Too often we think of Aaron and Abraham and others through a modern lens. I still remember someone asking what it must have been like to be Abraham’s home teaching companion.
I thought about this when someone asked me about this ditty that has been going around:
Aaron was a prophet, built a golden calf.
Led the people dancing, and he made them laugh
Moses heard about it, he was not amused,
And for the people, they felt rather used …
I think they expected me to tell them it was inaccurate. Irreligious and disrespectful, perhaps, but that really happened. See Exodus 32:1–6 and this essay about the golden calf.
So, Abraham?
As for Abraham and home teaching? Abraham probably didn’t do any home teaching. He started as a refugee, fleeing his home after his father tried to have him killed over idol worship. He sought ordination to the priesthood from sources that have disappeared and left Abraham as their only trace. He then became a wandering scholar who survived the court of Pharaoh. In the end he was a warrior prince with over three hundred men who were trained only for war and also herdsmen and flocks.
We tend to forget that Abraham owned no land until he had to bury his wife and that he won the battle of the five kings. His heritage is reflected well in Esau and Jacob. Jacob was a herdsman. Esau had men under arms (and was completely disinterested when Jacob offered him herds as a peace offering, but finally accepts the gift).
Aaron is even more alien to us than Abraham. Would you really expect to see Elder Nelson leading a worship service around a golden calf because President Monson was not available and the congregation wanted him to do something they were comfortable with?
The truth is that while parts of the story of Abraham touch us, much of it is alien to us. Abraham did not live in a church or community that we would recognize and the gospel he followed did not have much in common with ours in many ways (no Book of Mormon, no Bible, no house of Israel, he paid tithing only once, and many other factors).
What about Aaron?
The story of Aaron, called to speak for Moses because Moses did not feel comfortable talking for himself, also is strange to us. Read about his ordination. Read the story of the golden calf, or when he and Miriam challenged Moses (and only Miriam got in trouble). Much about the story and about his life is nothing like anything we have in common with each other.
The Problem
Too often on any gospel topic there is black and white thinking on inadequate foundations, and too much assuming that likening something to ourselves means that the story is really one that would fit into the lives of our next door neighbors without changing any of the details.
I think we are better served to think that we are like blind men and the elephant – except that there isn’t an elephant. Or that we lack the words, ideas, background and concepts to see the elephant as it is (and that those of other times, eras or cultures just lacked different parts of what they needed to see the elephant as it is).
Speaking English and living in a progressive modern country doesn’t suddenly make us superior to everyone else from every other era.
So, what should you have been told?
Someone should have told you that we understand so very little about Abraham or Aaron, both because of holes in the record and because their lives are so alien to us.
Outcast wandering scholars who become warrior princes are alien to us. Aaron, whose function was to be Moses’ mouthpiece because Moses felt he didn’t have a good enough gift of public speaking, is even more alien to us in many ways.
We can understand so much by realizing just how alien they are to our modern life and expectations and by appreciating that the complete picture is much bigger than the one we have.
And we can understand even more by avoiding building golden calves. Which is what we do when we idolize our own understandings over everything else.
What do you think that we over-estimate that we understand?
Thanks to Andrew S. for help on the graphics and improved editing skills.
If this wanders too much, like Abraham’s life or Aaron in the wilderness with the Children of Israel, then unlike them, the essay probably needed more edits.
But I hope it illustrates the point I was trying to make.
As I have studied a bit more I am very much feeling like I don’t know much about the scriptures, the culture and times they were in, and me being able to get as much out of them as I had in year’s past.
In answer to your question, I now think that’s almost everything. I love that because it’s not looking great from where I’m standing right now.
I had a Moslem colleague who understood the story of Abraham and Isaac completely differently to us. For her the handmaid was the heroine, protecting Abraham’s true born son with angelic help when cast out into the wilderness. The hajj according to her, is a re-enactment of the handmaid’s experience, and the Arab lineage derives from her son with Abraham. Consequently, she sees the Arab/Moslem world as equal in heritage to the children of Israel. Quite another view of the same story.
What I wish they would tell us about Abraham:
The party line is that God commanded Abraham to take a plural wife. However, Genesis 16:1-3 clearly indicates it was Sarai who asked Abraham to do it, out of insecurity over her infertility. In stark contrast to God commanding it. Read it, verse 2 could not be more clear.
Many Bible scholars think God never commanded polygamy, that it happened against His will and caused numerous problems. That seems to fit our Mormon history and why we felt compelled to repeat these mistakes of the past does not have a divine explanation.
For the record , when Abraham took Isaac up the mountain to sacrifice him, another extremely disturbing event twisted beyond reason, Isaac was not his only son. Ishmael, the result of Abraham taking a second wife was out there starving in the desert, abandoned by his father to near certain death.
This is one of many examples of the passive patriarch and the manipulative matriarch causing grief that spans generations. The implications of the proper gender roles in society are far reaching, and not particularly useful anyone.
As I have become more informed during the past 45+ years (after coming out of Plato’s Cave after my mission), I think the importance of “scripture” is vastly overblown. It would be of immense value to have an accurate record of God’s teachings in Old, and then New Testament times. Then our primary problem would be bridging the enormous gulf between modern and ancient languages, culture, and meanings.
But, what we have as “scripture” has a highly suspect provenance, was actually written down (and derived largely from oral histories and cultural legends) decades and centuries (e.g., Genesis was written down by the priests of Israel while in captivity in Babylon in the 600 BC timeframe) after the purported events, and is interpreted for us by a highly biased (even if well-meaning) collection of leaders that are not seeking for clarity but to guide (manipulate) us in the “way we should go.”
So, our manuals and our leaders use extensive proof-texting to make their points from this morass of “inspiration.”
IMO
I appreciate the story of Aaron and the fact that a prophet was not perfect. It really helps me to see prophets as more human. One thing that is bothers me about the church today is that all the human,less “faith promoting” aspects of our modern prophets, have been conveniently absent from our curriculum. I like knowing I am not the only imperfect person at church. We all go on Sundays with our church faces on. I used to think everyone at church was so perfect and really felt inadequate. I have come to realize as I get older, and hopefully wiser, that once you really get to know another person the more flawed they become. The Bible is full of stories of Prophets who have huge flaws. I would like to see more of that in our modern scriptures.
I recall those stories.
This week I was involved in a conversation with one of my brothers about the importance of trying to understand the context to make sense of scripture. Of course being far removed, our understanding of context is at best an approximation, and may well leave something to be desired in understanding, but it’s better than simply applying our own lens.
I always thought the caution with the golden calf was that leaders should be above pandering to the base. Unfortunately, that doesn’t seem to be the case always. Another view of the story is that Moses brought the word of God down to the people, but Aaron instead gave the people what they asked for, and they always ask for something more comfortable and less challenging than what God asks.
Nicely said.