I awoke this morning thinking about the golden calf story. Moses had been leading the Israelites through the desert, back to the holy mountain. The Israelites had agreed to the covenant with YHWH (“...all that YHWH has spoken we will do...”, Exodus 19:8). Shortly thereafter, Moses received the commandments on stone tablets, “written by the hand of God,” and brought them to the people, only to find them worshipping a golden calf they had made.
God was furious! The Israelites had received the commandment to worship God alone, and have no other gods “before Him.” “Have no other gods” was important enough that Torah (the first five books of the Hebrew Bible) repeats it several times. For example, Exodus 34:14: “You are not to bow down to any other god! For YHWH – Jealous-One is His name, a jealous God is He....”
The Israelites were not the only ones to have received that commandment. The Qur’an is filled with such admonitions. Here are three:
“Allah! There is no god but He, (and no one deserves to be worshipped except Him);” (4:87) and, “Do not take with Allah any other god for worship...And your Lord has commanded you to worship none but Him.” (17:22,23) Also, “”God will not forgive idolatry. He will forgive whom He will all other sins. He that serves other gods besides God has strayed far indeed.” (4:116)
We who were raised in the Christian tradition know well Jesus’ answer when he was asked which is the most important commandment:
“Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.” (Mark 12:29, 30. See also Deuteronomy 6:4,5)
These words begin the Shema, the morning and evening prayer of many Jews (Deuteronomy 6:4-9). The one-ness of God, and the commandment to worship only God, when taken together with the prohibition against having other gods, leaves pretty much no doubt for any believer in any of the Abrahamic faiths.
What other gods? There is the golden calf, of course, built perhaps because Moses had been too long away from the Israelites. Perhaps the people were just following their leaders. Read Deuteronomy 13 about what to do with people who say, “Let us follow other Gods and let us worship them.”
We often make claims about what we believe, and believe IN. And then we act in totally differently ways. It’s as though we’re following other gods, seeming to love our (fill in what’s most important to you right now) more than God. Others’ golden calves (bigger houses, newer cars, higher position, “truer” faith) are easy to point out. Our own are harder to see, but they are real. We could do much worse than to recognize our calves as the “other gods” they are, and move them back to their proper places. That can be our major step toward loving our God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength. With Moses’ help, God, although furious, forgave the Israelites. (Exodus 32: 11-14) It’s just that we don’t have Moses to argue on our behalf!
