Parashat Ki Tisa (Exodus 30:11-34:35) offers us more attentiveness to worship and other spiritual practices. But in the middle of this passage, we find the story of the Golden Calf, and the condemnation of being “stiff-necked” or arrogant. Arrogance, in this passage, is worse than idolatry. Why?
Arrogance is both belief and practice that one is themselves right above others or superior to others. When we’re arrogant, we cannot believe that when someone tells us we’re wrong or out of line that either is true. After all, we know best. We are the best. We’re right-thinking and right-practicing and right-believing. When we’re arrogant, we’re not likely to be attending to the wisdom or gifts others bring or valuing them. Arrogance sets ourselves up as the only ones who know and the ones who know best for everyone else. Arrogance keeps us from learning from others and keeps us from finding ways to work with others where everyone benefits and without exercising power over others. Arrogance is part of white supremacy, where whiteness is named the best, the normative, and everyone else is other and less than. Arrogance is part of oppressive beliefs and practices because, ultimately, arrogance is about seizing and using power over others, lest we become one of the powerless. Behind arrogance is fear.
Because the root of arrogance is extreme fearfulness, arrogance frequently mistakes being powerful for having power over others. In Parashat Ki Tisa we have the people, learning how to be free. In any of our lives and any learning, we’re going to make mistakes, which is why there is an opportunity for forgiveness and reconciliation. Yet the people emulate Pharaoh in being stiff-necked and not embracing the challenge for change and healing. It is a more drastic and detrimental version of asking “are we there yet?” Ok, now are we free? Now are we free? Now, what about now? If we seize power over everyone else, are we truly free? If we assert we know best, are we truly free? If we turn away from our connectedness to all of being, are we truly free?
Here the mistaken belief is that freedom doesn’t have discomfort, or require all that much of us. That suggests something to us about the fears that promote arrogance: we have been threatened with being hurt by others to such a degree that we will do anything to prevent that again, and the most expedient thing seems to be to command and control others. When we’ve been badly hurt, we can lose our tolerance for any discomfort, as discomfort becomes an indicator that we are losing control and in danger again. It takes time, intention, and supportive people and communities to help us learn that any discomfort does not automatically mean we are risk of exploitation again.
Setting the story of the Golden Calf among the spiritual disciplines of how to worship and how to have reverence is a reminder: when we’re arrogant, we lose our ability for reverence of anything but power over others. Why? reverence demands humility, an awareness that we are part of this blessed complicated whole, with gifts to offer and with even more to learn. The disciplines I wrote about last week are part of creating the container within which we learn and grow. Growth mostly doesn’t happen in the comfortable spaces but as we stretch into discomfort and face both what’s internal and external needing change. Sometimes what most needs changing is our awareness that we’re neither the least nor most important, but part of this amazing whole that can be made better or worse by what we choose and don’t choose to do.
Are we free yet? Nope, because we have a whole lot of power over others to undo, internally and externally. That may be most present to you as racism, or sexism, or ableism, or homophobia, or transphobia, or classism, or colonialism, or religious repression, or another form of oppression and victimizing others so someone feels superior. And that one feeling superior can very much be ourselves, even people who mean well and try to address oppression outside themselves can still have stuff to deal with inside themselves, maybe even hidden there. Arrogance is to assert in this aching world that there are no dominating cultures and how those inflict harm on those trying to fit in and those who are set apart as never going to be fully as good as what the dominating culture puts forth as superior.
Arrogance twists humility into humiliation. True humility is knowing ourselves and our community, faults and foibles, strengths and gifts. We know we have work to do and we’re doing it, individually, as families, in community, and in our larger world. There is no need to humiliate someone to reach the work of healing, of hope, and of drawing this world more fully toward freedom, love, equity, and justice. By practicing the spiritual disciplines that call us back to our belonging to the web of being, by learning to stay present and open-hearted in the uncomfortable places, by continuing to learn and accept life’s challenges to grow more whole-heartedly and justly, we practice humility and let arrogance go. We ease up the stiff necks and discover how to dance with one another and with all of life for hope, for love, for freedom, and for joy.
