So these administrators and satraps went as a group to the king and said: “May King Darius live forever! The royal administrators, prefects, satraps, advisers and governors have all agreed that the king should issue an edict and enforce the decree that anyone who prays to any god or human being during the next thirty days, except to you, Your Majesty, shall be thrown into the lions’ den. Now, Your Majesty, issue the decree and put it in writing so that it cannot be altered—in accordance with the law of the Medes and Persians, which cannot be repealed.” So King Darius put the decree in writing. Daniel 6:6-9(NIV).
Conspirators are, generally, cowards. Like their mentor, Satan, they rarely attack you head-on because they lack the courage to do so. It’s a military maxim that you should always attack your enemy at his weakest point, yet it’s a maxim of cowardly conspirators that you only attack what you know you can absolutely get away with…until you can’t.
Daniel’s satrap peers don’t come at him and accuse him of malfeasance as an administrator. In the previous verse, they admitted they couldn’t. So they attacked him using his faith. They conjured up a scheme to appeal to Darius’ vanity in order to trap Daniel, who they anticipated wouldn’t play along. Their conspiracy attacked Daniel in a (supposedly) weak area, and didn’t directly challenge God…until it finally did.
Funny, isn’t it. The conspirators of today are doing the exact same thing. They can’t attack you or me directly for believing (though many openly mock faith) so they attack how faith is expressed, how we may practice it in the public sphere. Without ‘going political,’ there is no actual Constitutional ban in America on public display of faith, even on government property or using means of government; the First Amendment doesn’t prohibit it (while it does explicitly prohibit the government from inhibiting worship in any way). There is no explicit ‘separation of church and state’ in our Constitution. Find it if you dare. Yet those who hate and mock God intensify their attacks on faith, usually obliquely and incrementally, piecemeal using sleight of hand or word manipulation They rarely attack head-on. Those are the tricks of Satan, and cowards, and Persian satraps.
They’re cheeky, too, these conspiring bureaucrats. In their petty scheme, they indirectly attack King Darius, belittling his authority and pretending to tell him what he can and cannot do. In doing so, they prescribe the sentence of execution: something that would become famous for all time, giving glory to God in the process. And something that would eventually be their complete undoing.
For further reading: Nehemiah 2:3, Esther 1:19, Psalm 59:3, Daniel 6:10
Lord, humble me when I am petty, or conspiratorial, or scheming. Show me my errors that I may change and glorify You.
This content may not be shared without consent of the owners of aspiringwriterdt.com. Please contact aspiringwriterdt@gmail.com for more information
Practical Proverbs 