How Now Golden Cow

Here's the metaphor. Moses goes up on the mountain to hang out with God, and leaves the people down at the bottom somewhere.

Probably should have just taken them all along with him. Who knew?

So he comes back down, and the little darlings have melted down all of their gold crap and made a cow out of it. Fine, whatever.

But then they started to worship the cow.

Note: Moses is up on the mountain talking to the REAL GOD. I mean, the creator guy. The whole shebang. And the people have already seen AMAZING crap. Waters parting, Egyptians drowning, 10 plagues that were doggoned impressive, manna from heaven, water from the rock, things that Walmart knickknack cows are never ever going to do,

And they made this stupid thing out of gold - I mean, gold is nice. It's pretty. - forgot all about the God of the plagues and the parting waters and the drowning Egyptians and worshipped a danged cow. That they had made. With their own hands. They knew that. They knew it wasn't a real god. It was a paperweight. A doorstop. A really really nice White Elephant gift. That people would trade for at a Christmas party. Which didn't technically exist yet. But still.

And then here's the part we need to notice and remember. Moses ground up the calf and made them drink it. Then he had 3000 of them slaughtered.

The thing that they worshipped was used to punish them.

I have this sneaky feeling that God is like that.

So. What are the things that American Christians worship?

America. Freedom. Individualism. Democracy. Capitalism.

So if you were God, and all of your people (I'm talking to you, American Christian Evangelicals) were idolizing, well, anything, do you just pat them all on the head like little misbehaving toddlers and gently swat their cute little bottoms?

The right answer is, it's a bit presumptuous to speak for God or try to predict what he's going to do, so heck, I don't know! Maybe!?

Here's what we do know. God really is not a big fan of idolatry, and he slaps idolators down like rapid bats.

But he is also frustratingly patient and compassionate, until time runs out.

Then things get ugly.

And frankly, he tends to let the ugly stage last a long time, too.

Like, he took forever to send the Israelites into captivity, and then took forever to get them out again.

I'm thinking time is a whole different thing for God. I've got a talk on that.

And when he took forever to punish Israel, they all got arrogant and cocky and bigheaded and conceited and just made things worse.

And then when they were all captivitied up for hundreds of years, crying out to God for hundreds of years, he took (go ahead, guess) hundreds of years to get them out again.

And here's the process: the Israelites, when they were up, got rich, powerful, arrogant, thought they didn't really didn't need God or to do what he wanted them to do, and they oppressed captive peoples so that there was violence and bloodshed in the streets, and it was ugly.

So God took their wealth and power from them, humiliated them, turned them into oppressed people, inflicted violence and bloodshed on their heads, and it was uglier.

They loved their money, their power, they took freedom away from others and kept it for themselves, they enslaved others and oppressed them, and they loved their country more than they loved God.

So God took their money and their power. He took their freedom and enslaved them. He took their country from them and dispersed them to the winds. And they didn't get it back until 1948.

He used what they loved against them, to punish them, and he didn't let up for a long long time.

They loved Israel (God's chosen land), and freedom, and money. Too much. Pride. Too much. Arrogance. Too much.

Can you see where this might be going?