The reduction of our struggles to everyday concepts, minimizes the greater war for our souls.
When things go wrong in our lives, it is easy to put a human face to our woes, to rationalise our struggles in everyday times. When Moses disappeared into Mount Sinai for an extended period, the people asked for a golden calf to be made. There are many angles to this request, but it must at least be seen against the background of a departed Moses.
Moses was the tangible expression of the unseen God seated beyond the swirling mists above and the pillar of fire below. They needed a physical presence in order to cope with the unseen. Moses had become a kind of linus-blanket, a comforting presence in an otherwise uncertain, confusing dilemma.
His absence demanded a proxy, without which the people risked falling apart. The golden calf would become a proxy for Moses and for God. I am not altogether convinced that the calf should be seen as a specific return to the gods of Egypt, but they may well have stolen a concept from Egypt to rationalize God. It partly explains our own need for buildings, priests, symbols, statues and proxies for God.
The calf not only symbolized the hopes and dreams of Israel, it also explained away their worst fears and misgivings. It had become a kind of talisman. If they could just see something representative of their concept of God, they felt that things would be okay.
By way of contrast, when Moses descended again they asked him to wear a veil, because of his glow. 2 Corinthians 3 explains that in effect they rejected the glory of the law, the bigger story behind current events. Having already worked through to a workable concept of God, the people were happy to take the written law as their new symbol of comfort and adopt it in a way that would give them a tangible religious experience. The truths behind the written laws were lost to them.
Now when we try to personalize our own struggles, grasping for meaning or symbols of hope to reassure our faith, we too miss the real point. Our struggles are not an end in themselves, but part of a greater journey with a surpassing conclusion. We must take our wrestles to a higher level, seeking God’s face and His heart for our lives without settling for symbolic gestures. Standing in prayer queues and falling over, nice sounding prophetic words and all the other jargon that characterizes our faith are not the real thing, they are at best just poor substitutes for intimacy with God.
We may fear what a real knowledge of God would imply in terms of exposing our nakedness or the costs of knowing God, but anything less is just a cop out. Sooner or later we must stop trying to put a face to our struggle or relying on symbolic gestures to make ourselves feel better, even if we aren’t. We must go up the hill and meet the lawmaker, not the laws and find intimacy with the savior not just the benefits of salvation.
© Peter Eleazar at http://www.bethelstone.com/
When things go wrong in our lives, it is easy to put a human face to our woes, to rationalise our struggles in everyday times. When Moses disappeared into Mount Sinai for an extended period, the people asked for a golden calf to be made. There are many angles to this request, but it must at least be seen against the background of a departed Moses.
Moses was the tangible expression of the unseen God seated beyond the swirling mists above and the pillar of fire below. They needed a physical presence in order to cope with the unseen. Moses had become a kind of linus-blanket, a comforting presence in an otherwise uncertain, confusing dilemma.
His absence demanded a proxy, without which the people risked falling apart. The golden calf would become a proxy for Moses and for God. I am not altogether convinced that the calf should be seen as a specific return to the gods of Egypt, but they may well have stolen a concept from Egypt to rationalize God. It partly explains our own need for buildings, priests, symbols, statues and proxies for God.
The calf not only symbolized the hopes and dreams of Israel, it also explained away their worst fears and misgivings. It had become a kind of talisman. If they could just see something representative of their concept of God, they felt that things would be okay.
By way of contrast, when Moses descended again they asked him to wear a veil, because of his glow. 2 Corinthians 3 explains that in effect they rejected the glory of the law, the bigger story behind current events. Having already worked through to a workable concept of God, the people were happy to take the written law as their new symbol of comfort and adopt it in a way that would give them a tangible religious experience. The truths behind the written laws were lost to them.
Now when we try to personalize our own struggles, grasping for meaning or symbols of hope to reassure our faith, we too miss the real point. Our struggles are not an end in themselves, but part of a greater journey with a surpassing conclusion. We must take our wrestles to a higher level, seeking God’s face and His heart for our lives without settling for symbolic gestures. Standing in prayer queues and falling over, nice sounding prophetic words and all the other jargon that characterizes our faith are not the real thing, they are at best just poor substitutes for intimacy with God.
We may fear what a real knowledge of God would imply in terms of exposing our nakedness or the costs of knowing God, but anything less is just a cop out. Sooner or later we must stop trying to put a face to our struggle or relying on symbolic gestures to make ourselves feel better, even if we aren’t. We must go up the hill and meet the lawmaker, not the laws and find intimacy with the savior not just the benefits of salvation.
© Peter Eleazar at http://www.bethelstone.com/
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