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The Golden Calf

“Make us gods who will go before us!” demanded the Israelites. “As for this fellow Moses who brought us up out of Egypt, we don’t know what has happened to him.” With those words, God’s people made a democratic choice – against the way God wanted them to go and for their own “security”. God’s way was not to their liking. It required faith and trust – not only in God but also in a man. That man had climbed a mountain forty days earlier to speak (he claimed) with God and had not been seen nor heard of since. They never liked the way he did things anyway, so here was a – literally – golden opportunity to have it their way. Aaron, their high priest and Moses’ brother, was massively outvoted. The majority ruled and they got their god – a golden calf which could be the kind of god they wanted.

Most Christians know the story well. Unfortunately most Christians don’t realize that Christianity itself is a golden calf of such proportions as to put Aaron’s effort in the shade.

So many love to dwell on the miraculous beginnings of the Church, and miraculous they were. Yet even they were no match, in terms of pure drama alone, for the events which launched the Israelites out of Egypt. Try matching the plagues and the parting of the Red Sea for starters.

Surely if any people had seen their God in action it was the Israelites, and if any man had been so clearly sent to them by their God it was Moses.

So, what went wrong? Why did they end up rejecting Moses and replacing God with a golden calf?

The Israelites had been desperate to get out from under the yoke of slavery. They wanted to be free – a people with their own identity, living in their own land. In anguish and desperation they cried out to their God and He responded, sending Moses to lead them out of Egypt and into the Promised Land. And lead them out He did, bringing the entire Egyptian nation to its knees in the process.

The joy of deliverance, however, was short-lived. Having left Egypt in triumph, with Moses at their head, the Israelites soon grew increasingly disenchanted with God’s way and God’s man. Why? Simply because they found that, when God is in charge, the terms and conditions are set by Him and Him alone. They loved His benefits but hated His demands. So they began to look for another way – a way which suited them.

Then came Moses’ forty-day absence on Mt. Sinai; an event which brought it all to a head and gave the people just the opportunity they were looking for.

Turning their backs on the privilege of being led by the living God and the man sent by Him, the Israelites set about to create their own religion. To their delight they found that, by simply using their own materials and resources, they could have their kind of god. More to the point, once they had such a god they, and they alone, could decide what was acceptable to him.

Thus God’s people chose to possess a god of their own making, rather than to be possessed by the God who had made them.

“Of course we wouldn’t do that!” protest today’s Christians. Yet that is exactly what many of them have done – they and their “godly” predecessors. And on a massive scale.

Despite reformations and revivals, despite split after split and division after division, despite scholarship and spirituality; Christianity, by and large, has long been one huge golden calf.

Though so diverse in its beliefs and expressions, the entire Christian religion lays claim to having its roots in the teachings, the crucifixion and the resurrection of Jesus. It claims to represent Him and to be the means by which humanity can come into relationship with God.

But what, in reality, is this huge religious system?

One does not need to be an authority on Church history to know the true source and nature of the Christian religion. Jesus told us that a tree is known, not by expert examination of its roots, but by its fruit. And the fruit of Christianity is not a pretty sight.

Christians are taught that the true Church of Jesus Christ is His body – the very embodiment of Jesus Himself. But is that true of the Christian Church as we see it today, in its many and varied forms? Certainly it may proclaim Jesus, but does it embody Him? The answer, once again, is obvious – for the fruit says it all.

Christianity is neither a representation of Jesus nor of the way He has called us to live. Worse still, it practises deception by claiming divine authority and godly motives while using the truth, not for God’s glory, but for its own ends.

The “guardians of the Gospel” proclaim that Jesus is the Son of God, sent to us by His Father, and they are right. Many of them preach that He died as a sacrifice for our sins, rising from the dead to make forgiveness and eternal life a free gift to all, and that is true. Yet it is right here that opportunities for the abuse and misuse of the Gospel abound; and they have been exploited by the self-serving Christian system for centuries.

Other religions – be they “doctrines of devils” or merely man-made – do not possess the same inherent capacity to attract those who seek God, for they are not based on the truth. Christianity, on the other hand, has truth on its side and can plausibly offer God’s way to those who seek it.

Using this advantage to the full, the Christian religion long ago made itself the guardian and interpreter of the Bible. A cunning move, because the Scripture is inspired by God and people’s hearts are touched and their lives changed by its words. Capitalising on this, Christianity uses the godliness of the Scripture to promote itself. As self-appointed sole-franchisee, it not only takes credit for having provided the means of blessing, it also draws credibility from the blessings themselves. Do they not, after all, prove that Christianity is truly of God?

As it has done with the Bible, so the system has done with every other sacred thing to which it has had access – consistently using the gifts of God to draw to itself those with open hearts and willing spirits. Is there any abuse and misuse worse than this?

But if the Christian system is so unrepresentative of God, why does He bless so many within it? Because He cannot do otherwise! Having made a way for humanity to come to Him and receive His benefits, He has bound himself to respond to those who claim His promises and gifts – despite the abuses of His goodness by those who have turned His grace and His promises hugely to their profit.

Moreover, those parts of Christianity which consider themselves the purest are often among the greatest promoters of the golden calf. Naturally they have their own version of it – one whose very ‘purity’ is guaranteed to make it even golder than the rest. But purity is not the point.

There is, as the Bible itself says, nothing purer than “gold tried in the fire” – which is precisely the material out of which Aaron’s calf was made. There was nothing impure about that. It was solid gold. Its error lay not in its quality but in its source. It was the work of men’s hands posing as God. And that’s not merely an error – it’s a monumental sin!

In their day Israel were the one people on the face of the earth who could legitimately lay claim to being worshippers of the one true God. They alone were the ones to whom He sent a deliverer to take them out of slavery and into a land flowing with milk and honey. In truth they had the exclusive right to call themselves God’s people. Yet it was Israel who wilfully and stubbornly rebelled against God, changing His way into their way.

They did it in Moses’ day, they did it after Moses, they were doing it when Jesus came, and Christians have continued doing it for centuries.

When Jesus came it was to those who called themselves God’s people. Only He didn’t call them that. He called them lost sheep. Why? Because those who were supposed to be their shepherds had replaced the true way of God with a man-made distortion. Just as so many of today’s so-called shepherds still do.

Such men, who claim to represent God, are in fact representatives of the system they serve. Like the worshippers of the golden calf, they point to the work of their hands and proclaim, “This is your god!”

No sooner had Aaron’s Israelites got their man-made god than they began to indulge themselves in an orgy of self-gratification. It was, of course, inevitable. After all, that’s why they made the calf in the first place. Once you define God in your own terms – moulding Him into the size and shape you want Him to be, and putting your words into His mouth – you will naturally begin to please yourself, even while you insist you are doing God’s will.

But even the attraction of self- gratification is a deception, for the Christian system is not interested in anyone’s welfare but its own. It is not out to liberate people. Rather, like all man-made and devil-inspired systems, it is out to enslave them. When Jesus spoke about preaching deliverance to the captives, He was speaking of the prisoners of religion.

If Christianity were really the way of Jesus, it would love God, it would be led by Him, it would depend upon Him and it would have Him alone as its security. But it does none of those.

It often astounds me how intelligent people can read the Bible they claim to believe, note the words of Jesus whom they claim to follow, and not be struck by the incredible contrasts between the way of Jesus and Christianity. Many, it seems, turn a blind eye, assuming that the system knows best. How foolish.

The problem with Christianity is not doctrinal. It is relational. Those who have sought to reform or revive it have often aimed for a purer doctrine (gold tried in the fire?). If only the Church’s beliefs and methods were more scriptural and its doctrine purer, they reason, surely it would be closer to what God intended. Which misses the heart of the matter and the root of the problem.

Christianity is the way it is for the same reason Israel worshipped a golden calf: it has consistently refused to relate to God on His terms. It has refused to submit to His Lordship, even while pretending to honor Him. And it is to such pretenders that Jesus said: “Why do you call Me, ‘Lord, Lord’ and do not do what I say?”

Christians are taught, not to yield to Jesus’ lordship, but merely to use Him as their saviour and provider. Instead of a God who runs their lives they have a golden calf which gratifies their selfish desires. What apostasy!

Pointing back through Israel’s history, Jesus accused its religious leaders of rejecting every man God had ever sent to them. While posthumously honoring those men, whom their fore- fathers had rejected, persecuted and killed, the leaders of Jesus’ day did exactly the same thing – to the point of crucifying the Son of God Himself. And that trend did not stop with the crucifixion.

Once Christianity became entrenched as a religious system it took over from Judaism in more ways than one. Like Israel before it, the Christian Church soon began to reject the men and the messages sent to it by God; and it still does.

A true man of God represents only God. He has no vested interests or ulterior motives. He stands unequivocally for all that pleases God. He is free to be God’s man and, being free, He has no interest in any self-serving, man-made substitute.

Today God is raising up, not merely individuals, but entire bodies of people who are discovering the liberation, the joy and the fulfilment of belonging to God on His terms. These have no interest in the preservation of the Christian system. They are single- minded. They do not immerse themselves in doctrinal pursuits, nor in accumulating scripture knowledge. They know that the key to pleasing God is relationship, so their priority is love – love for God and love for one another.

Like Moses on the mountain, such people have made God alone their security. While others worship a golden calf, they worship the living God. They have rejected pride in knowledge and the security of a system, in favour of living by faith and trusting in God.

So far as the Christian system is concerned, such people are not popular. Yet it is they who are the hope of God’s kingdom and the key to the fulfilment of His purposes – for they are the people who know their God.

The way of Jesus is emphatically not a religion. Nor is it an academic pursuit. It has nothing to do with man’s ways and everything to do with God’s. It functions under the lordship of Jesus and is led by His Spirit. It depends not upon the visible (even if, like the golden calf, it is made of the purest gold) but upon the living God.

Those who promote and perpetuate a religion called Christianity – so as to have that which pleases them – are guilty of the same horrendous crime as the Scribes and Pharisees. They take the sacred things of God and used them to lure, to trap and to enslave God’s people. They distribute the precious gifts of God with the liberality, not of those who care, but of those who ensnare. They gratify themselves and teach their followers to do likewise.

And, sin of sins, they do it all in the name of Jesus – often using the very gifts and ministries which He Himself once entrusted to them! How can they read their Bibles and not be smitten by His words: “Depart from Me, for I never knew you? ”

The Israelites saw their God in action in Egypt. They acknowledged the man He sent to them. They followed Him into liberty. Their God parted the Red Sea for them and miraculously led and provided for them. Yet, when it came down to it, they loved their own ways more than His. Had they admitted as much and openly forsaken Him they would at least have been true to themselves. Instead they changed the word of God into a lie and worshipped the creature rather than the Creator. The perpetrators of the Christian religion have done no less.

Christianity does not worship God. It worships the god it has created.

It does not proclaim God’s word. It propounds its own ways.

It does not represent Jesus, whose name it takes. It beautifies and promotes itself for its own gain and glory.

It does not seek and save those for whom Jesus died. It uses His gospel to make converts for its own ends.

Christianity is a golden calf.