Daniel (Greek) 14:1-5: a reflection

1King Astyages was gathered to his fathers, and Cyrus the Persian received his kingdom. 2Daniel lived with the king, and was honored above all his friends. 3Now the Babylonians had an idol called Bel, and every day twelve great measures of fine flour, forty sheep, and six firkins of wine were spent on it. 4The king honored it and went daily to worship it; but Daniel worshiped his own God. The king said to him, “Why don’t you worship Bel?” 5He said, “Because I may not honor idols made with hands, but only the living God, who has created the sky and the earth, and has sovereignty over all flesh.”

Daniel, honored above all the king's friends, faces a pointed question. The king worships the idol Bel, going to it daily and lavishing food and wine upon it, and he asks Daniel why he does not do the same. Daniel's answer is clear and unafraid: I do not worship idols made with hands, but only the living God, who created heaven and earth and has sovereignty over all flesh. In a court where idol worship was expected, Daniel quietly but firmly draws the line.

Notice the contrast Daniel names. The king's god is an idol made with hands, a lifeless thing that must be fed and tended by its worshipers. Daniel's God is the living God, the Creator of heaven and earth, who needs nothing from anyone and holds sovereignty over all. The difference could not be starker: a manufactured object versus the Maker of all things. Daniel will not exchange the living Creator for a dead idol, whatever the pressure to conform.

Daniel's confession is a model for standing firm amid pressure to worship what everyone around you worships. The idols of every age, whether carved images or the modern gods of money, status, and self, are ultimately lifeless things that cannot give what the living God gives. When you are pressed to bow to what others bow to, take Daniel's stand: I worship only the living God, the Creator of all. Keep your worship for the One who is truly alive, and do not exchange him for any idol, however respectable it seems.

Lord, Daniel refused to worship a lifeless idol, confessing you alone as the living God, Creator of heaven and earth. When I am pressed to bow to what everyone around me bows to, whether carved images or the modern gods of money, status, and self, give me his courage. Keep my worship for you alone, the living God, and let me never exchange you for any idol. Amen.