Christians seem to love metaphors about ships. I’ve heard a few in my time, but these are the two that particularly stand out for me. Firstly, ‘A ship should be in the water, but the water should not be in the ship’, which is a metaphor for how Christians need to be active in the world and yet not influenced or corrupted by it. The second is similar: ‘A ship in the harbour is safe, but ships aren’t built to stay there’, a metaphor for how Christians often like to stay in their comfort zones, or church bubbles, rather than step out into the world and be seen doing the things Christ has sent us to do. These are good images - they help to clarify an issue God’s people have had to face since Abraham was first asked to leave his home and head for Canaan; they put the problem into terms we can easily understand and remember. They do not, however, make the problem any easier.
Not only did Daniel and his friends face this problem, it defines most of what we know about them and their deeds from the Bible. These were handsome and talented young men with good prospects and good connections whose entire lives had just been ravaged by the storms of death, destruction and exile. The harbour of their youth had been pillaged and burned and their ships blown out to sea against their will. They were in genuinely terrible circumstances - circumstances that might be hard to understand or even imagine for those of us who have lived quiet lives in the relative safety of western civilisation.
But though they were captured by an enemy who had destroyed their nation, robbed its wealth and humiliated their religion, they were themselves still considered valuable - valuable to that enemy and valuable to God. God had given them many talents and skills, knowledge and wisdom, as well as health and good looks, and they were desirable as part of the elite servants of the court of King Nebuchadnezzar. It’s clear from the way the passage is worded that this is what God intends - he wants his people to serve amongst those who are not his people, to use the gifts, talents and abilities that he has developed within them for the good of those around them, regardless of who those people might be and where they stand with the Almighty - and to do so very well.
It is a challenge for our daily lives now. How does God want me to serve those who do not know him today? Which groups of people, hostile to the gospel, do I need to be part of? How can I use the talents he has given me to make the world a better place for everyone in it? How can I do that so that God is glorified? It is something we need to ask ourselves all the time, wherever we might be, for there are always ways we can serve others, no matter what our circumstances. If we ask God to show us what those ways are, he will do so and he will make sure we are equipped for the task.
So, Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah are taken out the frying pan of their recent trauma and put straight into… well, into a pretty cushy training regime, at least, as much as such things could be. They were to be treated well, given further education and allowed to eat the royal food. What a privilege!
For many people this would come as a great relief and if life had looked like it was going to be hard living among this heathen nation, they might now choose to see it as an opportunity for personal gain. After all, the God they served had sent them there, why not just follow these new, Babylonian ways and enjoy their lifestyle instead?
And, at first, it seems like Daniel and his friends have accepted this. They are given new names - Babylonian names and, despite the fact that their God-fearing Hebrew names had now been replaced by names which honoured the Babylonian gods, there is no evidence in the rest of the book of Daniel to suggest that they argued about this or demanded to be referred to by anything other than their new names. Daniel continues to be referred to as Daniel, although it’s still pointed out later in the book that he was also known as Belteshazzar, but his friends are actually better known by most Christians as Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, names which, in all likelihood, honour the Babylonian gods Aku, Merodach and Nebo. How could they have accepted such a defilement?
And, yet, they cannot have simply decided to accept their new lives as Babylonians, with all the idolatry that that entailed, for we see that there was problem for Daniel. The exact reasons for his concern are not stated in the passage, but it was clear that eating the King’s food was not appropriate for Jews. The meat was almost certainly not kosher and it may well have been offered to Babylonian idols beforehand. Here Daniel draws a line. How the people around him choose to identify him is one thing, and a thing he might not have had much say in, but what he took into his own body - what, essentially, forms part of his real, personal identity that he could control and he was not going to defile himself according to the Babylonian ways.
And it was a risky course of action to take. Turning down luxuries offered by the King was hardly the most polite thing to do in an already perilously delicate situation. Yes, these young men were valuable, but they were still captives and almost certainly thought of as property. To turn down the offered food could easily be considered an insult and if they had damaged their health in any way by doing so then it would have been like damaging one of the King’s prized possessions. To make matters worse, as the story unfolds we see that the other young men may well have been restricted to the same diet - young men without Daniel’s particular principles who were probably enjoying all the King’s meat. It was a path with the potential to make many enemies and, though the passage doesn’t state it in chapter one, it’s clear that Daniel’s god-honouring ways earned him more than his fair share of resentment through the years.
And yet, despite the risks, choosing this course shows great shrewdness on Daniel’s part, especially as we see how things unfold and God’s hand is seen in the favour of the official. Daniel knows when to pick his battles. When faced with a world which was opposed to his God, he knew when to let the world think it was winning and when to take a stand for what was right, whatever the consequences of that might eventually be. We might not think we would be able to make such judgement calls, but Daniel’s wisdom didn’t develop on his own, it was a gift from God and we too can ask God to give us the wisdom to work out our, sometimes messy, lives in the midst of a complicated world which refuses to recognise him.
Which brings us to the final point of this passage. As we see Daniel and his friends carted off to Babylon amidst the most terrible of circumstances, as we see them chosen to serve the king, educated, treated well, given heathen names, as we see them defy their captors and prove the goodness of God, so too do we see the true hero of Daniel chapter one - God - doing all the real legwork in the story. There is no doubt for the writer of this passage that God is in charge, that the horrible situation Daniel and his friends had to endure was ultimately God’s doing - in his great work to punish his people and bring them back to worshipping him, but so too was their skill and knowledge, the favour of those around them and, in the end, the triumph of their faithful response over the idolatry of the world they had been put in. God is always in charge, and no matter how tough the situation we are facing at any given time, we can be assured that God knows what he is doing, he has it all in hand and he will work out his purposes, according to his will, for his glory.
Daniel and his friends go on to glorify God in many ways, bringing the thoughts and eyes of the most powerful men in the world at the time right to the base of his throne, that in all things God’s sovereignty might not be challenged. That challenges us: challenges us to serve in a world where God is rejected, hated even, with the love that Jesus Christ commanded, challenges us to have wisdom and discernment to discover just where the line is that we must not cross, the line that separates a faithful, godly life from the idolatrous world. But it is also a comfort to us, for we know that, with God in charge, he will give us everything we need to face those challenges and that, in the end, he will be glorified, even through our lives.
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