Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego at Hogwarts

In a previous post I mentioned I would next deal with the topic of metanarratives. That's coming down the pipe, but first I want to deal with a subject that came up in that entry as well, that of the recognized tendency for young people to abandon or at least set aside their faith in college. There are lots of ideas about why this happens; today's entry is based on my observations working with various church youth groups, focusing more on those whose situation lets them go to good colleges and face the World's temptations of prosperity and success, as three young men did in the book of Daniel.

1. Why the Names?

Three young Hebrew men, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah, were prisoners of war after a powerful empire invaded their small country, which was weakened after years of poor leadership and had all but totally forsaken the God who had delivered them so many times in the past. This time, He spoke through His prophets to announce the day of Jerusalem's fall was coming certainly, so much so that his people should go along with it, and make lives for themselves in the lands to which they were deported, for it was God Himself who granted success to their enemies and they would not quickly be returning to Israel, though someday they would.

This Babylonian empire was ruled not by a moustache-twisting villain or fearsome lord of darkness but a powerful, vain, and capable leader, who considered himself the hero of this story. (he learned better years later, eating grass in the field) Pragmatically, he sought to both remove the ruling class from the Hebrew people and also bring the best of them into his own service.

Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah (along with Daniel) were found to be far superior to those already in the King's service, and were quickly drafted to join his team. It's hard to imagine what was going through their minds as they agreed to serve the king who had attacked their country and deported their people, but it seems clear they sought ways to honor God in the midst of this radically different environment and situation. They are our success stories; they succeeded at being in The World but not of it.


But before they got their high profile government jobs, they had to complete their Babylonian education. This began in an interesting way. The first chapter of Daniel tells us that the young men were given new names.

Among those who were chosen were some from Judah: Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah. The chief official gave them new names: to Daniel, the name Belteshazzar; to Hananiah, Shadrach; to Mishael, Meshach; and to Azariah, Abednego.

You may have studied Daniel at some point and know the meaning of these names, honoring Babylonian deities to demonstrate where their new loyalties were supposed to lie. But I think there's another way to look at it. Giving them new names as they enter the Babylonian royal school of magic is basically saying this:
"You're a wizard, Harry!" *cue the theme music*

"You're sure you won't eat the rich food from the king's table? Ah well, more for me."

2. Life in Hogwarts and what comes after...

"Your old life is behind you." "Maybe you had it easy back in Israel, not anymore." "The rest of your lives are ahead of you." "Welcome to Babylon, kiddies, the new capitol of the world." "This education is the key to your future success." "You're lucky to have this opportunity." "You're a long way from home, kids, you're going to make your own choices now." "Study hard if you want to make it here." "Ace this stuff, and Babylon's your oyster." "Here's a little taste of what might be in store:" (And a dramatic feast from the king's own table is unveiled. Intimidating music plays, and representatives from the royal magicians and astrologers are putting on an impressive little show)

I don't know if that's exactly what it was like for the young men, described in the book of Daniel as Israel's best and brightest, as they were placed under the court overseer who gave them the new names. But if so, I'm guessing most kids didn't stand a chance. And don't today. This is what heading to college is like for smart and talented kids. The world unfolds for them, with all the temptations and distractions it has perfected over the centuries. You put on the Sorting Hat, and it says "Anesthesiologist," "Bioengineer," "Fortune 500 CEO," "Future 'it' fashion designer" (or maybe:) "Slacker who somehow always does ok," "Stressed out math teacher," "Peace corp trust fund baby," "It's ok, the army will straighten you out," or the inevitable "Ah, now this kid is Going Places."

Of course, by the end of college and as the job search starts many of them will know just how tiny a slice of that world is actually available to them, but by then many of them will have made mistakes and spent years doing things that make them embarrassed to return to God or the church.

3. The Beautiful Lie

For everything in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—comes not from the Father but from the world. (1 John 2:16)

And beautiful it certainly can be...

The world has a thousand false narratives, and for middle-to-upper class American kids headed off to college, it might be recognizable: "What happens here stays here. Have as much fun as you can because after this it's nose-to-the-grindstone time, to see if you can cut it in the working world." A kaleidoscope of semester projects and crazy parties and staying up all night to drive to the beach to get drunk and high and then watching the sunrise and feeling 100% alive, having all the sex you safely can while you're young and at the peak of attractiveness, drinking in life deeply before packing away all the happy memories, saying goodbye to the birthplace of your nascent adulthood, and putting on the suit and doing what grownups do, according to the world's definition, working your butt off and getting the corner office, the killer ride in the company parking spot, finding a wife/husband and having a couple of kids, smiling sadly at a few more wrinkles in the mirror and reflecting nostalgically when you bump into old friends on what a crazy trip life is. There are dozens of variations on this, of course, but you get the idea.

It feels like a life lived well, beautiful in its own way, full of fun and drama and pathos and hard work and quiet satisfaction, and seems entirely complete without the gospel in there anywhere. (and for those who do try to wedge the gospel in there somewhere too, it will seem mysteriously extraneous and hard to relate to, less meaningful than those rich life experiences) The World can fulfill you physically, emotionally, mentally, psychologically, pretty much any way except spiritually, and it can do a decent job of pretending to do that too. "Religion" is not dangerous at all in this scenario. A bit of a spiritual experience on an Easter Sunday in the unfamiliar setting of a church or some sober reflection on life at a funeral is good for the soul, no doubt. A good way to round out life, not missing the deeper things, so long as one doesn't go overboard, of course. Can't become a fanatic and start giving up fun stuff and make the rest of us feel awkward.


After all that, the idea of actually devoting one's life to God, whatever it sounded like in youth group, comes across either as a nice fairy tale story, a beautiful dream of innocent childhood you left behind when you entered the real world, or perhaps as a noble and deep calling, for those saintly people who can hear a heavenly voice the rest of us can't, the monks and mystics who enrich life in their odd way and might have a bit of unearthly wisdom for those who are down on their luck or failing at life.

As Christians we're not allowed to refrain from showing God's love to someone just because their mistakes are observably their own fault. It's tempting, when they're not sorry but rather proud of them, but still wrong. The spell of confusion the world casts is the lie that when truth is in your mind you should listen to your heart's excuses ("It can't be wrong when it feels so right"), and when truth is in your heart you should listen to your mind's excuses ("Life's tough; I had no choice"), and after you've made the mistakes, to accept the world's consolation that your troubles are someone else's fault, and "making it" through life's struggles is not the default state of all human beings, but is somehow a noble calling, "far more so than those hypocrites in church could understand." So many will say- "Church is for good people, I'm just trying to get by, I figure God will understand." -and actually mean that they want the comfort they feel is within their grasp and not God. (George Muller kept an orphanage open solely through prayer and faith, so God is quite able to help you "get by" and far beyond that. But there are wrong excuses we are culturally conditioned to accept, especially when offered with humility.)

So the idea that living a life ignoring God and dealing with the consequences of your sin on your own is a struggle more "real" or authentic somehow than seeking your Creator doesn't actually make sense if you parse it out, but ingest enough of the world's propaganda and it can seem and feel very true. It's what the world is good at.

4. Is There a Solution?

I write to you, dear children,
    because you know the Father.
I write to you, fathers,
    because you know him who is from the beginning.
I write to you, young men,
    because you are strong,
    and the word of God lives in you,
    and you have overcome the evil one.
(1 John 2:14)

Yes. Lots of kids are going to college and coming out young adults strong in their faith and ready to serve God and live their lives according to His word, in whatever career they choose. How does this happen?

Students' faith is between them and God, and nothing can be done for them in that regard. But we can help, and indeed that is our responsibility, to prepare them. Let's look to our 3 heroes as an example. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego endured by being prepared in several ways:

A. Able to apply their faith and knowledge of the truth to an unfamiliar situation.
Though suddenly in Babylon, faced with situations they'd never encountered before, they knew the truths they learned were universal, and how to apply them to meet new temptations and challenges.

B. Banding together for support
We can't know for sure, but I suspect if there was only Shadrach, only Abednego, it would have been a much more difficult struggle. Would the overseer have permitted a lone boy to resist the command, where he permitted four (including Daniel) together? And in the story of the fiery furnace, the three could stand together and give a response to the king as one.

C. They were prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice for their faith
Although they were surprisingly willing and able to adjust on cultural issues, when it came to honoring God, they were willing to die (again, together) rather than dishonor Him.

Now let's quickly look at how these apply to today's students:



A. Applying faith and God's truth to unfamiliar situations

 One word: discernment. If your Christian life as a student was a list of do's and don'ts, it won't survive the college transition, and you'll be left to muddle through on your own. My life was a bit along these lines, and although I didn't do the wrong things that are quite normal in college, it was a less fun and memorable experience than it could legitimately have been because I was very worried about doing something wrong. I don't believe this will be the problem for most students, rather the opposite. They'll find themselves doing things they definitely know are wrong after a chain of decisions they'd never had to face before. ("Whoa, how did I end up here? Well, no going back now...")

I'm not a parent, but I've been a kid and grown up. If kids, as they mature, are allowed the opportunity to make less damaging wrong decisions, they will have much better discernment by the time they're ready to head off to college. Try to remove all opportunities for wrong-doing is both fighting a losing battle (the sin nature is defeated in Christ but the sanctification process is a long one), and not preparing them to succeed when suddenly plunged into a multitude of opportunities for fun wrong-doing.

B. Standing Together, Growing Together

It takes more than once a year... though Passion was pretty great.

I mentioned in that previous post I mentioned at the beginning, the greatest factor I've seen in kids staying and growing in the faith while in college is getting plugged into active and solid christian fellowship groups on campus. The Christian life was meant to be lived in fellowship with other believers, and most students crave and need fellowship like oxygen. (I was both introverted and still figuring things out socially, but I enjoyed pretty much all the Christian groups I was involved with during college.) Also, practically speaking, they provide fun things to do that are often actually fun, and a real alternative to "let's play drinking games and strip poker because no parents are around to stop us anymore."

College is the time when a lot of kids find out what kind of adults they're going to be. It sets the stage for the whole rest of their life in some ways, and certainly the next phase of their life. That time needs to be spent in fellowship with other Christian students going through the same process. So for a Christian parent who wants to do the best to help their child grow and not lapse in their faith during college, I strongly advise you to steer (or send, depending on how traditional your parenting style is) your children to colleges that have strong Christian fellowships. Of course, they still have to choose to attend them. Which leads me to the last point:

C. Deep Conviction

(Note: Above I used the wording "prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice" and not "prepared to die" both a) in the exaggerated sense, as there are things students think they would rather die than do (death may seem like the easy way out when one has to forsake one's social group and be ridiculed by them in order to make a stand for God), and b) sadly in the literal sense, since for the many students silently suffering from extreme depression (I was one), the ultimate sacrifice for God may sometimes be the decision to keep living.)

It saddens me to say it, but it's very obvious to those of us who are or have been youth counselors: A lot of youth group kids aren't believers, even some of the ones whom the rest of the church (and their parents) assumes to be. Yes, they said the right things, yes they were baptized, but they don't have a vital and saving relationship with God through faith in Christ. Maybe they felt pressured, maybe they were impressionable as young kids but didn't really understand what they were doing, there are lots of different situations. I know it's soul-wrenching. Sometimes the more loving parents are desperate to know their child has accepted Christ, the more they push the child to make a declaration of having done so when it's not true. (It happens a lot in Taiwanese churches too, where parents often have more say in their children's lives even into adulthood) 

But some kids are bored to tears in youth group, aren't buying most of it, and are out the minute they get a car or have any other options. (One kid I knew was quite straightforward. "I don't really care about all this stuff. I want to make tons of money and live the good life." The sentiment is not uncommon, only the honesty) Other kids are the type to meet whatever expectations are placed on them, and so they'll play the youth group game as long as necessary, and seem genuine, but when college comes with a new and very different set of expectations, and friends, they'll morph into someone who matches those instead.

You can't give a child, or anyone else, deep conviction, any more than you can give them a patient heart or give them experience in resisting their own temptations. It's something that happens between them and God. But you can model it for them. Let them see that your life is a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God, and that your relationship to God is loving and not legalistic. (Quoting angry scripture at them whenever they do anything wrong, for example, is not the kind of admonishment that leads them to love God's word. But neither is letting them do whatever they want and calling that love.) 

If children, or students, or maybe adults too, see that you are patient in suffering, joyful in affliction, hopeful in chaos, that you have something the World can't offer, then that example is something they can take out into the World as an alternative to what they typically see there. When the World presents them with bad choice A and worse choice B, they'll know a third choice exists.

5. Conclusion

 

So, when the new Christian student arrives at Hogwarts, and the World seems to be laid at their feet, and they are encouraged to abandon muggle religion and join the rarified air of the famous wizards-who-know-better or at least take the respectable road of a life spent in the rat race without looking up until retirement, the decision is up to the student. No parent, older sibling, role model, caretaker, youth counselor, pastor, etc. can make it for them. But they can go in with the preparation of discernment, the support of fellow believers, and the conviction that has been modeled for them by those who had the chance.

If we have prepared them well, we can stand back, pray, and trust God. Some will still make foolish choices, some cannot learn from warnings, only through the consequences of their mistakes, but God knows how to deal with His own. The greater danger is letting them go off to Hogwarts never having seen genuine faith modeled by those closest to them.

"The world and its desires pass away, but whoever does the will of God lives forever."