Reading… and Thinking

So all the people broke off the golden earrings which were in their ears, and brought them to Aaron. And he received the gold from their hand, and he fashioned it with an engraving tool, and made a molded calf. Then they said, “This is your god, O Israel, that brought you out of the land of Egypt!” So when Aaron saw it, he built an altar before it. And Aaron made a proclamation and said, “Tomorrow is a feast to the LORD.”

– Exodus 32:3-5 (NKJV)

What would you have done in Aaron's shoes? The people who, a few weeks before, had cried out, “All that the Lord says we will do!”, the people who had heard the voice of the Almighty Himself speak to them from heaven saying, ‘Have no other gods besides me,” and “You shall not make for yourself an idol,” these people are now saying, “Let us make us gods to lead us out of the wilderness.”

The people must have been nearing desperation. After six weeks, most of them concluded Moses wasn't coming back. Who then would lead them? All they could think of was to revert to what they grew up with – there was a god for everything in Egypt, and they were in need of a god to lead them.

Aaron realized that there was a kernel of truth here. They did indeed need a God to lead them, and that God was the LORD. But their minds were now filled with making a physical representation like they were accustomed to. Aaron decided to take this wrong impulse, and try to redirect it toward the true God. Rather than let them re-create the whole Egyptian pantheon, he took charge. He made them one image. And, of key importance, he called for a feast to the LORD (Yahweh). If they needed a physical representation, well that wasn't great, but at least they were going to worship Yahweh, not one of the gods of Egypt.

Something like this must have been Aaron's rationalization. As reasonable as it sounded, it was terribly wrong. What should he have done? He should have confronted the real issue, instead of the symptom. The real issue is expressed in verse 1, where the people say, “As for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.” Who was it that brought them up out of Egypt? Was it Moses? No way!

It was Yahweh who brought them up. They superstitiously thought Moses had the power. With Moses gone, they thought they were helpless.

What Aaron needed to do was to correct this basic misunderstanding. To point out that they had a God, who was going before them. That this mighty God was still on the mountain (the visible cloud was still there!), and He was no doubt instructing Moses. But even if Moses was taken away by God, He would not abandon them. Did not Aaron himself have some of the same power? Was not the rod of God the one that he carried? There was no need to seek some other god, some deaf, dumb, and blind idol, when they had the evidence of a living God among them. A God who saves, as they had seen with their own eyes. There was no reason to fear.

Had Aaron approached it this way, would everyone have believed it? Probably not. But maybe he could have held them for the few additional days until Moses came back. And at the very least, he could have refused to become part of so wrong an action as creating an idol.

We are often faced with hard choices, and a lot of the time there is a course of action that looks like a solution, but deep down we know it’s a compromise – it isn't the right thing to do. When we face a crisis, it's vitally important that we step back, and not just react. What's the real problem? Tackling it will always be better than tackling the symptoms – although it often won’t be easier. Very often, just like Israel, the real problem is thinking that there has to be a human solution. We forget that we have a God to lead us, and that if we'll just remain faithful to Him, He will save us. Standing up for trust in God may not immediately remove the crisis situation. But taking the longer view is always the right approach.