Circumstances Don't Change Standards

“But Daniel purposed in his heart that he would not defile himself with the portion of the king’s meat, nor with the wine which he drank: therefore he requested of the prince of the eunuchs that he might not defile himself.” (Da 1:8 AV)

The story is very familiar.  Daniel and his three companions were taken to Babylon.  As princes in the tribe of Judah, they were kept as wise counsel for the king of Babylon.  When grouped with all the other captive seers, they were required to eat and drink that which their Chaldean captors felt necessary and best.  However, knowing the diet they were given was not healthy nor biblical, Daniel asked the meat and wine be replaced by pulse and water.  A test was given.  There would be a ten-day trial period and if their appearance and health did not improve, they would be forced to consume the King’s diet.  The LORD blessed their obedience to the word and gave them better health than their pagan colleagues.  What is interesting here is Daniel upheld the standard of a prince even though he was not a eunuch and seer for the king of Babylon and no longer an acting prince of the people of Judah.  He kept his calling and standard even though his circumstances change.

At the pizzeria I co-managed, it was the ambition of every employee to get on the pizza side of the kitchen.  There were four main areas.  There was the dish sink.  That is generally where everyone started out.  Then there was the sub and sandwich station.  There was the buffalo wing station.  Then there was the pizza section.  That was the largest.  The sandwich and wing section would often get combined depending on how busy it was.  A new employee would work his way up from washing dishes and busing tables to the wing station.  From there, he would work his way up to the sandwich station.  Finally, if he did an excellent job, he was promoted to the pizza side.  Even the pizza side had its hierarchy.  You would start out as a puller.  That means you would pull the pizzas out of the oven, put them in the appropriate box, slice them, and send them to the front to get cashed out.  If you got that down, then you moved to be a pizza maker.  That was often to the coveted prize.  But it wasn’t the highest on the skill level.  The highest skill level was the ‘pounder’.  He was the quarterback of the entire kitchen.  He was responsible for pounding out the dough which the makers used.  But his main duty was to organize the orders and give instructions to the entire kitchen so orders could be coordinated based on different objectives.  A dining room order was pushed up.  A delivery was pushed back.  Since pizza took much longer than wings, the pounder would tell the wing maker when to ‘drop the order’.  Anyway, as a manager, one of the leadership skills we used was to ‘demote’ someone from a higher position to a lower one just to see how they would react.  Would their standard of excellence continue even though they had been demoted?  Would a pizza maker do his best when washing dishes?  This was particularly important because at the end of the night, the two or three employees left would often cross over to another’s responsibilities so we could all get out of there at a reasonable hour.

Daniel went from a life of privilege in Judah to a life of servitude and humiliation in Babylon.  Many of us would not care a whole lot what we ate.  In fact, we would much more prefer a tasty side of ribs with a flavored drink over salad and a water.  But Daniel never let down his standards.  Even though his circumstances changed and they would never be the same again, he still held on to the standards required of him as a prince.  He would never father a child.  He would never get married.  He would never own a palace.  Compared to the other seers, his chances of sitting as a prince was slim.  Even though the LORD elevated him and his three friends later, Daniel has no way of knowing this was going to happen.  Every motivation to keep those standards was gone.  But he did anyway.  Loss of hope has a way of taking the motivation necessary to keep those standards away.  We get despondent and figure it doesn’t matter anymore, so we might as well do what we’ve always wanted to do but kept ourselves from doing.  Not Daniel.  He was going to keep the law and standards to the best of his ability no matter the circumstances.  By the way, it was this integrity that God used to improve his circumstances.