There once was a king...

There once was a king who was adored and feared by the people of his own great nation as well as others across the known world.

He understood that displays of power fueled these sorts of feelings in most spheres of influence at the time.

So he sought to display power at every opportunity.

He brought in the best looking and most promising young men from one of the groups under his control, central casting types, and began feeding them a steady diet of the riches of his nation and the world. He gave them titles and nicknames, fancy clothes and accessories, and demanded that they take on his own beliefs and understandings about power, wealth, and the world.

A few of his chosen recruits quietly denied the gifts and diet of propaganda, religious dogma, and exercise of privilege they were given by the king. These discerning outsiders were not weighed down by the consumption of the cult of personality surrounding the king. They became the strongest and wisest among the recruits.

One day the king was troubled by a dream he had but didn’t understand. The “yes” men who had become his advisors to this point couldn’t tell him what the dream meant. They had become saturated in the manipulative tactics of the king’s empire and wanted the king to tell them what he was thinking before they spoke.

One of the discerning outsiders, who had politely refused his given nickname along with the trappings of exclusive royal privilege, was able to interpret the king’s dream without the king even telling this outsider what specifically was troubling him. The outsider had been paying enough attention and was wise and led by conscious and conviction rather than the whims of the king.

The discerning young man told the king that the king’s legacy would be one that was not strong enough to face the pressures of the world. With each passing generation after him the ideas and strength he fought for and put all of his trust in would fade away because, while shiny and impressive to most, they were not the sort of things that lead to long lasting flourishing and stability.

The king seemed to receive this information well. He was impressed by the young man and had him promoted. And yet, the king was not moved to change his tactics.

Instead, the king doubled down on displays of wealth and worldly power.

He had a giant monument constructed. The monument was meant to be a symbol of the king rising up above the forecasted limits and weaknesses of his legacy; an everlasting and permanent representation of the power and stability this king, and only this king, could bring about.

There must have been grumbling about this monument, because the king ordered everyone under his rule to submit to this symbol of his power. He mandated times of day to turn toward this monument and acknowledge the strong king who had brought it into being.

Again, some of the outsiders among his government refused to submit to these orders.

The king decided to punish these people who dared to oppose his orders and would not submit to his ideas. He punished them as harshly as he could imagine someone being punished. He submitted them to a destructive force which had previously consumed many of his detractors and those who opposed him.

Yet these people were not consumed. They were not destroyed. Their ideas, convictions, and devotion to something bigger than themselves or any worldly power met the heat of the oppressive wrath of the king and showed that at times heat is not destructive, but fortifying and refining. The force of goodness they lived for was stronger than any worldly danger and protected them from harm.

For a while, the king acknowledged the greatness of this force of goodness, these ideals, these convictions. But ultimately the king’s need for submission to his own ego and for personal glory as he understood it, through worldly wealth and power, drove him mad.

He was pushed out of power, exiled to slowly watch from a distance as his once so influential masses of worldly power and wealth dwindled at the hands of the “yes” men who had long ago traded wisdom and ideals for the submission and shows of worldly might that won the king’s favor. His monuments were removed and the ideals of worldly power and wealth gave way to the ideals of others who at least tried to be focused on righteousness (as ill-fated as some of these folks may have been as they submitted to the draw of worldly wealth and power) He faded into madness, obscurity, and then into dust.

When will these cautionary tales be observed with lasting esteem and trust?

How much longer must we be at best acquiescent or submissive, and at worst zealously in support, of systems and governments which glorify and seek stockpiles of worldly wealth and means of securing worldly power through violence and oppressive influence?

I pray that more and more folks from all over creation will find in themselves the discerning spirit exhibited by the outsiders in this story, who chose to honor and idealize the force of flourishing and goodness which is much more expansive and inclusive than worldly sources of promised security and power.

I pray we will take notice that these things remain, even when subjected to the most powerful forces of pressure and heat accessible to worldly empires and their leaders, faith, hope, and love.

Above all, I pray we will love.

Amen.

(The story told above is a retelling of part of the narrative of Daniel Chapter 1)