I’m all for telling Bible stories to little ears. Children should hear about Adam and Eve, Noah’s Ark, the life of Moses, and more. But if G-Rated versions are all you know, the stories do not make sense. If you never grasp the evil of Noah’s day, you will think God was mean to punish the world with a flood.
Every Bible story is like that: there may be a G-rated version for family audiences, but a sophisticated reader must make the effort to understand the wickedness of the Bible’s bad guys. If you miss the evil, you will miss the power of God’s heroic rescue.
One evil we are spared in the US is cruel and unusual punishments. To be drawn and quartered was to have ropes tied to your arms and legs, each one harnessed to a draft horse. When men whip the four horses they run in four different directions, tearing arms and legs from the torso of the suffering victim. Nebuchadnezzar enjoyed having people “torn limb from limb.” He destroyed their houses. He ordered the slaughter of his advisors by the hundreds. He built an eight-story statue of gold and commanded the world to worship it, and if any refused, he had a furnace prepared to roast them.
Then when Nebuchadnezzar saw God’s miraculous deliverance of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, he issued another harsh decree:
“Anyone … who says anything offensive against the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego will be torn limb from limb and his house made a garbage dump. For there is no other god who is able to deliver like this” Daniel 3:29.
With a rule like that on the books, no one would speak the Lord’s name in vain. Isn’t it sad that Americans, history’s most blessed people, are not afraid to speak the Lord’s name in vain? Even Christians sometimes treat God’s name like something common and worthless.
God, help us grasp the evil of Your enemies, teach us to revere your name, and to live lives that honor our Savior.
ΑΩ
Household Words: 