...Including Their Wives and Children
- Rev. Aaron Houghton
- Aug 28, 2019
- 7 min read
Darius has those who conspired against Daniel thrown over to the lions along with their wives and children..and this is a story we’re teaching children at VBS next week? Graciously, our curriculum doesn’t really focus on this detail...but that doesn’t mean that it isn’t there. Nor does it tell me how the heck I, as a Christian, am supposed to cope with this act of brutal violence towards innocent women and children in the midst of a popular Bible story. When I was in elementary school, the children at my church put on Rescue in the Night, a musical singing the story of Daniel and the Lion’s Den. I was one of King Darius’ royal advisors, Crushafo, the captain of the guard...I remember walking around the stage with a fake dumbell and grunting a lot. It was a brilliant performance (if you ask real nice, I’ll bet my mom has a video of it somewhere). Crushafo, along with Taxalot, the keeper of the vault, and Astrofar, the royal astronomer, were the conspiring trio who tricked King Darius into passing a law they knew Daniel would break, and set the punishment for such disobedience to getting thrown into the lion’s den. Following the dramatic rescue of Daniel, the musical had the three advisors being given a “taste of their own medicine” at which point three lions ran out exclaiming, “Did somebody say taste?” and I was comically chased off-stage along with my co-conspirators.
The story we read in Daniel has a considerably less “comic” ending to it. We remember at the beginning of the chapter being introduced to 120 chief administrators. King Darius has them thrown into the lion’s pit, including their wives and children, whose bones are crushed to pieces before they even hit the bottom of the pit. Not quite a fitting scene for the ending of a children’s musical. This vindictive act led Norman Porteous to comment that perhaps “the author of our book had not learnt everything that God had to teach about the nature of justice (Towner, 86-87).” I must confess that there is a portion of my sinful human nature whose thirst for revenge is satisfied by those who conspired against Daniel getting what’s coming to them. But no part of me can get behind feeling good about including their wives and children in the punishment. Nor can I endorse, or feel good about worshiping a God who would give such cruelty the thumbs up. I agree with Porteous, the nature of God’s justice is not captured in violence, not even violence towards the wicked. There is a passage in the Talmud, which are Jewish commentaries on Scripture, at which the angels, seeing the Egyptians who have just been drowned in the Red Sea, are about to break into song but God stops them saying “how dare you sing for joy when My creatures are dying?”
But doesn’t the story suggest, in the case of Exodus at least, that God causes the sea to fall around the Egyptians? How can God cause the very thing God mourns? Even the Proverbs seem to be of two minds about this: 11:10 “When the wicked perish there is singing” but then in 24:17 “When your enemy falls, do not rejoice.” “We have to live with this dichotomy. If we are not happy about evil being punished, then we do not care enough, but if we are not sad at the loss of life, then our humanity is weakened.”
When I was Crushafo, I got to deliver this piece of royal counsel to the king: “Always trust in your own strength, O King. The smartest man is the one who can crush his enemies!” To which Daniel responded, “The Lord is my strength, Oh King. If God’s on your side, who can stand against you?” It is one of the ironies of human weakness that it would make us feel so desperate to prove our strength. Violence is the “quick fix” solution that sin has fed us for this sense of inadequacy from the very beginning. Think back to Cain and Abel...Cain was jealous of his brother and so he killed him. There. No more problem, right?
Royal advisors versus Daniel is the same story, different actors...and a different outcome. Jealous humans turn to violence to bolster their insecurities. God intervenes to protect innocent human from violence. But what about the wives and children? I’m still not comfortable with King Darius’ treatment of them. Nor am I comfortable saying that God is happy about their demise. Angry human turns to violence to satisfy thirst for revenge. To be honest, I’m not really comfortable with any story that promotes violence as a solution: frightened human turns to violence for comfort, hateful human turns to violence for release, weak human turns to violence for a sense of power...or even good human uses violence to stop the plans of the wicked.
Some of you may know that I had my laptop stolen out of my car last week. It was the first night I spent in my new home. I was telling my neighbors about it and they were shocked: “That just doesn’t happen around here, man.” They told me. I was heartened by their enthusiastic empathy, and comforted by the way the news spread and it seemed like within just a few hours, everyone on my block was keeping an eye out for my stolen computer. What I wasn’t comforted by was the enthusiasm which one of my neighbors showed towards making sure the person who had stolen my laptop would be punished if he ever found out who did it: “If I find the person who took your laptop, man...I’m gonna mess them up. I’m gonna make sure they know not to mess with you again.”
“Woah...woah...woah,” I said, “Please don’t hurt somebody on my account. I don’t need that, and this neighborhood doesn’t need that.”
Just because I’m not comfortable modeling my life by stories of violence, doesn’t mean I’m not entertained by them in fiction. Violence is exciting, and has always been one of the most popular and thrilling topics of literature, theater, film, and even history. It might be the most popular story, but it’s not the only story...and I’m willing to suggest it’s not the best one.
There is yet another story where human weakness seeks to defend its “strength” by deferring to violence. But this other story offers a different final conclusion. It is a story that offers me a model for living in which violence is not the go to solution for all of my problems. Introducing the Christian story: the story of God’s love overcoming the power of violence on the cross. What’s relevant for us as we prepare for VBS is realizing that we can use Daniel and the Lion’s Den to help us tell the story of Jesus Christ.
The passion of Jesus Christ is similar to the story of Daniel 6 in many ways: “[Daniel 6] begins with an account of conspiracy and betrayal by fellow [chief advisors]; in Matthew 26 Jesus’ passion begins with his announcement of his own betrayal, word of the conspiracy of the chief priests, scribes, and elders to catch Jesus, and finally Judas’ decision to betray him. The [chief advisors] despair of catching Daniel in any compromising situation and so seek to force a confrontation between his rock-like integrity and the law of the state; similarly, the accusers of Jesus can trap him only by reporting to Roman authority his messianic title, ‘King of the Jews’. On the eve of his arrest Daniel ‘prayed and gave thanks before his God, as he had done previously’; Jesus, too, is taken by the soldiers as he maintained his accustomed dialogue in prayer with God. In the actual confrontation with the authority, [King Darius] sympathizes with the accused and works for his release until at last--with deep misgiving--he is forced by his own law to bind the prisoner Daniel over for execution; in Matthew 26:19 Pilate’s wife warns her husband of Jesus’ innocence; Pilate himself protests his innocence to the crowd. In the end he honors the law that allows him to release to the crowd the one condemned man whom they demand. He then washes his hands of Jesus’ innocent blood. The parallel continues from this point, though without the ongoing participation of the authority; Daniel is executed and his torture chamber/ tomb is closed with a stone and sealed; Jesus is executed and his tomb is closed with a stone and sealed. And of course the [dramatic resolution] of both accounts is the same: the person presumed dead reappears from the tomb, vindicated by God’s saving power. The fundamental difference in the two accounts emerges just here, of course: Jesus really did die and was raised, whereas for Daniel an angel shut the lions’ mouths and when he emerged from the den ‘no kind of hurt was found upon him for he trusted in his God.’ Jesus trusted God, too, but grievous--indeed fatal--wounds were found upon him--and God’s victory over them and death was therefore all the more overwhelming. (Towner, 84)”
Jesus confronts violence by dying to it. Jesus shows strength, not buy crushing his enemies, not by allowing his disciples to lift their swords to defend him, not by starting a war, but by exposing the weakness of violence against the strength of God.
The final conclusion: “God will achieve his redemptive purposes without ‘breaking into pieces’ the bones of all those who sin against him.” Just speaking candidly as a sinner, here, but...that’s good news. Let us not forget, King Darius first threw his favorite advisor to the lions because the “law”, which he had been tricked into writing, said that “it must be so.” That’s one of many things I really like about Jesus, if a law is stupid and going to hurt people, he isn’t afraid to question or disobey it. In order to save us from tremendous pain Jesus disobeyed the laws of death. My inclination then, as one who has played the role of Crushafo, is not to submit to King Darius who threw his enemies to the lions, but to submit to the care and teachings of King Jesus, who says that we must learn to love our enemies (including their wives and children).
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