To Gain the Whole World
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Welcome to Halting Toward Zion, the podcast where we limp like Jacob to the Promised Land and talk about life, the universe, and everything along the way. I’m Emily Maxson here with Greg Uttinger, and we are talking about Daniel, chapter 1.
The book of Daniel is really great I think for us today in a society that is not a Christian society, living as Christians in the world. I feel like there are a lot of parallels for us to see in Babylon and the commands that God gives to the people of Judah as they are captive, planting gardens and all that – but, spoilers. I’m getting way ahead of us.
Anyway, I’m excited that we’re starting the book of Daniel, which is all I was really trying to say. We’re going to begin at the beginning with chapter 1 and what Daniel does when he’s faced with the possibility of eating the king’s food. Why does it matter?
You know, that’s probably what a lot of his friends asked him. Bible teachers and pastors and commentators tend to be quick to reply, “Well, it was ceremonially unclean,” but that seems unlikely for all of it. Does Nebuchadnezzar not like venison or beef or chicken? Fruit or vegetables? There was probably a great deal of food that was clean by the dietary laws that Israel observed.
Others will say, “Well, it was offered in sacrifice to idols,” and that’s quite probable, certainly possible, but the text doesn’t mention it. Paul in his discussion of meat offered to idols does say that a strong believer can realize that the meat is still meat, and eat it without offending God if we can eat in faith and thank God for it. Again, the text simply does not say that it was offered to idols nor draw any attention to it.
The one thing that the text does say repeatedly and plainly is it’s the king’s meat. That seems to be what’s distinctive about it, if we just read the text as it stands. But it kind of strikes us as funny in the 21st century because our reply is, “So what?”
Well, none of us has ever been invited to dine with a king – I mean very few of us.
To us, food is food. You sit in a restaurant and there are all kinds of people around you, and yet we assume that the people we’re eating with are friends. I’ve been in places in Europe where you’re given your food and you go and sit down at a long table with lots of people you don’t know at all. They may be tourists, they may be locals, and the place is so packed that you just kind of squeeze in next to total strangers.
Even Americans have got to admit that’s a little weird. We normally eat with people we know, people we have some kind of relationship with. It may be family. It may be good friends. It may be a young man buying dinner for a young lady to work out some kind of romantic relationship. It may be a business lunch where people are trying to sort out the possibilities of some future business relationship with financial commitments and all that. It is rare to sit down with someone you don’t know at all and just start eating.
Actually, it does happen. A few weeks ago I was waiting to pick up a pizza, and several tables over a gentleman who had been talking to the people behind the counter and then started addressing the room then started talking to me, and I started talking back and eventually moved over and spoke to him more clearly because, guess what, we had something in common. We were Christians and he was having a hard day. He had kind of wanted to be at his church and he ended up here because of family things, and he was so glad to meet a fellow believer. I ended up praying for him before I left.
See, even in this context you sometimes talk to people because they’re just there and proximity wins, but even today in the 21st century, eating with somebody generally means there’s some kind of relationship that exists or you’re trying to build, or in the process of just being near each other you discover and then you turn chairs around and you just start talking.
In the ancient world it was much clearer that this is what food was, and particularly where royalty is involved. You joked about it earlier, but not everybody gets to eat with a king. I never got to eat with Queen Elizabeth. I’ve never gotten to eat with any of the presidents who have served during my lifetime.
There are people who are somewhat famous, within my definition of famous, that I have gotten to eat with, and that’s an honor. It’s an honor to sit at the table with somebody who is well-known, who’s respected, who has some authority, to be included within that sphere of community. In the ancient world this was very, very true. Not just anybody came and ate at the king’s table, because the king’s table was not a smorgasbord. It was really a king with a real table.
So for Daniel and his friends to be invited to share the king’s meat, whether it actually meant they went to his table or it was just ferried to them by servants, it still involved an act of communion, an act of drawing close, of enjoying a friendship, a relationship, patrician to plebe, lord to vassal, something where they were accepting that this is the basic communion and community in our lives.
What’s wrong with doing that? If you want to socially climb, shouldn’t you appreciate such a thing when a king says, “Come have dinner with me”? Depends who the king is. If we just treat it abstractly like, “Well, some old king someplace,” that doesn’t do justice to what’s happening here. Nebuchadnezzar is the king of Babylon, of Babel. Babel does not have a good reputation in scripture.
It goes all the way back to Nimrod and Cush and that whole rebellion, where God intervened and scattered mankind. Or we can think back to the time when Achan saw a Babylonian garment and coveted it and stole it, and Israel got into lots of trouble at Ai for messing with things Babylonian. Or the Babylonian ambassadors who not so far in the past had visited Hezekiah and of whom God say, “Well, that’s great. You showed them everything? Your whole house full of stuff and all of your kids are going to go to Babylon.”
But more to the point, of course, was that Nebuchadnezzar was the king who had come against Jerusalem, who had laid siege to it, had conquered it, and now was taking people away from it to Babylon.
In fact, Daniel is one of those. Daniel has been taken by force from his community, his family, the people he knows and loves, from the worship of his God, from the temple, and he’s been taken to a strange foreign land where basically they’re trying to brainwash him.
They’re very nice about it. They’re giving him the best room, the best clothing, the best food, probably anything he wants. He just has to go to classes and learn how to be a good right-thinking Babylonian, so that one day perhaps he can go back to his own land and work for the Babylonians as one of them.
This is the king who’s making nice-nice with Daniel, and Daniel and his friends say, “We’re not okay with this. We understand that Jerusalem has fallen because of the sins of God’s people. God is angry with us. This is part of his prophesied judgement. It’s what the law said would happen. It’s what the prophets said would happen. It is what in fact has happened, and we’re not sure really where we stand in relationship to God, but he is our first loyalty and we’re not going to get too comfortable with basically the anti-Christ.”
In the perspective of an earlier generation, dinner with Hitler maybe is not such a great idea, or lunch with Mussolini. This seems to be where Daniel and his friends run up against the wall. “You give us new names? Okay. You put us in new clothes? Okay. You’ve taken us from our families and all of that.” The issue of who they worship is not on the line.
They are not told they have to give up their God. They’re not forced to worship idols at this point, so those things aren’t there. Their holy books, if they’ve made it to Babylon, have not been taken away from them. If they can get hold of them, that’s fine. They’re not forbidden to go to synagogue, apparently. None of that’s there, so all these other things they’re accepting or they can deal with, but at this point they draw the line.
Daniel is obviously the leader, but these four men agree together that, “We’re not okay with dinner with the anti-Christ, so here we’re going to draw a line.”
Back to your original question. His other friends, the other young men who were brought to Babylon, probably looked at him and said, “We don’t get that. We’re staying away from the pork and the bacon. We’re not eating the shellfish, so we’re not violating any of God’s dietary laws. Hey, we’re not even getting drunk. We’re eating the good stuff and we are strong believers, so the fact that it may have been offered to idols – we’re not asking, we’re not telling, we’re not complaining.
“We think you’re just a little over-righteous here, Daniel. We don’t see where you’re getting this in scripture, and it just doesn’t make sense. You’ve got to get along to get along. You have to be involved in the system to work the system. Right now you’re alienating yourself. The powers that be are going to look at this as you just being troublemakers. We on the other hand – hey, we’re doing well. We get invited to all the great parties and the balls and the celebrations. We talk to important people. We’re going to be the movers and shakers in this empire.
“Give us time – give us another 10, 20, 30 years – and we’re going to be running Babylon, then look where we’ll be. We’ll be able to exercise dominion in the name of God and for the sake of the covenant people, and you’re just going to be on the outs and no one is going to invite you to any parties.”
It is. There is very heavy irony here but, knowing human nature, that is exactly what people are saying to him. “You’re a legalist. You’re a pietist. This is not in scripture. There is no explicit command, so we don’t see a reason to do this. If you want to do it, okay, but dominion, responsibility, walking the corridors of power – we’re going to be doing that and you’re going to be having your little Bible studies with three people present. We thought you were smarter than that. We have a dinner to go to. Talk to you later.”
First of all just in passing, and maybe that’s the problem – that it’s just in passing – we know the three friends, Meshach, Shadrach, and Abednego. Those were not their names. Their names were Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah, good Hebrew names, all of which have the name of God or Yahweh worked into their names.
Fun fact. I met somebody swing dancing one time who was named Mishael, and I was like, “Oh, like in the Bible!” and he was like, “Yeah. Not a lot of people know that.” I was a Bible teacher.
“Just call me Shadrach.” The Babylonian names seem to be rooted in the names of Babylonian gods. It’s not that names are unimportant. In fact, Daniel gets a new name too, Belteshazzar. But of all the places where they could draw a line, that’s not the one they choose.
Pretty much. Under other circumstances perhaps they might have chosen them. Sometimes what people call you does matter, but here they were going to let that pass. They can’t control what other people call you. They’re not pouty teenagers who say, “If you don’t call me this, I’m not answering.”
So these three young men, these Hebrew men – like you say, unless you’re a Bible teacher and have actually paid attention, you may not even know that they have other names, because we always see them after this through Nebuchadnezzar’s eyes and he always calls them Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.
Thank you, exactly. But that’s more of the irony here, that even Christians have come to call them Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, when those are their pagan names given them by pagan conquerors. And they in their humility and in their wisdom simply smile and say, “You called?” rather than fussing there. But they do fuss, they do draw a line where the food is concerned.
So together they consult and probably pray a good deal, and eventually they go to the man in charge. This is chapter 1 of Daniel. I’ll just read a little bit here –
And the king appointed them a daily provision of the king's meat and of the wine which he drank, so nourishing them three years, that at the end thereof they might stand before the king. Now among these were of the children of Judah, Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah, unto whom the prince of the eunuchs gave names, for he gave unto Daniel the name of Belteshazzar, and to Hananiah, of Shadrach, and to Mishael, of Meshach, and to Azariah, of Abednego.
But Daniel purposed in his heart that he would not defile himself with the portion of the king's meat, nor with the wine which he drank. Therefore he requested of the prince of the eunuchs that he might not defile himself.
I don’t know if he actually went to him and said, “We find this religiously defiling. Could we have something else?” He may not have been quite that blunt, but somehow he communicated, “We have religious scruples here that we may or may not discuss at this point.”
Now God had brought Daniel into favour and tender love with the prince of the eunuchs.
So Daniel to this point had been a good kid, a nice young man. He’s probably about 17, give or take, and the prince of the eunuchs thinks he’s a great guy and is inclined to do what he asked, but…
And the prince of the eunuchs said unto Daniel, I fear my lord the king, who hath appointed your meat and your drink, for why should he see your faces worse liking than the children which are of your sort? Then shall ye make me endanger my head to the king.
The prince of the eunuchs – I don’t know what our equivalent would be, but the head honcho of the food department – says, “I can’t just do that, because there’s a health issue here. The king is giving you the best food we’ve got. It’s the healthiest food. It’s what noble people eat. It’s noble food, and if we put you on some kind of lesser diet, that’s going to affect your health and you’re not going to be up to snuff when you stand before the king, and that’s going to be my head because he wants you to be healthy and strong.”
Then Daniel appeals to the guy who’s actually between him and the prince, a guy named Melzar, and proposes a test.
Then said Daniel to Melzar, whom the prince of the eunuchs had set over Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah, Prove thy servants, I beseech thee, ten days, and let them give us pulse to eat and water to drink.
The word pulse – some people say vegetables and that’s sort of true, but it’s a little more exact – it means you took a whole bunch of different kinds of seeds and you ground them up. I don’t know what our equivalent would be.
Right, so they’re going to do that and water. Water is safe. Now remember, in their home country they would have been taught to drink wine and to drink it responsibly.
In the ancient world there’s often not a guarantee that the water is safe. That’s why so many civilizations drank wine.
Yeah, it was healthier, by and large, as long as you didn’t abuse it. But that’s the test that Daniel put out there. “Give us 10 days and then check us out.”
Now, 10 days isn’t a lot for food to accomplish a lot. I suppose you could starve yourself a little. You might make a few cosmetic changes, but 10 days is real short. But Daniel probably figures, “This is the best deal I’m going to get.”
The other thing here is these three young men know they’re pushing their luck or possibly pushing the bounds of God’s good will, because they’re here because Judah has sinned. They’ve committed idolatry. They’ve rebelled against the law of God and the prophets. This is God’s judgement. The question becomes now, “How far has God forsaken us?”
You can’t say, “Well, God may punish the wicked in Judah, but he will always care for the righteous.” They’re in Babylon. They’ve been taken captive.
Yeah, they’ve been swept up in the judgement. God’s mercy to his elect has not kept them from experiencing the common curse that’s fallen upon the land, so they don’t know for certain what’s going to happen. They certainly have no pledge of any kind of miracle, but they try it anyway. They hope and trust that God will honor this in some fashion. If God is going to honor it, 10 days is as good as 20. “It’s what we think we can get out of this guy, and we’ll just have to see what happens.”
Prove thy servants, I beseech thee, ten days, and let them give us pulse to eat and water to drink. Then let our countenances be looked upon before thee, and the countenance of the children that eat of the portion of the king's meat, and as thou seest, deal with thy servants.
“Give us 10 days and then you judge.” He doesn’t exactly say it, but the implication is, “If you do not see a significant benefit to us, or at least if you see a decline in us, then we’ll submit to your judgement and we’ll eat the food.”
If what they were doing was absolutely sinful, the proper response would be, “And if not, you’ll have to kill us because we can’t do this because it’s sinful.” Again, this seems to be something that they’ve chosen as their own place to draw a line, rather than a divine absolute. But in their wisdom and their application of God’s law they say, “We’ve got to draw a line someplace, and this seems like a good place to stand.”
And they’re showing consideration for this head of students, as it were. They don’t want him to lose his head because of their scruples.
No, they don’t, so they’re willing to give in. Again it’s easy to say, “Well, they were expecting a miracle.” They may be hoping for one, but expecting is real big. It’s been a while since Judah has seen any miracles.
Thinking back real quickly without actually looking, which is always dangerous, we had the shadow of the sun, and presumably the sun itself, moving for Hezekiah. We had the slaughter of the Assyrian army in the days of Hezekiah, but I’m not remembering much in the way of miraculous intervention after that.
And even those are sort of oblique miracles rather than the blatant signs of Elijah and Elisha.
Yeah. So they don’t know what’s going to happen. I think it’s very important to stress that sometimes you do walk out in faith saying, “I believe that godly wisdom leads us this way. I believe this is what God wants, but under the circumstances we cannot box God in. We cannot guarantee that God will respond to this, that he thinks the way we do.”
The curse that hangs on Judah may be so strong that he will just say, “No, too little, too late. You’re on your own. I’ll catch you later on my own schedule,” but since they believe it’s important, they are acting in faith as best they have. And because it’s faith, faith responds to revelation, and there’s limited revelation here. There’s the broad principles of scripture to which they’re responding, and yet they have to wait on God to see if he will back them up, if they’ve got it right, and if this is the right time and the right place and they’re the right people.
Prove thy servants, I beseech thee, ten days, and let them give us pulse to eat and water to drink. Then let our countenances be looked upon before thee, and the countenance of the children that eat of the portion of the king's meat, and as thou seest, deal with thy servants.
So he consented to them in this matter, and proved them ten days. And at the end of ten days their countenances appeared fairer and fatter in flesh than all the children which did eat the portion of the king's meat. Thus Melzar took away the portion of their meat and the wine that they should drink, and gave them pulse.
I’ve got to say, if I was one of those students I’d be a little bit ticked off at Daniel. “I had a whole spread here. What have you done?”
Yeah. You don’t become fairer and fatter by eating ground seeds in the normal course of things. This tips I think beyond what the Puritans would call special providence into something that’s miraculous. God’s normal ordering of creation just doesn’t accomplish this, and certainly not on a schedule that a man himself has dreamed up.
So the young men are greatly encouraged. God has backed them up. They took a stand and God is there for them. He has done something that is quiet. It’s not moving the sun in the heavens. It’s not the Euphrates turning to blood. It’s not the sun going dark or frogs multiplying, but it’s a miracle and it’s one they’ve personally experienced.
So they know now, “This is the path. This is what we’re to do. We’re to maintain our testimony, our witness for Yahweh in the midst of a pagan culture, to continue to assert the Creator/creature distinction in the midst of a society that’s dedicated to continuity of being theology, and to hold fast the God who speaks over against the idols who babble nonsense. We’re going to hold to a divinely rational universe in the face of the irrational, this system of Babylon,” and so they do.
And the king communed with them, and among them all [that is, all of these young men were brought in] was found none like Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah; therefore, stood they before the king. And in all matters of wisdom and understanding that the king inquired of them, he found them ten times better than all the magicians and astrologers that were in all his realm.
They weren’t simply better than the other young people their age. By now they’re probably 20. Their 3-year program has been finished. They’ve graduated from Babylon U and they’re better than all of the other straight-A students. They are able to think with the wisdom that these other Hebrew young men don’t have.
But more than that, they are wiser and more helpful than the old guys, the stargazers, the astrologers, the magicians who have been standing before Nebuchadnezzar all of his very short reign, because he hasn’t been king very long, and during all of his father’s reign before him.
These seem to be four of the smartest guys you’re ever going to meet anywhere, because their answers not only make sense, but they practically work. They’re things you can get a hold of and do something with. For instance, if the Euphrates is lacking water, the magis might go on and on about how the great goat of heaven has not been milked properly by the goddess of goat milking, and thus we need to sacrifice frogs in order to stimulate the process. You can imagine how magic works here, because that’s the system they were working with.
Continuity of being means “As below, so above. We have the magic powers here to move the universe, and the magic things that we have to do are rituals.” They involve icons and talismans and rites and rituals that make absolutely no sense, except to a magician, and they make sense only to a magician because, “…and that’s the way we’ve always done it, because that’s what the gods and powers that be want, and this will indeed move the universe.”
Daniel and his friends are more likely to say, “There was not much rainfall in the mountains. Notice the snowcaps are not so hot. Our suggestion is rather let the frogs live and let’s build more cisterns and let’s start an irrigation system, and let’s dam up some of the streams and let’s get some water going that we can make use of during these dry years.”
It’s going to be something like what Joseph did when he was in Egypt. They would come up with practical advice that fit a rational universe – not that they’re rationalists, but that they believe in a consistent faithful covenant-keeping God who operates his universe consistently, as he promised Noah he would do. On that basis, they ignore all the magic garbage and they move directly to engineering and physics and meteorology, and lo and behold, it works!
The magicians may be out there sacrificing frogs while Daniel and his friends are arranging for the damming up of some moderately-sized stream, and within a few days it’s very clear. The frogs are just sitting there shedding goo all over, but water is already filling up in this new reservoir and the people can see, “Whoa, we’re going to have some water over here pretty soon. This is good!” That’s the kind of practical things that were going on.
In questions of human nature, they would know Proverbs. They would know the Psalms. They would know Job and the wisdom literature, Ecclesiastes. They would know the law of God. They would know how to think properly about fallen man and what he’s capable of and how much he’s not to be trusted. They could see through all kinds of scams and schemes and failures and excuses.
They could also tell the king, “You’re trying to change people’s hearts here. You can’t do that. You can kill them or you can bribe them, but you don’t have the power to make them think differently. Education in the long run is not going to do that the way you think it is, so let’s consider how about free trade? That might do a whole lot more good here than what you’re talking about,” and so on. Their understanding of the law of God, of God’s providence, of man’s sinful nature would give them a tremendous advantage in that community.
We can think here of David in the Psalms saying, “I understand more than the ancients because I keep thy commandments.” For these young men at about 20, this is the kind of advice they were giving and the kind of advice that Nebuchadnezzar approved of.
As you said earlier, the irony here is that this is the last time we ever hear of all the other young princes of Judah. They vanish. Presumably they went someplace and did something.
Yeah, they were consigned to bureaucratic service somewhere, one assumes. But Daniel and his friends had the ear of the king, and as time goes on they climbed the ladder even further, and they climb every time by standing up to the king’s wickedness and idolatry.
At every point they’re exalted it’s because they challenged the king, and he didn’t always like being challenged. But when God backs them up, the king would back up and say, “Oh, well now. God’s on our side. We can use this. I can tap divine resources, because my magicians sure aren’t doing it in any convincing way.”
We’ll see in the next chapter that when the king gives the command to go kill all the wisemen, Daniel is able to go right into him to ask for an audience. He’s granted the audience and says, “I can answer your question. Just give us some time,” and Nebuchadnezzar hears him. He’s frustrated with all the old guys, all the guys with the Ph.D.s and wearing the mantles of this god or that god. He’s had it with them. They’re worthless. But when Daniel steps in, he is at least willing to listen and give him a chance.
By this point, Daniel is still really young. To some of our readers, 20 to 23 may sound kind of old. I’m sorry, it really isn’t.
We don’t run into Cyrus until much later in the book, but what it means is Daniel survives during the whole length of the neo-Babylonian empire, from the time that Nebuchadnezzar ascends the throne, through his reign, through the quick reign of a few of his successors, through Nabonidus and Belshazzar’s reign together.
When Babylon falls, Daniel doesn’t. Daniel survives. He outlived the Babylonian empire. He outlived his captors. And when Cyrus comes, he is put in charge of the kingdom.
So here is this young man who at a very early age, with no resources, no backing, no adults to run to and say, “Please help,” no sweet old ladies he can go to and say, “Please pray for me. This is going to be tough,” he and his friends are on their own, as far as I can see. All they have is their walk with God, and it’s enough because they commit to being faithful. At a very basic level, they’re not going to compromise. Who they eat with, who their friends are, what gang they belong to is what’s going to define their existence, and the center of their gang is the God of Israel. They’re going to be in his gang, whatever it costs them.
Again, they have no guarantees at this point that this is going to be an easy battle or an easy ride, but they’re not going to back down. They’re not going to quit. They’re not going to compromise. They’re going to trust God for the results, whatever those results may be. If they die, then praise God.
Of course, in the next chapter we’re going to see that Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego use this line exactly. “The God we serve, he can rescue us, but if he doesn’t we’re still not bowing down to your stinking idol. It’s that clear. We’re on God’s side. We’re standing with him. We’re eating with him. We’re having our communion with him. That doesn’t mean we’re your enemy, Nebuchadnazzar. We’re actually here to help you, but it’s going to be on God’s terms and not yours, so think twice here, please.”
In the rest of the book we only see his friends a little bit longer, and then they drop out of the scene, perhaps transferred elsewhere. We don’t know. By the time we get to the story that everybody knows, Daniel in the lion’s den, 70 years have passed, depending on how you reckon it.
One of the many reasons I hate Bible story books is you see the pictures and you see Daniel as a teenager being thrown to the lions. That’s the end of the story. That’s when Babylon has had its 70-year run and has fallen and there’s a new king in town, Cyrus the Persian. He’s Darius in the book of Daniel. He’s the one who throws Daniel to the lions, and Daniel survives. Daniel at that point is in his late 80s.
Same with Moses and the Exodus. There’s something to this. God waits a while for you to be ready for your thing.
God sometimes waits a while and we get really impatient. We want to change the world now, which is not in itself a bad thing, but we do need to realize that it may not be God’s thing. God may not start working for a very long time.
It’s interesting that in the New Testament we have Paul telling Timothy, “Let no one despise your youth,” and yet the people he generally puts in his church are elders. They’re not called smart people, they’re called elders.
Nor are they called youngsters. “Everyone submit to the youngsters in your church.” No, we’re not doing that.
The faith that survives the lion’s den is the faith that begins in youth. It takes time and trial and practice and resting on God and waiting on God and enduring all sorts of things. Here we kind of see the soul-searching that Daniel has to go through. When we come to the lion’s den story Daniel hears, “Oh, so that’s what they’re going to do. If I pray I’m in trouble. Okay, I’m going to go pray,” and he gets thrown into the lion’s den.
Again there’s no hint here of any great soul-searching or “What do I do now? I’m not sure.” It’s like, “Hmm, lions. That’s interesting. Okay, throw me.” And he doesn’t seem terribly surprised when God rescues him, either.
When you’ve lived your life with God long enough and faithfully enough, then some things just don’t move you. That doesn’t mean nothing will move you, but some things become a little petty. “Really? Really? You think that one’s going to trip me up? No, I’ve been through that. I’ve done that. You’re going to have to up your game. Before I deny Christ you’re going to have to come up with something a lot better than that, because I’ve been there and done that.”
It’s such a singular mindset to us today, I think. Often when charities change how they’re run in response to changes in government policy, for instance, often it’s framed as, “Well, the government won’t let us do this anymore,” whereas really it’s that the government will not give you free money if you don’t do this anymore. On an organizational level that’s often what’s going on behind the scenes, so it’s the power of the purse that’s making the difference there.
And then on an individual level it’s, “Well, the government told me I couldn’t do X, so I’m going to obey the government.” No, the government can’t really stop you from doing X. They can just respond to you doing X, and are you willing to take that response?
As we’re telling Gretchen these days, “If you do this you will get a spanking.” I don’t know if we should change that to sandwiches, for the sake of the internet. “If you do this you will get a sandwich.”
Yes, let’s see what happens. But no, we are not going to change how we speak of Christian life just because someone may be listening and censoring what we’re doing.
No, we’re not going to self-censor. We’re not going to be stupid, but there are some things that we’ll say them the way the Bible says them, and people can do what they want with that.
There’s a time to use euphemisms and watered-down speech, but not often. When you’re talking about what the Bible itself actually says, I think there’s a danger there. That’s the very kind of thing that Daniel and his friends are running away from.
And then there are those things where, “We have adopted this policy because we believe it is favorable to the kingdom of God, but it is not something God requires of us.” You can bend on those things. For instance, as a Christian school we started our Christian school with a sort of vision. There’s nothing in the Bible that says our vision has to be exactly like this. In fact, the Bible doesn’t even exactly say that there must be Christian schools, although I think it rather implies it more than once. It doesn’t say you have to have this kind of curriculum, or meet in these kinds of facilities, or work with these kinds of students.
For instance, in our school as we’ve gotten a new clientele we’ve had to change some of what we do, and that’s okay. We’re not compromising scripture. We’re just saying, “God in his providence is giving us a new assignment,” and to stubbornly cling to our old way of doing it, that’s wrong and that can get us in a lot of trouble.
But for a foreign power – foreign to our jurisdiction, that is – someone who does not have legitimate authority comes to us and says, “You have a history class. You may go ahead and teach history, but you must be sure to teach the millions of years of humanity involved, and treat all cultures equally,” and go down the list.
“No. You want us to talk about all cultures? We do that. We tell everybody how sinful they were. Oh, you want us to mention how the Greeks treated young boys? We do actually mention that. You wouldn’t like the way we talk about it, though.”
There are times when you can meet standards by being wise as serpents and harmless as doves, but there are also times when you say, “No, we’re not going to do that.”
“You may. We’ll see what happens then. We’ll see what God does. We’ll see what legal options are open to us. I appeal to Caesar, as Paul would say.”
Sometimes we do draw the absolute lines in the wrong place. For instance, here they didn’t draw it on the issue of wine, they drew it on the issue of communion, which is a lot fuzzier. It wasn’t that they wouldn’t drink wine at all. It was that, “The wine we get is from the king. This is about relationship. This is about who defines our existence and what sphere of social interaction we’re going to move in, and what’s going to set our priorities. It’s way beyond whether or not this goes through my lips or not.”
They were willing to bend on some things, but on the basic issue of “Where is your allegiance?” – that’s the thing they wouldn’t bend on, and that allegiance ultimately would cover everything and would test all of them.
In the next chapter, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego’s lives are on the line. In the story of the lion’s den, Daniel’s life is on the line. But having settled this here now, those later contests weren’t what they could have been otherwise.
When we compromise and compromise and compromise, and then a huge compromise comes up, it’s a lot harder to say no. It’s a lot harder to stand firm for Christ when we’ve already slipped so many times. That doesn’t mean you can’t. It’s just more difficult psychologically and spiritually, and it’s embarrassing. “Well, yeah, I should have stood for Christ all those times and didn’t, but I’m going to now.”
That’s good now. You would find it easier and we’d probably be having fewer discussions if you’d started early. So to young people listening, your walk with Christ has already begun. What gang you run with is at stake here. Is Jesus your Lord? Is he your best friend? Are his people your best friends or are they just one small part of your life, and most of your loyalties and time and allegiance lie elsewhere?
This is what Daniel 1 is talking about, and something for all of us to think hard about.
We could go on for a long time, but we should stop and do some recommendations. I think I would like to recommend a liberal arts education, and I have so many caveats.
Recommendation: A liberal arts educationIs there a positive thing, before you start doing the caveats, or do you want to do the caveats first?
We need to define liberal arts education, is really is what the caveat is. I don’t mean an English degree, although an English degree is a fine thing to have. I don’t mean a history degree, although obviously I think those are pretty great. I have one. What I mean is education for the sake of the learning community, not for the job you expect to get at the end of it.
It is a luxury, and I don’t think everybody needs it. I think trade schools are probably more practical if you’re thinking, “Hmm, I’ve just finished high school. How do I go out and make my way in the world?” Probably consider trade school first.
But if you’ve got extra time and can get scholarships or you’re rolling in money or something, consider taking a few years to just learn and be a part of a community that’s about learning, especially one that’s about learning about Christ. That means not just classes. It means not just the books you read. It means who you eat with.
I look back on my college experience and eating with friends, that’s where the learning really hits. It’s not in class, although wonderful things happen in class. It’s really bringing it into your life and into your relationships.
You speak of a learning community, and to some people that’s a very strange thing, especially with these last several years where so many classes are online, and even before that. From our school we’ve had students who’ve wanted to take online classes, and there’s a time and place for this, obviously. There are a lot of ways to get from Point A to Point B, and a lot depends upon what you’re after. If you’re after the skills that will enable you to pursue a calling, then any way to get you there is probably going to be okay, as long as it doesn’t violate God’s law someplace along the line.
If you want to make contacts with people, though, if you want to be in networking, that kind of involves, as you say, sitting down and eating with some people, having pizza late at night as you go over notes with friends and things like that, or at least sitting beside someone in a classroom and talking over what you think is going to be on the next test.
It also involves, in many cases, finding a good teacher and becoming friends with that teacher on some level. Now, some teachers won’t let you, largely because they’re jerks and full of themselves, but good teachers are always willing to talk to you and begin relationships, because the reason we get into this gig is to help young people grow up, and then the question is, “To what?”
If you’re a Christian, you have one set of answers. If you’re not, you have a different set of answers, although sometimes they superficially look alike at first. But teachers at some level want the best for their students, and depending on the background, the faith, the worldview of the teacher, even if he’s not a Christian there may be still good things even from a Christian perspective where you can say, “He doesn’t exactly understand what I’m all about, but he’s willing to write me the letter of recommendation, with asterisks and smiley faces. This guy thinks I’m great. I’ll go with that.
“This guy has showed me processes in mathematics or the sciences or in culinary school or in computer science, that none of my Christian teachers ever knew about. I am learning stuff that has practical use here because, as in Daniel’s case, I’ve been brought into tender love with this guy or this woman or whoever.”
And that’s nothing inappropriate. That’s the tenderheartedness of a teacher in wanting the best for your student.
And there’s no guarantee that you’re going to get that at any given school. I was greatly blessed in my junior college in that most of my teachers were like that. There were one or two that weren’t or that were simply very poor teachers, but by and large the guys who taught me were great.
They were more than willing to talk to you about whatever when they had some downtime or just before or after class, or right in the middle of class, because they were really good at what they did. The reason they were in a junior college is because they wanted to teach. They didn’t want to do research. They wanted to work with people. So this is something that can present great opportunities for learning.
Now, I learned theology and a good deal of history, and certainly what literary theory I know, from books, and I learned well because I read a lot of books and I read from a lot of directions. I read from people who quoted each other and who quoted the same confessions and creeds. But God was gracious to me. That doesn’t always work, and most people do need pastors and Christian leaders who will interact with them.
No, I had a pastor but he was busy. I did bend his ear a few times, but a lot of the learning I did I got from reading books, so I’m sensitive to the fact that that is a way to learn, but I wouldn’t recommend it for everybody.
People are sometimes surprised to find out that I was a physics major, in fact, sometimes very surprised. “Here’s this book on physics you should read!”
I chose physics in part because I figured that I loved history already. I loved theology and philosophy. I was learning to love literature and I figured, “These are things I can learn on my own by reading. I’m never going to teach myself calculus. I’m never going to teach myself physics and chemistry,” so I deliberately enrolled in those programs to find people who knew that stuff and who could teach me better than I could ever teach myself, and particularly at the junior college level I was extremely successful. God was very gracious.
So as we’re talking about this idea of an educational community, it’s not the only way to learn, but it’s a really good way to learn certain sorts of things and have certain sorts of experiences that rarely can be duplicated by other means.
The question again becomes, “What is your goal? Do you need the skills real fast?” Some people just need a degree. They need the ticket, the piece of paper, and they know that. “I don’t care about what I’m learning here. I’ll learn other stuff other ways. I just need this piece of paper.” Okay, for you then maybe pushing through an online school is the best thing possible. If you’re in the middle of a pandemic, then online school may be the only option you have. We’re not setting hard and fast do’s and don’ts here.
In fact, this just came up in school the other day. I said, “The reason we are recommending at our school a liberal arts education is because you’re too young to know what you’re good at. You’re too young to know how God has gifted you. Until you are exposed to a great many ways of thinking and doing – science, math, art, music – you don’t know what’s there that’s untapped. You don’t know what you may find that you just absolutely fall in love with.”
Since all knowledge is interrelated, even if you find out, “I am going to be a physicist,” you may suddenly discover, “Oh, you mean that’s related to math and to music? What?”
One of the characters in a novel I’m working on turns to her friend and says, “Music? You’re all science and math and stuff. How do you know about…”
“But music is mathematically based,” and they have a little discussion. Music is more than math, to be sure, but you begin to discover connections and you begin to understand more of this wide wonderful universe God has made.
So yes, a liberal arts education is a wonderful thing. It’s not for everybody under all circumstances, for lots of reasons.
I’m going to cheat by saying that’s my recommendation too, for all the reasons that I just stated, with this addition. We often think of liberal arts as the humanities.
But liberal arts traditionally included math and science. I don’t know if I can quote them off the top of my head, but the seven original liberal arts, aside from the Trivium, which was grammar, dialectic/logic, and rhetoric, the others were astronomy, arithmetic, music, geometry – but of course, all of those didn’t mean exactly what they mean today.
To study astronomy was cosmology and science in its broadest terms. It would include geography and navigating by the stars and all sorts of things. Mathematics would involve everything from finance and counting your stock and doing taxes, to the highest forms of mathematics that were available in the late Middle Ages, which at that point was largely algebra.
The earlier forms, the so-called Trivium, was all about reading and writing, which meant you had to read something. The answer to “What do I read?” is “Everything, but the first thing you read is the Bible, and you set everything in terms of that.”
Yes. So in recommending this again we’re not saying the starry-eyed study of old books and old ideas. We’re talking about understanding cutting-edge learning all the way across the board to see what there is to know, what you enjoy knowing, and how it can all be put together to serve the kingdom of God. At the heart of it – always, always, always – is read the Bible and know God. So that’s my recommendation, too.
And come down out of that ivory tower once you’ve looked around inside it.
Thank you so much, Greg. This has been a lovely conversation. Thank you also to David, our producer and my lawfully-wedded husband.
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