CHAPTER TWO
CAUGHT IN THE BACKWASH
How Big Is Our God?
Recess was the highlight of my elementary school experience. The homework, study drills, and tests were simply the price I had to pay for a sweaty game of tag, dodgeball, or football.
One year we had a particularly big event on the schedule. It was the final game in a schoolwide baseball tournament. This wasn’t a lunchtime or recess game. It was bigger than that. It was scheduled to take place during our normal class time. That alone made it a big deal. But better yet, the winning team would be crowned as the Grazide Elementary School World Champions.
I was the pitcher.
It was an epic opportunity.
At least I thought so at the time.
Caught in the Backwash
On the day of the big game, our whole class was amped. Our teacher warned us that if we didn’t settle down, we wouldn’t be allowed to play. We shut up like church mice. No one wanted to risk it. We knew she meant it. We flipped the switch and immediately donned our best behavior.
Unfortunately, we had a couple of kids in the class whose best behavior wasn’t very good. They were out of control, pretty much on a daily basis. So it was no surprise when Marvin let out a yelp and took a wild swing at Steven, who had apparently snuck up and given him a wet willy.
Our teacher lost it. Mrs. Eisman (I’ll call her Mrs. Eisman because … well … her name was Mrs. Eisman) screamed at the whole class. She marched Marvin and Steven off to the principal’s office and came back to inform the rest of us that we would spend the remainder of the afternoon reading and diagramming sentences.
Our big game was off.
Permanently.
We forfeited.
I lost my chance to be a world champion.
It was a bad day for a bunch of good kids who got caught in the backwash of Marvin and Steven’s depravity.
I’m over it now.
Mostly.
Still, I learned an important lesson that day: Sometimes the innocent suffer with the guilty. They can get caught in the backwash.
Obviously, our little baseball game was no big deal in the bigger scheme of life. But when someone else’s foolish or evil behavior destroys our health, our marriage, our job, or our lifelong dream, that’s a different matter. It’s not so easy to move on or get over it. But that’s what Daniel had to do. He was caught in the backwash of God’s judgment upon sins that were not his own. He had no other choice.
Daniel’s Dilemma
God had repeatedly warned the leaders and people of Jerusalem to repent and return to him or suffer the consequences. Yet they turned a deaf ear. They continued to disobey with high-handed arrogance.
Finally, God had enough. He brought down the hammer. He handed Jerusalem over to the wicked Babylonians, who besieged the city, raided the temple, and carried off the best and the brightest of Jerusalem’s young men, including Daniel and three of his good friends.
Now I want to be clear. God didn’t lose it like Mrs. Eisman did.
God doesn’t have a temper problem. His discipline and judgment are perfect in timing and scope. They are never unwarranted or out of line. When it comes to dealing with his children, even his harshest judgments are carried out with our best interests in mind, always with the purpose that we may share in his holiness.1
The citizens of Jerusalem got exactly what they deserved and what they needed in order to turn their hearts back to God. Unfortunately for Daniel and his three friends, they got caught in the middle of it all. They were carted off to Babylon with other young nobles, forced to enter the service of a wicked and egomaniac king named Nebuchadnezzar.
Yet Daniel never complained, never whined, and never gave in to despair.
He understood an important principle. He knew that God was in control of who was in control, even when the wicked gained an upper hand. In fact, it’s the first thing he points out when he begins to tell his story.
It Was the Lord …
Daniel starts his book by emphasizing that Babylon’s victory over Jerusalem wasn’t a tragic triumph of evil over good. It was the Lord’s will. It was God’s doing. Here’s what he writes:
Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came to Jerusalem and besieged it. And the Lord delivered Jehoiakim king of Judah into his hand, along with some of the articles from the temple of God. These he carried off to the temple of his god in Babylonia and put in the treasure house of his god.2
From Daniel’s perspective, it was God who gave Babylon the victory. It was God who turned the holy things in the temple over to Nebuchadnezzar. It was God who allowed them to be placed in the treasure house of a pagan god. And it was God who allowed Nebuchadnezzar to get away with mocking the God of Israel as an inferior and defeated foe.
Don’t miss this. From the first page to the last, Daniel clearly saw God’s hand in everything that happened. It’s the foundation upon which his hope, humility, and wisdom rested.
When the Lord Is Behind Everything, It Changes Everything
Frankly, there is no way to make sense of Daniel’s response to the wickedness that surrounded him without understanding his deep trust in the sovereignty of the Lord. God’s control was the lens through which he viewed everything that happened to him and to his nation. And it’s the first thing he wants us to know before he dives into the rest of his story.
I am not saying (and Daniel isn’t implying) that God’s ultimate control of people and nations turns us into mere puppets on a string. We aren’t mindless droids carrying out bit parts in a preordained cosmic theater.
We have freedom—a lot of it.
We can choose to live within God’s will or outside of his will. Our choices really matter. They determine outcomes. We alone are responsible for our actions. We can’t blame them on God or on anyone else.3
God’s sovereign control simply means that in the bigger scheme of things, there are no accidents. His plans will not be thwarted. He is never surprised or befuddled. At the end of the day, everything will be found to have worked together for the good of his people and the glory of his name. Even when the wicked seem to prevail, he is at work. His kingdom will come. His will will be done.
For Daniel, God’s sovereign control over men and nations factored into every equation. No matter what happened, he never forgot that his God was far bigger than Babylon.
Which invites the question: How big is our God?
How Big Is Our God?
If we’re honest, I think many of us would admit that we sometimes fear that our God might not be as big as our Babylon. Now we’d never say that out loud. But it’s how we feel and respond, both emotionally and behaviorally.
That’s what makes Daniel’s story so important today.
If we want to make a dent in our modern-day Babylon, we need to take our cues from the man God used to influence the original Babylon. And it all starts with a grasp of something we can too easily forget when caught in the backwash: God is in control of who is in control.
He always has been and always will be.