Category Archives: WISDOM & STICKING POINTS

ENDURING STICKING POINTS part 4 of 4

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choicesOne of the most distressing dynamics among close colleagues of the same faith or political persuasion can arise when the sticking point of one colleague now means that he or she must diverge from the unity that has been built up among the group. This is particularly true over a big issue. You find yourself at an impasse: “I can’t go with the group on that. I’ve got to go another way on the issue.” The clear departure from what has become the norm for the group may really rock the boat, say, of a particularly crucial church project or public policy, especially if it is a prominent leader who has swerved from what was expected to be unity on the plan of action.

In the three previous posts, we have seen that four devout Jews (Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah) who were officials in the Babylonian government had the same sticking points about their schooling, their diet, and dream interpretation. But these four close colleagues may have had contradictory sticking points on two stunning policies. I am going to speculate a little, here, but there does not seem to be anything in the text that weighs in against what may be imagined here.

One of the two policy events, unfortunately, has been somewhat trivialized in a children’s Bible lesson called the “Tale of the Fiery Furnace.” It is, in fact, as we might say in today’s lingo, a story about religious intolerance (Daniel 3). In short, King Nebuchadnezzar has built a huge statue of gold in the plain of Dura and everyone is required to bow down and worship it. All goes well until Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah (to use their Jewish names) make quite a public display of refusing to bow, even when given a second chance. In a fit of rage, Neb has them bound and thrown into a “burning fiery furnace” – perhaps the same one used to refine the gold? But God steps in and saves the three men. The king watches this all take place and is so moved by the rescue that he offers a doxology to The Most High God.

Question: Where was Daniel? What was he doing when his three friends were trussed up and thrown into a roaring blaze? Wasn’t he among all the government officials on the plain of Dura? The text is clear that the king had summoned all of his officials. So why wasn’t Daniel thrown into the roaring blaze? Did he bow to the statue? If so, he clearly had a different sticking point on this matter that did his three Jewish friends. If so, it makes one  wonder what that conversation among the four was like!

sticking pointOne day, however, the roles are apparently reversed, as seen in another famous children’s Bible lesson called “Daniel in the Lions’ Den,” which is really a story of political jealously (Daniel 6). Very briefly, Daniel is now a leading cabinet official in the government of King Darius, who is thinking out loud about making Daniel prime minister over the entire nation. But Daniel’s political enemies are jealous and plot to frame him as a corrupt politician.

When they cannot find any evidence of that, they seek to have him executed on religious grounds. So they con Darius into enacting a religious law of the land that they know Daniel will not obey, and he will have to be executed. Now the king really likes Daniel but he twigs to the con job too late. He deeply regrets that Daniel refuses to obey the new law, but he has no choice in this matter. He sends Daniel off to die and he is “thrown into the lions’ den.” But when God sends an angel to save Daniel, Darius is overjoyed and offers a doxology to “the living God who endures forever.”

Question: Where were Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah? What was their position on the new religious policy? Did they obey it? If not, why weren’t they also thrown into that den of hungry lions? Or perhaps it wasn’t a sticking point for them, as it was for Daniel.

Nowhere does the book of Daniel, as far as I can tell, preclude us from considering the “Where was?” question I have proposed. The text leaves open the possibility that Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah had contradictory sticking points – as devout Jews and close political allies – on two huge issues at the heart of their religious-political lives.

As I see it, the agency of wisdom left them free in their consciences to believe and act as they would – as the pagan kings’ doxologies put it: To God be the glory.

©2014 by Charles Strohmer

Images by Lauren Macdonald & Aphrodite, respectively (permission, Creative Commons)

ENDURING STICKING POINTS part 3 of 4

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identityThe question I want to begin with, here, is why did the four Jewish friends have a sticking point about the king’s menu but not about a change at the heart of their identities? That is, they accept radically different personal names (Daniel 1:7). This must have been a most distasteful compromise to these devout Yahwists, whose birth names are in various ways associated with characteristics of the God of Israel. But when they enter the Chaldean Institute their Hebrew names are formally changed to denote various pagan gods. Although some of these names have not been satisfactorily explained, the following indicates the enormity of the changes:

  • “Hananiah” in Hebrew means Yah has favored [me]. His new name, “Shadrach,” means something like Command of Aku (Aku being a Mesopotamian lunar deity).
  • “Mishael” means Who is what God is? His name is changed to “Meshach,” Who is what Aku is?
  • “Azariah,” whose name means The Lord helps, gets saddled with the “Abednego,” Slave of Nego (or Nebo; Isaiah 46:1). (Some scholars believe that “Abednego” has a relation to “Aradnabu,” Servant of Nabu, who was King Nebuchadnezzar’s personal deity.)
  • “Daniel” – God is my judge or God will judge or Judge of God – becomes “Belteschazzar,” a name similar to “Belshazzar,” a king of Babylon (Daniel 5). Both names stem from “Bel,” the chief god of the Babylonians, but it is unclear what “Belteschazzar” meant, possibly Bel is my prince or Protects the prince’s life.

Personally, I think I would have eaten the king’s food but put my foot down about being called Baalzebub or some such thing. But if these guys had any qualms about being identified with pagan gods, the text is silent about that. Although they submitted to radical changes of name, imagine what it would have been like to have been told – you a pious Jew – to walk around with one of those names and respond to it all the time in the royal court.

So someone asks Daniel, “What’s your name, sir?” To which he has to reply, “Bel is my prince.” Just think what that must have cost his soul as a devout Yahwist. Would it not have been a sticking point for many godly Jews of the time, for whom any association with the gods of the nations was a religious bugaboo? Yet Daniel, who is certainly aware of this deeply inbred religious antipathy, makes not a peep of protest. Apparently it is not a mountain that he, or his three friends, are willing to die on.

Although the text is silent as to why this was not a sticking point for them, we may assume that the changed names was not meant to wipe out their religious identity, for the text is clear that they remained free to worship Yahweh and that they did indeed do that. This, in fact, is consistent with a certain amount of religious freedom that the empire of Babylon  was known for. Instead, the radical changes of name went to the heart of their Jewish national allegiance, and as such served a political purpose. As a political official of Babylon, no way would Daniel be permitted to answer his king or a foreign dignitary who asked “What’s your name?” with the Jewish implications of God is my judge.

If these four Jewish men, then, were to be fully integrated into the Babylonian government, if not into society itself, their allegiance to Israelite nationalism would have to go away, at least symbolically. As with Joseph in Egypt, they would need new names that matched their political status as Babylonian officials. Some scholars believe that the change of names was probably part of an official ceremony in which the four swore allegiance to Babylon as naturalized citizens.

In the next post we will look at two more controversial sticking points in the narrative of Daniel the statesman/diplomat.

©2014 by Charles Strohmer

Image by John Nicholls (used by permission via Creative Commons)

ENDURING STICKING POINTS part 2 of 4

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sunsetWhen I talk about wisdom-based diplomacy and negotiations, questions may arise about the approach that wisdom would take toward militants whose core religious-political position is to put a gun to your head and say, “Submit or die.” Although the number of submit-or-die militants is small, everyone today knows what kinds of organized violence and murder they are capable of, on both large and small scales. So let me state categorically that there is no negotiating with submit-or-die ideologues. That, I believe, is a basic principle of the agency of wisdom.

On the other hand, if you want to make peace, you don’t talk to your friends but to your adversaries or enemies. This is where wisdom-based negotiations can excel, even in such contexts as, for instance, U.S. talks with the Iranian regime, or even with Hamas or leaders of the Taliban who are sincerely open to seeking a negotiated peace. I believe that the agency of wisdom not only accepts this principle but is more than able to meet the challenge, to those who are open to it.

It was through a long series of difficult negotiations that apartheid ended in South Africa (1993). Likewise, a peace agreement among a diverse array of religious and political adversaries was reached in Northern Ireland and between the British and Irish governments (1998). Two stunning examples from the Middle East are the Israel-Egypt (1979) and the Israel-Jordan (1994) peace treaties. Many political ideologues in Israel (elsewhere, too) had been arguing that democracy in the Arab world was a necessary precondition for any normalization of relations between Israel (a democracy) and her neighbors. Yet adversaries talked and reached agreements.

Peaceable agreements, however, take place only around a table of adversaries who are willing to negotiate. So let me again state that there is no place at the table for submit-or-die militants. Wisdom is no fool.

Nevertheless, religious believers with strong core convictions can feel pretty nervous moving to this edge. I get that. I have found it helpful to talk about it in the context of “sticking points,” and here we can learn more from Daniel and his three Jewish colleagues (Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah), who faced some extreme tests of conviction. For they were not wafflers or ungodly compromisers, nor did the play both ends against the middle. They were in fact willing to die for certain beliefs. And for that reason their sticking points provide insight.

For instance, although the four friends from Jerusalem were devoted Jews, when they were in Babylon they were not fussed about rising to positions of political power in what for them was a “pagan” nation. To enter that career entailed being put through a specialized course of studies that would scandalize many Christians. That is, their consciences were clear about something that would be a sticking point for many devout believers today.

lightThat it was not a sticking point for these four Yahwists probably seems odd to us because it does not square with what we think their obedience to the Mosaic law, on which their religious convictions were based, required. But that is our understanding of what was required of them as devout Jews. Clearly it was not their understanding. This, I suspect, was because the interplay of religion and politics was normative throughout the old-world Middle East. No one questioned it. For the peoples of those cultures it was a moot point.

In many of those cultures, but not in Israel, the kings were considered gods or demigods. Yet in Israel’s king-prophet-priest setup, religion did play something of a constitutional role in that nation. Daniel and his three Jewish colleagues were born and raised in this system. In other words, the basic questions that Americans quibble over today about the separation of church and state did not concern the peoples of the old-world Middle East, where secularism was unimaginable.

Religion and politics mixed like soup and water in Babylon. Neither the Chaldeans nor the four Yahwists thought it even remotely strange, never mind impossible, that officials with different core religious beliefs served alongside one another in the political decision making of the nation. They just got on with it. And in that sense it was not unlike the American political system and other Western governments today, but quite unlike governments in Muslim majority countries in the Middle East where those in office must hold to the same core religious belief.

Further, the religious-political edifice of Babylon was a legal construct backed by law, and government officials of any accepted religion were protected by that law. So much so that when Daniel’s political enemies go so far as to conspire to get him killed, they have to resort to getting a law passed to frame Daniel, for they want it to be seen publicly as a proper act of government (Daniel 6:1-24). (A similarly motivated political frame-up job is concocted against Naboth by the politically astute Jezebel, King Ahab’s consort; 1 Kings 21.)

One of the sticking points, then, that concerned the four Yahwists was not “should we enter Babylonian politics?” The question was “where should we draw the red line as insiders? Where will we dig in our heels and say This far but no farther.” So, as we have seen in previous posts, they would not eat from the king’s menu and they would not rely on “occult” practices as their source for interpreting dreams and visions.

In the next post, I will ask some awkward questions about why these devout Yahwists had dissimilar sticking points among themselves on some life-or-death issues.

©2014 by Charles Strohmer

ENDURING STICKING POINTS part 1 of 4

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sticking pointsThis series of posts on Daniel has been considering how Daniel’s education and tutoring in the wisdom tradition equipped him with the skills of a statesman/diplomat. We have been interested in puzzling out insights related to that role rather than to Daniel’s role as a prophet. So far, we have looked at several key narratives that show how Daniel gained and exercised exceptional diplomatic skill:

  • Daniel’s wisdom-based education in both Jerusalem and Babylon;
  • Daniel’s meteoric rise to renown in the Babylonian royal court as a devout Jew serving with distinction at the highest levels of government;
  • his irenic attitude and style of communication;
  • his respect not only for the king but for his Chaldean colleagues, including those advisers called astrologers;
  • and his esprit de corps with his Chaldean colleagues in government.

In these next posts I want to wrap up our time with Daniel the statesman/diplomat by considering:

  • Daniel’s non-retaliatory actions toward his political enemies;
  • how his wisdom-based way of reasoning bore fruit in political-religious controversies within the royal court;
  • and the different, possibly contradictory, sticking points between Daniel and his three Jewish colleagues in the Babylonian system.

Over the years, I have found it helpful to talk about these three features in the context of “sticking points,” so I will do that here. Knowing what one’s sticking points are in a given situation, and honest and open talk about them with others, is actually quite crucial because there may arise the mistaken notion that with wisdom “anything goes.” Not so. At the other extreme, there may be present arise a very real nervousness in which the word such as “compromise” and  “accommodation” seem like swear words to people who don’t swear.

There are of course compromises that are not wise. On the other hand, a wise compromise may never see the light of day because one of the parties is overly nervous about seeking any sort of agreement with the other. I hope that insights we gained from Daniel’s attitude toward the king’s menu have shown that you can have your sticking point yet still negotiate an acceptable compromise agreement. But the Daniel narrative offers us even more challenging insights about sticking points, which we will consider beginning in the next post.

©2014 by Charles Strohmer