Our mid-week bible
study has been working through the book of Daniel recently. Today was chapter 6 – the one story that
everyone thinks they know, but really don’t.
It is the story of how
jealous officials convinced King Darius (is it pronounced Dare-EE-us or
Dar-EYE-us?) to issue an edict that no one should pray to anyone or any god
other than Darius for the next 30 days, and of Daniel who, upon learning of the
new law, promptly went to his upstairs room and flung open the windows so that
everyone could see him praying to his God, and how he was subsequently thrown
into and protected in the lion’s pit.
Our conversation
centered on how easy it would have been for Daniel to have avoided the whole
issue altogether. He could have prayed
in secret. He could have kept the windows
closed. He could have just not prayed
for 30 days. But no. Daniel purposefully, willfully and with
premeditation, broke the law. Flagrantly
broke the law.
The commentary I had close at hand had an
especially striking quote from John Calvin for this passage: “Earthly princes deprive themselves of all
authority when they rise up against God, yea, they are unworthy to be counted
amongst the company of men. We ought
rather to spit in their faces than to obey them when they …spoil God of his right.”[i]
It’s curious to me how
the bible gets all twisted up and used to make Christians into “good little
citizens” saluting the flag and pledging allegiance to this or that
country. When was the last time any of
us spat into the face of our senators?
When was the last time we flagrantly broke the law in order to be true
to God?
No comments:
Post a Comment