A very modern idol

Several years ago, when Helen and I were planning our wedding we decided that it would be fun to work with a jeweller to make wedding rings for one another. This involved spending a day melting a lump of gold, pressing it into a band and bending it round, creating the join and smoothing out the curves, before finally buffing and polishing.

This complex process was all assisted by an attentive jeweller over our shoulder and a glass of bubbly within easy reach. It made for a memorable day and I’d be happy to recommend them to any engaged couples here this morning.

Melting down gold jewellery is also a significant feature of our Old Testament reading this morning. The infamous story of the golden calf. Moses, we hear, has been away on the top of Mount Sinai, speaking with God and receiving the ten commandments. Meanwhile, the people of Israel seem to have given up on him and God- deciding instead to make a god for themselves. And so they gather-up their gold, cast the image of a calf and bow down in worship- as Aaron proclaims, “These are your Gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt.”

This is perhaps the classic story of idolatry in the Hebrew Scriptures. A story that is replayed again and again as Israel turns from God and his law and puts in his place a variety of idols. Sometimes they chose gods of more powerful nations. At other times they chose gods who seemed more accommodating than the God of Israel- with his tiresome laws. And on more than one occasion they preferred eastern fertility gods with what we might politely term their ‘exotic’ worship practices.

Time and again we hear the prophets preach against these idols and mock those who bow down to lifeless statues. Isaiah challenges these idols to predict the future, knowing that they will be silent. Jeremiah asks what kind of people go around swapping gods- exchanging the glory of the one true God for a worthless lump of wood. Meanwhile, Ezekiel takes it a stage further suggesting that people have set-up idols in their hearts and that it is not just an outward temptation but also be an inner obsession.

Talk of idolatry can seem an ancient irrelevance. Surely these are merely the bizarre practices of a bygone age and an ignorant people. And yet, there are some very modern idols. Indeed only last week, as turmoil on the financial markets deepened and Gold reached £16/gram the Archbishop of Canterbury suggested that the western world has made an idol of the market.

In an article in the Spectator, he argued that capitalism has its own mythology. One which proclaims that the market has a reality, authority and mind of its own. Reading the papers this week, it does seem as if the market has a global power which all must recognise, that we must follow wherever it leads and that huge, possibly human, sacrifices must be made to it. It seems that the Archbishop may have a point.

In the Old Testament, idolatry in the Temple was seen as the cause of decay in wider society and potential national ruin; justice was forgotten, the poor trampled under foot and foreign nations threatened war.

This week, there has certainly been a lot of comment on the failure of ethics and regulation within our own financial markets; whether it be unrealistic borrowing, trading in toxic debt or bonuses that reward recklessness. This in turn has given way to even more worrying talk of a wider economic recession.

We do have to be careful about reading Scripture on to the modern world. But might these events be the result of our idolisation of the market? A belief that greed and fear are the only economic principles?

Perhaps the most developed Christian analysis of the market can be found in the social teaching of the Catholic Church. It understands the market positively as an effective engine for progress and development, however, it warns that the market must never be allowed to become a law unto itself.

Rather the market should be seen as an effective means to a higher end. That higher end is the ‘common good’ and flourishing of all humanity. And this requires us to use justice, freedom and truth as our guiding principles and love as our final regulator.

It would seem that this idol is now crumbling before our eyes. Possibly, collapsing under the weight of its own rich decoration. In the face of these momentous events there are, of course, many lessons to be learnt not only for our bankers and politicians but also for all of us who borrow and save.

But perhaps the most radical response that we can make as the Church, is to worship. To worship the one true God, to allow his love to fill our hearts and overflow into lives which seek the common good of all humanity made in His image and likeness.

Amen.