An Ancient Empire, A Former President, and Some Recent Concerns
If you are familiar with Daniel (the book and the man), you know that his enemies looked for a way to get rid of him. The plan they devised was to get the king to issue an order that would prohibit the worship of any god other than the king himself for thirty days. Those who violated that decree were to be cast into a den of lions. The thinking was that Daniel’s enemies knew that he regularly worshiped the one and only true God and that this practice would/should result in them no longer having to deal with him.
They also knew something else. In that empire (the Medo-Persian empire), once a law/decree was written down and signed by the king, it could not be changed. Nobody – not even the king – could change it.
I will leave it to you to remind yourself about how this plays out as you read or remember the book of Daniel. What I hope to do here is to attempt to make a present-day application. A couple of things have happened a lot more recently that made me think of that ancient empire and the book of Daniel.
Within just a couple of days of each other, two things occurred that prompted these thoughts. One of those things was that I listened to a podcast I normally listen to. Then, the very next day a post by Adam Faughn appeared on “A Legacy of Faith.” The podcast and the post had somewhat similar themes.
Both of them sounded to me a little like Ronald Reagan’s often repeated claim that he did not leave the Democratic Party, but that the party left him. Mr. Reagan was basically saying that his views and positions had not changed. He was “where he had always been.” He suggested that it was the political party he used to belong to that had moved.
Adam’s post contained a very similar message about churches. Far too many people claim that their church left them when, in fact, the church is “where it has always been” in terms of doctrine and practice. The people who are making the claim are the ones who have moved.
The podcast suggested much the same thing with regard to morality, decency, etc. Those who claim that people and values are moving away from them are actually the ones moving away from long accepted (and in some cases) biblical norms.
I’m thinking that we could learn a valuable lesson from those ancient Medes and Persians. I suppose that what I am thinking could be stated this way:
A written policy, statement, doctrine, etc.
from an authorized source supersedes everything else.
All of this reminds me of a story I heard years ago about a religious debate. Two preachers were debating the meaning of a particular passage of scripture.
As I remember it, one of the men spent a great deal of time using his rhetorical and “logical” skills to try to explain away the obvious meaning of the passage. As you might have already guessed, his reason for doing that was that the passage did not agree with the doctrine he taught. When he finished, the other man merely opened his Bible, turned to the passage, read it, and said, “It’s still there.”
That simple act and statement says a lot. There is one ultimate source of authority and He has given us in writing His will for our lives. It supersedes everything else – including our Constitution (which, after all, can be amended). Whenever there is any distance between that “Divine Document” and the religious doctrines I believe and practice or how I live my life in a moral and ethical sense, I need to understand that God is “where He has always been.”
AUTHOR: Jim Faughn