God might have regretted the promise made to Abraham in light of the golden calf and in a more irreverent moment one
might even imagine the Lord uttering Homer Simpson’s exclamation of
resignation… D'oh!!! In the end the Lord’s mind is changed by Moses who
persuades the Lord to protect the Lord’s own name so that the disaster visited
upon the stiff necked people won’t turn the Lord into the subject of an Egyptian
joke. It is a very human image of God
that any loving parent of a willfully disobedient child might recognize. God is
stuck with these people brought out of Egypt with mighty power and outstretched
hand and God, throughout the wilderness wandering, will have to be talked down
from the precipice of hot wrath burning against ungrateful people. No other God
puts up with such disrespect or is as long suffering as the God of Israel. I
wonder if through the “changing of the mind” God’s mind becomes fixed to
forgive in a far more dramatic way when through the disaster visited upon the
Christ God’s mind cannot be moved away from mercy no matter how many golden
calves are created by God’s own people. Oh but surely there is a consequence
for worshiping false idols? Of course there is. The idol you worship is false.
Or in other words; you can’t get milk or mercy from a golden calf.
No comments:
Post a Comment