The Message Remix (258 page)

INTRODUCTIONDANIEL

 

Images generated by the book of Daniel have been
percolating through the daily experiences of the people of God for well over two thousand years now,
producing a richly aromatic brew stimulating God’s people to obey and trust their sovereign God.

Obedience to God in the pressures and stresses of day-by-day living and trust in God’s ways in the large sweep of history are always at risk, but especially in times of suffering and persecution. Obedience to God is difficult when we are bullied into compliance to the God-ignoring culture out of sheer survival. Trust in God is likewise at risk of being abandoned in favor of the glamorous seductions of might and size.

Daniel was written out of just such times. There was little or no observable evidence in the circumstances to commend against-the-stream obedience or overarching trust. But Daniel’s stories and visions have supplied what that society did not—could not—give. Century after century, Daniel has shot adrenaline into the veins of God-obedience and put backbone into God-trust.

Daniel is composed, in approximately equal parts, of stories and visions—six stories (chapters 1-6) and four visions (chapters 7-12). The stories tell of souls living faithfully in obedience to God in a time of adversity. The visions are wide-screen renditions of God’s sovereignty worked out among nations who couldn’t care less about him. Six soul stories; four sovereignty visions.

The six soul-survival stories nourish a commitment to integrity and perseverance right now. Very few of us live in settings congenial to God-loyalty and among people who affirm a costly discipleship. Hardly a day goes by that we do not have to choose between compliance to what is expedient and loyalty to our Lord. The stories keep us alert to what is at stake day by day, hour by hour.

The four visions of God’s history-saving ways nourish hope in God during times when world events seem to put God in eclipse. The visions are difficult to understand, written as they are in a deliberately cryptic style (apocalyptic). From time to time they have been subjected to intense study and explanation. But for a first reading, perhaps it is better simply to let the strange symbolic figures give witness to the large historical truth that eclipses the daily accumulation of historical facts reported by our news media, namely, that God is sovereign. In the course of all the noise and shuffling, strutting and posing, of arrogant rulers and nations that we call history, with the consequent troubles to us all, God is serenely sovereign; we can trust him to bring all things and people under his rule.

There are always some of us who want to concentrate on the soul, and others of us who want to deal with the big issues of history. Daniel is one of our primary documents for keeping it all together—the personal and the political, the present and the future, the soul and society.

 

 

From:
Daniel was in his teens when the Babylonians invaded his country and took members of the royal and noble families to Babylon as captives. Because of their brains and spirit, Daniel and some of his friends were placed into the Babylonian Royal Academy to train for the empire’s vast bureaucracy. Daniel agreed to work for the empire (the alternative was death), but he continually risked his life by refusing activities that would dishonor God. He eventually became a high-level government official and a renowned wise man—renowned even among the Babylonians, who assumed he practiced magic.

 

To:
Daniel finished his book around the time when Persia conquered Babylon and allowed willing Jews to return to Judea. The returning exiles faced harsh obstacles to rebuilding their country: local enemies and poverty topped the list. They were sorely tempted to assimilate with their more affluent non-Jewish neighbors, so they needed Daniel’s example of integrity. They also had every reason to doubt that their puny efforts made the slightest difference in a world of war and injustice, so they needed to know that God was still in charge.

 

Re:
About 605-535 B.C. Prince Siddhartha Gautama, known as the Buddha or “enlightened one,” was born during Daniel’s lifetime in northern India. Siddhartha grew up rich and married a rich cousin, but at age twenty-nine he found he needed a way to deal with the stark facts of aging, disease, and death. Through study, meditation, and self-denial, he sought a way to serenity in the face of suffering. This way came to be called Buddhism. He taught that suffering could be ended only by detachment from desires. While Daniel said God would save humans through acts in history, Siddhartha said enlightenment offered a way to escape continual reincarnation into the endless suffering of history.