An Angry God, and Other Things We Don't Like To Think About

“Now, let me be, that my anger may blaze forth against them and that I may destroy them” 

 - God (Exodus 32:10a)

Sometimes I think I should start making Christian motivational posters using all the neglected verses. Like this one that you never see hanging on a wall with a picture of sunsets or the children kissing flowers. Why not? Because the image of an angry God stands at odds with our how we like to envision and define him.

We don’t like to think of God as angry or capable of destructive wrath. We want him to be a God of love and tender mercies. We want him healing the sick, blessing the poor, and stroking our hair while he tells everything is going to be all right.

If we have to think of God as angry and prone to violence, we try to frame it in our mind as the response to an exceptionally wicked event. We can almost get behind him smiting the evil sinners – the murders, rapists, and child molesters. Those people surely deserve his wrath, but to us, he will always be the God of Love and love offered with no conditions or boundaries or requirements for we are none of those evil things. We are his children, and we want to believe that he will forever be soothing our nerves and quieting our fears for that is a God easy to embrace.

The thing is that verse – the one that says he wants to destroy *them*- it is talking about his children. You know? The ones he had just literally poured out a river of blood for. The ones that he loved enough to kill every Egyptian first born to save. The ones that he had parted the Red Sea for so that they could pass safely into his provision, and most importantly, his presence.

It would be easy to try and scramble for an excuse for why God would say such a thing. We go back the passage that this verse came from and sigh with relief as we learn that this is a response to the people of Israel worshipping the golden calf. I mean, really how much danger are we in at transgressing that particular little hang up of God? I know I have never been tempted to build an idol nor do I have the means to make one, so I must be safe, right?

I would not be so quick to draw that conclusion. You see a lot of us read this passage and we think that the sin is in the worshipping of a false god, some Egyptian bull deity that they learned of in their time of bondage. We think the sin is bowing before a golden image, and failing to give him their undivided adoration.

The thing is that is not what the problem was, at least, not at the heart of it. Had he told them not to make graven images? Yes. Were they doing exactly what they had been told not to do? Absolutely, but have you ever wondered why he gave such a command and why breaking it angered him so greatly that he was willing to wipe the entire fledgling nation of Israel over what in the grand scheme of things seems to be such a minor infraction of the rules when compared to the wickedness of the nations that surrounded them? Nations that practiced temple prostitution? Nations that offered up their children on bloody alters? Nations involved in witchcraft and necromancy? What is it about this sin that is so heinous to a holy God?

The answer is found in the request for the idol. The people go to Aaron and say:

“Up, make for us gods who shall go before us. As for Moses, this man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.” Exodus 32:1

A bigger clue is found Aaron’s presentation of the golden calf:

“These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt…Tomorrow shall be a feast to the LORD.” Exodus 32: 5b, 6a

Now either these people are dumber than a box of rocks and their memories are so flawed that they can remember the multiple miracles done on their behalf, or there is something going on here that we have often overlooked.

Look at the way the word LORD is written in verse 6. Go check your Bible, if it is a recent translation, you will find what I have recorded here. It will be written in all capital letters. This is not an accident or a mistake, it is a clue that translators have included for us. Any time you find this writing of the word LORD, it indicates that this is the divine name of God as given to Moses at the burning bush.

Even the words here in these verses is the Hebrew term Elohim, another name for God. A plural of honor to convey the truth that he is far greater than any single god could ever be. It is the title used of God in Genesis 1 as he creates the earth and places too many to recount here.

Note the description given to this God of the Golden Calf, he is the one who brought them out of the land of Egypt. The text is very clear, this is not some foreign god or alternative to the God who saved them this is the one and true God who even as they feasted before the calf hovered over the mountain where Moses met with him to seek guidance for this people.

It is true that they defied God’s command in making the calf, but it is also true that they were doing the best to honor this strange and unpredictable God in the only way they knew how. They looked at the rules and they thought to themselves, “This does not make sense. We don’t know how to worship a God who we cannot see, who refuses to appeal to our senses, or offers the comfort of his tangible presence in our lives. This could not be what he really meant. Certainly, it is better that we worship in the only way know how than to be alone in this desert.” So they took matters into their own hands and the tried to make God a little less frightening, a little less overwhelming, and a little less unreasonable.

The sin was not that they failed to worship the one true God. Their sin was in their attempts to define him in terms that allowed them to be more comfortable with his presence. The calf was image they knew and set them at ease as it was part of their lives before encountering this God who uprooted them from all they had known. The calf did not demand that they allowed God to be bigger than their own imaginations or leave them at the mercy of a God they could not define.

If we were brave enough to be honest, this is what we have all done at one time or another. God’s commands didn’t make sense. They defied logic, scientific data, and accepted social norms. We convinced ourselves that he couldn’t really mean what he said, or that he wrote it for someone other than ourselves. Surely, worshipping him in the best way we know how is better than being alone in this desert called life, or so we reason in our heart.

The problem is our finite human imaginations will never be big enough to even come close to an image of God that does him justice. When we try to define him according to our terms he will always end up as lifeless and unresponsive as a chunk of metal, and he is only as beautiful and awe inspiring as we our thoughts can handle with ease and comfort.

And while this god of our creation gives us all the soothes with his reasonable demands, allows us to blend with society, and acts as a talisman against the evils of this world, that god will never be able to love us to maturity, to challenge us to grow in wisdom or grace towards others. That god will never inspire us to dream a dream bigger than ourselves or seek out more than our own pleasure.

The people danced before their idol, and they thought themselves holy and righteous for doing so. Today we dance before idols not seen upon a pedestal, but elevated in our hearts so that we do not have to fear the God we cannot define. The true God will never submit to such limitations, and he does not lower himself to cater to our whims or comfort, because he knows that ultimately, we need the challenge and security found in the God worthy of so much more.