The Friendly Enemy

Friendly? How can an enemy be friendly?

– Deceptively friendly. – Deadly. Even more deadly than an openly hostile, threatening enemy.

Remember what happened in the Garden of Eden? The enemy serpent, Satan, came across as a friendly, concerned soul – even on Eve’s side. He appealed to her intelligence and potentially powerful knowledge to make her think God was holding out on her, keeping her from the prize info He wasn’t about to give her. (It really did go much farther than an apple.) And look what happened. We lost it all.

So it was with Daniel and his three friends. Remember, these were young teenagers. Food is a major force in a teenage boy’s life. In order to entice them to buy into Nebuchadnezzar’s re-education program, after being torn away from their homeland and families, they were given the same food the king ate. Really good stuff. The best wine. Who wouldn’t want that? After all, what’s wrong with a little comfort when you’ve been traumatized and are really hurting?

But for Daniel and his friends, this presented a problem. In my Aug 29 post, I mentioned that they remained strong in their belief and love for their God, and stood against their indoctrination into the Babylonian culture and religion. They knew that this wine and meat had been dedicated or sacrificed to idols. That put them in a position of defiling themselves. So Daniel asked that they be fed some pretty plain stuff – lentils, legumes, etc., and water.

I doubt those teenagers were much different from today’s youth. Wouldn’t they love to be fed great food – and lots of it? Or maybe, if they had some doubts about it, wouldn’t they follow along because it felt good?

Imagine the character it took for them to deny themselves the pleasures of great food for the sake of remaining faithful to their God.

Would we – do we – do that today?