CHAPTER THREE
SURROUNDED BY EVIL
How Bad Can It Get?
If you feel as if our culture is headed to hell in a handbasket, you’re not alone.
Most people have felt that way throughout history. Almost every generation looks back and wonders what happened to the “good old days.” It’s human nature. The evils of the past tend to fade from memory, while the injustices and evils of the present stand out in bold relief.
Perhaps that’s why Solomon wrote, “Do not say, ‘Why were the old days better than these?’ For it is not wise to ask such questions.”1
The Good Old Days
I have a pastor friend who regularly bemoans the lack of moral fiber in our political leaders, the media, and youth. He sees it as something unique to our modern era. Yet when I read the cultural critiques of spiritual leaders long dead, I’m struck by the fact that they said much the same thing.
None of them waxed eloquent about living in a day of righteousness and purity. I’m pretty sure they’d be shocked to learn that their days of evil have now become our good old days.
Our tendency to look at the past through rose-colored glasses isn’t just restricted to the long distant past. It also includes the fairly recent past. Consider how many Christians look back at the 1950s and the days of Leave It to Beaver as the golden era of family values and godly culture. While they were indeed good times if you were a white middle-class suburbanite, they were hardly the glory days of family values and godly culture if you were a black family living under the last vestiges of segregation and Jim Crow.
That’s why I cringe when I hear aging baby boomers decry the moral and political chaos that has overtaken our country. No doubt things are a mess. But I wonder if these former hippies have forgotten or simply romanticized the decadent and violent days of their youth.
Political leaders and presidents were shot at or assassinated about as often as rap artists are today. An unpopular war cost fifty-eight thousand American lives. Those who bravely served our country returned home to be treated with unwarranted scorn. Promiscuous sex and hallucinatory drugs were celebrated as the path to enlightenment. Race riots set major cities aflame. Police were called pigs. And no one over the age of thirty was to be trusted. Worse, some people wore leisure suits—in public—and they were proud of it.
It’s Never Been Easy
It’s never been easy to live a godly life. The pressures and challenges we face today may be daunting, but they’re nothing new. I hear it was rather tough in the first century. It’s still incredibly dangerous in Iran, Saudi Arabia, China, and many other places.
Granted, those of us who take Scripture seriously are often written off as ignorant or narrow-minded bigots in America today. And it’s becoming increasingly common to be discriminated against for simply articulating biblical values. But let’s be real. We’ve got it easy compared to many who are attempting to live their lives for Jesus in other parts of the world. We have nothing to whine about.
It’s not illegal to pray. We can own a Bible. We can utter Jesus’s name without fear of being tossed into jail or killed. When we refuse to bow down to the idols of our culture we may lose our job. We may lose some friends. But we won’t be thrown into a fiery furnace.
Again, that’s why Daniel’s story is so important. It not only gives us a template to live by, but it also gives us perspective. Because no matter how bad things get, Daniel had it far worse.
When it comes to evil, Babylon has no equal.
Let me show you what I mean.
As Evil as Evil Gets
The Bible says that immediately before Jesus’s return, a mighty angel will come down from heaven crying out, “Fallen! Fallen is Babylon the Great!”2
Now that’s strange because historic Babylon has ceased to exist and according to biblical prophecy will never be rebuilt or inhabited again. So why harken back to a kingdom that’s already long gone?
The answer is simple. Babylon is the personification of evil. Even at the end of human history, it will still represent to the angelic host the worst of the worst. Nothing will ever reach its depths of depravity. Not al Qaeda. Not Mexican drug lords. Not the Tower of Babel. Not Sodom. Not Gomorrah. Not even Nazi Germany.
So what made Babylon so bad?
How did it become the biblical metaphor for all that is wicked and evil?
A Godless King
To begin with, Babylon’s king was a godless ruler named Nebuchadnezzar. He was an egomaniac, known to be hotheaded, murderous, vain, unreasonable, and incredibly cruel.3
After conquering Jerusalem, he took a number of holy items from God’s temple and brought them back to Babylon in order to put them on display. He placed them in the temple of his demonic god, Marduk. It was his way of publicly mocking the God of Israel.4
Later he built a ninety-foot golden statue as a tribute to his personal power and fame. He demanded that everyone bow down and worship it. Those who refused were immediately put to death.5
Another time, following a disturbing dream, he ordered his wise men and enchanters to interpret the dream. But in line with his unreasonableness and cruelty, he refused to tell them what he had dreamed. He told them to figure it out on their own. And when they couldn’t, he ordered his executioner to kill them all.
Fortunately, before they could be killed, God revealed to Daniel both the dream and the interpretation. But had he not, Nebuchadnezzar would have slain all of them (Daniel included) for their inability to answer the most unreasonable of requests.
A Godless Religious and Educational System
Babylon was also known for its demonic influences. The state-sponsored religion was satanic, and the core curriculum in the schools of higher learning included a large dose of astrology and the occult.
In order to prepare for service to the king, Daniel and his three friends were forced to complete a rigorous three-year study program. It consisted of learning the language and literature of the Chaldeans, which means that it was designed to certify them as enchanters and magicians, experts in the dark practices of the occult.
Now I live in California, often called the land of fruits and nuts. Our legislature has passed some bizarre laws. Our courts have made some strange decisions. Our schools have introduced some weird curricula.
But I guarantee you, on the worst day, in the worst class, with the worst teacher, my kids were never exposed to anything as godless and flat-out demonic as the standard curriculum in Daniel’s classroom.
No way.
Never.
Not even close.
None of my kids had to get a degree in the occult in order to land a good job.
A Spiritually Hostile Environment
To make matters worse, Babylon was fiercely hostile to the spiritual values Daniel and his friends held dear.
One of the first things they had to endure was a name change.
Daniel means “God is my judge.” His Babylonian captors immediately changed it to Belteshazzar, which means “Bel’s prince.” Bel was a title for their demonic god, Marduk. The Babylonians used it in much the same way that we use the title Lord to speak of our God. It would be like having your name changed from Christian to Satan’s Prince.
The same thing happened to his three friends. Their names were changed in a blatant attempt to blot out any connection to their homeland and their God. It was Babylon’s way of forcing their captives to adopt a new identity and a new god.6
Even the food they were served attacked their faith. As wise men and enchanters in training, Daniel and his buddies were supposed to be fed from the king’s table. It was a diet rich in foods expressly forbidden in the Law of Moses.
It was all they had to eat. That put them in a tough spot. It’s not as if they had any kosher vending machines, delis, or grocery stores to turn to. They could either break God’s dietary laws or starve to death.
Rather than railing at his captors, Daniel calmly came up with a creative solution. He sweet-talked their guard into a ten-day test diet of vegetables and water. Then God stepped in. At the end of ten days Daniel and his friends weren’t just healthy; they appeared to be better nourished than everyone else. So their guard let them skip the king’s table for the remainder of their training.
But don’t let this one small victory fool you. The cultural and spiritual assault against Daniel’s values and traditions and God’s law was immense and pervasive. There was no escaping it. When it came to staying kosher, he won. But when it came to his name, the things he had to study, and the wicked king he had to serve, he lost.
But that’s not even the worst of it.
Daniel also had to deal with something that none of my Sunday school teachers ever told me about.
Something Else My Sunday School Teachers Forgot to Tell Me
Daniel and his friends suffered the indignity of castration. They were turned into eunuchs. Now I admit that Daniel doesn’t say so explicitly. But it’s strongly implied, as a quick lesson in ancient history and Jewish culture will reveal.
In ancient cultures it was incredibly important for a man to have a family, especially sons. They provided him with status. They worked his land and tended his flocks. They also served as a financial safety net. Without social security, pensions, or IRA accounts, there was nothing else to depend on in your old age.
In addition, sons provided a Jewish man with a legacy and a continuing place in the annals of God’s people. Without sons, his family’s allotted portion of the Promised Land would be handed over to others. His name would fade from memory. It would be as if he never existed.
That’s why the Old Testament places such an emphasis on ancestry and family lines. It really mattered who begat whom. Those who were without offspring were looked upon with pity. Some even considered them to be cursed by God.
Yet when it comes to Daniel and his friends, there is absolutely no mention of any spouse or family in the entire book or the rest of Scripture. In a Jewish context, such silence is deafening.
Add to that the fact that powerful kings of antiquity routinely took the best and the brightest from conquered lands and brought them home. The best women were enrolled into the king’s harem. The best men were placed into his service as high-level stewards and slaves.
Daniel describes the kind of young men who were imported from Jerusalem to serve in Nebuchadnezzar’s court: “young men without any physical defect, handsome, showing aptitude for every kind of learning, well informed, quick to understand, and qualified to serve in the king’s palace.”7
Now obviously these are not the kind of men a king would want hanging around his harem. So to eliminate any problems (and to remove any chance of a testosterone-driven rebellion), kings routinely had such men emasculated and turned into eunuchs. In fact, the man in charge of Daniel’s training was himself a eunuch, the “chief of the eunuchs.”8
The Death of a Dream
I don’t know about you. But when I consider all that Daniel had to deal with, I don’t have much to complain about. All my excuses about how hard it is to live for God these days sound pretty lame.
Daniel was a young man with a bright future. He seemed to have it all. He was noble, a member of the royal family. And not just any young noble, he was the cream of the crop—first pick on the playground, teacher’s pet, the kind of young man everyone wanted to be.
Then one day it all ended. A godless army besieged his homeland. His king surrendered. He and his friends were summarily hauled off to a strange land, with a strange language, to study a demonic curriculum in order to enter the service of an evil king.
Add in his castration and you have a really horrible, rotten, no-good day.
His dream had suddenly turned into a nightmare.
But in the midst of his nightmare, God showed up. He gave Daniel a plan and path to follow. And by following it, Daniel thrived in the most unlikely of places.
But that raises another troubling question: Why would God let the bad guys win in the first place? What’s up with that?