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'...and out came this calf!'
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Friday, July, 02, 2010
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by John Fischer
"Someone is lying in spectacular fashion." - Rep. Tom Davis of Virginia
We live in a society that has come to expect a certain amount of lying to go on at all levels. We've all lowered the bar considerably.
I was reading again the story of Moses on Mt. Sinai receiving the tablets on which were written the commands from God, the first one of which was being broken at that very moment down the mountain, as the people were worshiping a golden calf. Moses had left his brother Aaron in charge, and the people had gotten restless, doubting whether Moses would ever come back. So Aaron had collected all their gold jewelry, melted it down and made it into a golden calf, and introduced them to their new god "who had brought them out of the land of Egypt." The key element about this for our story today was the fact that Aaron had "fashioned" and "tooled" the calf himself. He was personally involved. And when he saw the power it had over the people, he was pretty impressed with himself.
When Moses came down the mountain, he found the people in a drunken orgy, celebrating their new, shiny, bovine god. Throwing the tablets down in anger, he demanded from Aaron what had happened. At that point Aaron waxed prolific in his story-telling finesse and did what we all would have done: passed the buck. The people had lost hope in Moses and were demanding a god like the pagan countries around them, so Aaron, trying his best to keep order, had collected all their gold jewelry, thrown it into the fire, and lo and behold would you believe, "...out came this calf!" Linguists must have developed the passive case in deference to our human capacity to blame someone or something else for our own guilt.
The passive case has no one responsible. It happened to me instead of something I made happen. "I just suddenly found myself in the wrong place at the wrong time." Oh really? How did you do that? Someone got you there. If it wasn't you, who was it?
Better to take responsibility for the good, the bad and the ugly. Sin doesn't happen to you. Sin doesn't even happen. We make it happen; we sin.
This is where the truth calls us to a better way. Lies almost always grow out of our attempts at cover-up. Truth is always the shortest way back. And it's the safest, too. You only have to remember what actually happened.
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