Anonymous (via GotQuestions)
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Danny Hickman
I don't get the "God vs government" angle from the story of Daniel staying devoted to his prayer life. I don't think the narrative is an attempt to teach us that God expects us to be brave, or to be willing to die for our religious convictions. I don't get that from the story.
The night before Dr ML King was murdered, he gave a speech in which he said he didn't expect to live a long life because of his political views. He vehemently disagreed with the Jim Crow laws of the United States, and was leader of a movement to change those laws. In his speech he stated that he'd like to live a long life, but "I'm not worried about that now, I just want to do God's will." So, it was Dr King's contention that all the death threats, 40 arrests, his home bombed, etc, was because he was doing God's will trying to overturn Jim Crow!!
That ain't what Daniel was going through. Daniel wasn't taking a stand against the Mede government. In fact he was "third ruler" in the kingdom (Dan 5:29). Daniel was a high ranking official of the government that put him in the den of lions.
Daniel and his friends were apolitical. They knew that their lives were meaningless without God. (Ours are too, but it's harder for us to know it because our lives are far more pleasurable than theirs were. They were eunuchs.
Some say Daniel did an 'In your face' to the king, but he didn't. He prayed and gave thanks "as was his custom..." (Dan 6:10) I don't think he changed anything, praying 3 times a day as usual.
Danny Hickman
Daniel and his friends knew that their lives were meaningless without God. They were captives; young men brought to Babylon in the third year of King Jehoiakim's reign in Judah, when Nebuchadnezzar came to Jerusalem and besieged it (Dan 1:1). Worst of all, they were eunuchs.
The writer of the book never says pointedly, "they were eunuchs." Here's how it is written:
Then the king instructed Ashpenaz, the master of his eunuchs, to bring some of the children of Israel and some of the king's descendants and some of the nobles, young men in whom there was no blemish, but good looking, gifted in all wisdom, possessing knowledge and quick to understand, who had ability to serve in the king's palace, and who they might teach the language and literature of the Chaldeans. (Dan 1:3,4).
If they were under the supervision of the master of the eunuchs, they were eunuchs. Why insert that into the narrative if they weren't?
They didn't want them distracted by the worse distraction of those times: a sexual appetite. The number one pleasure and pastime in antiquity was sex. There wasn't too much else in which a "common" man could amuse himself. Hence, sex was the biggest distraction to a life of devotion to God. And Nebuchadnezzar considered himself a god.
Daniel and the 3 H boys had no life without God!! They wouldn't chance losing Him!!
Solomon teaches, after a life of meaningless pleasure, that life is meaningless without God. Eccl 1thru12.
Daniel and the 3 Hebrew boys knew it!
Danny Hickman
It wasn't bravery that enabled Daniel and his friends to defy the king.
It wasn't bravery that led Dr King, Medgar Evers, Senator John Lewis and others to defy the Jim Crow Government of the United States. They all loved their lives; they were as afraid of the consequences they faced for their disobedience to government officials as anyone else.
There were citizens who stood with Dr King and the movement who were not subject to Jim Crow laws. They could eat wherever they chose to eat; could get hotel accommodations; could go to the local pool, or lay on the local beach. They were making political decisions; they were putting their life in jeopardy in an attempt to help get the laws changed. Viola Liuzzo, a 39 year old woman from Detroit, who was murdered by three KKK members for shuttling activists to the Montgomery Airport, was one of many who opposed Jim Crow.
That ain't what Daniel and friends were doing. They weren't trying to get the law of bowing for the "national Babylonian anthem" changed, nor the Mede and Persian law of 30 days of praying only to King Darius.
I believe both the Hebrews and the Americans were heeding a call of God to do what they did. They weren't braver than others. They all were willing to die or they wouldn't have done what they did. WHY?
Because devotion to God meant more to them than their lives. Dr King came straight out and said it the night before his death: "I just want to do God's will." It was the same reason the Hebrews had...