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SHADRACH, MESHACH, AND ABEDNEGO
Shad·rach, Mee-shack
& A·bed·ne·go
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“...We will not worship
your gods or worship the golden image which you have set up.”
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No matter that this Book of Daniel barely made it into the Bible and that
its message is carried in highly metaphorical stories. It’s a good read. |
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Here are some good guy fanatics willing to die for their faith. Anyone
else would have crossed fingers and agreed to fall down and worship the
king rather than be cast into the fiery furnace. |
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We tend to think zealots are nuts. In fact, that could be largely correct.
The halls of mental hospitals are filled with religious zealqts. People
of strong religious convictions are out there killing one another...and
us. |
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But Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego are the heroes of this story, so we
pay attention. |
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Their ways are not the king’s ways—or our ways. |
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For some reason they remind me of the three Baptist missionary physicians
recently murdered by a religious zealot in Yemen. I refrained from saying
“mentally deranged religious zealot,” assuming that you might already have
that opinion. |
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What the heck were these docsctoing out there in the Persian Gulf? Didn’t
they know that Yemen is full of folks who hate Americans? Weren’t they
aware that their President, back in the USA, was sending 10’s of 1,000’s
of America’s finest warriors, armed with the greatest military weapons
in the history.of the world, to deal with the terrorist threat? |
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“...We will not worship your gods or worship the golden image which you
have set up.” |
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Actually, those were not the words Qf the physicians, but their actions
made the same declaration. They served a different king. Their action,
naïve as it seemed, declared a wholly different way of dealing with
terrorist hatred toward Americans. It was based on the idea that forcing
zealots into becoming martyrs merely creates more zealots. It’s something
like how abusers create abusers by abuse. Even as our troops steam toward
the Middle East, new martyrs are being recruited. |
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So they came with healing hearts and hands into the midst of a society
that needed their skills. They came without wealth or weapons to offer
an alternate American response to the distrust boiling in those far places.
They came to honor the King of their spirits rather than the king of their
country. |
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They rejected the way of their king and placed themselves in danger of
the fiery furnace. |
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Now, I’m not big on missionaries. In fact, most countries won’t allow the
old time evangelist missionaries to come. They will accept educators and
health specialists, like those three doctors. They accept help with their
agriculture and development needs. If Christians have human compassion
and some skills to match, they are welcome. |
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I’m not big on the old time Baptist zealots either. I’ve read Kinsolving’s
“Poisonwood Bible,” which characterizes the way the missionary movement
used to be. But who would argue against the bringing of compassionate healing
to sick people? |
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Here’s my bottom line (I can already see the dots at the end of my page).
Those three doctors, who risked the fiery furnace, represent a way that
is more likely to win the hearts of those who both fear and resent our
materialism and secularism and wealth and militarism, than will the threat
of bombs and missiles and hoards of America’s finest and best military
personnel. They. entered the furnace as fools for Christ. In my writing
of the book, they emerge as men on the right side of God.
— Art Morgan,
Jan. 2003
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