The Church of the... Earring

Ok, so as I read through my daily list of blogdenities, I get
this distinct feeling that I am somewhat of an odd fish for believing in absolutes,
or truth, or anything concrete. Everything is the abstract and feeling is
more important that truth. (I can hear your Pontius Pilate impression now...
"What's Truth", it's Christ, learn about him in your Bible) We walk
around and get titillated by people who tell us that our interpretation of
reality defines our truth, and our experiences define reality. Everything
is so circumspect and so focused on US. "I am angry at the church
because THEY hurt ME, thus YOU must be angry at THEM too because THEY must
have hurt YOU. Come on... let's share stories.... let's swap gossip. Let's
speak against the man of God. Let's create OUR own movement. Let's gather
EVERYONE who is bitter and angry, and we can become a new church to worship
God in a new way."

The problem is, that when we do this, we unfortunately become
much like Israelites after they were led out of Egypt. They were given a freedom
that they didn't know how to handle and when they denied the God who led them
out of Egypt, and decided to take their knowledge, and their wealth, and their
skill, they created the golden calf. They decried God, and Moses. It was their
loss of faith in God that caused this, not the harsh hand of a wicked taskmaster.
Not a crude, money-oriented leader. Moses was one of the most humble men to
walk the earth, according to the Bible. He was a FRIEND of God! But they saw
him as someone seeking to obtain power over them, bringing them to the wilderness
to die. They created something to hate, in order to justify the lust of their
flesh.

Then they formed the first Church of the Earring. If you can
imagine the earrings representing a little bit of something from everyone,
a little theology, a little spiritualism, a little wealth, a little of the
"ancient" worship. You can understand the pride associated with
this "church". It's a church that has it's basis in Egypt, a picture
of the world, that has denied God and his man, Moses. The saddest part was
that Moses loved these people so much. Go, knowing Moses' heart and knowing
his love, said to Moses "I will strike them down and raise of you a new
nation". But Moses had a great love for these people. The people of course
thought that he hated them. "He" wouldn't let them to what they
wanted. "He" called down their leaders as false. "He"
was weak and made mistakes. After all, there were many other of the Jews who
were more qualified, who never murdered anyone, who spoke more eloquently,
who had much more popular support, but they were not the man that God chose
to lead Israel from bondage.

Hatred, accusation, new worship, calls for "unity"
and peace... these all had a prideful origin in the Church of The Earring.
The pride to create God anew, to throw out God as he revealed Himself to them
and to give him an "Extreme Makeover". To make him manageable, after
all you ALWAYS know what a golden calf is going to do and where he is going
to be, but GOD is unpredictable. He is a pillar of fire and sometimes he moves
off in a direction that we don't want to go.

The saddest part to me is that the Church of the Earring had
some participants that were
people that God HAD ordained as leaders. They were a willing part of it at
first but then saw what they had created. Aaron didn't set out to create a
false god. He set out to calm a people of a perceived hurt. Aaron was the
peacemaker, but you can't make peace and deny truth, otherwise you get a golden
calf. But Aaron repented when Moses came down the mountain. Most of the people
rushed back to the congregation because they saw the displeasure of God, yet
some were willing to die in their sin for the sake of being right, because
they hated Moses, they hated that God wasn't who they thought he was going
to be. They hated that they were stuck in the wilderness and not in the promised
land where milk and honey flowed. They hated that there was a long journey
ahead with sand, dust, dirt, and scorpions. They hated that God knew that
they were not ready for the freedom of their own land. They hated having to
depend on God to feed them DAILY and not being self-dependent. They hated
the true nature of God because HE didn't fit into their paradigm.

The Church of the Earring came to a crushing end. The people
drank of their creation and had a bitter belly and probably blamed it on Moses
and God. But that is not the end, the Bible is filled with many examples of
the Church of the Earring. There have been many since the wilderness and there
will be many again until Christ returns. Like Joshua, the zealous FOLLOWER
of Moses AND God, where will you stand when the question is asked: "Who
is on the Lord's side?"