Are You a Religious Expert?

According to his resume, he was a religious “expert”. Born Catholic, raised Baptist, converted Hebrew Israelite, then Nation of Islam. Somewhere in there Kelly became pastor of a Church of God in Christ, only to leave the denomination over their stance on women pastors. Now, apparently, he is such an expert that he is beyond any formal creed, and practices his beliefs outside of any formal or organized setting.

How does one become an “expert” like Kelly? I think there are some clues way back in the Bible, in the book of Exodus. During a forty-day disappearance on Mt. Sinai by their religious expert – Moses – some of the leaders of the people of Israel decided to take matters into their own hands. Moses and his God were too unpredictable and unreliable, so they decided to make a “god” of their own, one formed by their own hands and with their own imaginations, based on the gods of Egypt that they were more comfortable with.

They created a statue of calf made of gold, a god that the community could gather around and, frankly, a god with a geographical location they could avoid if they wanted to. Along with creating this god by their own hands came the ability to decide just how this god was to be worshipped, and they apparently decided this god would be a party god, one they could worship with gluttony and lust and orgies and chaos.

On the surface, the golden calf doesn’t sound at all like the god Kelly worships. But there are some similarities at a deeper level. First, the materials Kelly used weren’t the gold objects the Israelites brought with them from Egypt, but they were the various religious ideas Kelly had collected during his journey through several different religions.

The golden calf had a physical location they could approach or ignore at will, and Kelly has reached a point in the development of his god where he can do the same. The Israelites had formed a god designed and crafted by their own hands, and Kelly has created a god designed and crafted by his own mind.

While the Israelites were down in the valley creating their own god, Moses was up on the mountain hearing from his. And the second commandment God gave Moses was this – “You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below.”

God already knew what was going on back at the camp. He knew our human nature, which prefers to decide on it’s our own what sort of god we will serve and what rules we will follow. He knew human nature would be the same today as it was 3000 years ago, that we would still be trying to form and worship god on our own terms.

It’s for this reason why the Bible contains numerous warnings against creating and worshipping idols, and that this commandment would still apply to us today. We need to read God’s word for what God says to us and for who He reveals Himself to be, not for bits and pieces with which to form a god of our own. If we don’t, we will be no more religious experts than the gold and silver craftsmen who built idols back in Moses day.