What Punishment Will We Get For This?

One of the strangest incidents recounted in the Bible, at least to my modern ears, is when Aaron, brother of Moses, made for the stubborn Israelites a new god to worship—after God had freed the Israelites from Egypt.

Even if you are still an atheist and don’t believe any of this, stay with me here, because this is going to turn out to have a very modern sequel you are going to want to know about.

Here is the gist of the story, from Exodus. If you already know it, you can skip to the bottom.

Now when the people saw that Moses delayed coming down from the mountain, the people gathered together to Aaron, and said to him, “Come, make us gods that shall go before us; for as for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.”

And Aaron said to them, “Break off the golden earrings which are in the ears of your wives, your sons, and your daughters, and bring them to me.” So all the people broke off the golden earrings which were in their ears, and brought them to Aaron. And he received the gold from their hand, and he fashioned it with an engraving tool, and made a molded calf.

Then they said, “This is your god, O Israel, that brought you out of the land of Egypt!”

Next day, they offered a service to the new god, worshiping it with burnt offerings, singing, and dancing—presumably barefoot. Bad dancing is always barefoot. Did you ever notice? Fred Astaire always wore shoes.

At any rate, the Israelites fresh paganism angered God, and he sent Moses back to the tribes to castigate them for their apostasy. Then this happened (with my emphasis):

So it was, as soon as [Moses] came near the camp, that he saw the calf and the dancing. So Moses’ anger became hot, and he cast the tablets [the Ten Commandments] out of his hands and broke them at the foot of the mountain. Then he took the calf which they had made, burned it in the fire, and ground it to powder; and he scattered it on the water and made the children of Israel drink it. And Moses said to Aaron, “What did this people do to you that you have brought so great a sin upon them?”

So Aaron said, “Do not let the anger of my lord become hot. You know the people, that they are set on evil. For they said to me, ‘’Make us gods that shall go before us; as for this Moses, the man who brought us out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.’ And I said to them, ‘Whoever has any gold, let them break it off.’ So they gave it to me, and I cast it into the fire, and this calf came out.”

Now when Moses saw that the people were unrestrained…then Moses stood in the entrance of the camp, and said, “Whoever is on the Lord’s side—come to me!” And all the sons of Levi gathered themselves together to him. And he said to them, “Thus says the Lord God of Israel: ‘Let every man put his sword on his side, and go in and out from entrance to entrance throughout the camp, and let every man kill his brother, every man his companion, and every man his neighbor.’”

So the sons of Levi did according to the word of Moses. And about three thousand men of the people fell that day.

Nasty business, wouldn’t you say?

Aaron only half apologizes; his words are like a modern news headline. He blames the fire for the creation of the god, in the same way journalists blame the SUV for mowing down civilians.

And what’s with Moses making the Golden Calf worshipers drink the ashes of the destroyed god? Christians eat the living God, but here are pagans forced to consume the fallen remains of a false god. Sarcastic mockery?

You see what happened. The punishment was swift, harsh, bloody and just. If you do not think it just, then you have not understood the premises of the story. The key one being God, in all his might, is real.

So much for history. A huge whopping problem we moderns have is that we believe history only happened in history. History for us, we say, has ended. We no longer make the mistakes our ancients ancestors make. We don’t have history, we have iPhones!

We certainly would not, like the crazed Israelites, wake up one fine morning and decide to make for ourselves a new god to worship. What superstition! We have electric cars!

England’s National Maritime Museum recently “unveiled a statue of a ‘god-like protector of all migrants’”. Here it is:

As befits a modern god of color, it is angry. It is without sex—a “genderless being born of the sea”. It has bad hair. And, most befitting of all, it was made by someone named Eve Shepherd. Well, you can’t get more Biblical than that.

According to another story, “The genderless creature [was] created in consultation with the transgender children’s charity Mermaids UK states it is ‘neither male nor female, neither human nor fish'”. Forget transgender. We’re doing transspecies.

The new god will sit next to a bust of Admiral Horatio Nelson, who gladly would have protected England from its current invasion of “migrants”. The museum boasts

The exhibition is part of the museum’s strategy to offer more diverse historical perspectives. The migrant goddess statue engages in a pre-recorded dialogue, downplaying Nelson’s military accolades in favor of recognizing the protection and support given to migrants. This reinterpretation of history gives a voice to the often-overlooked heroes of the sea.

The god speaks.

You can, I hope, see the parallels. Our Lord tarries, we have grown bored, and have created for ourselves a new god, in the same way they did way back in history. It has taken on the characteristics most desired.

One wonders what our punishment will be. Historical, maybe.

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