A Peculiar Pattern In The Book of Daniel

(c)iStockphoto.com/whitemay

This year I’m doing something I’ve never done: I’m reading the entire Bible through in historical order, the order the events in the Bible happened, not when they were written.

It’s been a fascinating journey, one that has enabled me to see things in the Bible I had never noticed. I made one such discovery last week in the Book of Daniel.

Daniel is a fascinating book for me because it describes broad swaths of world history. There is prophecy pertaining to the Babylonian Empire, the coming Persian, Greek and Roman empires.

There is mention of Nebuchadnezzar, Cyrus the Great and prophecies regarding Alexander the Great and Antiochus Epiphanes IV, major historical figures and objects of study for even secular historians.

It is in the context of this setting and description of historical world-dominating empires that something peculiar emerges regarding the coming kingdom of God.

The Book of Daniel essentially starts with the story of Daniel interpreting the prophetic dream of Babylonian emperor Nebuchadnezzar, which concludes with a description of the kingdom of God, “And in the days of those kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom which will never be destroyed…it will itself endure forever.” (Daniel 2:44)

Later Nebuchadnezzar, after having an interesting encounter with God, praises Him and states in a written declaration, “His kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and His dominion is from generation to generation.” (Daniel 4:3).

Then during the reign of Nebuchadnezzar’s successor, Belshazzar, Daniel has a vision, at the end of which he declares “His dominion is an everlasting dominion which will not pass away; and His kingdom is one which will not be destroyed.” (Daniel 7:14)

After that Darius the Mede ascends to the throne and seeing the miraculous delivery of Daniel from the lions’ den proclaims, “For He is the living God and enduring forever, and His kingdom is one which will not be destroyed, and His dominion will be forever.” (Daniel 6:26).

It’s almost as if God placed this repeating theme of the enduring nature of the kingdom of God in the midst of this book of great earthly kingdoms and rulers to make a point: All these earthly kingdoms, the greatest the earth has had to offer, ultimately were conquered by others, but the kingdom of God will never be left for another people and will endure forever. The Lord even has two non-Jewish earthly rulers proclaim this truth so that we don’t miss the point.

And there is one last point. The enduring nature of the kingdom of God is not merely a result of the promise of an afterlife, but it is a characteristic of the kingdom of God on earth. The kingdom of God has endured and will continue to endure, not only because it offers life after death, but before it. GS

What I Learned About God From My Cat

My Cat, Godfrey 2010 (c) Gregory Scott

My cat, Godfrey, was not happy with me.   It was time for dinner, he was hungry and I hadn’t fed him.  So, each time I walked into the kitchen he ran over to me, cried, ran back to where we feed him and then looked back over his shoulder at me.  I got it, but he didn’t think I got it.

I couldn’t feed him because he was going to the veterinarian the next day for an endoscopy.  You see, Godfrey tends to toss his cookies and the endoscopy was supposed to help us understand why.  The problem is Godfrey didn’t understand all that.

I tried to explain it to him.  I told him he couldn’t eat because if he ate, the endoscopy wouldn’t work, and if the endoscopy didn’t work we wouldn’t be able to see what was wrong with him, and if we couldn’t see what was wrong with him, he would keep barfing.  But I could tell he didn’t get it.  He just sat there staring at me, meowing plaintively.

I tried speaking very slowly. I’ve even spelled it out for him, e-n-d-o-s-c-o-p-y, but it wasn’t registering.  He knew I loved him and fed him every day, and it didn’t make sense to him why I was not feeding him this night.

The thing is, Godfrey is a smart cat. When he wants me to hold him he gets up next to me and taps me on the shoulder with his paw.  When he wants a certain type of food, he walks into the pantry and taps on the bag with his paw.  But he doesn’t see and think on the level of complexity that I, as a human being, can, and I can’t explain it to him in any way that will satisfy him.

I’m confident God is farther above us than I am above Godfrey.  If He wasn’t we would probably be disappointed in Him.  I suspect that also means there are some painful things we go through that, as much as God may want to explain, we are not capable of understanding.  He sees so much and understands the cause and effect of things on a much higher level of complexity than we could ever understand.  So, instead, at times, He just asks us to trust Him.

Now if I can just figure out how to explain that to Godfrey. GS

Apologies, Muslims, Reagan & Communists

I don’t know if you read Nicholas Kristoff’s op-ed piece in the NY Times Saturday, Message To Muslims: I’m Sorry.

Mr. Kristoff is a Pulitzer Prize winning writer, known for bringing to light human rights abuses in Asia and Africa and has been referred to by Jeffrey Toobin as “the moral conscience of our generation of journalists.”

In the piece, Mr. Kristoff correctly states many Muslims are compassionate, peaceful, and altruistic. He expresses regret for Americans equating Muslims with terrorists, suggests Americans should not malign Islam because of the acts of Islamic terrorists, and apologizes to Muslims for those who have done so.

Mr. Kristoff is undoubtedly correct that there are many Muslims who are compassionate, peaceful, and altruistic and that they should be treated like human beings, not terrorist monsters. I’ll go further: Christians should love not only peaceful Muslims but Muslim terrorists.

But Mr. Kristoff is undoubtedly wrong in suggesting–as it seems he does–that the relative goodness of the Muslims he identifies as compassionate, peaceful, and altruistic should exempt Islam from public scrutiny.

First, Mr. Kristoff’s premise is fuzzy. Does he mean by “equating Muslims with terrorists” that he believes Americans are accusing all Muslims of being terrorists? I’ve not heard anyone suggest that. I have heard people say Islam is not a “religion of peace” and question the earnestness of Muslims who say it is. There is nothing persecutory or bigoted about that. It’s a fair question.

Second, Americans believe the public square is the marketplace of ideas. Islam is an idea, just as Christianity is. Ideas can be true, false, good or bad. But the American experiment is rooted in the supposition that discussion is the means by which we arrive at the proper conclusion about any idea. Mr. Kristoff seems to suggest Islam should be exempt from that discussion. (By the way, in a typical Islamic state there is no such discussion).

There should be no surprise that Islam’s stock is currently down in America. It could have something to do with Muslims flying planes into buildings, threatening, in the name of Allah, to kill cartoonists and would-be book burners. Even if that is the impetus for the discussion, it doesn’t delegitimize the argument.

I get the impression Mr. Kristoff wants to make sure people are treated fairly and humanely and that he believes by exempting Islam from the public discussion it is more likely we will all get along. He seems like a good and thoughtful man, and his intent should be lauded. We need men and women like Mr. Kristoff who can talk people off the ledge of bigotry and xenophobia. But at some point Truth matters, and refusing to talk about the underlying idea at issue doesn’t bring resolution or peace; it just postpones them.

I remember the media raging at Ronald Reagan  for calling the Soviet Union an “evil empire.” I’m sure there were Soviet communist party members who were compassionate, peaceful, and altruistic people at the time, and there were plenty of journalists–probably some who worked for the New York Times–who suggested the answer to the Cold War standoff was to seek a better understanding of the Soviet people and their needs and fears.

Instead Reagan thrust the question into the public square.Does the tens of millions murdered by Stalin, the tens of million imprisoned for their political or religious beliefs, or the hundreds of millions robbed of their freedom by the Soviet empire qualify it for the label, “evil”? It was a legitimate question, and we are all the better for having asked it. GS

On Intolerance

(c)iStockphoto.com/focus97

There’s much talk today of the evils of intolerance. It’s the one thing our increasingly post-modern culture agrees is morally wrong. I think they are wrong, which I suppose makes me intolerant of their tolerance.

“Tolerance” means “the capacity for or the practice of recognizing and respecting the beliefs of others.” (The American Heritage Dictionary, 4th Ed.) “Respect” means “[t]o feel or show deferential regard for; esteem.” Id. So, to be intolerant means to fail to esteem the beliefs of others.

If I affirm some things, I am necessarily rejecting–or being intolerant–of other things. For example, for me to say my iMac mouse is white is to also say it is not black. To esteem the belief that the mouse is black when I know it is white is insanity. Likewise, for me, as a Christian, to esteem a religion that asserts there are many ways to God, or a way other than Jesus, when Jesus said no one comes to God except through Him, is to cut off the branch upon which I sit. Intolerance then is not evil but a logical necessity.

Intolerance is amoral. It is its object that determines in any given situation whether intolerance is good or evil. If I’m intolerant to injustice committed against the poor, my intolerance is good; if I’m intolerant of righteous acts my intolerance is bad.

There is something else wrong with the clarion call to tolerance. Tolerance is utterly impotent to inspire men to great acts. Who has ever laid down his life for tolerance? It is intolerance we have to thank for many of our heroes; it is the fuel of bravery. It was intolerance for Nazi fascism that inspired Americans to volunteer and risk their lives in World War II. It was intolerance for racism and injustice that inspired Martin Luther King, Jr. into the streets to mobilize the peaceful protests that would transform a nation. Tolerance compels no such action.

That is why tolerance will never abide as a virtue. It’s a chimera of a humanistic culture, unable to inspire men to greatness and so devoid of content as to make it useless as a virtue. The answer to bigotry is not tolerance but righteousness, or put another way, intolerance for bigotry.

So, next time someone accuses you of being intolerant just consider it an affirmation of your sanity. GS

On Trees And The Kingdom of God

Good communicators understand their audience.

So, when Jesus spoke to an audience of Jewish people and told them the kingdom of God was a mustard seed that becomes like a tree so that birds nest in its branches (Matthew 13:31-32), I want to know what the Jews would have thought he meant by such a tree. I want to know what image and meaning Jesus was trying to evoke in his audience, and to understand that I need to understand His audience.

The Jews knew the Old Testament. They were taught to memorize it as children and write it on their doorposts. They heard it recited repeatedly in the synagogue. When Jesus told them the kingdom of God was like a tree, He was using a popular Old Testament metaphor for earthly kingdoms that Jesus knew his Jewish audience would recognize and understand.

In Ezekiel 31 the Lord, referring to the Assyrian Empire calls it a tree “loftier than all the tress of the field” and that “[a]ll the birds of the heavens nested in its boughs” and “all great nations lived under its shade.” (Ezekiel 31:5-6).

In the Book of Daniel, Nebuchadnezzar has a prophetic vision wherein the Babylonian Empire  is represented as a tree that “grew large and became strong” and the “beasts of the field found shade under it, and the birds of the sky dwelt in its branches.” (Daniel 4:11-12).

Then, referring to King Jesus and the kingdom of God, in Ezekiel 17 the Lord, through Ezekiel, says He will take a tender twig from the top of a cedar and plant it “on the high mountain of Israel and that it will “became a stately cedar…And birds of every kind will nest under it; they will nest in the shade of its branches.” (Ezekiel 17:22-23).

So, when Jesus told His Jewish audience the kingdom of God would become like a tree and birds would nest in its branches they would have understood He was talking about an earthly kingdom under whose covering the nations of the world would enjoy protection and provision. GS