Refusal to Own Failure

"Then Moses said to Aaron, 'What did this people do to you, that you have brought such great sin upon them?' Aaron said, 'Do not let the anger of my lord burn; you know the people yourself, that they are prone to evil. For they said to me, "Make a god for us who will go before us; for this Moses, the man who brought us up from the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him." I said to them, "Whoever has any gold, let them tear it off." So they gave it to me, and I threw it into the fire, and out came this calf.'" -Exodus 32.21-24

Moses is back, and he's angry. So angry in fact that he smashed the two stone tablets that God had written and given to him on the mountain. He takes the golden calf, throws it in the fire, and then grinds it into a powder which he adds to the water source and makes the people drink it. And then he confronts Aaron.

Aaron messed up. He knew he had, but instead of owning his failure, he like Adam way back in the garden, paces the blame. It wasn't his fault, the people made him, he said. And it wasn't as if he had done it on purpose, he just put the gold in the fire and it miraculously became a calf on its own. I'm wondering what Moses' face looked like as he got this explanation.

Aaron knew he had lost control, messed up, and led the people into sin and shame. But still he couldn't admit it. Even in all the chaos he was still trying to cover his own backside by passing the blame on to the people and chance. He was trying to save face, and so he lies and fails to own his failure.

Men, this has been the case since the first one of us messed up. Adam passed the blame to Eve, Aaron passed it to the people, and today we push the blame off on whoever we think we can get away with. Why are we so proud that we can't own our failures? Why are we so terrified of making mistakes that we try to save face at someone else's expense? How many times have you tired to use the excuse, "It just happened by itself"?

It doesn't take a man to pass the blame. Every time one of us tries we are refusing to play the man. Let's not be like Adam, or Aaron, let's be men. When we mess up, let's suck it up, own it, and move on. Let's man up and deal with the consequences of our failures, and then learn from them. Let's be men, and own our failure.

"Iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another."

To God alone be the Glory!

Strength and Honor