Mooby
October 6, 2011
Excerpt from Psalm 106
"They exchanged the glory of God for the image of an ox that eats grass."
Reflection by Quinn G. Caldwell
One of the awesomer religiously-themed movies out there is Kevin Smith's Dogma, in which an atheist abortion clinic worker — who also happens to be the last scion of Christ — attempts to stop two rebel angels from unraveling creation. Along the way, she's aided by Metatron (aka the Voice of God), a writer's-blocked Muse, an elided Apostle, and two pot-smoking prophets. [Warning for parents and the easily offended: just because a Daily Devotional author recommends a movie doesn't mean it's appropriate for all audiences.]
In one scene, the renegade angels attack as idolaters the board of a corporation whose mascot is Mooby, an anthropomorphic golden calf with a gigantic media and fast food empire.
The golden calf reference is pretty glaring. The claim about what constitutes idolatry, on the other hand, is uncharacteristically subtle for a Kevin Smith movie. Jesus and the prophets would have gotten it, though. The claim is that worship isn't primarily made up of religious practices, words, or postures. Instead, you worship whatever you give most of your thoughts to, whatever you spend most of your time and money on, whatever you would go crazy without, whatever you look forward to most, whatever you long for most of all, whatever you stare at in adoration longest.
By this standard, I don't know a single person, including me, who couldn't use a little iconoclasm. So let us pray:
Prayer
Dear Lord, please forgive me all my Moobys and return me to you, the only true object of worship. And if it's not too presumptuous to say so, I totally hope you're like the God in the movie. Amen.
Quinn Caldwell will be speaking at Bless! A National Conference for Worship Leaders, Nov. 10-11 in Boston. Learn more here.
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