Being Change, Daniel 3

The story of Shadrach, Meschach, Abednego and the fiery furnace in Daniel 3 is popular.  It has been covered by some great jazz artists including Louis Armstrong, Ford Leary, Johnny Cash, and even the Beastie Boys!  Veggie Tales also worked the story into its vegetable platform.  It’s a cool story about a megalomaniac who wields his power in truly horrible ways, demanding those under his power to comply or die.  In this story, these three Jewish guys refused the mandate to honor a statue presumably made in King Nebuchadnezzar’s image.  True to his word, Neb stoked the fiery furnace and had the guys thrown inside.  Instead of becoming instantly incinerated, Neb himself looked inside and saw the three of them walking around with a fourth unknown person.  He had the guys dragged back out and to everyone’s amazement, there were no signs of fire on their persons – not even the smell of smoke!  Instead of being killed some other way, King Neb honored them and decreed that their god should be honored, and that those who defamed the Jewish god would be destroyed.  What’s not to like about this story?

While the sci-fi side of the story is really cool, what surely was more important for those who circulated the stories for centuries of oppression before they were written down was the faithful behavior of the three Jews who refused to honor the golden idol.  Their brief statement undoubtedly emboldened the hearts of those who recounted the tale: “If our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the furnace of blazing fire and out of your hand, O king, let him deliver us. But if not, be it known to you, O king, that we will not serve your gods and we will not worship the golden statue that you have set up” (Daniel 3:17-18 NLT).  I imagine the three words, “but if not”, were especially powerful as a model of unwavering faith.  It turns out that God was with them in the fire – their hope was not disappointed.  When they came out, they experienced yet another miracle: King Nebuchadnezzar reversed his position, making defaming the Jewish god punishable by death.  Faithfulness sometimes produces unexpected results.

In the United States, freedom to practice one’s preferred religion – the Christian religion more than others – is a constitutional right.  It is extremely unlikely that a person will be killed in the United States for worshipping in a Christian way.  And, since the dominant theological language and paradigm in the US is Christian, expressing the Christian faith will likely not be met with much worse than indifference.  God is referenced – usually in a Christian way – by politicians in a variety of settings, and Christian symbols and statements are everywhere.  Since some of the earliest settlers in what would become the United States were leaving European religious intolerance behind, and founding their colonial life on Christian principles, many believe that the United States is a Christian nation.  Yet this is not the same as being a people truly guided by the Rule of Christ, evidenced by an ethic and ethos resembling Jesus’.

Shadrach, Meschach and Abednego had the “luxury” of a completely obvious choice to make between their Jewish faith and the order of the king.  To honor the mandate would be in direct violation of one of the Ten Commandments!  No subtlety here!  In the United States, it’s not always so obvious.  In fact, I would suggest that it is sometimes very difficult to know that we are being wooed into honoring false idols at times because the US has been so closely associated with Christianity, and blessing has been invoked even for things that are anathema to God – and then God is worshiped for the very thing I do not believe God desired or was involved with in the first place.  The US dropped two atomic bombs on Japan which served to end war with that country.  Is there anything “Jesus” about wiping out tens of thousands of innocent lives?  I know, this is a pretty easy one to pick on, and yet my experience is that we as a culture are more prone to celebrate our military might than lament the horrible amount of pain, suffering, and death we have inflicted – even if in the name of peace.  There are other easy examples from the past, of course, which include the mistreatment of Native Americans, American enslavement of people from Africa, Japanese internment camps, lack of child protection, lack of women’s right, lack of civil rights – it’s a long list of infractions.

The violations against the Way of Christ are not only in the past.  They are very present.  They confront us every day on a personal, community, and national level.  The three Jewish men were clear on what they believed and what it meant for what they would and would not do.  They believed it so strongly that they were willing to stay faithful even if it cost them dearly.  Do we know what we believe so well as to recognize when we are being tempted to honor something contrary to our faith?  Are we so passionate about our allegiance to God that we would be willing to pay a significant price for not bowing down to the idols worshiped on our culture? As biblical scholar Daniel L. Smith-Christopher notes:

Christian faith involves the refusal to bow before the golden statues of Nebuchadnezzar. But what is critical in the modern era is the realization that in our time Nebuchadnezzar is now perfectly capable of building his statues with the face of Jesus—evil appears as an angel of light. (E.g., a U.S. nuclear submarine capable of dozens of Hiroshimas was named Corpus Christi, “the body of Christ”!) For Americans who believe that they live in a “Christian” country, it is far too easy to accept political or economic policies that involve bowing to golden statues in the name of national interests. The bombing of Baghdad during the Persian Gulf War resulted in thousands of civilian deaths and continued to wreak havoc for the poor of that society years after the cease-fire through the destruction of a vital infrastructure for distribution of medical supplies, food, water, and other essentials of peaceful existence. Yet, the bombing was accompanied by a political rhetoric of “faith and patriotism” that played as sweetly on international television as did Nebuchadnezzar’s orchestra. But the Christian is called to resistance, and to “atheism” in the face of all false gods. If chapter 1 was a call to resist the enticements of the king’s food and wine, chap. 3 is just as clearly a call not to lose heart before the sight of the monumental self-importance of the conquering regime, both then and now. Modern Christians ought to refuse all attempts to serenade violence and exploitation with the tunes of patriotism. It is precisely the responsibility of Christians to point out the falsehoods of using Christian symbolism and language to defend exploitation and military brutality. The beginning of that task, however, is for us to refuse to be moved by the music of national interest. Mishael, Azariah, and Hananiah, then, are Hebrew apostles of a radical faith that is, at the same time, a political atheism. (“The Book of Daniel,” In New Interpreter’s Bible, edited by Leander E. Keck, Vol. I–XII. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1994–2004)

Where does your primary allegiance lie?  The United States?  The US military?  Donald Trump?  The GOP?  The DNC?  How do you determine your stance on the following issues: immigration, Black Lives Matter, Blue Lives Matter, LGBTQ rights, health care, fender equity and equality, prison reform, global warming, income inequality, public education, taxation, prison reform, housing affordability, civility, – what would you add to the list?  What about on the personal front – what informs your decisions about what you do with your time, money, voice, passion, etc.?  In all of the above, if we call ourselves Christian, how do we know we are being faithful and not simply adopting a sort-of-Christian-sounding-but-not-much-like-Jesus alternative?  These are things to think about for the duration of our lives. 

Thinking about such things, and allowing our attitudes and behaviors grow from such reflection actually make a difference, too, both personally and on the larger scale.  Shadrach, Meschach, and Abednego’s nonviolent response led to significant political change.  Nebuchadnezzar not only backed down from his edict – he came to the defense of the Jews!  I wonder if we are aware of the potency of being faithful in a nonviolent way.  As Ronald J. Sider notes in his book, If Jesus is Lord (Baker Publishing Group, 2019): “A recent scholarly book examined all the known cases (323) of both major armed and unarmed insurrections from 1900 to 2006 and discovered an amazing result: ‘Nonviolent resistance campaigns were nearly twice as likely to achieve full or partial success as their violent counterparts’” (25).  Because we live inside and are guarded by a global superpower which protects itself with super power, we can be very easily tempted to believe that more violent forms of power is the only way to affect change.  Our national political culture certainly believes so, as violent language and chest-puffing prevail.  Many sociologists believe that the significant uptick in hate speech in the United States is in part due to the normalization and consequent legitimization of derogatory speech from our top leaders.  Hate has been popular-rised.  Yet many people claiming to follow Jesus fail to do so when it comes to standing with and for those on the receiving end of such violence. Instead, many Christians – even high profile leaders – are silent as they turn a deaf ear on rhetoric that disparages people rather than honors.  This is a direct contrast to the way of Jesus, and suggests that a golden idol of sorts, perhaps in the shape of an elephant or a donkey, has won allegiance over God.

I wonder who might be a modern-day Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego?  I wonder who might be willing to declare their allegiance to God even if it results in significant personal sacrifice?  I hope I might be more like them than not.  I hope the same for you, too.  For the sake of our own faith.  For the sake of our nation.  For the sake of the entire world which God loves.