attempts to complicate

Despite the fact that I know that it's big time of controversy was a few years ago, I've recently started reading Rob Bell's "Love Wins", mostly because I found it at a library so didn't have to pay anything for it. Truth be told, I've only read the first few pages of it, but those pages have told me quite enough about what he's trying to do.

Let me try to explain...

In the game of Go, there is a certain principle. In Go, the aim is to arrange stones in such a way as to control points of territory, and the player with the most territory wins the game (to make it fair, the player with the white stones is given some extra points, to make things interesting, but the general idea is still the same). Although capturing an opponent's stones and making sure your own are secure does play into it, the main thing is territory.

Now, as a game progresses, territorial frameworks will develop. Players will arrange their stones rather like fenceposts, marking off certain areas that they exercise a degree of control over. It may not be perfect control, it may be better to think of it as potential territory until it has been completely secured, but it is enough for the time to claim the a player has X points of territory under control. After a while, both players can determine which may have more potential territory, and which has less.

The principle I mentioned before is this, that the player with the great amount of territory will want to play in a quiet and secure way, because if all goes quiet that player will win, while the one who is behind will want to complicate things, attack and exploit weaknesses in the opponent's frameworks, and so make up lost ground, cause the opponent to make mistakes, and gain territory for himself or herself.

What Rob Bell does in "Love Wins" is to try to confuse and complicate things. In those first few pages, he attempts to pile question on top of questions, exploit real of imagined faults in his opponent's teachings, claim even that the questions that cause the confusion are what are important.
He is, in fact, acknowledging

that he is

playing

from behind,

in the

losing

position, that, really

all he can

do is to raise a ruckus

and hopefully cause people

to question

and not worry about an

swers.

Oh, and he does weird things with paragraphs, like that. Not sure why. I guess it's suppose to be cool, or something.

In fact, coming right down to it, it seems like Bell's confusion tactics pretty much sum up the whole postmodern and emergent way of thinking and arguing as a whole.
Why else would they be so much against answers, except that they know that the answers would not be what they want them to be? Of course, it's a trick on their part, because they very much like the answers they themselves create. The only time they are all into the exercise of confusing people with questions is when they don't like the answers.

And so, because the Bible teaches quite a bit about Hell, and because Jesus Himself tells us about the reality of Hell, and because Rob Bell doesn't like the idea of Hell, Bell spends the first few pages of the Book trying to confuse us, even to the point of implicating God if He should dare to have some place like Hell where He would dare to send unbelievers to.

And hasn't complicating things been one of the Devil's big tactics? Instead of one transcendant and imminent God, why, give people pantheons of gods, gods in every tree and every creek, gods in the sky and gods under the earth, gods who are nice and even more that are vindictive and nasty, gods that are far away and gods that are causing your neighbor to acts really strange. Instead of believe in one true God who has revealed Himself to us, why, give people all kinds of religions, ones that are about the here and now and others that are about the next life (even if that next life is in the here and now again), ones that are calm and others that are chaotic, ones that focus inward and others that focus outwards. Heck, even ones that have no god at all, or rather that make man or chance (for what else is evolution but the enthroning of chance in the place of a god) the object of adoration and worship.

Bell claims at one point that orthodox Christianity is on the side of people like himself, which is like saying the orthodox Christianity is on the side of the heretics. I give him credit for brazenness, but that's about it.

for whom the bell whines

Hell-Questioning Pastor Rob Bell Says New Book Has Led Him to ‘Profound Brokenness’

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Evangelical megachurch pastor Rob Bell said he did not anticipate the firestorm he would stir with his book that questions the traditional Christian belief that a select number of believers will spend eternity in heaven while everyone else is tormented in hell.

Bell said Tuesday that he not only didn’t set out to be controversial, he had no idea his best seller, “Love Wins,” would bring condemnation from people like Southern Baptist Seminary President Albert Mohler, who claims Bell is leading people astray.

“The last couple of weeks have been most painful in my life,” the pastor from Mars Hill Bible Church in Grand Rapids, Mich., told a crowd of about 1,600 at Nashville’s Belmont University on Tuesday after an audience member asked him about the criticism he has faced. “It has taken me to a place of profound brokenness.”

Well, I guess he's learned that he can't go toe-to-toe with any real Christian thinkers now, because he's playing the ultimate "I can't win" card--the VICTIM card.

"Oh, poor little me, I just kinda wondered into writing a book that I didn't really think was all that bad, I didn't expect people to really read it and argue that I'm wrong, why can't they just believe what I wrote, and stop trying to say that I took things out of context and that I'm plain wrong, that's just mean of them, stop it all of you!!!"

Pathetic.

Real, Bell, if you're going to go down, go down swinging. This little whining act is sad.

“I kept meeting religious people who were incredibly dogmatic about heaven and hell when you die but didn’t seem to care about the fact that 800,000,000 people will go to bed hungry tonight.”

Oh, you mean the same religious people who start charity works, go to places to build houses and dig wells, preach the Gospel and try to keep people from going to the Hell you don't believe in, Mr. Bell?

Victimhood and slander. Were I able, I'd stand on the door of your 'church' and shake the dust from my feet. But driving to Michigan isn't worth it, so I'll content myself with showing how much of a post-masculine thing you are.

follow the crowd

Scholares believe that the word sex is related to the Latin word secare, which means "to sever, to amputate, or to disconnect from the whole". This is where we get words like sect, section, dissect, bisect.

Our sexuality, then, has two dimensions. First, our sexuality is our awareness of how profoundly we're severed and cut off and disconnected. Second, our sexuality is all of the ways we go about trying to reconnect.
Rob Bell, sex god, p. 40

Bell plays pretty fast and loose with the concept of sexuality in this book, essentially broadening the definition for sex to mean any way in which people connect with each other. Outside of a general ickiness when one thinks of that in connection with some kinds of relationships (parent/child, buddy/buddy, siblings), he gets rather confusing in his use of the term.

These moments (special moments) move us because they have a sexual dimension. They help us become reconnected. They go against our fallen nature, which is to be cut off.

This is why music is so powerful...

Music is powerful because it is sexual. It connects us...The experience of a great concert--with everyone singing together, waving their hands in the air, and a feeling of oneness permeating the room--has a significant sexual dimension to it.
p. 41

This is a confusing play on language. There is simply no need to start using sexual language for any of these things.

Plus, one can question whether any of those experiences is necessarily good in and of themselves. For example, he refers to what he experiences at music concerts. I can think of something like Woodstock, quite infamous for drugs and sex.Did that "feeling of oneness" maybe cause some people to loose their inhibitions and their minds, and do things they later regretted (or should have regretted)?

Or what about other concerts, where the "feelings of oneness" led to senseless violence?

What he seems to be writing about seems more like a group mentality, or mob mentality, where individualism is lost for a time in some kind of collective drive, be it to sex or violence or what have you. Far from glorying in those experiences, there seems to be reasons to view them with at best skepticism.

baby angst?

The woman (Eve) is told that there is going to be conflict between her and the man. The man is told that there is going to be conflict between him and the soil.

And this is where you and I come in. We were born into a world, into a condition of disconnection. Things were created in a certain way, and they're not that way, and we feel it in every fiber of our being.

Is this why the first thing newborns do is cry?
Rob Bell, sex god, p. 40

One wouldn't suppose that the first thing a newborn does is cry because, well, the first thing that happens to it is that the doctor spanks it, would one?

And he does it for the child's own good, too, to help it to start breathing. If he doesn't, the child will suffocate. Severe damage or even death may result from it.

While kind of seeing his point, Bell does go a bit far with the newborn analogy. One must go a ways before saying that those just born are experiencing existential angst.

looking for what is coming, and where I'm going

The vision John has is not of people leaving earth and going somewhere else. It's a vision of God coming here and taking up residence in our midst.
Rob Bell, sex god, p. 165

The context of the quote above has to do with Revelation, more specifically the end, where John tells us of the new heaven and new earth, and the new Jerusalem coming down out of heaven.

There is really nothing new in what he's say, at least by my experiences. Granting that because death is often of more immediacy then the second coming, or at least of more apparent immediacy, among the churches I've been to the question of a person's destination after death has usually been of more immediate concern than the coming of the new Jerusalem; still, it did get it's share of teaching about and mention.

And one need not go even to Revelation to see it. Zechariah in the OT tells us of a time when Christ will return, and for a time make things right here on earth.

My problem with Bell here, and emergents as a whole, is a small one, at least in comparison with some other things they say and teach. It's small and subtle, but I think of at least some small importance.

It has to do with his claim of God "coming here", with the inference, or so it seems to me, that it will be to this earth that the new Jerusalem will come.

This seems to miss the idea, both in Revelation and elsewhere, that things are they are now are not meant to last forever--that the earth is kept for a time of judgment, that as it is now will someday be destroyed, and perhaps the whole of the university as we know it along with it.

As the passage in Revelation says, John saw a "new heaven and a new earth", because "the old heaven and earth had passed away". In something that to me seems very similar to what happens with us in regards to the resurrected body, the material world will also "pass away" and either be replaced with the new or be itself made new.

Although perhaps a small thing, like I said before I think it is of some importance. More than one place in the Bible tells us to hold lightly onto things of this world, and to look for the next--"Do not lay up treasures here on earth...but lay them up in heaven", "Our citizenship is in Heaven", "Love not the world, nor the things of the world".

One big problem that I think emergent has is in their emphasis on this world. True, few if any of them come out and say that there is no Heaven (though Pagitt's harping on dualism comes close), but it seems to be an embarrassing topic to them. In watching at least one online video of McLaren, it seemed that he wanted to drop the subject as quickly as he could, so he could get back to the issues he thought of more importance. Given the McLaren has pretty much adopted a full-preterist outlook in regards to prophecy and Christ's return, which is that all biblical prophesy has been fulfilled including those about Christ's second coming, then his focus on this world is really all he has.

If this world is all there is, then "laying up treasure in heaven" becomes an act of futility. If this present world is the "new heaven and new earth", I have a great desire to demand a refund, because it most certainly had to have been a bait-and-switch, because the reality would be far less than what was advertised.

Saying this world is temporary does not make it unimportant, any more than saying that our present life is temporary makes it meaningless. If anything, knowing there is something more waiting and coming, something new, and that some of our actions, small as they may be, can influence our individual place or lack in the new heaven and earth, makes this life of no small importance.

And if anything, the teaching that "this world is not our home" should give us heart to do right when faced with dangers and even death. Especially since the teaching is true.

scales, again

Love is a giving away of power. When we love, we give the other person the power in the relationship. They can do what they choose. They can do what they like with our love. They can reject it, they can accept it, they can step towards us in gratitude and appreciation.

Love is giving up control. It's surrendering the desire to control the other person. The love--love and controlling power over the other person--are mutually exclusive. If we are serious about loving someone, we have to surrender all of the desires within us to manipulate the relationship.
Rob Bell, sex god, p. 98

This closely echoes something mentioned a few weeks ago, from Chalke's and Mann's "the lost message of jesus"--this idea that love and power, or love and control, are somehow like the two ends of a set of scales or a see-saw.

And like then, we must ask, is what Bell is saying really true?

No doubt, we can point to instances when power or control have been abused. There is no denying that. But having acknowledged it, does that make it universal?

Like with Chalke and Mann, we can point to some examples. Do parent's who do not exercise authority over their children show that they love them more or less? If a parent warns a child about walking into the street just lets the child do it anyway, fearing to use any power or control for fear that it will somehow show less love for doing so, is that really showing love?

The context seems to deal God's love for man, and this becomes even more problematic than the love of parents for children.

Can we really say that God does not exercise power or control over people? I know that this is one of the more debated things out there, especially when it comes to the whole "predestination vs free will" debates. I have no dog in any such fight, but I don't need it for this topic.

We can look at the accound of the Exodus and Israel's wandering in the wilderness. Did God not lead them? Did God not show His power to them? Did God not provide for them? Did God not bless them? Did He not also punish them? Did He not give them laws, things they needed to obey? Even with one like Moses, with whom He seems to have had as close a relationship as with anyone else in the biblical accounts, does He not punish Him when he disobeyed? Did He not keep the whole of the people (save for two men and those under a certain age) from entering the Promised Land when they did not believe Him but doubted?

Did God love those people? Did He not free them from Eqypt? Why, then, these great and terrible acts of power and control concerning them? Why did He not just let them be, let them do their own thing? Why get in a tiff when they started worship a golden calf, or when they complained about His provisions, or when they doubted if they could take the land He'd promised to them? Why make such a big deal when Moses struck the rock instead of speaking to it?

Abuses should not be used to soil legitimate exercises, though that is done far too much today. Pointing to parents who have abused their children is not really an argument against spanking, though some use it as such. Pointing to instances of husbands abusing their wives is not an argument against headship, though some use it as such. Instead, arguments against abuses are arguments against...well...abuses. A counterfeit $20 bill does not negate the existence of the real $20 bill; rather, it depends on the existence of the real to make it difficult to know the fake (a fake $3 bill would be easy to spot, because there is no real one).

The exercising of authority in relationships is something that certainly requires a lot of wisdom, and I don't think that simply saying "love and controlling power...are mutually exclusive" can really be said to be echoing reality. Things are too complex for that to hold up under careful consideration.

May we wonder why they seem so intent on making love and power polar opposites? If we take their formula, what does it do to our ideas of God? Does it say anything about their emphasizing God's love and de-emphasizing God's rules?

so close, yet so far...

It is usual for me and those like me to put the question to Rob Bell, and rightly so. Some of the things he's said and written have deservedly raised the eyebrows.

So, it was with something like surprise that I read these couple of paragraphs, not only for the position they seem to be saying he holds, but also for the insight he offers in them.

Who decided tha tkids--or anybody else for that matter--are unable to abstain?

In a lot of settings, abstinence programs are laughted at. So are those campaigns in which students commit themselves not to have sex until they're married. Have you ever heard a news piece on the television or read a magazine article about one of them that didn't at least subtly mock the idea of "keeping yourself pure for marriage"? People who organize and promote these kinds of campaigns are often viewed as hopelessly naive messengers from a far-off land that simply doesn't exist anymore. The criticism of the "sex is for marriage" view is usually presented as the voice of realism. Are people actually capable of restraint?

But it's not realism. It's the voice of despair. It's the voice that asks, "Aren't we all really just animals?"
Rob Bell, sex god, p. 54

It may be said that this, too, did raise the eyebrows, but for different reasons--that such as he should have seen through "We can't expect kids to abstain from sex" rhetoric to see even one of the hidden assumptions behind it.

And I think he is right, and very much so. The voices that say that we can't expect people to not have sex before marriage is the voice of despair. It's an insight that is almost like something Schaeffer would have said.

But a few pages later, any hope I may have had getting lowered a bit, by these words.

In the creation poem of Genesis 1...
p. 57

Yes, I'm reminded that Bell thinks the Creation account is something like a myth. Yes, he says that the voice of despair asks "Aren't we all really just animals?", but then he believes that we really are just higher animals who evolved from lower animals.

And I wonder how he can say that about the voice of despair, when he believe the real myth that feeds that voice.

choose your imagery

For some, this is an entirely new perspective on God. Many of the popular images of God are of a warrior, a creator, a judge, a system of theology, a set of absolute truths, a father, the writer of an owner's manual.

But a lover?

Rob Bell, sex god, p. 97

I'm not really sure where he says this is such "...an entirely new perspective on God". I would guess most Christians have had some idea of it. I don't think it's helps Bell's argument that what is likely the most well-known verse in the Bible begins "For God so loved the world...". And certainly the imagery of the Church as a Bride has been popular.

Of course, such imagery of God as lover has it's dangers, as do ones like God as judge (which dangers emergents are not charry about pointing out and even exaggerating). I think Bell falls into one of those danger, the one of the great kindly Grandfather in the Sky, who gets a little testy at times and does wish the kids would play nice together, but knows they have it tough and is ready to look the other way when all's said and done.

I suppose that is what he's saying in places like this, a few paragraphs later.

This raises questions about what is at the base of the universe. What, or maybe we should say who, is behind it all?

A list of rules?

A set of beliefs, which you either believe or you don't, and if you do, you're in, if you don't, you're out?

A harsh judge and critic, who's making a list and checking it all the time?

Who is at the base of the universe?

Well, I guess we could ask "What the heck does that mean?" Still, I guess we can guess what he's aiming at, even if the expression is a bit...

Anyway, as in John 1, "All things were made by Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made".

So, we have the Word, Jesus, and the One by whom all was made. We then have all things being made by God. I think there is another verse in the Bible that says that He holds all things together.

Ok, so we have God as this central, foundation figure.

But what does that mean? What do we know about God? What can we know? How can we learn, if that is possible?

If we look to the Bible (which I recommend doing) to learn about God, we see many things about Him.

We can find lists of rules.

We can find things He commands us to believe.

We can see Someone who does judge, and sometimes harshly. We can sometimes find Him giving lists of the sins of some people.

This is why I think Bell is falling into one of the dangers of the imagery he is favoring here. Especially in his disparaging of "A set of beliefs...", he seems to being saying that beliefs are not so important (perhaps something like his trampoline analogy from Velvet Elvis).

The imagery of God as lover may have its benefits--one can find it in Isaiah and rather notably in Micah. But it is far from alone among the imagery used in the Bible for Him, and to isolate it or make it the main one while disparaging and discarding the others seems rather unwise to me.

everythings...what???

Scholars believe that the word sex is related to the Latin word 'secare', which means "to sever, to amputate, or to disconnect from the whole." This is where we get words like sect, section, dissect, bisect.

Our sexuality, then, has two dimensions. First, our sexuality is our awareness of how profoundly we're severed and cut off and disconnected. Second, our sexuality is all of the ways we go about trying to reconnect.
Rob Bell, sex god, p. 40

If we take this understanding of our natural state seriously, we have to rethink what sexuality is. For many, sexuality is simply what happens between two people invovling physical pleasure. But that's only a small percentage of what sexuality is. Our sexuality is all of the ways we strive to reconnect with out world, with each other, and with God.
p. 42

This redefining of 'sex' seems rather problematic to me. For one, to define 'sexuality' so broadly as to make it mean 'all of the ways we go about trying to reconnect' is to in essence say that everything is sexuality.

By that definition, then, two men shaking hands in greeting each other is a sexual act, or a group of women meeting for coffee at a local bookstore, or children playing baseball in the park, or a father reading a child a bedtime story, or friends exchanging e-mails, or a vehicle driver honking a horn at another driver, or a person at a computer writing an entry blog.

All are, after all, examples of ways those people are trying to 'connect' with one another.

Trying to say all of that is 'sex' or 'sexual' threatens to make it rather icky. Sex is very right within it's own realm, but outside of that it threatens to get sordid very quickly.

So, yes, I am not happy with his attempt to make "sex" mean any attempt we may make to connect with another person. I'd like to think that I can play a game of checkers with a friend or a stranger without someone else trying to soil it by saying it's 'sexual'. I'd like to think that I can have a casual conversation at a coffee shop without someone saying it's a 'sex' thing.

I can't help but feel that there's something...dirty...about this redefinition. At least, it makes me feel soiled.

heaven (and hell) is a place on earth?

In the book of Psalms, it's written: "The LORD has established his throne in heaven, and his kingdom rules over all" To the Jewish mind, heaven is not a fixed, unchanging geographical location somewhere other than this world. Heaven is the realm where things are as God intended them to be. The place where things are under the rule and reign of God. And that place can be anywhere, anytime, with anybody.

Now if there's a realm where things are as God wants them to be, then there must be a realm where things are not as God wants them to be. Where things aren't accodring to God's will. Where people aren't treated as fully human.

It's called hell.

Rob Bell, sex god, p. 21

If there is any doubt that Bell is saying that Heaven and Hell are things or condition here on Earth, in this present world, read a page further.

When Jesus talks about heaven and hell, they are first and foremost present realitites that have serioius implications for the future. Either can be invited to earth, right now, through our actions.

It's possible for heaven to invade earth.

And it's possible for hell to invade earth.

p. 22

I don't know if some other part of the book deals with his thoughts on after-death matters, but at least from that little bit, Bell is pretty much saying heaven and hell are here, that we humans make our own heaven and hell here on earth.

It would be interesting to know where he gets this stuff. For example, one can look at Jesus' story of the rich man in Hell to see that he didn't wind up there until after he died. One could as well look at Jesus' words to the criminal at the crucifixion, telling him he would be with Him in Paradise, to know that if one is promising Paradise to a man soon to die, then that Paradise has nothing to do with this present world.

pots and kettles

Last year I was in Canada for a couple of days, staying in downtown Ottawa. When I got to my hotel, I noticed that there was a buzz about the lobby. Lots of people with cameras and lots of British accents.

I got my key and took the elevator to my floor, and as I walked down the hall, the door of the room next to mine opened and a woman stepped out wearing a shirt with four words on it: "Mick, Keith, Ronnie, Charlie."

Ah, yes, the Rolling Stones.

With great passion, she told me that they were staying in this very hotel, and that the concert was tomorrow night, only a mile form here.
Rob Bell, sex god, p. 34

This entry isn't about the Stones.

It simply struck me when I read this the first time, that Bell is staying in the same hotel as the Stones.

Because, let's be honest, the Stones aren't camping out at the nearest Motel 6 or EconoLodge.

No, when the Stones go to a city, they're crashing at one of the swankiest places in town. Bell doesn't say what hotel it was, but with such a clientelle, it can't help but be a very nice place, with a hefty overnight price tag.

And that's where Bell stayed.

(Not to mention that he goes on to say that he got a ticket to the Stones' concert the next night, and that couldn't have been cheap, either.)

I kind of found that to be a bit off. You know, him being emergent, and them being so "Wealth is evil and God favors the poor and we need to stop being such greedy Americans and give up on capitalism and the free markets and go socialist so everyone is equally poor and all that..."

Do I hear Algore's private jet going by overhead...?

what's wrong with being right?

Jesus at one point claimed to be "the way, the truth, and the life". Jesus was not making claims about one religion being better than all the other religions. That completely misses the point, the depth, and the truth. Rather, he was telling those who were following him that his way is the way to the depth of reality.
Rob Bell, Velvet Elvis, p. 21

John 14
14:1 Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me.
14:2 In my Father's house are many mansions: if [it were] not [so], I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.
14:3 And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, [there] ye may be also.
14:4 And whither I go ye know, and the way ye know.
14:5 Thomas saith unto him, Lord, we know not whither thou goest; and how can we know the way?
14:6 Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.

So, let's see...

Jesus is talking about going away to prepare a place for the disciples, but returning for them and us so they can be where He is. Thomas basically says he doesn't understand, but Jesus explains that He is the way, and that no one comes to the Father except through Him.

In saying He's going away, Jesus is talking either about His death or more likely about His ascension. His words about coming again are much the same as the angels' at His ascension, "this same Jesus...shall come in the same manner as He has gone into Heaven".

In other words, Jesus tells this to His disciples, giving them hope concerning the things they were to soon experience.

Bell clouds the issue somewhat, by making it about religions. It's may not be about any religion that calls itself Christianity (as Mormons may try to sell themselves), but it is about people being true Christians.

Perhaps a better question than who's right, is who's living rightly.

No, it's about believing in Christ, which does have to do with who's right. The Pharisees, Sadducees, Scribes, all would have said they were living rightly. In a sense, it wasn't their attempts at moral living that were wrong, it was that they didn't know Him when He came.

As Paul says, in Romans 9

10:1 Brethren, my heart's desire and prayer to God for Israel is, that they might be saved.
10:2 For I bear them record that they have a zeal of God, but not according to knowledge.
10:3 For they being ignorant of God's righteousness, and going about to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted themselves unto the righteousness of God.

Strange, that Bell says it's not about being right, but Paul says that his people's problem wasn't their zeal for God, but that they didn't have or didn't exercise the knowledge they needed for the zeal to be good. Paul as Saul was zealous, but he was wrong, so it's likely he knew a bit of what he was talking about.

The question is still "Who's right", because it's only when that question is answered that one can determine who's living rightly. It make the question "Who's living rightly" presupposes that one has already determined what are the standards for 'living rightly', that one's standards are in fact the right ones, or to put most plains, that one is right.

making the old new, but not in a good way

In Moses' day, the way you honored and respected whatever gods you followed was by making carvings or sculptures of them and then bowing down to what you had made. These were gods you could get your mind around. Moses is confronting people with an entirely new concept of what the true God is like. He is claiming that no statue or carving could ever capture this God, because this God has no shape or form.
Rob Bell, Velvet Elvis, p. 23

Perhaps Bell can tell us, please, when Abraham, Isaac, or Jacob made carvings and sculptures of God. Maybe he can tell us when the people who were in slavery in Egypt had taken up build such sculptures and statues.

Funny how we don't see that among them. Funny how we see the fathers building alters, but never statues. Maybe it's like they didn't see the need. God spoke to them, God called them, God made promises to them, God even consults them at times, but they don't make images of Him.

Maybe the people did kind of want a god they could see, kind of like in Egypt. Maybe that's one reason they made the golden calf. But that was the new idea, not the old one.

As such, then, Moses isn't confronting them with "an entirely new concept", but rather with an old one, one that goes back to the founders of their nation. If anything, such things as the golden calf represented new ways, things they likely picked up in Egypt, things they had to unlearn and set aside in order to return to the truth about the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.