What an eerie confluence of events. On Monday, September 15, 2008, the day Wall Street teetered, Sotheby’s auction house raised a record $127 million for the works of artist, Damien Hirst — considerably more than the previous record of $20 million set in 1993 for works by Pablo Picasso. One of Hirst’s pieces (it sold for $18.5 million) was “The Golden Calf” — an embalmed calf with golden hooves and horns. That’s the same day Lehman Brothers collapsed under $613 billion dollars of debt, becoming the biggest bankruptcy in U.S. history. Though the fall of Lehman seems like ancient history in the frantic pace of recent weeks, the lessons of the golden calf are timeless.

The juxtaposition of these two events was not lost on writer, David Bodanis, in his Financial Times article, How We Were All Blinded by the Golden Calf. Bodanis uses the events to reflect on the world’s economic system through the lens of Exodus 32 that describes the making of the golden calf by the ancient people of Israel. Though I don’t agree with much of Bodanis’ exegesis, I think he makes two thought-provoking points regarding the elevation of financial institutions to the role of idols.

The first point that I appreciate gets at the question, “Why did they make it?” Bodanis writes:

“Exodus says it was because once Moses had left them to climb Mt Sinai, they became terrified at being left so isolated in a barren desert wasteland. The calf would give them access to forces that could assuage their fears … Few people in finance or working hard in other jobs really worship money in its own right. Instead, they want the decent things money can bring: a good home; great family holidays. It is only when they fear that no one else is going to provide those – no Moses, or trustworthy state, or employer-for-life – that they start acting frantically.”

And in this panicky fear they want answers now, so they frantically create something to calm their fears even if it can’t save them. Rational? No. Familiar? Yes.

We speak glibly about people being “believers” or “unbelievers.” That is, people who have faith and those who don’t have faith. But the fact of the matter is, all human beings are believers. It’s really an issue of what or whom we believe. And at the end of the day, it’s not about how much faith I have but whether the object of my faith is worthy of my trust. To have all the faith in the world that you can walk across a lake covered with a quarter inch sheet of ice … well, it’s not you; it’s the ice.

Faith is only as good as what it is placed in. And wasn’t faith shaken quite a bit in the last weeks? Is your faith in the invisible God of Moses or in a golden calf?

A second insight from Bodanis is how idolatry causes blindness.  In this case he asks,

“…why did so many bankers and regulators ignore clear signs of what was coming this week?”

His answer?

“In popular culture it is common to raise an ordinary mortal to immense heights on the basis of the films they have been scripted to appear in or their ability to play a game with a ball. Talent is nice but not indispensable, for to the worshipper, an idol – and only the idol – has been infused with a power more deserving of attention than anything else.

That does not matter too much when it is just a matter of film actors or football stars. But raise an entire institution – the unfettered financial world, for example – to the role of an idol and you are not critical of anything it does, either. That has more serious consequences. When outsiders try to show you its flaws, you will not genuinely listen to their arguments.

An invisible god can inoculate you against those failures. With an invisible god, you have not agreed to focus on just the idol: to believe, for example, that all that counts is giving maximum attention to what Wall Street and the City want. For your eyes are open – while when you stare at Mr Hirst’s wealthy bull, they are not.”

I like that insight. When we look to and trust an invisible God, a God who defies description, limits, or boundaries, our eyes actually stay open to see things that can be described, limited, or bounded for what they are. Rather than “blind faith” I think this is really “seeing faith.” The only blind faith is the one that so focuses on the idol that it can no longer see reality.

So as the turmoil continues, let me ask,

“What do you fear and what is it driving you to do?”

“And what have the eyes of your heart locked onto, that holds your gaze and your hope?”

For more on this subject, check out InsideWork’s Scriptural Roots of Commerce series, Module 1: Discovering God and Module 6: More than Money.