the Bible. Look back and how the book of Exodus describes him.

I am. I will be what I will be.

BE.

I have profound objections to a god of history. One that I could “hang up” if history were proved to be different than the Bible describes. I also have profound objections to a god that is far away. One that is absent except in special circumstances when he reaches down to touch our lives. IF we are lucky enough.

But maybe more fundamentally, I might have profound objections to a god that is a person. I mean a noun. Xenophanes, ancient Greek theologian, once said something to the effect that if horses had gods, they would look like horses. We naturally fall into this notion that God is a he. And a being. Only.

But the Bible describes him as a verb, sometimes. God is I am. God is be. God is love.

I get this. A transcendent divine force that pervades my entire being. That exists at the centre of my life. That completely encapsulates and makes sense of the story of Jesus. That helps me understand the spiritual journey my Israelite forbearers stumbled through and wrote down for posterity. A cause for the world. FOR THE UNIVERSE! A movement that history clings to and that we either flow with or against.

God isn’t elsewhere. God didn’t pin everything in history and we are just coasting in the wake waiting for him to resurface again in some triumphant presence. GOD IS NOT THE OCTO-MAN.

God is all around us. In our everday. In the now. SHE’S A GIANT COLUMN OF FIRE. And instead we want to make up some golden calf so we can wrap our mind around him.

But, I think, she’s gonna be what she’s gonna be.

Making the World a Better Place

So I’m having a Facebook conversation with some people the other day (I qualify it as a “Facebook conversation” because while they can be productive and helpful, they really aren’t the same as a face-to-face over dinner kind of thing). General “la-ti-da” kind of stuff and I am rolling out my typical indictments of modern American Christians that they would rather spend money on their own Sunday morning entertainment or lobby the government for more cultural superiority than they would like to help the poor or instill social justice, blah blah blah. My close friend, who I’ve known for over a decade, in all earnestness, says to me privately, “I know what you don’t like, but I want to know things you do like.” She voiced a desire to make the world a better place and felt like since I believe so strongly in this ideal, wouldn’t it be more fruitful to concentrate my efforts on illuminating what is right instead of what is wrong?

Well, yes. But the problem with that is (and has been since my idealism was torn down half-way through my Peace Corps service), I don’t really know the way forward like I thought I once did. The problems in this world are beyond big. They are global in scale. I watch even the most powerful voices advocate for change against a much more powerful elite that has vested interests in maintaining the status quo. Even working towards local changes becomes hard.

Nevertheless, my blissful naivety still exists. Even if my idealism is partly shattered, I still believe even small things make a difference and if more people worked together, the sum of our concerted efforts would be greater than the individual changes we enact. So here is my attempt to explore the possibilities of what we can do as individuals to make the world a better place, globally and locally.

Overall:

Before we even get into the specifics, I think we should first approach an overall attitude.

JUST GIVE A DAMN.

Even as small as it sounds, this is a heroic feat in our modern, complacent society. Cornel West, Christian theologian, has very prophetically noted, “The expansion of indifference to other people's suffering is the most dangerous phenomenon in the world.” Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, with equal fervor, argues this:

“There is immense silent agony in the world, and the task of man is to be a voice for the plundered poor, to prevent the desecration of the soul and the violation of our dream of honesty.
The more deeply immersed I became in the thinking of the prophets, the more powerfully it became clear to me what the lives of the Prophets sought to convey: that morally speaking, there is no limit to the concern one must feel for the suffering of human beings, that indifference to evil is worse than evil itself, that in a free society, some are guilty, but all are responsible.”

Do you care who makes your clothing? Do you care whether or not the people who mine valuable minerals for your electronics are paid a living wage? Do you care how many innocent civilians died today by US government sponsored military actions? Does it matter to you how many Americans get three nutritious meals every day? Do you even think about the parents who have to watch their children die because they don’t have access to life saving medicine and medical care that most of us take for granted? Do you care how much farmers are paid for their crops or just whether the cup of coffee was increased $0.40? Does it matter to you that other human beings live in destitution or die prematurely or fail to get a basic education and a chance to provide a life for their children that they never had? Does it matter to you that many neighborhoods in America are plagued by such systemic poverty that even prison is an escape. All of these things (and so much more) we can change. But our lives are comfortable. So it takes an effort to actually give a damn.

This is where it has to begin. You have to actually care about what happens to other people that you don’t know. You have to care in a meaningful way.

You have to let that concern carry you forward into finding out ways you can change the status quo. To educating yourself. To imagining a new world and fighting the never-ending struggle to make that world come to life. To make sacrifices in your daily everyday routines.

Global:

My journey has taken me in many different directions towards finding out what I can do in the global sphere to change the problems of social injustice. I joined the Peace Corps and worked at international development for a bit. I have many friends that have also been driven by this impulse to change the world, so they dropped everything and moved away to another country where they live and work in local communities trying to help the severely impoverished improve their life one project at a time.

But not everyone can do this. Not at all. Some people have rooted down. They have kids and other responsibilities that prohibit some kind of dramatic action like this. Or maybe what they feel called to do with their life can’t be done in rural poor countries. Or maybe they simply don’t want to do something that dramatic, but they still want to help in some way.

That’s ok. So what else can be done?

Honestly, and stay with me here, this is where our voice becomes so important.

We live in a democratic society that thrives on our voice being used. The world’s political and economic structures are hugely influenced by the U.S. and our allies. We should be constantly making our voice heard by our government, petitioning them to do things that are not in the best interests of ourselves, but in the best interests of the poorest of the poor (which actually turns out, is ALSO in our best interest – but that’s another blog perhaps). We should be voting for people and ballot initiatives that work to help the poor and make the world more equitable. We should be constantly using our democratic reach to show the powerful political elites of our country that WE CARE ABOUT OTHERS, and if they want to properly represent us, they better do the same.

We also have a substantial economic weight to throw around. How does your favorite clothing company treat its workers? Does candy company XYZ get ethically sourced chocolate? Did your bank contribute  to the Great Recession (Financial Crisis of 2009)? Have they been fined by the SEC recently for defrauding people like you and me? How does Corporation ABC treat its workforce? Does it treat them with respect and a desire to help them subsist and provide for their family?

If we were to make concerted efforts not only to be educated and mindful consumers, but helped other do the same, the market would have no choice but to listen to our concerns and change its practices or lose profits. We have enormous potential, here.

Lastly, you can give money. Now this is a touchy subject. Firstly, most of the people I know are low to middle income. Secondly, financial information is incredibly personal. Most people don’t share that kind of intimate details about their life with other people – especially debts. Even folks who make decent sums of money might be in positions that make it difficult to be as charitable as they would like because of other incredibly personal situations that resulted in debts. And lastly, along with political support, charitable giving is often charged as being a cop-out. “It’s an easy way to assuage guilt without getting personally involved with the poor or oppressed people.” This is greatly oversimplified.

I work at non-profits. I work with a lot of really smart people who could have had much more lucrative careers in another sector. We do this to help people. But we rely on people to help us with monetary contributions. Not everyone can do non-profit work. Not everyone WANTS to do non-profit work. So we are able to do a lot of good work and we wouldn’t be able to do it unless people gave us money. IT’S A BIG DEAL. Even modest contributions. They pile up and it makes an enormous difference.

Local:

Helping the situation in your local community can be both easier and not. Obviously volunteering for some charitable cause that helps serve people or fulfill a local need that is important to you is probably the single biggest way. But that is often very difficult to do, especially with work and family responsibilities. Likewise, giving to those local causes is also very helpful, especially if they are 100% local and receive no outside funding.

If you are a member of a church, or business, or other social civic club, you can look into the budgetary and operational processes. Is there any current practice or norm that has unforeseen consequences that marginalize the poor in your community? Is there any way to help conserve money in order to free up more funds for charitable giving? Can you periodically take up collections or donation drives for local food pantries or thrift shops? If buying a new piece of furniture, is it feasible to give away the old one instead of selling it? There are a myriad of things we can do that just take little bits of mindfulness to the plight of the less fortunate around us and a tiny bit more initiative to pursue that goal.

Lastly, and perhaps more importantly, you can dialogue. You can have 1001 conversations with your family, friends, children, co-workers, acquaintances, even your mail man if you’d like, about these kinds of ideas. I get the general feeling that most people are not spiteful to the poor or the marginalized or the stranger. But they simply don’t think about them or don’t know what to do. For those of us who have strong feelings about these things, it is imperative that we talk more and more about them with other people. Challenge people to do more, whatever that may be. Challenge people to challenge you when they think you aren’t being very mindful. Argue and debate and dialogue about which course of action is the best way to help make the world a better place! Because after all, the path forward is not always clear and two of us can both want a better world and have completely antithetical notions on how to get there. It is imperative that we have civil, friendly conversation to make these kinds of issues on the forefront of our priorities. And by talking about our desires, we openly invite others into an intimate knowledge of our concerns, which opens up understanding and mercy despite disparate political or prudential decisions.

In conclusion, I want to quickly wrap this up with two quick comments:

One was mentioned earlier. Often times, some of these ideas or prescribed actions are maligned as cop-outs or methods of assuaging personal guilt in the complicity of an unfair world. That is oversimplified and not very fair. If no one gave money to non-profit charities, then they wouldn’t exist. If no one advocated to their political leaders about these kinds of things, we would never have had some of the large systemic changes that have indubitably made the world a better place.

Assuaging guilt really isn’t the point. Does it make us feel better to do these things? Sure. But that isn’t bad. The end result of true social justice is the goal. And we won’t feel truly satisfied until we get there. I often here Jesus’ words quoted “The poor will always be with you” as if to say that the priorities of this world come secondary to the spiritual priorities of the church, because after all, there is nothing we can do – injustice is inevitable.

That is a sad, hopeless interpretation of his words. Yes, the poor will always be with us as long as that is the attitude. And if it were our children starving, or our parents dying prematurely of preventable diseases, or us freezing every night because we couldn’t afford heat in the middle of a New England winter, I would find it hard to find Jesus’ mercy and God’s abiding love anywhere in that sentiment. The battle for justice is long and hard. But if we all want a better world, questioning the intentions and veracity of someone’s desire only makes the struggle harder. We need to challenge each other to do more but we need to do it in love and mercy. (And this is something I am constantly struggling with. Outrage and self-righteous indignation often come too easily, unfortunately.)

Secondly, (and lastly – I promise!) many of these suggestions are a lot of work. They require us to break out of our comfort zone. This is true. It requires research and self-education. This is VERY true. Educate yourself. Educate others afterwards. Never stop looking deeper. The world we live in is bigger than ever before and more complex than we can even begin to imagine. Our decisions have profound impacts on a global scale despite feelings of complete hopelessness to do anything. It is hard work. Very hard work.

But we can’t be indifferent. We have to give a damn.