Never safe, Eternally safe

Thoughts from the book of Daniel:

Some 2600 years or so ago, four young boys, along with the flower of Jewish intelligentsia, began a long hard march across deserted areas, a journey of as much as 1000 km, to the great city of Babylon where they were selected for training as early Janissaries in the service of the newly acceded king, Nebuchadnezzar II.  Within a short period of time, perhaps months or a year, they were presented to the king who confirmed them in his services and found them peerless, far beyond the best ministers of state within the empire.  Even so, they might have been slaughtered at the whim of the king for failing to do the impossible, because all others could hardly be trusted in doing even what was possible.  So they prayed, and Daniel did the impossible and interpreted a dream that the king withheld.  Thus, Daniel suddenly became very wealthy, and was made the governor over the entire province of the capital, jewel of the Near East, including the city and all government within it.  After royal confirmation, Daniel's three friends were similarly elevated under him, set over the affairs of the capital and its environs, heads of their departments of state, while Daniel liased with the king at the palace.

In seventy or so years, still in power after at least one dynastic change, this same Daniel would stand before the crown prince of the empire, lost in debauched revels while his father stood with an army in the field against the combined might of Media and Persia ascendant, as an old man risking his life on his integrity to announce imminent doom when the outcome was still unsure.

For one night this old man is named the vice-regent of the empire, third in line of formal succession and granted all the vestments and pomp of nearly unlimited authority even as King Nabonidus was swallowing the news that a small contingent of Persians had outflanked his strong point on the Euphrates and had advanced to the unaware capital, damming and diverting the river around it prior to special forces insertion.

In the month from the time that the city was lost to Cyrus II, the Great, the shahanshah king of kings, personally arriving to survey his conquest, it may well have been that newly minted vice-regent of the empire who oversaw the smooth negotiations of the city's transfer.  It might have been in those first months that Daniel was sized up as integral and an honest broker, and in a rare continuance of government in the ancient world, found so trustworthy as to retain his absolute pre-eminence over the massive new acquisition of the Babylonian sphere, overseeing 120 regional governors and their offices.  His own office, charged with efficient administration, would dictate policy in favor of the new owners, conduct certifications and vetting of delegated regional and local governments, and oversee a wildly successful anti-corruption and auditing program that proved impossible to subvert, disrupting several millenia of practice in this part of the world.  There would be no scandals, no revelations that stuck against the man in charge making him as boring to the local media as he was a threat to everyone else of rank who preferred "business as usual".

It's hard to imagine a comparable position in today's world.  Perhaps being named president over Russia in the days of the former Soviet Union, answerable only to a handful of high party officials including the premier.  And your friends are your chiefs of staff, handling the higher affairs of administration, filtering the information that you need to take with you to the Kremlin.  And you have been elevated from the position of a minor bureaucrat, and you're perhaps not even 20 years of age.  But even this lacks the imperial grandeur of Babylon because in those days, that empire stood alone at the top of the known world.  And even at the height of its power, the USSR was decayed and brittle internally, relatively poor per person compared to it neighbors.  Babylon would endure no cold war and its rival would only quickly upset it and take its place at the top.  There may be few administrators (if any) who have survived that many dynastic and conquest changes while continuing so close to the pinnacle of power.

We may forget, in reading these stories, just who they were who were cast into a giant brick kiln likely used in constructing that 90 ft obelisk with Marduk's image.  And who that old man was who was so unceremoniously removed from the royal palace to the lion pen.  In that world, and even as in ours, few ever make it that high up, and few ever should have had so much trust in the power they wielded.

And yet, in both cases, one compelled by the paganism of a king unifying his empire in the worship of one chief idol, one a combination of absurd vanity and an unchangeable legal framework, Daniel and his chief lieutenants were so quickly removed from their posts to be executed.  The KGB rarely matched the ease of the demise of these officials.  Even Stalin needed show trials with his more prominent threats.

It is a reminder to us that, even in these times, even in this country where we pride ourselves in being a nation of laws, we have no guarantee from our situations against the evil and fickle desire of the world around, and in few other areas is their wrath so sharp as when we threaten their worldview and evil practices, even simply by being something other than they.  Those who hate God, hate His people.  And they may be driven to overwhelming evil, either sudden or plotted over a long period, and such evil rejoices tremendously when it can rip out another servant of God, shouting in barbaric defiance at the thought of the deity who accuses them in conscience.  As bad as those kings were, in both cases men of integrity were trapped and happily sold out by those who wanted what they had, power and money, and resented them.

John 15:18 "If the world hates you, know that it hated me before it hated you."

Five hundred years after, one far more righteous than Daniel would say these words and be handed over to death for a sum far less than any Persian or Babylonian official would have gotten out of bed for.

The better life is, the more secure we feel.  The more complacent we become.  And perhaps the least visible, the more compromising, and the least useful we are.  We remember Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah among how many thousands of other Jewish boys and girls who "made it" because of what they did even with the wrath of empires against them.  And for them it was sudden and they did not waver.  The others -- I'm sure a lot of them stopped to tie their sandal laces when the time came.

Nothing guarantees persecution more than us being willing to deal with our sinfulness and then lead a life of integrity, even if we barely give a spoken word.  If only we had that drive.  It's so much easier to appear "mostly with integrity".

Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves. But beware of men: for they will deliver you up to the councils, and they will scourge you in their synagogues; And ye shall be brought before governors and kings for my sake, for a testimony against them and the Gentiles. But when they deliver you up, take no thought how or what ye shall speak: for it shall be given you in that same hour what ye shall speak. For it is not ye that speak, but the Spirit of your Father which speaketh in you. And the brother shall deliver up the brother to death, and the father the child: and the children shall rise up against their parents, and cause them to be put to death. And ye shall be hated of all men for my name's sake: but he that endureth to the end shall be saved.
(Mat 10:16-22)

Our response ought to be that of the three Hebrew Janissaries:

"If it be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of thine hand, O king. But if not, be it known unto thee, O king, that we will not serve thy gods, nor worship the golden image which thou hast set up. "

(Dan 3:17-18)