These be your gods, O modern people

"This is your god, O Israel, that brought you out of the land of Egypt!" (Exodus 32:4 NKJV)

We are in the season of two major festivals, Easter and carnival, which some have argued have common roots in paganism, particularly in the fertility cults.

In the biblical narrative, when Moses took too long to come back down the mountain from meeting with an invisible God, the people threateningly approached his brother Aaron, the high priest: "Come, make us gods that shall go before us; for as for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him." Aaron complied and produced the golden calf, mimicking the fertility bull gods of Egypt left behind in the exodus and of Canaan to which they were heading.

The people received the golden calf with the proclamation, "This is your god, O Israel, that brought you out of the land of Egypt!"

High Priest Aaron proclaimed a feast "to the Lord", not to the golden calf, for the following day. In a deft political move, he had smoothly combined two gods, two religions and two worships! On festival day, the people "sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play". In other words, they kept a carnival, a fertility festival! But they also offered sacrifices and offerings!

So it has been throughout human history. People have invented gods, mixed gods, and worshipped gods. Monotheism, particularly with an invisible god, has been a strenuous exception and in the minority.

The descendants of the ex-slave Israelites regularly added the gods of the surrounding peoples to their One God, arousing the ire of the prophets. One of the greatest of their prophets, Isaiah, parodied in fine poetry the silly business of making gods (44:9-20). A man cuts a tree, cooks his dinner with part of it and makes a fire to warm himself with part of it. And "the rest of it he makes into a god, his carved image. He falls down before it and worships it, prays to it and says, 'Deliver me, for you are my god'," not considering that it is part of the tree he has burnt for fuel. Isaiah's God mocks the gods who must be transported as a burden on beasts and on human shoulders and must be fastened in place so as not to pitch over!

too sophisticated

The people of modern advanced and advancing societies, societies which largely are the products of a particular religion, are far too sophisticated for making graven images. They have a distinct preference for invisible gods, lots of them, a pantheon of modern gods.

The first battles between a stubbornly monotheistic Christianity and the Roman Empire in which religion and state power were combined were not over Jesus as the God of the Christians but over the Christian objection to surrendering Him to the Roman pantheon and to pay divine obeisance to Caesar, the semi-deified keeper of the pantheon. Jesus had taught his disciples, at peril of their lives, "Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's." And He expected them to know the difference.

Caesar's heir and successor lives and reigns.

In deft political moves, accommodations were made which Christianised Rome and Romanised Christianity. So spokesperson Michael Burke can tell us as plain as ABC, and without a hint of discomfiture, in his column on 'Holy Thursday': "Pope Victor I (185-195 AD), an African, acculturated the Easter celebration with pagan Roman practices so that Romans would worship Jesus Christ and not their pagan gods."

A change not unlike, in his view, Norman Manley moving Labour Day from the proposed May 24, Empire Day, to May 23, the anniversary of the start of the modern labour movement by Alexander Bustamante, to accommodate an Opposition MP's request!

own gods

In any case, squabbles among Christians are not the concerns of many modern advanced people in a post-Christian age. They have their own gods. In the pantheon are the gods of Secularism, Materialism, Hedonism, Scientism, Statism, Careerism. And there is always room for another. As Jesus could have been added to the Roman pantheon, no problem, so can He be added to the modern pantheon. And the gods are all related, as in the incestuous ancient pantheons.

In the worship of Secularism, people, like Aaron's Israelite rebels, are not necessarily dismissing 'the Lord' altogether. They are simply expanding their options in defiance of the first commandment, "You shall have no other gods before Me."

Secularism drives religion out of public life, out of culture, law, politics and government, and underground. And itself becomes a new faith. Secular Humanism sets up humans as the measure of all things. But which humans? Equity of voice and power among humans is purely a phantom of infantile imagination. The strong will rule and impose their will, Nietzsche's Ubermensch, the German for Over-Man or Superman.

The god of Materialism is worshipped in the acquisition of things as the measure of life. The ultra-focus of governments on the economy as the raison d'être of government and the credit frenzy by both persons and states are macabre manifestations of the religion.

Pleasure, and by any means, is the purpose of life is the mantra of the worship of Hedonism. We see this in the predominance of entertainment and the addictive quest for a new high.

omni-competent state

The view of the State as god has never been stronger, not even in Roman times when Caesar, the embodiment of the State, was worshipped as a god. The contemporary frenzy of political discourse is driven by the notion of the State as omni-competent provider and keeper. The State has grown and is growing by leaps and bounds, consuming more and more of the GDP and encompassing and controlling more and more domains of life in exactly the fashion of the fascist state, never mind the fanciful façade of 'democracy'.

It was Mussolini himself, the father of Italian fascism, who said, "Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power." In country after country, including our own, we are witnessing with gaping mouths the fusion of State and corporate interests and actions, in servicing national debts which can never be repaid.

Mussolini further made it abundantly clear that "fascism is a religion" and "according to the doctrine of fascism," he preached, "empire is not only territorial or a military or mercantile concept, but a spiritual and moral one." And his famous dictum: "All within the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State."

Messianic leaders are in demand to reorder the world and to deliver blessing after blessing by statist miracles while the citizen is reduced to trusting sheep led by a divine shepherd. The demand for world government of a world state which can brace against the encroaching chaos rises in strength.

Modern humans, as the hallmark of their enlightenment and sophistication, worship the god of Scientism. The foundational doctrine of the religion is Science is the one source of all knowledge and all truth. Despite the incessant revision of scientific knowledge, whatever does not stack up to current 'scientific' knowledge must, by definition, be false and inferior. Science will solve all problems, including the vast and deadly ones created by science itself. Science can provide values and purpose and a moral compass for humankind in a world which, according to 'science', was generated by chance over aeons of time.

People worship the god of Careerism. They claw their way up the rugged rock face of education and career to find only a barren plateau at the top. Work is worshipped. Life is organised around the job and the organisation.

Organisational theorist Gareth Morgan, in his masterful study, Images of Organizations, has a chapter on 'Organizations as Psychic Prisons' with a section, 'Organization, Death, and Immortality', in which he writes:

"Although we may in quiet times confront the fact that we are going to die, much of our daily life is lived in the artificial realness created through culture. This illusion of realness helps disguise our unconscious fear that everything is highly vulnerable and transitory ... . When viewed from the perspective of our own impending deaths, the artefacts of culture can be understood as defence systems that help to create the illusion that we are greater and more powerful than we actually are." There is considerable hostility, and sometimes active persecution, against those who refuse to worship work, as against other religious heretics.

reflection

This long Easter weekend engenders reflection - for everyone about the meaning and purpose of life, and of our own life in particular. For some, it will be an opportunity for Christian worship on Sabbath and Sunday, and for reflection on the faith. The work worshipper may flop into stupefied and fitful rest, disturbed by addiction-like withdrawal symptoms. The hedonist will whoop it up in carnival or other activities. The materialist will review and polish his treasures.

But humans will worship. Christian thinker C.S. Lewis once remarked that it would be the oddest of things if there were no God to satisfy the God-need which is universally present in humankind, since for every other need there is a satisfier. For hunger, food. For thirst, water. For sexual desire, sex. For companionship, companions. The compelling challenge is to find and worship and serve the real God rather than the numerous idols created by our ever-fertile imaginations.

Martin Henry is a communication specialist. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and medhen@gmail.com.