March 15, 2001

Monica,

I wish someone would explain to me how it is any different for people to have a so-called picture of Jesus than it was for the Hebrews to make a golden calf.

They weren’t trying to turn away from the God who brought them out of Egypt. Moses was gone so long they doubted that he was coming back. With Aaron’s guidance they made the thing that looked most like the voice they heard on the Mount Sinai. They used the best material they had, all donating their fine gold jewelry to honor God. They made a golden calf, and Aaron said, "This is your God who brought you up out of Israel." They were trying to worship the God who delivered them, but they were very ignorant people, not knowing God. They did what was right--in the eyes of man.

People think they have a picture of Jesus in the same way. It is not a picture of Jesus. The Bible, quite deliberately I’m sure, gives absolutely no physical description of Jesus. People carry around what some artist hundreds of years after the time of Jesus’s earthly walk decided he probably looked like. How is that different from what the Hebrews did? The only difference is that we know he was a white male human when he walked the earth. People know we should worship Jesus; they carry a false picture that they think is Jesus; they worship an idol just as much as the Hebrews did with less excuse. The fact that "everyone else" seems to think it is Jesus is no excuse. All the Hebrews except Moses thought the golden calf was a good likeness of the voice they heard on Mount Sinai too.

Love,

Dad