Sacred Cows and Golden Calves

My wife, Victoria, and I went to Nepal on our honeymoon. Though religiously tolerant to a point, Nepal is a Hindu nation. In the streets, cattle roam free. They are considered sacred and are not to be harmed.

To western eyes, this creates some unusual circumstances. Cattle lay in the middle of a busy road and sleep. The cars and buses drive around them, careful not to come too close. Caught in a swirl of traffic, the cows have nothing to fear. The sacred cows sleep peacefully without a care for the passing vehicles. No one could imagine harming them. Policemen divert traffic around the beatified bovines and life goes on.

Those sacred cattle remind me of the story of the golden calf in Exodus. At the point the golden calf is created, Moses has gone up Mount Sinai to be with God. More than a month passes and the people have not seen Moses. The community’s communication link to God is down. Moses has gone up onto the mountain, where no one dares follow. Moses may never return. What are they to do?

The book of Exodus says the people tell Aaron their priest, “Arise, make us a god who will go before us, for this Moses, the man who brought us up from the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him!”

The people no longer want an invisible God. They want a god that they can see among them. God isn’t working the way they think God should and something needs to change. Instead of changing their view of God, they seek to change their God.

What happened? God didn’t live up to their expectations. They had an image of how a god should be and act and the one true God wasn’t measuring up. The people took things into their own hands, or more particularly, they put it into Aaron’s hands. Their high priest was charged with making an image of a god—something that he and all the people had very specifically promised not to do.

Look at the words they used in particular. They say that it was Moses who brought them out of Egypt. Moses? Did they forget the Passover? Did they forget the parting of the Red Sea? Did they forget the pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night? Did they forget the manna? What they forgot was that if God does not measure up to your idea of God, then it is your idea that must change, not God.

Just as the Hebrews wanted to change their God to fit in the image they had for him, I too can confine God to my own ideas. I too have my share of sacred cows—ideas that I leave unmolested. Like a policeman diverting traffic around a cow sleeping in the road, I too can go to great lengths to preserve my false images of God, which can be my own sacred cows. I put God in a box and then I go to great lengths to leave my image of God alone. I don’t allow it to change and grow.

For example, I want God to punish the people who hurt me and other folks I care about. I want it done in this lifetime, preferably this week. I don’t mind bad things happening to good people so much as I don’t want God to allow good things to happen to bad people. But God will not act as a cosmic cop to exact the revenge I deem appropriate.

            I want God to rescue me in my times of trouble, even the trouble I so intentionally make for myself. But God is not the cavalry set to rush in just before the closing credits and save the day.

I want prayers answered on demand. And I want it done on my schedule, in my way. But God is not a divine vending machine, and no effort on my part will change that. It’s not God that needs to change, but my idea of who God is.

The boxes may be labeled cosmic cop, cavalry, divine vending machine, or perhaps something else. But as soon as I confine God to a segment of my life and decide how and when God may act in my life, it can have dire consequences. It’s not that God will abandon me, but I will be abandoning part of who God is and how God acts.

Our false images of God, these sacred cows become our golden calves, taking the place of God with a cheap imitation. Just as the Israelites wanted to create a god that fit their own image of how God can act, so can we. God is not safe and cannot be contained. God refuses to be placed in a box, no matter how comforting that may be to us. We can’t segment God off to a few hours on Sunday.

The challenge is to let God be God. To allow God to delight and surprise us in new ways. As we break open the boxes, we find that God is more than can be contained with human imagination.

We need to let loose of the God of our making to find the true God revealed to us in ever new ways through worship, scripture, and prayer. Our sacred cows, our false ideas of God, are seen as pale shadows compared to the divine. Our false images of God are turned to dust as we encounter the true and living God in our lives.

            (The Rev. Frank Logue is pastor of King of Peace Episcopal Church in Kingsland.)

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