On the way to earning her teaching degree, my daughter Kelley was required to spend a few months teaching kindergarten. If someone wanted to study the kinds of messages we unwittingly feed to our children, and how they get interpreted, kindergarten would be a great place to hang out and take notes. Most of us would be surprised at the eclectic nature of some of their conversations. They bounce from topics touching on the eternal to the ridiculous in no time at all.

 

One day Kelley was privileged to overhear this little jewel:

 

I wonder if our fickleness isn’t partly why God refers to us as his little children. As the “adult” in the divine-human relationship, God understands the gravity of words and ideas and the depth of the stories he has given us by which we are to live. We, on the other hand, are equally as capable of going from matters of epic importance to those of minimal consequence as easily as a kindergartner jumps from condemning someone to hell in one sentence to asking to borrow a Sharpie in the next.

 

At times we become so bogged down in the minutiae of life that we fail to give sufficient time and reflection to the weightier matters of God. I know that often I’m guilty of intermingling the sublime and ridiculous in ways that must appear as incongruous to God as a discussion about hell and blue markers appears to us. Why do we do this?

 

Maybe it’s because we’re so used to reading Bible stories at the children’s level. After all, this is the level at which many of us get introduced to those stories. The tragedy is that many of us don’t move past that level of understanding, and these formative narratives take the shape of banal morality tales, right along with Aesop’s fables and after-school specials.

 

Take the story of Daniel, for instance; Daniel is forever known as the guy who miraculously survived the lion’s den. But there is a lot more to his story, a powerful story of commitment and fortitude, of a man unwilling to compromise his principles and the God who vindicated him. And it just might be that Daniel’s example was on the mind of Jesus in Gethsemane.

 

Overcome with anguish, Jesus is attended to by angels. Wanting human companionship, at least for a moment, he arises to seek some modicum of support from his friends. But despite his admonitions to the contrary, they’re asleep. They can’t really be there for him. Maybe, in that dark hour, as his flesh-and-blood companions fail him, he turns to others who have gone before, to the faithful of the stories that have shaped his faith. We can see him taking courage in the story of someone who faced lions: Daniel, a man with a story worth listening to afresh—a story worth seeing through new eyes.

 

When my three children ranged in ages from late middle school to early high school, I made a radical career change. Instead of going from rags to riches, my story was just the opposite. To this day my kids—now grown—remind me, “Hey, dad, you remember when we used to be rich?” Years ago, they asked this question when they were requesting something that, in an earlier time, didn’t used to be such a big deal – a new outfit, a trip out of town to visit a friend or cousin, maybe tickets to a sporting event. Today, it just brings us all a good laugh.

 

About a decade ago, I had a successful business career. It afforded us the luxury of building a large house with a game room that was the envy of the neighborhood. Perhaps the best part was that all three children had a private bedroom and bathroom, which eliminated arguments as the kids prepared for school. The house was large enough that everybody enjoyed enough personal space so that coexisting rarely brought any problems.

 

But then things changed.

 

Drastically.

 

Tired of the corporate grind, I decided to strike out on my own and enter into a ministry of teaching and writing. To make ends meet, my wife and I liquidated our assets. First to go was our house. We were sad to see it go, but our new financial situation required we move into something more reasonable.

 

Before long we found a quaint country house that sat on top of a couple acres of land. Out back was a pond framed by willow trees one of which had a swing that hung from a high branch. It was something right out of a Norman Rockwell painting.

 

The challenge for us came in adjusting to the size of the house. It covered just 1200 square feet, and all five of us would have to learn to share only one bathroom. Do you have that picture in your mind – two adults, three teens, one bathroom! Had we always lived under these arrangements that might not have been so bad, but downsizing to them after years of being spoiled was a different story entirely.

 

To squeeze into this new house it was clear that some drastic steps would need to be taken. We began looking at everything we could live without – the pool table, air hockey table, double basketball shoot, ping-pong table, foosball table, weight set and a big screen TV – it was clear that some decisions would have to be made and we all had differing opinions as to what was “essential.”

 

These decisions affected more than the game room. I also sold my car and new truck and bought a used vehicle that appeared to have enough tread on the tires that I wouldn’t have to replace them anytime soon. All of the typical status markers got revamped, reworked, or re-thought. Some of them just got recycled.

 

The timing of all of this could have been better, I suppose. After all, the kids would enter college in just a few short years, and selling all of our assets in order to support ourselves till the new venture got off the ground (if it got off the ground at all) was plenty risky. There was no guarantee that we could make enough money to pay the mortgage, send the kids to college, or even to keep the lights on.

 

As I write this almost a decade later, I’m glad I made the leap of faith. Considering the environment I left behind, it wasn’t that difficult of a decision to make.

 

I worked at the headquarters of a national insurance company where I served as Vice President of Market Development. I sat in a beautiful corner office on the top floor between the President and the Chief Executive Officer. My personal secretary, tailor-made suits, and limitless expense account were intended by the company to convey to the world that I was a corporate power player. Even the plants in my office were a status symbol; you see, the more plants in your office, the higher up the ladder you were. More than just verdant pleasantness, the greenery in my office marked my place on the corporate totem pole.

 

As with many large corporations, everything was extraordinarily formal and structured. As an officer in the company I was expected to maintain certain “standards of success” that would let the outside world know that I was working for a prosperous company on the move. In keeping with those standards I was provided with a list of cars that were appropriate for someone of my position to drive: Mercedes, Porsche, BMW, Audi and the like. Show up in a Chevy and you better have your resignation letter in hand! The same standard applied to the house I was building. The company required that I submit the floor plans and exterior elevations for “corporate approval” before having it constructed.

 

As if these things were not excessive enough, the company had its own tailor and it was policy that all officers had their suits custom made, wore French cuffs at all times, and wore business appropriate cufflinks – don’t even dare to pull out something with a sports logo on it! And we were forbidden to socialize with those of lower status—no slumming aloud. For a Vice President to fraternize with the working-class stiffs on the lower floors was a cardinal sin. It didn’t take long for this to wear on me.

 

The perks of this job, though, were pretty enticing. I got limo rides to sporting events where I entertained clients in the corporate suite with all the food and drink we could consume. I had free tickets to concerts and shows for the purposes of entertaining prospective clients. The lavish and frequent parties I attended meant that I had to own my own designer tuxedo. Many of these events were held in the 14,000 square foot home of the CEO, complete with a grand entryway beneath a balcony specifically constructed to accommodate the several members of the local symphony orchestra who were regularly contracted to provide the evening’s entertainment.

 

It wasn’t unusual to rub elbows with local and state politicians at these gatherings. The aura of power and privilege was palpable. The entire state of affairs reeked of influence and seemingly inexhaustible resources to ensure landing the next big deal. It was intoxicating—absolutely intoxicating and as decadent as anything you might see in ancient Rome.

 

And before long, it became nauseating.

 

So I quit.

 

Before resigning I had cast decorum to the wind and gotten to know the guys in the accounting department pretty well. On weekends we’d meet for a round of golf, and during the week I’d find any excuse to go downstairs and enter into whatever sports talk they were batting around from the previous weekend’s events. I knew policy forbade me from fraternizing this way, but it seemed so arrogant to treat others as inferior, and I never felt good about people my own age and older calling me “Mr. King.”

 

The difference between the two cultures was night and day. Downstairs we talked about the everyday stuff of life; these were the kinds of conversations I remembered having around the kitchen table with family and friends. Among the upper echelon it was different. We were clearly living the good life—no struggles here, by golly—and our conversations gravitated toward things like the net worth of the Chief Financial Officer’s newborn son who owned stock in Disney just for being born. You could take an elevator ride in our building and be in a different universe.

 

These memories helped me deal with the radical life-changes I went through after leaving the company. The first year of my new venture in ministry netted me $300 per month in support. While it was only a fraction of my previous paycheck, I was never happier. No longer did I have to take part in something so blatantly arrogant. I felt less like a puppet and more like a real person. To this day I still don’t earn what I once paid in taxes, but I have no regrets and I’ve never felt more blessed.

 

A few years after I left the company, I heard rumblings from some of my old friends still employed with the firm. It seems some creative accounting was taking place at the highest levels, and monies that, by law, were supposed to be held in reserve to pay out for catastrophic loss were lining the pockets of the boys upstairs. Apparently they felt that a catastrophe was so unlikely that the money was essentially there for the taking. The legal details could be overlooked as long the right people got their share of the pie.

 

The scheme seemed to be working—at least until the events of September 11, 2001. After the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, the dominos began to fall.

Claims from the disaster overwhelmed the insurance industry. The company lost its re-insurer to bankruptcy, and soon thereafter the entire house of cards came crashing down.

 

An investigation showed that substantial bribes had been paid to a state regulator to cover up the fraud. Some of the company’s remaining officers lost their insurance licenses while a few others went to prison. This was the beginning of several corporate scandals that seemed to dominate the headlines over the next decade.

 

What is the old saying about pride going before a fall?

 

I’ve often wondered if one of their last acts wasn’t to ask the corporate tailor to fit them for a nice prison jumpsuit. Maybe the Chief Financial Officer could cash in some of his son’s Disney stock to buy a new TV for his new friends in the pen.

 

Power. Wealth. Arrogance. In circumstances such as this, it’s almost impossible to remain grounded. That’s why I had to leave.

 

As debauched as it can be working at the top levels of some of our largest corporations, I imagine it doesn’t compare to the power that lingered at the fingertips of Daniel. As his story is presented to us, Daniel was born into royalty but soon came to know the loss of being taken captive at the hands of a foreign power. Because of his education and background, Daniel quickly found himself in high government positions in the new regime. Altogether his political career spanned a total of seventy years, three kings (Nebuchadnezzar, Belshazzar, and Darius) and two empires (Babylon and Medo-Persia). He knew the joy of having much and the joy of having little. But through it all, Daniel never forgot the difference between living and Life.

 

Unlike merely living, for Daniel Life was about knowing the fullness of keeping covenant with God. Life entailed an internal quality that cannot be touched by another. While living simply craves an uncomplicated existence for oneself, Life reorders everything around service to God, a service that first seeks what is right over settling for safety or expedience. Living knows only the poverty of survival, whereas Life knows the way of true wealth and dwells secure in the house of wisdom. Yes, Daniel knew the difference between these two ways of being-in-the-world.  He refused to be caught up in power plays and politics, compromise and gamesmanship because he never lost sight of who yielded true power. This allowed him to radically reorient his own private world as he remained faithful to God first—and to the king second.

 

When Daniel and the nation of Israel fell into the hands of the Babylonians, Daniel refused to yield his principles. His walk with God—as difficult as it may be as a young exile in a hostile environment—came first. When taken with his friends to the king’s palace to be trained for service, Daniel refused the king’s unclean food and wine, instead consuming only water and vegetables.^[1] While the text does not allow us to fully see behind this request, we are immediately struck with the idea that Daniel refused to be “defiled,” even if it meant alienating his monarch and losing a greater position in the new government. Daniel recognized a higher power, a greater king with a better position to grant. That’s why Daniel allowed nothing about daily living to interfere with his Life with God. Living, without Life, was no life at all.

 

Daniel’s encounter with the Babylonian emperor demonstrates this clearly. In this familiar story, we remember that the king’s troubling dream caused him insomnia. Fearful and desperate to understand its meaning, Nebuchadnezzar threatens to execute all of the wise men of Babylon unless they can explain his dream. Adding to the tension, King Nebuchadnezzar refuses to give any details of the dream. Not only must the wise men interpret it, they have to divine for themselves the dream’s narrative.

 

In great fear, the wise men answered the king by saying, “There is no one on earth who can reveal what the king demands…The thing that the king is asking is too difficult, and no one can reveal it to the king except the gods, whose dwelling is not with mortals.”^[2]

 

Here the difference between living and Life come into focus. For the Chaldean wise men, the best they can do is scramble to continue living in a world they find absent of any deity. No so with Daniel. He has come to know the fullness of a walk with God and the location of authentic power. In his time of greatest need, Daniel turns to this power to discover the contents and meaning of the king’s dream.

 

After this mystery is revealed to Daniel, he blesses God by saying:

 

            have revealed to us what the king ordered.^[3]

 

For Daniel, there is no doubting the source of wisdom and power – it lay with God. While king Nebuchadnezzar may rule the land and even determine the fate of his subjects, he holds no real power, just as he knows no real life. To find that, he would have to discover the God who “changes the times and seasons” and who “deposes kings and sets up kings.” Only by giving himself to this God could the king find the true source of power that Daniel had discovered. This is the authentic power that has caught up Daniel together with his ancestors in a story greater and grander than he could ever discover within the details of his own smaller story. This is the identical power and presence that sustained Jesus and that stands ready to support us along our journeys too.

 

While reading this account I’m struck with the weight of it all. If Daniel is not given the information the king is seeking, he, along with the other wise me, will be killed. But even in this I’m fascinated with the difference between Daniel and the others. Regardless of his fate, Daniel knows he possesses something that cannot be taken by anyone. He has a relationship that cannot end in this dimension or the next—for Daniel knows God. And Daniel is heartened by this knowledge regardless of whether he lives or dies.

 

This is typical of Daniel’s life. Whether he is sitting in a seat of royalty or exiled to captivity, Daniel always remains grounded because he is able to discern between the temporal and the eternal. Before he ever arrives at the point of action, his decision has already been made. The constant principle by which Daniel lives is that nothing, absolutely nothing, can shake him from following the ways of God.

 

It might be well if Daniel’s story ended here, but it doesn’t. Soon he and his friends will be tested again. Will they give their lives to remain faithful to God? Will they at long last exchange true Life for mere living?

 

When I consider these things, when I put myself in their place and stand where they are standing, I must confess I am at a loss for what I would do. I know what I like to think I would do. But would I do it? Would I stand strong or cave to the pressure? After all, I can recount plenty of times in my life when I’ve given in to compromise with far less than death on the line.

 

But I believe this is where the real value of this story comes to us. It is about life and death and everything in between, about steadfast faith versus the easy way of compromise. It helps me see that I can be steadfast, and that even when I’m not, Jesus— the one who passed through the fiery furnace of Gethsemane—is on my side.

 

In time king Nebuchadnezzar forgot or disregarded his profession to Daniel that, “your God is God of gods and Lord of kings.” He established a golden statue and announced a decree that anyone not bowing before it should be thrown into a blazing furnace. Seeing himself as absolutely powerful, Nebuchadnezzar became absolutely corrupt.

 

I think it would be easy to invoke a kind of situational ethics if you were Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, the friends of Daniel. “After all, surely the king is mad. Why not humor him and use what power he’s given us for the good of others,” they could have reasoned. But they didn’t. Nothing could entice them to compromise the path upon which they had set their feet.

 

If we are still approaching this story at the level of a children’s tale, we could stop here. But we’ll miss something if we do. Something revolutionary is happening here; an eternal principle is emerging. A profound question faces us in the story of Daniel’s friends: what good is living if, in the process, we have to forfeit Life? What does it benefit to continue drawing breath outside of fellowship with God? None of Daniel’s compatriots were willing to sacrifice their integrity to protect their own skin. Amazingly, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego refuse to bow before the king’s false god and false power, even in the face of a real threat.

 

Enraged at their obstinacy, the king orders their execution. “Because the king’s command was urgent,” the text tells us, “and the furnace was so overheated, the raging flames killed the men who lifted Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego” into the furnace.^[4] But something amazing happens. To his astonishment, as the king looks into the furnace he sees not three, but four men walking around, unbound. The fourth person is described by the king as one having the “appearance of a god.”^[5]

 

Implicitly the story tells us that these men were not forsaken in their moment of greatest trouble. In taking their stand with God, he stood with them. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were neither alone, nor were they consumed or harmed by the fire. They opted to cling to Life rather than to compromise in order to extend the trivialities of daily living.

 

No wonder their story is still with us today, far more monumental than a long-forgotten statue erected by a power-hungry king.

 

It’s easy to read or hear the stories of the fiery furnace and the lion’s den and gloss over the fear that these men faced. They had little reason to believe anything but that they were forfeiting their very lives in order to stand with God. But as we contemplate our deaths—literal and metaphorical—these stories carry more intensity.

 

My first real brush with death came at twenty-six. Barely more than a quarter century old, I believed I was about to die. It was a Saturday evening and I was hungry, so I called my friend Eddy to meet me at Long John Silver’s. They were about to close, but we knew that if we got there in time they would cater to our craving for seafood and chicken baptized in hot oil. And we were right; even though it was nearing closing time and we were the only two patrons in the restaurant, they agreed to remain open long enough to serve us.

 

Not long into our meal a couple of men entered the restaurant, shirts covering their faces. I laughed at first, figuring them for a couple of local goofballs playing a trick. This thought left me quickly as the first of them pulled out a very real gun and shared some very real profanity as he instructed me to cooperate at the price of my life. The gun barrel looked large enough to swallow me whole as he stuck it in my face, and I found myself remarkably compliant.

 

The other man rounded up the employees behind the counter and in the kitchen, as he demanded that the manager open the safe. I remember telling Eddy that I wasn’t going to go in the back and lie on the floor; if they demanded that, I’d take my chances and head for the door. Even in the midst of terror, Eddy managed a bit of humor: “I wouldn’t do that, Tim. As big as you are, he won’t even have to aim!” I realized Eddy was probably right and the best thing to do was just cooperate and hope it ended soon and without incident.

 

I sat in that booth thinking they were going to shoot us. I began to imagine how much that would probably hurt, and I assumed that I would die. I thought about the tragedy of being twenty-six, having a wife and three small children and dying in a Long John Silver’s. No offense to the corporation, but I can think of more glamorous ways and places to cash it all in. It seemed so ludicrous.

 

Since we were sitting by the exit, I knew if we were going to get shot it would be as they as went out the door. I braced myself as they ran past, praying they wouldn’t pull the trigger.

 

Fortunately, they didn’t.

 

As awful as it might be to lose your life by taking a bullet in a fast-food restaurant, it still seems preferable to being eaten alive by a den of hungry lions—and yet that’s exactly what Daniel faced. For the man who wouldn’t compromise, the lions seemed a better option than denying God.

 

I have to sit with all of this for a while to begin to appreciate the magnitude of it all. When I pause, I can feel some of his horror and even taste a bit of the dread that comes in a moment of deathly fear. And that’s what it is—dread. I sense the awful rush of adrenaline and the dizzying pace of his racing mind as he contemplates what is about to happen. I’m captivated by his faith and moved by his unwillingness to waver.

 

By this time in the story, Daniel has experienced exile at the hands of the Babylonians. He has served at the royal pleasure of King Nebuchadnezzar and then King Belshazzar and now, finally, under King Darius; but it looks as though he has reached the end of the line.

 

As with his other assignments, Daniel is above reproach in his service to the king. But others, for reasons known only to them, have conspired to have Daniel killed. We learn that his enemies recognized that “they could find no grounds for complaint or any corruption, because he was faithful, and no negligence or corruption could be found in him.”^[6] So how would they get rid of him? What would they do?

 

Discovering that Daniel prayed to God three times a day, his enemies soon used his faith against him. Under the guise of reverent respect, Daniel’s enemies encouraged King Darius to establish an ordinance that anyone praying to anyone other than the king for the next thirty days should be thrown to the lions. To Darius, this seemed like a reasonable request. Don’t we all, in some sense, seek to be worshipped or praised?

 

So here we come face to face with what a remarkably uncompromising person Daniel was. The text records, “Although Daniel knew that the document had been signed, he continued to go to his house, which had windows in its upper room open toward Jerusalem, and to get down on his knees three times a day to pray to his God and praise him, just as he had done previously.”^[7]

 

With the words “although Daniel knew that the document had been signed,” we are no longer left sitting with some children’s story. We are face to face with a man who has discovered that he holds the power to continue living, but only if he forfeits his Life, and that the reverse is probably also true. Daniel’s decision teaches us that compromise is no Life at all. Jesus said it this way: “What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his own soul?”^[8]

 

In the service of the world’s greatest kings, Daniel refused the intoxicating drink of pleasure and power. He refused to swallow the conventional wisdom of the world or to concede his ethics in order to achieve what was politically or personally advantageous. And in every instance, God delivered him.

 

Did God spare Daniel’s physical existence? Yes. But we must be careful not to see this as the point of the story. The point is that even in the face of physical death, Daniel’s decision was already made, for Daniel, in giving his life to God, had already died to himself.

 

Once for all time Daniel demonstrates to us the most demanding of lessons to be learned – he is willing to give up living in order to keep hold of Life. The lesson convicts us of all the “wood, hay and stubble” of our lives destined to perish and points to the real value we know – relationship with God.

 

I once heard a preacher say that it wasn’t the pain of the cross that Jesus dreaded; it was taking on the sin of the world before a perfect Father that was foremost on his mind as he wrestled in Gethsemane. This preacher claimed he—the preacher—could endure the pain of being crucified, thus the physical pain and prospect of death were really no big deal. This was offered as proof that much more than physical pain was on the mind of Jesus in that awful garden of decision.

 

Maybe. But this pastor’s bravado didn’t sit well with me then and it still doesn’t as I write this some twenty years later. I agree that much more than physical pain was on the mind of Jesus as he lay before God on that fateful night, but I think we rush past this aspect of that night at the expense of greater understanding, at the expense of a greater empathy for one who bore our sins. I think it would be unwise to fail to consider the humanity of Jesus, opting to think only of the “spiritual” consequences of his death. When we do this, we release his story into a realm beyond what we commonly experience or can relate to—and this does not serve us in the Gethsemanes of our lives.

 

When we consider the humanity of Jesus, how can we not sit with him through his fear of swords and thorns, of whips and fists, of nails and spears? How can we see the Jesus with whom we can relate and not speak of the terror of being bound, beaten, spat upon, and being stripped of anything remotely signifying the dignity of humanity? Surely, Jesus felt the horror of breathing his last.

 

I believe Daniel sits in the forefront of the mind of Jesus as he travels to the same edge of the pit to which Daniel traveled. Death is certain: a death so painful, so terrifying, so unjust, that Jesus sweats in agony. And Jesus knows that he, unlike Daniel, won’t be rescued at the last minute. He has to go through death, go through with the horror of this experience, to fulfill his mission.

 

I can hear him cry out for the faith that enabled Daniel to grasp hold of Life knowing that a decree had been signed guaranteeing his death. I listen in on the conversation between Jesus and his faithful ancestor. In my mind, I hear the heavenly messenger sent to comfort Jesus as he retells this epic story of a faithful servant from long ago.[9]  He speaks of Daniel courageously giving himself to death at the hands of an earthly king before compromising his faith in the heavenly one. He speaks of how Daniel did this so that his story might give Jesus and millions who would follow in the Gethsemanes of their lives the courage to relinquish the momentary things of life that they might lay hold of the eternal.

 

This is no children’s story playing out in the life of Daniel. It is an anchor for Immanuel – God with us – as he is awash in a sea of despair—a sea that you and I are familiar with in our own lives.

 

Steadily his faith takes hold and begins to raise him up. He receives in this story the peace that comes with differentiating living and Life. He knows that while the living may end, the Life endures forever. He sees that come what may, he is more, much more, than the inhumane treatment he is about to receive.

 

In Gethsemane Jesus ponders his true identity. He ponders the road before him and what it will say about our identity as we join with him in his example of self-sacrifice. But this will be so only if he yields to his fleshly desires and wholly gives himself to the ways of the Father. It will come to pass only if he arises and places himself in the hands of God. Only then will his identity be complete. Only then will he have made a way clear that we might join with him in seeing our true selves as well.

 

The moon moves across the sky. The deeds of Judas play out on the stage of greed and compromise. The pseudo-forces of religion are assembling. History edges toward the greatest moment it will ever know.

 

With Jesus, we arrive at the final hour of a decision that will forever change the relationship between the Father and his children… but only if we join with the Christ in coming to see and take hold of our true identity.

 

 

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