The Church & The Golden Calf

The Golden Calf isn’t history... it’s the church’s present danger.

I read the very difficult story of the golden calf in Exodus the other day. You probably know the story: Moses goes up to the mountain to get the law from God and while he’s gone, the Israelites convince Aaron to make a golden calf out of the jewelry they got during the exodus from Egypt. When Moses comes down the mountain, he smashes the tablets in anger.

It’s a hard story. There’s no sugarcoating it.

But as I did my reflection and journaling with my ChatGPT Bible assistant, something struck me from the text.

As Aaron is fashioning this idol into the image of calf, he seems confused. At least that’s how it read to me at first. For once the idol was formed, he said…

“He received the gold from their hand and fashioned it with a graving tool and made a golden calf. And they said, ‘These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!’ When Aaron saw this, he built an altar before it. And Aaron made a proclamation and said, ‘Tomorrow shall be a feast to the LORD (YHWH).’” - Exodus 32:4-5

I had never noticed it before. Why was Aaron praising YHWH with this golden calf? Did he think YHWH indwelled the idol?

That was the question I asked ChatGPT.

The answer sent chills up my spine.

• The people attribute the Exodus to the calf: “This is your god(s) who brought you up out of Egypt.”

• Aaron then declares a feast to YHWH — using God’s covenant name.

• They’re not abandoning YHWH outright. They’re trying to worship Him through an image, borrowing from Egyptian/Canaanite culture.

Essentially the Israelites were reshaping YHWH into a god of the cultures surrounding them.

It wasn’t as if they called the calf by another name like Baal. They didn’t abandon theism.

But what they did was worse because it’s insidious. Syncretism. When two or more belief systems blend together that distorts the original.

It’s easy to read an ancient story like this and scoff at the Israelites. I would never do that, we think. Or maybe we think that the golden calf represents money or status or earthly addictions that we’re all tempted by.

Yet, what if it’s not about that at all, but about the warning — do not shape God into the image you want Him to be based on what the culture tells you at the time.

The 12 years I have been outside the Church, completely oblivious to the culture of Christianity. Now that I’m back, there is a lot out there that sounds nothing like the God YHWH I read in the ancient text.

• Progressivism

• Health & wealth gospel

• Gnosticism

• New age meets nice Jesus

• Anti-semitism in Christianity

Are we taking YHWH and reshaping Him into the image we want to hold of God?

+ Progressive Christianity says God affirms everything, no matter what.

+ Health & wealth gospel says God is a vending machine for success.

+ Gnosticism says God’s truth is hidden and only for the “enlightened.”

+ New age meets nice Jesus says God is just here to vibe with your self-actualization.

+ Anti-semitism in Christianity says God’s covenant with Israel doesn’t matter.

None of them are rejecting the existence of God outright but they are dressing Him up in theology that does not line up with who He says He is.

So who does YHWH say He is? In His own words, as His glory passes by Moses in the cleft of the rock, just two chapters later, YHWH says…

“The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.” - Exodus 34:6-7

When He speaks about Himself, He is saying…

• YHWH, YHWH - covenant-keeping God, unchanging.

• Merciful & gracious - His first words are compassion, not wrath.

• Slow to anger - patient with human weakness.

• Abounding in steadfast love & faithfulness - overflowing, not stingy.

• Forgiving - willing to wipe away rebellion, failure, crookedness.

• But also just - He will not pretend sin doesn’t matter; He confronts evil and its consequences.

^^ No one likes this last one. And yet a God who doesn’t love justice is apathetic and ambivalent towards evil.

YHWH chose to resolve that tension of justice & mercy not by softening His stance towards evil, but by taking our place.

God became flesh. Not for a visit or as a disguise, but forever. Forever God in human form in Jesus of Nazareth. Bounding Himself to us permanently.

Think about that for a minute. YHWH. Immutable. Omnipresent. Uncreated. Unchanging. Overflowing with so much love that He chose to absorb the wrath of God (Himself) in a perfect act of justice, so that His mercy could flow forever. And what it cost Him? Constraint in human form for eternity. That.is.indescribable.

The cross shows that God has made Himself our mediator, forever.

So when the Church today remakes Him into something culturally palatable - whether Progressive God, Prosperity God, Enlightened Secret God, or “Nice Vibe Jesus” - we’re back at Sinai with a calf of our own making.

The question this Sabbath day for me is will I worship Him as He truly is, or will I fall to the temptation to turn God into a reshaped version of who I want Him to be? Will I bend to what feels comfortable to my limited understanding, my flesh, and what doesn’t upset the people around me?

Or will I follow the one true YHWH - the God who bound Himself to us in flesh, who satisfied perfect justice and poured out unending mercy, who united Himself to us forever in Jesus Christ.