Who am I - Looking Up.

‘Tell me what you eat, and I’ll tell you who you are.’ So said the French lawyer, politician and gastronome, Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin. The same could be said for who or what you worship – what we worship will ultimately drive how we think, behave, and in a sense, become.

This is what happens during the Exodus story of the Israelites at Sinai. While Moses is absent, the people urge Aaron to construct for them an idol – something they can worship and assign their Egyptian deliverance to. This Aaron duly does. Moses can hardly believe what they have done in his absence – after all that God had done. In response to their failure, replacing God with a dead Egyptian god, Moses forces them to grind the idol down and consume it. Ever afterwards the people are repeatedly described metaphorically as having the attributes of the calf; stiff necked, hard hearted, ears that can’t hear and eyes that can’t see.

How far things had fallen from the opening of Genesis. Here, humans in the image of God, made after ‘God’s kind,’ walk with Him with royal roles as God’s Stewards and representatives in the cosmic temple God has created and taken residence in. Undertaking God’s work of ordering the world and reflecting creation’s praise back to God. With this comes supreme human dignity, purpose and security.

But instead of being God’s Image bearers, they become image makers. Instead of serving and worshipping the creator they become worshippers of creations. Life, purpose and meaning is turned upside down. If creation is an act of God ordering the world, this is an act of disordering the world. Instead of being God’s image bearers they become creators of their own image bearers, worshipping, as Jeremiah describes, ‘scarecrows in a melon patch.’ 

That idolatry is worshipping the wrong object is one thing – a failure to give God His due, it is also a failure to give humans their due value. Worshipping the wrong object not only demeans God, it dehumanises people. The dignity, purpose and security of Genesis 1-2 is now lost.

Worship of the wrong object is at the root of all sin. The most foundational law code within the bible is the 10 commandments, laws written deliberately to be general and foundational. These are the basis of everything else when it comes to rules about ethical behaviour. And the foundation of these laws is the first three which together are all about worshipping God single heartedly. There is no place for other imaged gods or treating God (and His name) casually. The clear implication is that everything that we do which is wrong is ultimately driven by idolatry or disordered love. As CS Lewis puts, putting second things first and first things second. When we put second things first, we put things that should not be ultimate, ultimate and subvert God into being something secondary.

The great tragedy is that we make good things become ultimate things. We place our hopes, desires, security and dignity into things or people that can never bear their weight. So, when we lose the person or thing that we have put our ultimate hopes in – the loss is likely to crush us. The nightmare of losing that ultimate thing becomes reality. When we make good things ultimate, we not only rob God of His ultimate position, but we are failed by the things we have put our trust in.

That God describes himself as jealous for our primary affection and worship reflects the reality that only He can bear our greatest needs and provide us with that which transient things and people can’t. We need to keep the good things in our lives merely good and the ultimate thing, ultimate.

For the Christian, the work of being transformed back to the image bearers we were made to be, has started.  Paul likens this work to the experience of Moses, who on meeting God shone – for a period – reflecting as it were God’s image and presence. Using this metaphor Paul describes that we are image bearers under construction. The great work of redemption is to make us into the creatures we were first made to be. This ‘being made into the likeness of Christ’ is as it were a mark of genuine faith – its development, evidence of God’s presence and work in us. This is how people are to know what God is like – his image bearers displaying Him. In the meantime, while we await the completion of it for ourselves, we look to Christ who is the perfect image and image bearer.

Paul doesn’t stop there. For us living in an individualistic society, we might be tempted to think this image transformation is a private affair – between God and me. Paul will have none of it. Writing to the church in Colossae he points out that this image transformation is happening collectively to them as a community – and a very diverse community at that. ‘Stop behaving,’ he says, ‘like you (plural) used to, you are being transformed together through the knowledge of God and in the image of your creator.’ This great work of God is both individual and communal – church is not a thing to be consumed but a community to participate in. We are in this image changing, God representing, creation praising business together.

And the Christian hope is that all of this will lead ultimately to the fulfilment of God’s great plan – to make us into what we should have been - in His New Heaven and Earth. Where His people will walk with him as God sought to do with Adam, image bearers in his great kingdom temple reflecting praises back to God and doing His good work, co-reigning with Him and fully alive.

The Christian story is a grand plan with an unimaginably grand destination - the place where good things are good, and the ultimate is ultimate.