DANIEL, CHAPTER 1
At first glance, today’s Bible story is about a food fight: a fight between God-given fruits and veggies, maybe whole grains too, and a rich, royal diet of exotic delicacies. Does this story only show that, if you have a choice between donuts and a Slim Jim for breakfast, or oatmeal and an apple, pick the oatmeal and the apple? Our bodies would certainly be happier, and so would our doctors.
But I think there’s another, deeper conflict happening in Daniel 1, and food is only the battleground, or the weapon, of this fight. It’s a fight between “singing the Lord’s song in an alien land” in the words of Psalm 137, and being bewitched and bedazzled by what I call “the daily non-stop imperial spectacle.”
This “daily non-stop imperial spectacle” greeted the few surviving Hebrew exiles, 2700 years ago, when they first saw the city of Babylon. There, they witnessed the supreme spectacle of imperial power for its age. The Hebrew captives were already in shock and awe from what Nebuchadnezer’s army had done to Judah, Jerusalem and their temple. But nothing could have prepared them for seeing city walls so tall and so wide that 4 chariots and eight horses could race side by side along the top. There they saw massive towers, temples, monuments to emperors dead and living, and pyramids on the scale of anything known in Egypt or Mexico. On those pyramids were practiced the imperial arts of divination and magic that underlie the daily horoscope in our local newspaper even today. Then there were the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, known from China to Spain as one of the Seven Wonders of the World. Imagine a 40-story Chia Pet. Everyone within sight of such marvels would have been sore tempted to fall on their knees in worship and wonder before such self-evidently successful power. That’s precisely the point of the daily non-stop imperial spectacle: that you give up any independent, critical thinking and surrender your values, your faith, your identity, your sense of self-worth, to the bedazzled worship of the empire, and of the emperor.
For the emperor, the empire and its armies who were most victorious, prosperous, powerful and fearsome, supposedly also had the gods most worthy of worship and loyalty. As warfare among the gods went in heaven, so it happened on earth, they thought back then. When Jerusalem was but a smoking pile of rubble, in the year 587 BC, it looked as though Marduk, the supreme warrior god over all the Babylonian gods and goddesses, had proven himself more powerful and worthy than the God of the Jews. Babylon’s so-called experts, the astrologers, and the diviners said, “Of course, the eternal reign of Marduk over all peoples and their gods is written in the stars.”
That’s what the non-stop imperial spectacle always says, constantly, to the point where nobody even recognizes it anymore, but everyone assumes it. Not only does the nonstop imperial spectacle mess with the heads of the enemy and the prisoner. It does a similar job on the subject and the citizen. For example: One night in March, of 2003, our family was sitting, waiting for a flight, in the Minneapolis/St. Paul international airport, just twenty-four hours into the invasion of Iraq. Now I don’t usually eavesdrop on other people’s conversations But there was a conversation taking place in a seat right next to mine that I just could not ignore. My neighbor was talking on his cell phone to someone about the invasion of Iraq. The tone of his end of the conversation made him all the harder to ignore. He was chortling with glee, about what a quick cakewalk this war would be over the hapless Iraqis, about whom he spoke with a bully’s contempt for a ninety-pound weakling. He even said that he had watched the opening salvos of the American missile attack on a wide-screen TV while engaged in—and I’m not making this up—cosmic bowling. That’s bowling to the accompaniment of flashing strobe lights and disco music. The rhythmic flashing of strobe lights were of one piece with the flashes of bombs and the streaks of missiles against the night sky on the wide screen TV. The thumping rhythm of disco music and the rumble of rolling balls and falling pins were of one piece with the sounds of bombs exploding and sirens blaring in the streets of Baghdad. All that were missing from this sample of the nonstop imperial spectacle were the sounds of terrified Iraqis screaming and crying.
Knocking over Iraqis with missiles and bombs was then as easy and entertaining as knocking over bowling pins, and of no more consequence to my neighbor. The invasion of Iraq was just another block-buster, star-studded extravaganza in the non-stop, 24/7 imperial spectacle.
I would have liked to ask him, “My friend, do you derive your self-worth and meaning in life from the fire power of those who claim to represent you? Are you experiencing a vicarious thrill of power through this bloody assertion of shock and awe in your name? Have you become so intoxicated by the illusion of invincible power that you have lost any other sense of identity, and all compassion for the men and women of both sides, our country and theirs, who will suffer and die, and for all their loved ones who will be united in grief and fear? Or don’t you know that, once the shooting starts, any glee is premature; that no bullet fired, no bomb dropped, is without regrets, consequences and complications afterward? If not, then the daily nonstop imperial spectacle is having its intended effect.” But such conversation was not to be. He said, “They’re calling my flight; gotta go.” Then he jumped up and ran off.
That was when I began to understand that this exercise in shock and awe was aimed not only at the Iraqis. My neighbor and I were also the intended targets. The nonstop imperial spectacle shocks and awes all of us, friend and foe, into surrendering our common humanity, our consciences, even our faith and our God, to worship the beasts of human and diabolical power.
For whenever a country embarks on war, like Nebuchadnezzar did to all his neighbors, it has also effectively declared war against its own citizens. Not only a war of impoverishment, as bread and butter get turned into bombs and bullets, but also a war against the better angels of our own nature. The country’s crusade becomes the subjects of our lives, rather than the love story between ourselves, our Creator, and Creation that is the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Instead of finding our sense of worth and meaning in love and submission to God, we seek our sense of worth, self and meaning in that measure of power we have over and against others whom we define as enemies and inferiors. We are supposed to be so much in shock and awe over all worldly forms of power that we boast, with the worshipers of the beast in John’s Revelation, “Who can make war against the beast?” Other versions today of the nonstop imperial spectacle include violent video games, most movies and TV dramas, much that goes on in professional sports, and most advertising and political campaigns.
Those were the temptations of the nonstop imperial spectacle that our Hebrew spiritual ancestors faced, when they were whittled down to a pitifully small remnant of demoralized, confused and traumatized slaves and captives in Babylon. Four of these captive Jews are mentioned in the first chapter of Daniel: the young Daniel and his comrades, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah. Their captors gave them Babylonian names: Daniel became Belteshazar; his friends became Shadrach, Meshcach and Abednego. That name change was also meant to hijack their sense of Hebrew identity, and to point them in the direction of Babylon’s gods.
The Babylonians tended to do that with conquered territories: to pull the native people up and scatter them around the empire. Then they would plant other captives in their place, so that future generations would blend into the Babylonian melting pot. People with the most leadership potential they would train for service in the empire. That’s how many tribes, countries, cultures and religions disappeared into the voracious, ever-expanding whirlpool that was the Babylonian Empire.
But not the Jews. Even with a front row seat at the nonstop, daily, grandiose, spectacle of empire, many, like those four young men, resolved to give up neither their God nor their identity, whatever the cost. These four young men were not violent rebels plotting to kill the king and overthrow the Babylonian empire. They may have heard the prophecies of Ezekiel and Jeremiah, telling them that God had given temporary dominion to Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonians, and that they were to submit to his political authority, though not to his religion. They may also have read Jeremiah’s letter telling them to seek the peace of this city to which God had carried them.
That they would do, as counselors to the king. They were very willing to learn the Babylonian language, the art and skills of Babylonian law, administration and counsel, and to work for the well-being of all people in the empire through law and public order. After all, not everything about Babylon was evil beyond redemption. We benefit today from strides the Babylonians made in agriculture, art and engineering. Despite his claim to godlike status and power, Nebuchadnezzar and his Babylonian subjects were human, bearers of God’s image, beloved of God, worthy of respect, love and care.
But these four Hebrew men were not willing to defile themselves or dishonor their God with anything contrary to God’s law and God’s Word, not even at the dinner table. That’s what this food fight in Daniel 1 has to do with what I have called “the nonstop imperial spectacle.” Nebuchadnezzar’s dinner table was just as much a nonstop imperial spectacle as were his palaces, his armies, and his imperial architecture.
Of course, the kosher food laws of the Old Testament were a factor. You can bet that the king’s daily menu violated those rules as well. Those laws reminded the Hebrews, every day, that they were chosen and called by God to be God’s priests and people among the other nations. They also constituted a cultural buffer against the paganism of their neighbors. There were other laws of dress, conduct, ritual and ceremony, and things like circumcision, which reminded them daily of who they are and whose they are. By refusing the king’s food, those young Hebrews were saying, in effect, “We can serve King Nebuchadnezzar, but we love and obey our God first and foremost.”
I wonder if there was also another reason that they refused the food from King Nebuchadnezzar’s table. As part of the daily nonstop imperial spectacle, the king’s menu included exotic foreign delicacies from the warring edges of his empire, things taken by force of arms or by tribute from conquered peoples: Greek olives, Egyptian dates, Indian mangoes, wild game from Sudan, fish from the Red Sea, musk ox from Tibet, Chinese plums and Italian wines. Foods like that signal elite imperial power, position and privilege.
If so, such food was tainted with human blood, sweat and tears. The blood of soldiers sent off to expand the empire’s borders, the blood of enemies killed, the tears of conquered peoples, the tears of Babylonians who lost their sons, brothers and husbands in war, and the sweat of slaves made to live and die as drones and pack animals, and of Babylon’s own poor, who paid dearly in taxes for this nonstop imperial spectacle that dazzled their eyes, while it took food out of their bellies, denied clothes to their bodies, and a roof over their heads. Seated before the king’s kind of food, Daniel and his friends would have a front row seat at every meal to the grandiosity of the nonstop imperial spectacle. As captive Jews, they also had a front-row seat to its brutal, unsavory underside.
Was their refusal to eat at the king’s table then a form of conscientious objection to this corrupt and violent grandiosity? It certainly had that effect. Was it also a statement of solidarity and self-identification with their fellow Jews and other captive people who could eat nothing but the simple fruits and vegetables and drink only the water that they requested? That too was the result.
If so, then Daniel and his friends remind me of the Danish people, during the German Occupation of World War 2. When occupation troops would goose-step in the streets to the sound of a marching band, to show who was boss, Danes in the streets would simply turn their backs on the imperial spectacle and look at whatever was displayed in the storefronts. Or when the occupiers requisitioned factories and assembly lines for weapons production, everyone quit and no one would work there.
The antidotes to seduction by “the daily nonstop imperial spectacle,” are not hostility nor a sense of superiority. Nor are they resentment nor rebellion, but simplicity, contentment, gratitude, appreciation and acceptance of the gifts and the goodness of God that are already at hand. Like the simple local fruits, grains and vegetables that Daniel and friends could and did eat.
I went online to see just what Daniel would have eaten in his trial menu, and typed in “Ancient Babylonian foods” and came up with “Why?” and “What kind of goofball are you that you would even care?” Beyond that I found melons, squash, onions, leeks, carrots, eggplants, and fruits like pears, plums, figs, pomegranates, dates, and grains like wheat, barley and rye. Lay off the Slim Jims, the Little Debbies and the Twinkies for a while and you’ll rediscover how good those basic, simple, God-given things taste. And how good you feel after you eat them. They don’t require armies of conquest, nor complicated trade deals, to acquire. Simple folk can grow them almost anywhere.
It was not enough, however, for Daniel and his friends to just butt heads with the nonstop imperial spectacle and resist it. Notice with what respect, consideration and courtesy Daniel makes his case for a positive alternative to his royal guardian. He did so in a way that was considerate and caring, winsome and hard to resist. If, instead they’d gone on a hunger strike or started beating their cups and plates on the table, innocent people, like their care-takers, would have lost their heads. Literally. Instead, they presented their alternative as an invitation and an experiment. “Give us some time to eat God’s fruits, grains and veggies, and then let’s see who’s healthier and happier. If we are worse for the wear, then we’ll go on the imperial diet,” they said. “If not, then we’ll all look good.” This is witness as “show and tell.”
Hopefully, in our witness to the world, we can also show and tell something practical and concrete about how God’s alternative to the non-stop imperial spectacle, God’s kingdom, has brought real and visible blessings into our lives and communities.
These four young men also demonstrate how we can walk the tightrope of Christian discipleship between two seemingly contradictory commands, “Love not the world, nor the things thereof,” and the command to love our neighbor as ourselves. “Do not love the world or anything in the world,” writes John the Beloved in his first letter. “If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For everything in the world—the cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes and the boasting of what he has and does—comes not from the Father but from the world.” What John calls “the world and the things therein,” is another way to describe “the daily non-stop imperial spectacle.”
But this same John tells us that “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son,…not to condemn the world but to save it.” Either we have an impossible contradiction there, or the world that God so loves—and that we are to love, too—is something other than the daily non-stop imperial spectacle. The world that God loves, and that Daniel served with love, wisdom and integrity, and that we are to love as well, is the world that God created, a world of people, of communities, of animals, plants, rivers, rocks, mountains and molehills that God put together on this astoundingly beautiful planet. God is working toward the redemption and renewal of all that he created and loves. And he’s doing it through seemingly powerless people like Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah. And through you and me.
Twenty seven centuries later, we are like these exiles. We too live in the midst of nonstop imperial spectacles. If we have made baptismal vows, however, we have promised our primary love and loyalty to the Prince of Peace, the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords.” So, let’s not let ourselves be bewitched and bedazzled by the non-stop imperial spectacle in which we currently live. Do not to give in to resentment, hostility, paranoia, nor a sense of superiority, either. Rather, love God and God’s world without needing to be loved by the nonstop imperial spectacle in return. Look to God for identity, approval and our justification, and don’t play to the world, nor to any factions in it, for identity, approval and applause. Let’s present our witness for God and for God’s wisdom in wise, friendly, show and tell manners, out of love for all our fellow captives and exiles, as did Daniel and his friends. For, as Jesus said, “Wisdom is proven right by her children.”