Can we tell just one more story? Preparing our kids for unknown pressures

We had just finished reading bedtime stories when my son asked, “Can we tell each other just one more story?” Typically I would have said no; we had our routine and this was probably a stall tactic. But I decided to indulge him. I’d just read Jesus’ warning that the beginning of the Great Tribulation would be signaled by “the abomination of desolation spoken of by the prophet Daniel,” and had been reflecting on different times in history when Christians have been deceived into following leaders who have essentially demanded their worship. And so I began, “One day Jerusalem was besieged by the Babylonians, and four teenage boys were captured and led off far from home. Their names were Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego…”

There is so much that I wonder about this story. The Bible describes these four boys as “youths.” All of the sources I’ve read put them between 11-16 years old. How in the world did these teenagers have the discernment and strength to resist the king’s choice food (during their 3 year re-education program), claim that God might reveal Nebuchadnezzar’s dream to Daniel, and then refuse to bow down to the king’s image of gold?

I wonder how they developed the ability to think independently of their peers and those in authority, taking seriously dietary laws and idol worship even as young teenagers living without their family’s guidance. For most of my life I had assumed that they were just maintaining their monotheistic Hebrew identities, but one of the primary reasons that they were in Babylon was because of their own people’s idolatry. When I began telling Adam this story I accidentally identified Shadrach, Meshack, and Abednego by their Babylonian names. Their Hebrew names were Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah. This is significant because it suggests their parents’ deep faith in the one true God. All three names ended in either “ah” (which is shorthand for Jehovah) or “el” (one of the names of God). Most scholars believe the boys to have been the children of Jerusalem’s nobility. They would have been born towards the end of King Josiah’s reign, during which all places of idolatrous worship had been destroyed and the temple was cleansed. Nevertheless, the roots of idolatry ran deep. Two years before Daniel and his friends were exiled, the prophet Jeremiah had stood in the temple calling for repentance in order that God might avert the impending disaster (Jeremiah 26). This had been their world. So I wonder what kind of family culture nurtured such incredible tenacity in a climate of compromise.

Another thing that I wonder is whether they’d ever personally witnessed a miracle. The years immediately leading up to their Babylonian captivity were pretty dark ones, spiritually speaking. Yet when their lives were threatened, “Daniel went in to the king and asked for time, so that he might interpret the dream for him. Then Daniel returned to his house and explained the matter to his friends Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah.  He urged them to plead for mercy from the God of heaven concerning this mystery, so that he and his friends might not be executed with the rest of the wise men of Babylon” (Daniel 2:16-18). And God did it! What in the world made Daniel and his friends think that God might actually save them?! Had they ever seen God do such a thing? 

Several years later, their lives were again threatened for their refusal to bow before the king’s golden image. Receiving the contents and interpretation of a dream is one thing, but what from their history allowed them to claim, “our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of your hand, O king” (Daniel 3:17)? Why didn’t they just accept that they were going to be martyred? Had they received a word from the Lord? We know that Daniel had been given the interpretation of dreams, but he wasn’t around and we don’t read anything about his three friends being given similar gifts. Even if they had, what kind of close relationship with God gave them such confidence that they really were hearing from God?

All of these questions lead me to wonder what their previous experiences of God had been and which stories from their history had so strongly shaped their identities and expectations of God. Had they been told about God giving Joseph the meaning of Pharaoh’s dreams? We know that the Passover feast was celebrated after Josiah had the temple cleansed. So had their worldview been formed hearing of God’s great deliverance when their ancestors were slaves in Egypt? Were they so different from my own children who love marching around “Jericho’s wall” (made of either snow or cardboard blocks) and then knocking it down with shouts of triumph? Had they been inspired by Gideon’s (eventual) courage and God’s supernatural deliverance from the Midianites? Did they exercise their young imaginations by fighting Goliath with homemade slingshots? Even while many of their contemporaries worshiped idols had they celebrated God’s victory during the showdown between Elijah and the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel? I wonder if their parents’ faces lit up with hope while sharing Isaiah’s prophesy that “When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you” (Isaiah 43:2, emphasis added). I can’t help but imagine them getting chills while articulating that last promise, fully believing its truth yet unable to even imagine how deeply and personally their children would come to know it in the days ahead.

I obviously do not know the answers to these questions, but they inspire me to nurture my children’s hearts and minds to be able to stand under the pressures of an unknown future. Chances are good that I will get to accompany them through their teenage years, unlike the parents of Daniel and his friends. Even so,  Eugene Peterson claims that “adolescence is the time when we become ourselves. The experiences and training of childhood are reformulated and individualized into a personal identity. ” (Like Dew Your Youth, page 11). My kids’ job will eventually be to reformulate and individualize their faith, but these years are my opportunity to provide the raw materials. And so sometimes I embrace stall tactics to tell just one more story.