AP

1 Corinthians 10:18-22  Consider the people of Israel: Do not those who eat the sacrifices participate in the altar?  Do I mean then that food sacrificed to an idol is anything, or that an idol is anything?  No, but the sacrifices of pagans are offered to demons, not to God, and I do not want you to be participants with demons.  You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons too; you cannot have a part in both the Lord’s table and the table of demons.  Are we trying to arouse the Lord’s jealousy?  Are we stronger than he?

The details of Paul’s argument here are not easy to get our heads around because the actual situation in Corinth at the time, in the midst of a culture in which the worship of idols of wood and stone was commonplace and endemic, is not something we experience in the same way.  Our ‘idols’ – things that so occupy our attention and take up our time and energy in a way that keeps us from ‘loving God with all our heart and soul and mind and strength’ –  are much more subtle and harder to identify/recognise than physical objects of wood and stone.

But they can be just as real and potentially dangerous!  Satan’s mission is to prevent us from obeying what Jesus called ‘the first and greatest commmandment’ (Mark 12:30), and he is a subtle operator who knows only too well our propensity to distraction from such obedience.  So, stepping back from Paul’s immediate concern at Corinth, the principle behind what he is saying is that we must resist any temptation to compromise with the very attractive things of this world, many of which are far from wrong in themselves.  It is the same message behind his warning to the Christians in Rome: “Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” (Romams 12:2a).

When I read Exodus 32, I find it very difficult to see how Aaron, after witnessing first hand the power of Yahweh in miraculously releasing his people from cruel bondage in Egypt, taking them across the Red Sea on dry ground while drowning all Pharaoh’s pursuing army, and leading them in the wilderness, how, after all this, he could fashion a Golden Calf and comvince so many to believe: “These are your gods, Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt.” (Exodus 32:4b)

While I am struggling with such unbelievable stupidity, I have to ask myself, “How much am I allowing my surounding culture, which is impacting me so constantly and subtly all day every day, influence my attitude/thinking/speech/behaviour/entertainment of ways in which I am not always fully aware?”  Am I, without even trying, ‘arous[ing] the Lord’s jealousy’?  I find it helpful and challenging to reflect on the fact that our English word ‘amusement’ comes from ‘a-muse’, or ‘not bothering to think carefully and deeply (muse)’ – ‘turning our brains off’, which seems to be what Aaron did at Sinai!  I am so easily distracted from putting my love for God first in all things at all times.

– Bruce Christian