Make us gods
The golden calf
Moses has been up the mountain too long. Days pass, and then more days, and the disoriented people at the foot of Sinai cannot bear the waiting any further. As for this Moses, they say, we do not know what has become of him. So they go to Aaron with a demand that is really a confession of how unbearable the silence has grown: make us gods to go before us, now. And out of the gold in their ears comes a calf, cast and shaped, something they can see and touch and carry, a god small enough to manage. These, they cry, are your gods, Israel. Disorientation breeds idolatry. This is its mechanism laid bare. When the true God seems delayed or hidden up some mountain, the uncertainty becomes intolerable, and the intolerable uncertainty pushes the heart to manufacture a substitute, anything visible to fill the silence and go before us now. The calf is never really about preferring metal to God. It is about the agony of the wait. It is what a people builds when the One they are waiting for is, as far as they can tell, taking far too long.
“Come, make us gods which shall go before us; for as for this Moses... we don't know what has become of him.”
— Israel, to Aaron — Exodus 32:1 (WEB)
“These are your gods, Israel, which brought you up out of the land of Egypt.”
This is Disorientation, and the unbearable wait is where it does its peculiar damage: the phase breeds idolatry. When the true God seems delayed or hidden, we manufacture a god we can see and control to fill the silence. The phase asks you to refuse the calf and keep waiting for the One who only seems to be taking too long.
In the disorienting wait you will be tempted to build a calf, and you should know the shape the temptation takes. It will not announce itself as idolatry; it arrives as relief: some visible, controllable certainty grabbed quickly to quiet the unbearable silence, something to go before you now so you need not stand in the dark. The idol is always whatever you reach for precisely because God seems to be taking too long: a certainty too rigid to be true, a person asked to be more than a person, a system that promises to end the not-knowing. The mark of the calf is that it ends the wait on your terms. And here is the hard discipline of the wilderness: it asks you to wait for the real God rather than fashion a manageable fake. But the One you are waiting for is not lost up the mountain, and He is not late. He is coming down with something better than anything you could cast from your own gold.
The Church that cannot bear the disorienting wait will cast calves: a strongman leader, a rigid new certainty, a slick program, a nostalgic golden age, anything visible to go before it now. Whole movements have melted down their gold to manufacture a god small enough to manage, rather than endure the silence of a God who seems delayed. The idol always promises to end the uncertainty on the Body's terms. But the recurring upheavals of Christian history were not resolved by the calves hurried up in the panic; those were ground to powder. Faithfulness across the whole Church in the wilderness means refusing the manageable fake and waiting, however long it takes, for the God who is neither lost nor late.
What cannot be shaken is the God you are waiting for, who is neither lost nor late. Calves can be cast and melted down; the One coming down the mountain remains. When the wait tempts you to manufacture a substitute, what endures is the real God, worth the waiting.
- What am I tempted to build because God seems to be taking too long?
- Where have I reached for a visible, controllable certainty to quiet an unbearable silence?
- Can I wait for the real God rather than fashion a god I can manage?
Lord, the wait has grown long, and I am tempted to build something I can see and control to fill the silence. Keep me from the calf. You are not lost and You are not late. Give me the faith to wait for You instead of fashioning a manageable fake. Amen.