Reflections on God and Money: An Idol in Israel (2)

The angel of the Lord appeared to [Gideon] and said to him, ‘The Lord is with you, O mighty man of valour’. And Gideon said to him, ‘Please, sir, if the Lord is with us, why then has all this happened to us? And where are all his wonderful deeds that our fathers recounted to us, saying, ‘Did not the Lord bring us up from Egypt? But now the Lord has forsaken us and given us into the hand of Midian.’

Judges 6:12-13

I infer from the above passage that Gideon was a moderately brave, humble but complacent young man. He seems humble because he hears the assurance, ‘the Lord is with you’, in the plural, referring to his community, and takes being called a ‘mighty man of valour’ as nothing more than courtesy. I have heard it said that the greeting was, in fact, mockery of the young man threshing wheat in secret; I think, however, it was genuine, if somewhat exaggerated, because what Gideon was doing was dangerous. He might have attracted the attention of the invaders, especially if a neighbour had reported him in hope of receiving a favour in return from their oppressors.

Gideon was complacent because, whether or not he had heard the prophet’s message that we reflected on yesterday, he had done nothing about the local shrine that his family looked after.

Idolatry often begins as the most subtle of distractions. It takes us unawares, luring us into something that seems, and may actually be, quite innocent in itself. With this in mind, I think we could usefully speculate on how the altar to Baal and the Asherah pole were set up in the first place.

Asherah was a female goddess of fertility and farmers placed poles in their fields to attract her favour. When the Israelites first conquered the Promised Land, they may have employed the local people who remained, who might have continued the routine of putting Asherah poles in the fields. Perhaps the Israelites were unable to distinguish between authentic agricultural practice and the paganism closely associated with it; worse, even, the Israelites themselves may have innocently copied the practice from their neighbours!

The altar to Baal may have been built by the conquered people and allowed by the Israelites in the belief they were responsible for what we would now call a pluralist society. Or the Israelites may have built it in the hope of appeasing the invaders.

I am speculating, obviously! But my point is that that whatever the Israelites did or permitted, and however noble they may have thought their motives, they were misguided, and one thing led to another, down into idolatry. Had they got to the point where they simply could not see their idolatry for what it was? Or were they just too frightened to act?

The prophet had reminded them not to fear idols. How afraid are we, today, of the idol ‘mammon’ – the influence that money has in our society? When we decide to set aside financial considerations and do what we think is right in a given situation, are we plagued by a host of 'what ifs'?

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Saturday, 12 October 2013

An Idol in Israel (2)