Nebuchadnezzar's Chaldean Scholarship
This is an excerpt from a sermon I gave on May 23:

This Babylonian education that Daniel was getting was as much about making good servants for the king as it was about them actually learning anything. Our schools are not just places of learning either, they are cultural institutions. Our government makes sure that when you graduate high school, somewhere along the way, you have learned modern mathematical and scientific practice, like the length of the third side of a triangle, Canadian history, like knowing the first prime minister of Canada was Sir John A. MacDonald, Canadian language, like knowing enough French to be able to read the cereal box in the morning, and Canadian literature, so you’ll probably have read something by Margaret Atwood or Mordecai Richler. Our universities work the same way. Engineers graduating from the University of Calgary and from the University of Waterloo should both be able to design structures and machines that adhere to Canadian safety standards.

The same is also true about our Mennonite schools. My EMC church back home was hoping that when I graduated high school, that I go to Steinbach Bible College in Manitoba. MCEC churches hope that their young people will go off to Conrad Grebel in Waterloo, CMU in Winnipeg, Goshen in Indiana or Concord College in BC. At these schools, we hope: 1) that they would fill their minds with Biblical studies, Anabaptist Theology, Mennonite history and social justice issues, 2) that they would come back and through preaching or whatever, share this information with the rest of the community, and 3) that they would marry someone who believes the same things. Why do we do this? We do this, because we like our institution, and we want it to last. Of course it is important to remember that the church is supposed to be the embodiment of the kingdom of God, and not solely a human institution. We keep this in mind, but at the same time, we want our other institutions to survive. We want our farms and businesses to succeed, and we hope that people run them with integrity after we can’t anymore. We want our families and communities to stay together and thrive well into the future. I hope that I can have kids some day, and I hope that small towns like Tavistock survive the urbanize of our society, where people are moving more and more into the cities.

This is what King Nebuchadnezzar is doing. He has an institution, his kingdom, and he wants to maintain it, by creating a group of people who are all well versed in the culture. Now, we would understand if Daniel and his Jewish friends resisted, and said, 'Look, we are not contributing to this Babylonian machine.' But they did not resist, in fact, not only did they take the education, but, with God’s help, they came out it knowing this Chaldean language and literature better than any of the other students, as we see in 1:18-20. 'At the end of the time that the king had set for them to be brought in, the palace master brought them into the presence of Nebuchadnezzar, and the king spoke with them. And among all, no one was found to compare with Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah; therefore they were stationed in the king’s court. In every matter of wisdom and understanding concerning which the king inquired of them he found them ten times better than all the magicians and enchanters in his whole kingdom.'

The point of this story, is not absolute resistance to government decrees, but to discern as to which decrees we can and should follow, and which ones go against the decrees given to us by God."

   [ posted by William @ 2:58 PM ]