The Golden Statue

I’ve been thinking a lot about the story of the Fiery Furnace this last week. 

If you’re unfamiliar with the story, it’s found in the third chapter of the Book of Daniel, which is set in the time of the Babylonian captivity in the sixth century BCE.

In the story, the King Nebuchadnezzar had a large golden statue made of himself, and at the dedication ceremony, he declared that when the instruments sounded, the people must bow down and worship it or be thrown into a fiery furnace.

When given the choice of submission or the fiery furnace, most people chose to submit. There were three men who refused, claiming that their God would save them, but even if He didn’t, they still would not bow down.

They were thrown into the furnace anyway.

I think this is the part of the story that we miss when we get caught up in either defending the historicity or dismissing the whole thing as allegory.

God did not save them from being thrown into the fire. The two men charged with lowering them into the furnace were burned alive from outside the furnace, but Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego not only survived, but came out unscathed.

The text says that “the fire had not had any power over” them.

When we insist on reading this story literally, we find loopholes; we might claim that as long as we don't literally bow down before the idol, we’re good.

But when we choose to accept that this was a parable, written centuries after the story was set and during the time of a different occupation, we understand that it wasn’t telling us how great Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were, it was a story meant to teach us a lesson. 

When we refuse to bow down to power we should expect to be thrown into the fire, but that does not mean that God is not present with us.

The fire has no power.

I think it’s easy to take away from this story a promise of a happy ending like Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego had, but that’s an unfair burden to place on the story.

Sometimes our faithfulness will open the eyes of others to the truth, but sometimes it won’t; the call to faithfulness is not outcome dependent.