Those with long memories will not have forgotten the startling religious conversion of Prof C.E.M. Joad, anti-God for most of his life, who shocked the British scientific community by displaying all the characteristics of a Damascus Road experience and preaching the truths he once lived to deny.
Joad's philosophy of materialistic humanism was best summed up in his memorable pre-conversion description of man given on a BBC Brains Trust programme:
"Man is nothing but fat enough for seven bars of soap; iron enough for one medium-sized nail; sugar enough for seven cups of tea; lime enough to whitewash one chicken coop; phosphorous enough to tip 2,000 matches; magnesium enough for one dose of salts; potash enough to explode one toy cannon; sulphur enough to rid one dog of fleas."
Tomorrow's two readings from Psalm 16 and the Book of Daniel, Ch. 12:1-3, give the deepest insights into the future hope of believers living under the Old Testament dispensation. If they had heard Professor Joad describe man's existence and potential in terms of mere chemical components, they would have considered him long overdue for conversion. "I have set the Lord always before me.
Because he is at my right hand, I shall not be shaken.
Therefore my heart is glad and my tongue rejoices;
my body also will rest secure,
because you will not abandon me to the grave,
nor will you let your faithful one see decay.
You have made known to me the path of life;
you will fill me with joy in your presence,
with eternal pleasures at your right hand["]
(Psalm 16: 8-11)
So ends one of the sweetest and most intimate of psalms, written in peaceful times, while the Daniel excerpt is near the conclusion of a book which has the fullest treatment in the Old Testament of the Kingdom of God. In exile in Babylon, God's people have to relearn basic lessons in the shadow of the world hegemony of King Nebuchadnezzar and his equally tyrannical successors. Throughout, the emphasis is on the activity of the one true God, who is the creator of the world and its king, and His rule is characterised by justice and mercy.
Thus people can be divided into two groups, the wise and the foolish. The wise make practical, everyday choices about life based on their fear of God and sometimes those choices are searing in their decisiveness and costliness, as in the case of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego opting for the fiery furnace rather than bow to idols. For Daniel himself it meant the lion's den as the only option open to him since, as a wise person, he saw there was no alternative, for God is where reality is found.
The foolish are those who ignore the reality of God. They say in their hearts, "There is no God", and they make their decisions, like Nebuchadnezzar, on the premise of God's absence or non-existence. De facto, they make themselves god in their world, setting themselves against the God of heaven and therefore against his people.
Daniel's logic is that there must come a time when all opposition to God's kingship ceases. His will must be done on earth as it is in heaven. The New Testament control of this theme is best expressed in the Letter to the Philippians 2:5-11, where, after the shame and ignominy of his death on the cross, Jesus is honoured as God's king and to him every knee must bow and every tongue confess that Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
These readings offer a carrot and a stick. The carrot is access to life in fellowship with God through submission to Jesus as Saviour and King, which is nothing less than eternal life and is a very wise choice. The stick is a warning that choosing to be god in our own world is rebellion, leading to eternally severe consequences, and is therefore very foolish. Prof Joad left it late, but there was no doubt he had become, using Daniel's vocabulary, one of the wisest men of his time not only in terms of Brains Trust membership, but as a humble member of the eternal kingdom of the Most High God.
G.F.