Where was Moses when God gave the Ten Commandments?
Before I answer that easy question, its important to read what specifically happens before God reveals the Ten Commandments at Mt. Sinai. Basically, an eighty-year-old Moses goes up and down Mt. Sinai four times to communicate with God and the people of Israel. Why all the schlepping up and down the mountain for an old man? In one of my classes Marc Rosenberg, a teacher at Pardes (Pardes Link) where I’m studying, taught that it shows that before having a spiritual experience with God, you need to do a lot of preparation and a lot of work.
Now back to my original question: where was Moses when God revealed the Ten Commandments? Moses was actually at the bottom of Mt. Sinai with everyone else.
Wait, what?
There it is in Exodus 19 Verse 20, Moses “went to down to the people and spoke to them.” The very next sentence in Verse 20, is God speaking and giving the Ten Commandments.
Marc Rosenberg taught that it was God’s “Plan A” to make a mass revelation. In other words, Moses was no higher than anyone else at Sinai, everyone was at the same level. But that didn’t work. The people freaked out and they fall back at the approach of God and beg Moses to go up and talk to God for them. Too much thunder and lightning can scare people I guess.
So God embarks on “Plan B”, that is he tells Moses and Moses will be the conduit for the people of Israel. But this proves to be problematic because what do people do when Moses isn’t around. They build a Golden Calf.
So, the essence of Marc’s teaching is that God’s original plan is that everyone can have a strong connection to God. Unfortunately, it takes a lot of work, i.e. climbing up and down the mountain, and most people don’t want that. More than that, they are afraid of it. So instead, people push forward “Moses type of people” to communicate with God for them such as Rabbis, Priests, Monks and others. It’s much, much easier to have someone else do the spiritual work for you.
But if you have someone else doing your spiritual work for you, you will find that you have distanced yourself from God and your connection isn’t very strong and its very, very easy build Golden Calves.
Aaron,
What, in your opinion, would be the modern equivalent of Golden Calves?
Also, unrelated to this, do you feel that your thesis for Destiny Media is still intact, but just delayed a couple of quarters in coming to fruition? The company’s May quarter revenues fell far short of your estimate from earlier this year; the company now estimates that it will be profitable in its fiscal Q1. Do you think it will still do ~$4 million in revenue over four quarters, but starting with its fiscal Q1 ’09 instead? I spoke with the CFO after the Q3 release, but he didn’t give any revenue guidance other than to say he expected enough revenues in fiscal Q1 for his company to be profitable.
Damien, I don’t respond on this blog to individual stock questions, I’m sorry.
Modern golden calves in my opinion would be anything that you worship, money, cars, houses, celebs, etc that would be something that distracts you from what life is really about.
Damien? Reminds me of The Exorcist. One trick I use to make it easier to read things on my computer is to set the screen resolution to 800×600.
Point taken about you not responding to individual stock questions.
Regarding your opinion about the modern equivalent of golden calves, I disagree. The salient point about the golden calf, as I remember it, wasn’t that it was gold, but that it was an idol. It was part of a religion. Despite the informal use of the word “worship” in the context of celebrities and money, I don’t think anyone really finds spiritual comfort in these things.
The modern equivalents of the golden calf are, in my opinion, secular belief systems such as Environmentalism, not-so-secular 12-step self-help programs, and perhaps aspects of eastern religions as filtered through practices common in the west such as yoga, meditation, etc.
I’m not sure I agree with Damien in terms of his broad definition of a secular belief system. I suppose that, taken to some weird extreme, where it becomes all consuming, or subsitutes entirely for any relationship with God, things like “environmentalism” or yoga or meditation aren’t really belief systems. Arguably, any of these could fall within the realm of a traditional judeo/christian belief system. Protection of, or love of the environment could easily stem from an admiration of, or desire to feel closer to God. Similarly, self-reflection is hard to separate entirely from, say, prayer.
At the same time, I’m not sure that it’s as simple as the materialism that Aaron seems to suggest. Is it significant that the golden calf was a “thing” as opposed to an idea? Was there concern about a more primitive version of materialism in the time of Moses? There probably was, but I think hanging it simply on a worship of things lets folks off too easily — it’s more complicated than that.
And what, exactly, is wrong with Eastern religions, DaveinHackensack? Or for that matter meditation? If you are going to haphazardly compare activities and beliefs that millions of people find helpful to a “Golden Calf”, then you might want to back up your assertions.
Let me guess, you have everything all figured out don’t you.
Homer315,
You have an excellent point, to simply hang it on things leaves out that people worship other things such as power for example that isn’t a “thing” so to speak.
Nice comment, Homer, makes me think.
Aaron
Huh,
I have nothing against Eastern religions, meditation, or yoga. I’ve done yoga a few times myself. I have nothing against golden calves, for that matter, if that’s your thing. I agree partly with Homer that one can engage in yoga or meditation and still adhere to Christianity or Judaism (or another religion, for that matter). My point was that those are the sorts of things that some non-religious Americans gravitate toward to fulfill the spiritual needs they don’t get fulfillment from in the religions they were brought up in. I disagreed with Aaron’s opinion that folks seek this sort of fulfillment in money, celebrity obsession, etc.