Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego defied the king and lived to tell about it. Allow me to tell the story with an anachronism that makes the point. In the face of the Third Reich, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego signed the Barmen Declaration and were then delivered from the megalomaniac intentions of the Führer. That’s the happy ending version of the story that we find in Daniel. But we know that fidelity to God doesn’t always result in a reprieve from suffering and martyrdom, as Dietrich Bonheoffer and Martin Niemöller can testify...and as millions of twentieth-century Jews can testify. Yet I
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