We all know how impressionable our children are. At a young age, they believe anything anyone tells them—whether it is true or not. As they grow older, their abilities to discern truth from error improves and then they stop believing everything they are told! In fact, we sometimes wonder if our teenagers listen to anything anyone else tells them anymore, except maybe their friends and the media.
Because children and teenagers are so impressionable and easily led, educators and politicians have recognized the need to educate them so that they can be good citizens. However, these very instruments–our schools and universities–an easily become, and indeed have become, places to indoctrinate our young people in the propaganda of the liberal, far left social agenda.
Both Everett Piper and Jonathan Haidt have written about the disruption on college campuses over the past decade as students have rioted, disinvited speakers who don’t agree with them, and had teachers fired over racial or sexual microaggressions.
Everett Piper, in his book Not a Daycare, writes that…
Our universities are doing a tremendous disservice, both to students and our culture, by letting students think they can bend reality to fit their whims. In the real world, people don’t get paid to be selfish and disruptive, but, rather, to be productive members of society….Our universities are producing a generation of Americans who are unable to function in the real world. We are quickly becoming a culture of Peter Pans, believing we can avoid reality in a Neverland of our own making. We’re encouraging students to embrace their selfish fantasies and to expect everyone around them to bend and submit to their narcissistic whims and personal prejudices. We have created a generation that expects to receive affirmation for every feeling they have and every emotion they feel. Objective reality doesn’t matter. Subjective opinions are king.
In their book The Coddling of the American Mind, by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt, they note that students have been, and will be taught three great untruths:
• First, what doesn’t kill you makes you weaker. They are not taught to handle adversity or opposition and thus learn to attack those who make them hurt in any way. They feel justified in attacking someone physically who has wounded them emotionally.
• Second, always trust your feelings. Facts don’t matter, narratives do. If your story feels right to you, no one can deny it. Whatever your desires are, that determines your identity and your reality.
• Third, life is a battle between good people and evil people. In other words, if you aren’t in my tribe, you are evil and I have a right to hate you.
They have forgotten what Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote in his The Gulag Archipelago:
“The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either — but right through every human heart — and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. And even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained”
You are in for a battle, and the world wants to change your mind. They want you to doubt what you have been taught at home and in the church. They want you to believe that “truth” is relative. But now there is no “truth,” just how people feel in the moment.
It’s not that you haven’t faced it before. It is all over the media we consume. But the difference is—at college you will be away from home, away from your roots. You will be told that your parents are old-fashioned, irrelevant and that your church taught you “dangerous” dogma.
In our universities and collage faculties here in the U. S. a notable shift began in the middle of the 1990s as the Greatest Generation was leaving the stage and the last Baby Boomers were taking up teaching positions. Between 1995 and 2010, members of the academy went from leaning left to being almost entirely on the left. Moderates declined by nearly a quarter and conservatives decreased by nearly a third.
As we look at the book of Daniel, we see that these four Hebrew friends that had been taken to Babylon, were in very vulnerable positions and might easily have given up on their beliefs and convictions in order to fit in with the Babylonian culture. It seems clear that Nebuchadnezzar’s Babylon U was all about trying to make good Babylonians out of any culture that was taken captive. Would Daniel and his friends succumb? What about you and me? We live in a culture that is very anti-God, post-truth, anything goes. We live in a culture that defines themselves by their desires (sexual desires) rather than God’s design. Will we stand for the truth? Will we be faithful to our God?
God had “given” Daniel and his friends to Nebuchadnezzar (Daniel 1:1). So we read in vv. 3-7,
Then the king commanded Ashpenaz, his chief eunuch, to bring some of the people of Israel, both of the royal family and of the nobility, youths without blemish, of good appearance and skillful in all wisdom, endowed with knowledge, understanding learning, and competent to stand in the king’s palace, and to teach them the literature and language of the Chaldeans. The king assigned them a daily portion of the food that the king ate, and of the wine that he drank. They were to be educated for three years, and at the end of that time they were to stand before the king. Among these were Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah of the tribe of Judah. And the chief of the eunuchs gave them names: Daniel he called Belteshazzar, Hananiah he called Shadrach, Mishael he called Meshach, and Azariah he called Abednego.
Soon after Nebuchadnezzar had conquered Jerusalem in 605 B.C., he received word that his father had died, so he quickly returned to Babylon to take care of the affairs of state. Some say he did this in an amazing march of two weeks (roughly 700 miles), taking Daniel and his friends with him, if we assume that they marched along one of the northern trade routes through Damascus that connected to Mari and then down the Euphrates River.
In order to govern such a large, diverse empire, Nebuchadnezzar saw the practical wisdom of recruiting and training individuals from different ethnic groups of his realm to serve within his state department. Nebuchadnezzar wanted the best and brightest minds at the service of his empire. Most Bible historians believe in the neighborhood of 60 young people were specifically marched the 700 miles to Babylon for this very purpose.
Notice that Daniel and his friends were the “cream of the crop,” being from royal or noble families. Some believe that Daniel was of the lineage of David (the “royal family”) while others hold that he was from a wealthy family in Jerusalem (“the nobility”).
According to Jerome’s Commentary on Daniel, Rabbinic tradition holds that Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah were descendants of King Hezekiah, based on Isaiah 39:7. (Jay Braverman, Jerome’s Commentary on Daniel: A Study of Comparative Jewish and Christian Interpretations of the Hebrew Bible (Washington. D.C.: Catholic Biblical Association of America, 1978), pp. 67, 68).
According to vv. 3-4 these young men had to meet some pretty high standards to meet the entrance requirements for Babylon U.
First, they were to be “youths without blemish.” In other words, Nebuchadnezzar only wanted flawless physical specimens in his court. The Hebrew word translated blemish (מְאוּם, mᵊʾûm) occurs in an alternate form in Lev 21:17–23 in which men with physical defects were disqualified for priestly service. It was not enough, however, that they be free of physical defect. Positively, they had to even be “good-looking” (lit., “those good in appearance”). Thus, a premium was placed upon physical condition and appearance.
Just as Israel often chose their first king based on physical qualities alone, Nebuchadnezzar was all about image. In other words, how they looked made him look good.
But they were not just brawn and beauty, they had to have brains as well. They had to be “skillful in all wisdom, endowed with knowledge, understanding learning.” He didn’t want good looking guys who couldn’t spell – they had to be bright too. A high IQ was mandatory.
“Wisdom is a rare commodity. The king was prepared to pay a high premium to find men who could speak with insight and clarity on complex issues that came to the attention of the throne” (John Phillips, Exploring the Book of Daniel, p. 31). You see wisdom is more than mere comprehension of the facts. Wisdom is the ability to skillfully and successfully apply knowledge and understanding to a specific situation. Any king or leader needs people like that.
They also had to be discerning, a reference to being able to gather data and correlate facts and then come to the right conclusion. This would come in handy in interpreting Nebuchadnezzar’s dreams. He wanted them to be inquisitive and informed.
Finally, they had to be able to “stand in the king’s court.” They not only needed IQ but EQ as well. They had to have refined manners. They had to know their way around a royal, political court with all its rules and regulations. Again, it is likely that they came from noble families, if not royalty itself.
I’m sure they would have to learn some new court procedures there in Babylon, but they had to show some aptitude to learning how to stand in the king’s court.
With all this potential, these youth weren’t given slave duty, they were given scholarships to Babylon U! How exciting! How enticing! How dangerous!
What was Nebuchadnezzar’s strategy in assimilating these young men into the culture of the day? What did he do to try to turn these servants of Yahweh into servants of Babylon and its gods?
First, Nebuchadnezzar brings these young men to a place far from home, far from the influence of their family and their religious support system. Marching through the Ishtar Gate, if there was ever a time to doubt the apparently defeated God of Judah, it was now. If there was ever a time to wonder about the promises of God’s earthly kingdom, it was now.
While together as a group of 60 or so young men, they were stripped of all their former educational and emotional support, making them easy prey for someone else to step in and become their “friend” or “mentor.”
Second, they were young. Most believe these young men were somewhere between 14 and 16 when they were captured. That is still a very impressionable time when young people are trying to figure out the meaning of life and what to do with their lives and are easily led by authority figures in their lives or by the peers around them.
The younger the subject, the longer he could serve in the royal court and the more impressionable he would be to the Babylonian worldview. And as Matthew Henry says, “He chose such as were young, because they would be tractable, would forget their own people and become Chaldeans (Matthew Henry’s Commentary: One Volume, p. 1083).
Warren Wiersbe said, “Obviously the purpose of their education was to transform these Jews into Babylonians” (Warren Wiersbe). He wants to reorient their worldview and capture their allegiance to his own culture and gods.
Third, although this isn’t clear from the text, it is quite possible that Nebuchadnezzar had all these young men emasculated. You will notice in verse 3 that the one in charge of these young men was Ashpenaz, who was Nebuchadnezzar’s “chief eunuch.”
There are a number of reasons to believe that Daniel and his friends were also eunuchs, very possibly “who have been made eunuchs by men.” D. A. Bayliss tells us that foreign kings normally surrounded themselves with eunuchs because then they would not have wives or families that would distract them from duty, or even worse, who might foment rebellion. We have no record in Scripture of Daniel being married or having a family and he showed no interest in returning to Jerusalem when that possibility arose. So “chief eunuch” may mean “chief of the eunuchs.”
If Daniel and his friends were made this way intentionally in a way that his faith taught him was a disgrace, now ripped away from his family and deposited in a strange land he had every reason to be confused, bitter and even angry or maybe more docile and submissive. This is what Nebuchadnezzar wanted. Out of this fertile ground he could turn them into good Babylonians.
Isaiah had made this prophecy to Hezekiah due to his entertaining the envoys of Babylon and showing them all the treasures in his palace (and very likely the “vessels of the house of God”), saying, “Behold, the days are coming, when all that is in your house, and that which your fathers have stored up till this day, shall be carried to Babylon. Nothing shall be left, says the LORD. And some of your own sons, who will come from you, whom you will father, shall be taken away, and they shall be eunuchs in the palace of the king of Babylon” (Isaiah 39:6-7). It is quite possible that Daniel and his friends are the very ones Isaiah prophesied about.
Fourth, these young men were chosen “to teach them the literature and language of the Chaldeans” (Daniel 1:4). No doubt this involved some of the occultic arts practiced at that time by “magicians and enchanters” (Dan. 1:20), who may even have been some of their teachers. In other words, they were to be indoctrinated into another culture, a godless culture, or rather a culture that would turn their hearts away from the true God to other gods.
While much of this literature would have been of an historical and legal nature, an extensive amount would have been religious, including omen texts, magic, sorcery, occultic practices, and the science of astrology. The Mosaic law had banned the practice of such occultic techniques (Deut. 18:10–12; cf. 1 Sam. 28:3–25). To read and study this material was not therefore strictly forbidden, but Daniel and his friends would have needed a strong walk with God and a biblical mindset to retain the ability to think critically when engaged in this type of study. Evidently, their esteem for God’s Word protected them during this time of indoctrination.
Imagine the influence these pagan Babylonian teachers had on these young teenagers in their classrooms, amazing them with all this new information. The Babylonians’ literature promoted their worldview, their view of man, their view of God, their view of sin, and their view of redemption, which were all directly opposed to everything these young teens had been taught and believed while in Israel.
Though Daniel and his friends went through these classes, they apparently resisted the pressure to change their thinking. This can be seen through the historical accounts of these young men in the chapters to follow.
But we cannot say that about all 60 or so of them. It is likely that many of them blessed their good fortune and became semi-pagans. After all, when you are in Babylon, you do as the Babylonians do.
The pressure on Christians to change their thinking today comes from the print media, movies, and television as well as from teachers. For example, we have all experienced the pressure of our society trying to change our thinking about homosexuality, calling it an alternate lifestyle. Books, even on the elementary level, teach children about “Heather who has two mommies.” They teach children that this is a good alternative. God calls it both shameful and a perversion in Romans 1:26, 27:
Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion.
Sometimes the world succeeds in molding and shaping our thinking, conforming our minds to the world (Romans 12:2), which is why Paul says that we must continually renew our minds in God’s Word.
Now, some may wonder whether it is appropriate for a Christian to attend a secular university. I think the implication of this text is that these young men were able to take this curriculum and cull from it what is in accordance with God’s truth, discerning truth from error and right from wrong. Other godly men did the same: Moses learned the wisdom of Egypt (Acts 7:22), and Paul spoke before the Supreme Court of Athens (the Areopagus), even quoting from their own poets.
We need to stand firm and resist the pressure. Be encouraged that Daniel and his three teenage friends stood firm against the Babylonian attempts to change their thinking. We will see what these Jewish teenagers and their parents did to prepare to withstand the pressure, because it is not easy. Christian, though the forces against you are great, take heart, stand firm, and dare to be a Daniel.
Grace Still Amazes 