God is Not a Cow! (Article)

The essence of idolatry is the entertainment of thoughts about God that are unworthy of Him.  - A. W. Tozer, Knowledge of the Holy

God is not a cow.  

You probably knew that.  But in the history of the world, a lot of people didn't.  Herds of humans have imagined God a cow.  

Remember the Israelites at Sinai?  They “made them a molten calf, and worshipped it, and sacrificed thereunto, and said, These be thy gods, O Israel, which have brought thee up out of the land of Egypt” (Exodus 32:8).  

Those Hebrew cow worshippers likely got the idea from Egypt where "Hathor" was revered as a heavenly cow that gave birth each morning to the sun, her “golden calf.”  As mother of the sun god Ra, Hathor was “closely associated with the primeval divine cow Mehet-Weret.”  

Me who-Where at?  Holy cow!  People really thought God was a bovine.

Jeroboam, King of Israel, repeated the sin of Sinai centuries later when he “made two calves of gold, and said… behold thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt.  And he set the one in Bethel, and the other put he in Dan.  And this thing became a sin.” (1 Kings 12:28-30).  

God, a cow?  Of course not!  But the apostle Paul explains that “when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened.  Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts (cows)… (and) changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator” (Romans 1:21-25).  

Changing God into an image of a fourfooted beast, into a cow, and serving that creature more than its Creator is far fetched, but not unfamiliar, even today.  The sacred cow in Hinduism “is honored, garlanded and given special feedings at festivals all over India… Demonstrating how dearly Hindus love their cows, colorful cow jewelry and clothing is sold at fairs all over the Indian countryside. From a young age, Hindu children are taught to decorate the cow with garlands, paint and ornaments... The cow and her sacred gifts—milk and ghee (clarified butter) in particular—are essential elements in Hindu worship, penance and rites of passage.”

Hindus aren’t the only ones who love their sacred cows; Christians are devoutly loyal to a pasture full of them.  Inconceivable as it is to imagine God as a cow, it is apparently no problem for traditionalists to conceive of God as a monster, and it is no exaggeration to say that their dogma of endless torment is to them a venerated treasure.  Of course they would never say their God is a cow, and certainly not a monster, deceiving themselves into believing that such a revolting ogre as would have his creation eternally tortured is really a loving liberator who graciously spares a few from his holy wrath.   

“I’d be careful if I were you,” an offended friend objected at such an affront.  “That’s irreverent!  I’d be afraid to talk about God that way.”  

“But I’m not talking about God that way,” I insisted.  “That’s not God!  I’m denouncing a false god, not the God of the Bible. God is not a cow, and God is not a monster.”       

We know an idol when we see one, at least obvious ”idols of the heathen” that “are silver and gold, the work of men's hands.  They have mouths, but they speak not; eyes have they, but they see not; They have ears, but they hear not; neither is there any breath in their mouths” (Psalm 135:15-17).  And “we know that an idol is nothing in the world, and that there is none other God but one” (1 Corinthians 8:4).  And “they be no gods, which are made with hands” (Acts 19:26).

But all idols are not so obvious.  Some are not “the work of men’s hands,” but rather the thoughts of men’s minds.  “Let us beware lest we in our pride accept the erroneous notion that idolatry consists only in kneeling before visible objects of adoration, and that civilized peoples are therefore free from it,” A. W. Tozer writes in his insightful classic Knowledge of the Holy.  “The essence of idolatry is the entertainment of thoughts about God that are unworthy of Him.”  

The heathen fashion their false gods from silver and gold and wood and stone; Christians have fashioned their false god from false thoughts.  “The idolatrous heart assumes that God is other than He is,” Tozer explains. “Wrong ideas about God are not only the fountain from which the polluted waters of idolatry flow; they are themselves idolatrous. The idolater simply imagines things about God and acts as if they were true.  Perverted notions about God soon rot the religion in which they appear.”

God is not a cow.   Christians rightfully reject such nutty nonsense.  It’s an utterly ridiculous thought unworthy of the Creator of the world and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.  But think with me for a moment.  If endless torment is indeed wholly smoke, a myth shaped by "wrong ideas" and "perverted notions" (and I have no doubt that it is) then God has been erroneously imagined as the author and administrator of an eternal torture chamber in which billions of occupants will be mercilessly tormented without any chance of reform or hope of release.  I wish you would read that last sentence again. 

It is no easy task for those who believe it true to rationalize its existence and exonerate its deviser.  But for those of us who know it to be an epic error and not a Biblical verity, it is not difficult to see it for what it is, a monstrous idea that makes our merciful God an atrocious monster.  

But God is not a monster.  No more than He is a cow.  “The Scripture doctrine (conditional immortality), as we have felt constrained to declare it here, removes, we believe, a great stumbling block from the path of believers,” Emanuel Patavel reasons.  "We are no longer compelled to conceive of God as possessing two different natures; on earth tender and beneficent, even repaying man’s ingratitude and wickedness by His mercies; but beyond the tomb, unmoved by the endless tortures and excruciating pains of His enemies.”

The Jekyll and Hyde divine persona is a patented defense of the endless dogma.  "Yes, God is a God of love, but He is also a holy God of wrath" is the alleged vindication and monotonous mantra.  Traditionalists have repeated this so often they actually think it makes sense. 

Let’s try it out this way: “Yes, Dad is a loving Dad, but he’s also a holy Dad of wrath.  Get on his wrong side and you’ll spend the rest of your life locked in the basement getting thrashed with a belt.”  That’s not even apples for apples (it’s only a lifetime of belt thrashing versus an eternity of burning), and yet it points out the diabolical dichotomy of the Christian mental idol, a monster who so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, but who will so terribly torment those who don’t love him back.  A beneficent Dr. Banner morphs into a hideous Hulk.

Purely penal and purposeless punishment could be the sinister routine of a devilish Dad, but not our Heavenly Father.  “Furthermore we have had fathers of our flesh which corrected us,” the author of Hebrews reminds his readers, “and we gave them reverence: shall we not much rather be in subjection unto the Father of spirits, and live?  For they verily for a few days chastened us after their own pleasure; but he for our profit, that we might be partakers of his holiness.  Now no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous: nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby” (Hebrews 12:9-11). 

It is for our profit and for the present; remedial and temporary, not penal and eternal.  This is the kind character of our Father, and it is preposterous to think that He who is so graciously intentional with His own kids will yet be so arbitrarily unsparing with the neighbor’s.

“But his ways are not our ways, and his thoughts are higher than our thoughts,” my offended friend protested.  

“Yes, higher, not lower.”  I countered.  

This often misquoted text is just as often misused as rationalization for why our finite minds can’t grasp infinite retribution.  But the scripture in question is a defense of God’s boundless compassion, not his unmitigated wrath.   

“Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts: and let him return unto the Lord, and he will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon” is the preface. 

Have mercy?  Abundantly pardon?  The wicked and unrighteous?  How can that be?  

And then the answer:

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord.  For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts” (Isaiah 55:7-9).  

It was not natural for sectarian Jews to welcome foreigners into the fold, but God revealed that “nations that knew not thee shall run unto thee because of the Lord thy God.”   To the irascible Hebrews they were irredeemable heathens, but God would “have mercy” and “abundantly pardon.” 

How could He do such a gracious thing?  His ways are not our ways… his thoughts are higher than ours.  That's not what we would do, because that's not how we think. 

That’s what that means, and it’s a grotesque misuse to quote it in defense of endless torment.  “The wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God” (James 1:20).   “I will not execute the fierceness of mine anger, I will not return to destroy Ephraim: for I am God, and not man; the Holy One in the midst of thee” (Hosea 11:9). 

God is saying, “That’s what a man would do, but I’m God and not man.  I am the Holy One who has higher thoughts of mercy, not man’s lower thoughts of wrath.”

But we have entertained lower thoughts unworthy of God in imagining Him to be a monster. 

Is God Jekyll or is He Hyde?  Or is He both? 

The Heidelberg Catechism (1563): “His justice requires that sin, which is committed against the most high majesty of God, be also punished with extreme, that is everlasting punishment of body and soul.” 

But Jesus said, “Love ye your enemies… and ye shall be the children of the Highest: for he is kind unto the unthankful and to the evil.  Be ye therefore merciful, as your Father also is merciful” (Luke 6:35, 36).  Ah yes, His thoughts are higher than ours!   So is He Jekyll, the Highest showing merciful kindness, or is He Hyde, the most high majesty requiring extreme punishment?  It's the words we read versus the words of the creed. 

Apologist W. E. Dowell asserts that “souls and bodies that cannot perish, but are capable of the greatest amount of suffering, will be plunged into hell, and suffer; not for a day, nor week, nor a month, nor year, nor a century, nor a millennium, but for all the ceaseless ages of eternity!”  But the Highest who is kind, with higher thoughts than yours and mine, says, “Say unto them, As I live, saith the Lord GOD, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked; but that the wicked turn from his way and live: turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways; for why will ye die, O house of Israel?” (Ezekiel 33:11).  Notice the question is “why will ye die?”  Why would a God who has no pleasure in the death of the wicked have any part in their ceaseless suffering?  Is He Jekyll or is He Hyde?

Listeners clinched the back of the benches with white knuckles as venerated colonial cleric Jonathan Edwards terrified them with these chilling details: “It is a great furnace of wrath, a wide and bottomless pit, full of the fire of wrath, that you are held over in the hand of that God whose wrath is provoked and incensed as much against you as against many of the damned in Hell.”  That God is a monster.  But not the merciful God who promises “I will not contend for ever, neither will I be always wroth: for the spirit should fail before me, and the souls which I have made” (Isaiah 57:16). 

Even my beloved Spurgeon entertained thoughts unworthy of God: “When thou diest thy soul will be tormented alone – that will be a hell for it – but at the day of judgment thy body will join thy soul, and then thou wilt have twin hells, body and soul shall be together, each brimful of pain... Thy heart beating high with fever, thy pulse rattling at an enormous rate in agony, thy limbs cracking like the martyrs in the fire and yet unburnt, thyself put in a vessel of hot oil, pained yet coming out undestroyed, all thy veins becoming a road for the hot feet of pain to travel on, every nerve a string on which the devil shall ever play his diabolical tune.”  Dear Charlie got a little carried away with such eloquent wax, his hellish embellishment sounding more like a description of Ivan the Terrible than Jehovah the Merciful.  What kind of a god is that?  But “who is a God like unto thee, that pardoneth iniquity, and passeth by the transgression of the remnant of his heritage? he retaineth not his anger for ever, because he delighteth in mercy” (Micah 7:18).

Scottish Puritan Ebenezer Erskine, in a “Sermon on the Judgment,” sounds more like a screenwriter of a horror flick than a preacher of the gospel:  “Think now, O sinner, what shall be thy reward when thou shalt meet thy Judge?  How shall the adulterer satisfy lust when he lies on a bed of flames?  The swearer shall have enough of wounds and blood when the devil shall torture his body and rack his soul in hell.  The drunkard shall have plenty of his cups when scalding lead shall be poured down his throat, and his breath draw flames of fire instead of air…The wicked shall be crowded together like bricks in a fiery furnace.”  A flaming bed and scalding lead could have been the cruel instruments of a ruthless Attila the Hun, but not of “the LORD… merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and plenteous in mercy.  He will not always chide: neither will he keep his anger for ever” (Psalm 103:8, 9).

No doubt these good men believed they were justifiably warning of a horrible hell to shun.  Such as saintly John Wesley: “There is no business, but one uninterrupted scene of horror, to which they must be all attention.  Every instant of their duration, it may be said of their whole frame that they are ‘trembling alive all o’er, and smart and agonize at every pore.’”  And you’re telling me God either authored, administers, or allows such a ghastly thing?  How can that be when “he, being full of compassion, forgave their iniquity, and destroyed them not: yea, many a time turned he his anger away, and did not stir up all his wrath” (Psalm 78:38)?  One uninterrupted scene of horror?  Really, Mr. Wesley?

“To help your conception,” the articulate A. W. Pink suggests, “imagine yourself to be cast into a fiery oven, all of a glowing heat… where your pain would be as much greater than that occasioned by accidentally touching a coal of fire, as the heat is greater.  Imagine also that your body were to lie there for a quarter of an hour, full of fire... full of quick sense; what horror would you feel at the entrance of such a furnace!  And how long would that quarter of an hour seem to you!… And how much greater would be the effect, if you knew you must endure it for a whole year, and how vastly greater still, if you knew you must endure it for a thousand years!  O then, how would your heart sink, if you thought, if you knew, that you must bear it forever and ever… That after millions of millions of ages, your torment would be no nearer to an end than ever it was; and that you never, never should be delivered!”  Just imagine what horror!  And while you’re at it you could insert the iconic “Scream” painting by Edvard Munch.  

You may suppose I’ve searched far and wide to find such appalling elucidations of the traditional conception of endless torment.  To the contrary, the above is typical fare from stalwarts of the evangelical faith.  Though I recoil from their monstrous elaborations, it’s still to be preferred over the flippant humor and callous chuckles common to today’s traditionalists.  At least those orthodox orators took it seriously!  And many subscribed to the “Divine Oops” theory in order to clear God of criminal intent (see chapter nineteen).  

Crass and corny church sign messages (“There is no party in hell- just one endless B-B-Q” or “Eternity: Smoking or Nonsmoking?”) and insensitive comments (“If you think it’s hot here” or “they’ll have hell to pay”) reveal the mental disconnect in the jaded brains of those who claim the vast majority of humanity will ceaselessly suffer in the flames of hell.  That is no joking matter, and if I believed it, I would never joke about it!

That’s the evangelicals.  Let’s not spare the Catholics.  English “Father” John Furniss (1809-1865), founder of children’s missions “entered fully into the mode of thought of the child-mind, and, speaking quietly but with great dramatic power from a platform, he always riveted their attention.  He was a wonderful story-teller, seldom moving to laughter but often to tears”  Listen now children to the story of Father Furniss’s Fiery Furnace: “It is a pitiful sight.  The little child is in this red-hot oven.  Hear how it screams to come out; see how it turns and twists itself about in the fire.  It beats its head against the roof of the oven.  It stamps its little feet on the floor.  You can see on the face of this little child what you see on the faces of all in hell -- despair, desperate and horrible!  God was very good to this little child.  Very likely God saw this child would get worse and worse, and would never repent, and so it would have to be punished more severely in hell.  So God in His mercy called it out of the world in early childhood.”  

Father Furniss’ book cover features the head of a dragon-like creature with the title “The Sight of Hell” in red letters centered in the creature’s fang-filled mouth pulsing with demons and the damned.  “The bite or the pricking of one insect on the earth sometimes keeps you awake, and torments you for hours,” Father Furniss told the children.  “How will you feel in Hell, when millions of them make their dwelling-place in your mouth and ears and eyes, and creep all over you, and sting you with their deadly stings through all eternity?”  Of a lad who liked dancing: “The blood is boiling in the scalded veins of that boy. The brain is boiling and bubbling in his head. The marrow is boiling in his bones!... There is a just and a terrible God. He is terrible to sinners in Hell.”  And of a girl who enjoyed showing off her dress: “her dress is made of fire. On her head, she wears a bonnet of fire... it burns her head; it burns into the skin; it scorches the bone of the skull and makes it smoke...  You do not, perhaps, like a headache. Think what a headache that girl must have.”  

Think what kind of god that priest must have had!  “A terrible God” in his own words.  “If the Rev. Mr. Furniss believes such stuff as this,” wrote one blunt reviewer, “he ought to be sent to the lunatic asylum.”

Holy cow!  People really have thought God was a monster!  Crazy, indeed! 

We began this chapter by referencing the golden idols of Aaron and Jeroboam, and the ancient goddesses of Hathor and Mehet-Weret.  They were calves and heifers.  But the worst cow god was a bull.  Molech, a Canaanite deity of the Old Testament, often pictured as a man with the head of a bull, was both cow and monster.  “Scholars have claimed that Moloch is merely another name for Ba'al, the Sacred Bull who was widely worshipped in the ancient Near East. Ba'al is also frequently mentioned in the Old Testament, sometimes even in proximity to Moloch. Jeremiah 32.35, for instance, refers to rituals dedicated to Ba'al in the Hinnom Valley, with the offering of child sacrifices to Moloch.”  

“But they set their abominations in the house, which is called by my name, to defile it” God said of their idols made with hands.  “And they built the high places of Baal, which are in the valley of the son of Hinnom (Valley of Hinnom is where we get the Greek word Gehenna translated hell), to cause their sons and their daughters to pass through the fire unto Molech; which I commanded them not, neither came it into my mind, that they should do this abomination, to cause Judah to sin” (Jeremiah 32:34, 35).  

These idolaters sacrificed their sons and daughters in the fire to appease the cow-monster god Molech.  What were they thinking?  God never ordered such a thing!  It never even entered His mind.  But such a “wrong idea” and “perverted notion” of God has entered many a mind.  Some may object that the God of Conditional Immortality will yet consume the wicked in a judgment fire.  This is true, but it will be a “sudden destruction” of unrepentant unbelievers who lived life with the opportunity for endless life.  To “burn up” is a horrifying prospect, but it is absolutely no comparison to burning on and on and on without any chance of reform or hope of release.  Everlasting destruction is an understandable justice; endless torment is a purposeless injustice.  To keep someone alive only to torture them is diabolical. 

Tozer’s right: “The essence of idolatry is the entertainment of thoughts about God that are unworthy of Him.” 

God is not a cow.  Yeah, you probably knew that.  But did you know that God is not a monster?