God Ain't Playin' (Except When He Is)
This may be the most theologically imprecise blog I've written in awhile (or ever), so for the Bible prudes out there, please forgive me ahead of time.
I want to take a break from the Corinthians notes to share my quiet time from this morning with you. Most days I will just jump into the Word, praying as I go, looking for new insights, waiting for God's presence, and listening to His voice. But today I felt a fresh determination to hear from God, not just gain a new Scriptural insight, so I spent some time waiting on Him before I even jumped into the text. The result was unexpected. My time with God was...pretty dang fun.
Now, God and I do have a special connection through laughter. Those of you who know my testimony from the past few years know how true, how embarrassingly and incredibly true that is. He likes to make me laugh. Sometimes it seems He'd rather do that than share some mind-blowing piece of wisdom with me. This continually surprises me about His character. He is a God that loves to laugh, loves to have fun with His children, and loves to play with them.
We live in a broken world, and that merits some seriousness. The Bible we read centers upon God's rescue plan for a sinful world, and so naturally, there is quite a bit of sobriety contained in it. But can you imagine what it will be like to relate to God in the next age, when death and sin and everything ugly is done away with? Let me tell you, it will be more fun than we can even imagine. And my contention is that, if you read the Bible with the right paradigm, you can see this joyful part of God's personality just brimming between the lines, anxiously waiting for the chance to have a little fun with us, even in this age.
I saw a little glimpse of this part of God this morning in my reading through the book of Exodus. The stories I studied were actually quite severe, but incongruously, the mental pictures being fed to me (from God?!) were pretty silly.
Let's start with chapters 25-31 of Exodus. Moses has been having the "quiet time" of his life. He's been invited to the top of the mountain, where God's glory dwells, in a way that no other human was allowed to experience. Image after image passes before him, and God's voice thunders through him, as the blueprints for the tabernacle, God's dwelling place with Israel, and are transmitted to him. What a holy occasion! The account of this other-worldly devotion time ends with Moses walking down the mountain again with the ten commandments on a tablet, hand-written by God Himself (and really, that's where God's joke-time with me started... What does God's' handwriting look like?? All caps? Times New Romans font? Italics? Is His grammar proper, or more down-to-earth for the sake of the commoner? Strange thoughts began to float through my head about the handwriting of God...)
Chapter 32 changes scenes. The people are at the bottom of the mountain, waiting impatiently for Moses. Days go by, then weeks... Where is he? You almost can't blame the Israelites for getting annoyed. Never were they told how long Moses would be gone, and they saw the guy ascend into a dark cloud of fire, smoke, and thunder. Perhaps he was struck dead. Perhaps he got raptured. No one really knew.
What happens next, though, is a little unbelievable. The people decide that they have had enough. They are tired of an absent leader, an unpredictable God, and a dry wilderness. They begin to pressure Aaron, the second-in-command, to make them new gods! And then they wanted to worship those gods as if they were the ones that had actually rescued them from Egypt.
Aaron, being the weak leader that he was, succumbs to their desires and starts to put all this work into creating a new god - a golden calf. Much money, time, and effort is put into this ridiculous venture. Most surprising of all, when it is complete, the people all enthusiastically begin to worship it in one accord.
"Thank you, o golden calf, for freeing us! You are so good to us. We praise you." I imagine a ten year old little Jewish girl walking by and asking her mother with childlike curiosity, "Mommy, why are you worshiping a fake cow?" To which the mother just shushes her child and tells her to get in line.
The madness continues as they "sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play" (v.6). We know from later in the chapter (and some New Testament passages that comment on this event) that this included some very inappropriate dancing.
After the golden calf worship service, the people begin to binge on all the food and drinks that they could get together. Ironically, they are cooking the very meat that God had supernaturally provided for them. Then as night begins to fall - the disco ball is brought out, and these cray cray Israelites begin to party! Someone presses "play" on the ipod "party mix" and the temperature goes up a few degrees. In one corner there are some very drunk Jews in a Macarena line, in another corner dancing that looks like it is straight out of a 21st century high school after-football-game dance. Aaron himself, being the pushover, starts off as an overseer, but within time and after a few drinks, starts moving his hips to the music in a very un-priestly fashion.
Meanwhile, as morning comes around, Moses and his assistant Joshua are climbing down the mountain in excitement with what God has shown them. As they near the bottom, however, they begin to hear the thud-thud-thud of the dance beat, and the cheers and whoo's of the crowd below. Joshua, ablaze with intensity, shouts, "There's war in the camp!" And in my (theologically imprecise) imagination I see Moses with his long white beard, still glowing from the glory of God, pause for a moment, listen, and shake his head.
"No, Joshua. That's not war - that's Christina Aguilera."
The two saints reach the foot of the mountain and look at the scene in front of them. Plastic red cups are scattered everywhere, people are passed out on the floor, and that remnant of ultra-hardcore dancers that are still out on the dance floor, sweat soaking through their garments, look up in shock. The cheering onlookers also turn to see their leader and prophet, and freeze in horror. The music comes to a screeching halt.
Time slows down as Moses looks from left to right, taking it all in, face getting redder with every moment. Then in seeming slow motion he lifts up the two tablets with both hands, symbolizing the nation's commitment to God, and smashes them against the ground. The sound awakens Aaron, who has passed out on the ground next to the table with the quail entrees.
I am sure what happened next was of the utmost seriousness, to Moses, to God, and to the people, but I couldn't help but laugh as I read it. Like other parts of the story, it is almost hard to believe.
In the fierceness of his anger, Moses storms over to the golden calf and throws it into the fire. No one protests. As it burns and softens in the flames, Moses takes it out and begins to grind it into powder before their very eyes. Every hammer blow makes the ashamed Israelites wince. Then I pictured Moses going over to the nearest Israelite man on the dance floor and exclaim, "You like golden calves, do you? And you like to eat and drink, eh? Well, why don't you drink some Golden-Calf-flavored-Gatorade!!" Moses then takes some of the golden powder, mixes it into a cup and starts to force it down the man's throat.
"No, I don't want to drink it! I don't want to...arrrgggghhhhh!" The man is overpowered and is forced to guzzle down the calf-powder. Soon, Moses has made them all stand in a line, and each one is made to drink this mixture. Aaron is standing by, trembling, fearing that Moses his brother has lost it, afraid of what he might say to him in his wrath.
After the guilty idolaters have dutifully chugged the calf-drink as punishment, Moses inevitably marches over to Aaron, demanding an account. This, too, struck me as rather hilarious.
"What did this people do to you that you have brought such a great sin upon them?" Aaron fidgets for a moment, and then with a quivering voice answers, "Let not the anger of my lord burn hot. You know the people, that they are set on evil. For they said to me, 'Make us gods who shall go before us...' So I said to them, 'Let any who have gold take it off.' So they gave it to me, and I threw it into the fire, and out came this calf" (v.22-24, exact quote).
I pictured Moses with fire in his eyes, looking his brother up and down, and saying, "So, let me get this straight. First, they made you do this."
"Uh, yes. Totally made me."
"Ok, and secondly, you threw the gold into the fire, and miraculously, a perfectly polished calf emerged from the flames?"
"Yes... It was crazy!"
Right, Aaron. Right.
I could go on about the different things that come to mind as I read the Bible sometimes, but I'm sure most of it wouldn't particularly edify you in any way, and is probably more of an inside joke between God and I anyway. But the scenes that played out in my mind this morning as I read this rather important and serious story from Exodus seemed too classic to keep myself.
Yes, the main message of this passage is quite sobering. If you've never considered it before, you should. It's the story of a people that, just like us, turn wayward all too quickly, and are all too prone to compose a religion of their own making just to fulfill their carnal desires. Rather than wait for the direction of the Lord, they chose to do what seemed right in their own eyes, and they suffered the consequences for doing so.
But I guess God thought I needed something different from the story today, and instead I just found myself laughing with Him, wondering about His handwriting, picturing the foolish Israelites as if they were straight out of some modern American Pie-like teenage-movie, and questioning why on earth Moses made them drink the calf! (Reading the commentaries on this event only made me laugh harder. Reality is, nobody knows why they were forced to drink Golden Calf Gatorade.)
This Book really is alive. Who knows what will happen when you read it with an open heart? You might be sobered as you read of a God who intervenes in history, hates sin, and sure doesn't play around with evil. Then again, you might just laugh at a God who loves to play with you.
I want to take a break from the Corinthians notes to share my quiet time from this morning with you. Most days I will just jump into the Word, praying as I go, looking for new insights, waiting for God's presence, and listening to His voice. But today I felt a fresh determination to hear from God, not just gain a new Scriptural insight, so I spent some time waiting on Him before I even jumped into the text. The result was unexpected. My time with God was...pretty dang fun.
Now, God and I do have a special connection through laughter. Those of you who know my testimony from the past few years know how true, how embarrassingly and incredibly true that is. He likes to make me laugh. Sometimes it seems He'd rather do that than share some mind-blowing piece of wisdom with me. This continually surprises me about His character. He is a God that loves to laugh, loves to have fun with His children, and loves to play with them.
We live in a broken world, and that merits some seriousness. The Bible we read centers upon God's rescue plan for a sinful world, and so naturally, there is quite a bit of sobriety contained in it. But can you imagine what it will be like to relate to God in the next age, when death and sin and everything ugly is done away with? Let me tell you, it will be more fun than we can even imagine. And my contention is that, if you read the Bible with the right paradigm, you can see this joyful part of God's personality just brimming between the lines, anxiously waiting for the chance to have a little fun with us, even in this age.
I saw a little glimpse of this part of God this morning in my reading through the book of Exodus. The stories I studied were actually quite severe, but incongruously, the mental pictures being fed to me (from God?!) were pretty silly.
Let's start with chapters 25-31 of Exodus. Moses has been having the "quiet time" of his life. He's been invited to the top of the mountain, where God's glory dwells, in a way that no other human was allowed to experience. Image after image passes before him, and God's voice thunders through him, as the blueprints for the tabernacle, God's dwelling place with Israel, and are transmitted to him. What a holy occasion! The account of this other-worldly devotion time ends with Moses walking down the mountain again with the ten commandments on a tablet, hand-written by God Himself (and really, that's where God's joke-time with me started... What does God's' handwriting look like?? All caps? Times New Romans font? Italics? Is His grammar proper, or more down-to-earth for the sake of the commoner? Strange thoughts began to float through my head about the handwriting of God...)
Chapter 32 changes scenes. The people are at the bottom of the mountain, waiting impatiently for Moses. Days go by, then weeks... Where is he? You almost can't blame the Israelites for getting annoyed. Never were they told how long Moses would be gone, and they saw the guy ascend into a dark cloud of fire, smoke, and thunder. Perhaps he was struck dead. Perhaps he got raptured. No one really knew.
What happens next, though, is a little unbelievable. The people decide that they have had enough. They are tired of an absent leader, an unpredictable God, and a dry wilderness. They begin to pressure Aaron, the second-in-command, to make them new gods! And then they wanted to worship those gods as if they were the ones that had actually rescued them from Egypt.
Aaron, being the weak leader that he was, succumbs to their desires and starts to put all this work into creating a new god - a golden calf. Much money, time, and effort is put into this ridiculous venture. Most surprising of all, when it is complete, the people all enthusiastically begin to worship it in one accord.
"Thank you, o golden calf, for freeing us! You are so good to us. We praise you." I imagine a ten year old little Jewish girl walking by and asking her mother with childlike curiosity, "Mommy, why are you worshiping a fake cow?" To which the mother just shushes her child and tells her to get in line.
The madness continues as they "sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play" (v.6). We know from later in the chapter (and some New Testament passages that comment on this event) that this included some very inappropriate dancing.
After the golden calf worship service, the people begin to binge on all the food and drinks that they could get together. Ironically, they are cooking the very meat that God had supernaturally provided for them. Then as night begins to fall - the disco ball is brought out, and these cray cray Israelites begin to party! Someone presses "play" on the ipod "party mix" and the temperature goes up a few degrees. In one corner there are some very drunk Jews in a Macarena line, in another corner dancing that looks like it is straight out of a 21st century high school after-football-game dance. Aaron himself, being the pushover, starts off as an overseer, but within time and after a few drinks, starts moving his hips to the music in a very un-priestly fashion.
Meanwhile, as morning comes around, Moses and his assistant Joshua are climbing down the mountain in excitement with what God has shown them. As they near the bottom, however, they begin to hear the thud-thud-thud of the dance beat, and the cheers and whoo's of the crowd below. Joshua, ablaze with intensity, shouts, "There's war in the camp!" And in my (theologically imprecise) imagination I see Moses with his long white beard, still glowing from the glory of God, pause for a moment, listen, and shake his head.
"No, Joshua. That's not war - that's Christina Aguilera."
The two saints reach the foot of the mountain and look at the scene in front of them. Plastic red cups are scattered everywhere, people are passed out on the floor, and that remnant of ultra-hardcore dancers that are still out on the dance floor, sweat soaking through their garments, look up in shock. The cheering onlookers also turn to see their leader and prophet, and freeze in horror. The music comes to a screeching halt.
Time slows down as Moses looks from left to right, taking it all in, face getting redder with every moment. Then in seeming slow motion he lifts up the two tablets with both hands, symbolizing the nation's commitment to God, and smashes them against the ground. The sound awakens Aaron, who has passed out on the ground next to the table with the quail entrees.
I am sure what happened next was of the utmost seriousness, to Moses, to God, and to the people, but I couldn't help but laugh as I read it. Like other parts of the story, it is almost hard to believe.
In the fierceness of his anger, Moses storms over to the golden calf and throws it into the fire. No one protests. As it burns and softens in the flames, Moses takes it out and begins to grind it into powder before their very eyes. Every hammer blow makes the ashamed Israelites wince. Then I pictured Moses going over to the nearest Israelite man on the dance floor and exclaim, "You like golden calves, do you? And you like to eat and drink, eh? Well, why don't you drink some Golden-Calf-flavored-Gatorade!!" Moses then takes some of the golden powder, mixes it into a cup and starts to force it down the man's throat.
"No, I don't want to drink it! I don't want to...arrrgggghhhhh!" The man is overpowered and is forced to guzzle down the calf-powder. Soon, Moses has made them all stand in a line, and each one is made to drink this mixture. Aaron is standing by, trembling, fearing that Moses his brother has lost it, afraid of what he might say to him in his wrath.
After the guilty idolaters have dutifully chugged the calf-drink as punishment, Moses inevitably marches over to Aaron, demanding an account. This, too, struck me as rather hilarious.
"What did this people do to you that you have brought such a great sin upon them?" Aaron fidgets for a moment, and then with a quivering voice answers, "Let not the anger of my lord burn hot. You know the people, that they are set on evil. For they said to me, 'Make us gods who shall go before us...' So I said to them, 'Let any who have gold take it off.' So they gave it to me, and I threw it into the fire, and out came this calf" (v.22-24, exact quote).
I pictured Moses with fire in his eyes, looking his brother up and down, and saying, "So, let me get this straight. First, they made you do this."
"Uh, yes. Totally made me."
"Ok, and secondly, you threw the gold into the fire, and miraculously, a perfectly polished calf emerged from the flames?"
"Yes... It was crazy!"
Right, Aaron. Right.
I could go on about the different things that come to mind as I read the Bible sometimes, but I'm sure most of it wouldn't particularly edify you in any way, and is probably more of an inside joke between God and I anyway. But the scenes that played out in my mind this morning as I read this rather important and serious story from Exodus seemed too classic to keep myself.
Yes, the main message of this passage is quite sobering. If you've never considered it before, you should. It's the story of a people that, just like us, turn wayward all too quickly, and are all too prone to compose a religion of their own making just to fulfill their carnal desires. Rather than wait for the direction of the Lord, they chose to do what seemed right in their own eyes, and they suffered the consequences for doing so.
But I guess God thought I needed something different from the story today, and instead I just found myself laughing with Him, wondering about His handwriting, picturing the foolish Israelites as if they were straight out of some modern American Pie-like teenage-movie, and questioning why on earth Moses made them drink the calf! (Reading the commentaries on this event only made me laugh harder. Reality is, nobody knows why they were forced to drink Golden Calf Gatorade.)
This Book really is alive. Who knows what will happen when you read it with an open heart? You might be sobered as you read of a God who intervenes in history, hates sin, and sure doesn't play around with evil. Then again, you might just laugh at a God who loves to play with you.
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