military junior leadership development in daniel

Had the opportunity to lead a bible study tonight, at the home of some friends I know through Officer's Christian Fellowship. I was concerned about what to focus on, as it has been years since I last facilitated a scriptural study discussion. I was pleased to find that the following points arose from the first chapter of Daniel quite naturally, and that what others had to say about the text made my own epiphanies strikingly more clear, too. Here are highlights from the text in which God has presented several lessons to me from the past year of active duty service as a junior officer (middle-manager in civilian terms). We learn in the first verses that the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar, after besieging Jerusalem, gathered the best of what Israel had to offer--the holy vessels of the temple, and the finest young men to serve in his court. Clearly, this man desired excellence in everything, and could recognize value and talent in many places throughout his vast empire. Daniel and three friends, given the names Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego by the king, were among those chosen:
⁸But Daniel made up his mind that he would not ^S)">(S)defile himself with the ^T)">(T)king's choice food or with the ^U)">(U)wine which he drank; so he sought permission from the commander of the officials that he might not defile himself.
¹¹But Daniel said to the overseer whom the commander of the officials had appointed over Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah,
¹²"Please test your servants for ten days, and let us be ^W)">(W)given some vegetables to eat and water to drink.
¹³"Then let our appearance be observed in your presence and the appearance of the youths who are eating the king's choice food; and deal with your servants according to what you see."
Daniel is aware that full acceptance of the king's favor and court life would compromise his calling to live according to the laws appointed for Israel by God. Rather than subvert the king's authority or withdraw from the court, he instead allows himself and his friends to be put to the test. Capitalizing upon the value King Nebuchadnezzar obviously places on excellence (he took pains to surround himself with it), the four have the vision to work within the system to change hearts and minds and allow God to demonstrate his favor. They need not have done this: they might have been as subversive as others in the king's court were, as is revealed in later chapters. They might have used their positions for their own agendas while paying no loyalty to the king, or they might have chosen to embrace the palace culture and forget who they were as Jews.
¹⁷As for these four youths, ^Z)">(Z)God gave them knowledge and intelligence in every branch of literature and wisdom; Daniel even understood all kinds of ^AA)">(AA)visions and dreams.
¹⁸Then at the end of the days which the king had specified for presenting them, the commander of the officials presented them before Nebuchadnezzar.
¹⁹The king talked with them, and out of them all not one was found like ^AB)">(AB)Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah; so they ^AC)">(AC)entered the king's personal service.

Their willingness to be tested increased the king's confidence in them: he recognized superior results when he saw them. Although his promotion of them would lead others to seek their lives (even the king to put them in harm's way--fiery furnaces and lion's dens come to mind) they found a way to be upstanding and excel in the positions they were placed in, while maintaining their integrity.

This fine balance between demurring and complying is even felt not-so-close to the top: it is quite intense at the company grade level of leadership for the military officer. Selected from a small 13% population in the U.S. eligible for military service, we are called to lead at our level, to instill the commander's intent into our subordinates. We make their cause our own, even when we disagree with them, and must often find ways to capitalize on their preference of Army values while dissenting respectfully at other less worthy ideals they espouse. Like the Babylonian king who appropriated things from the house of God to place in his own temple, they borrow the watchwords of faith in order to instill discipline and esprit de corps in their units: "loyalty, duty, respect, selfless service, honor, personal courage." Yet we cannot agree with the bravado, the "coarse talk," the tendency to misuse their power for personal gain and to view people as resources to be appropriated rather than as bearers of the imago dei. The believer has a divine mandate not only to sift through these and seek the good, but to do so with a fervor and deference that the commander may or may not deserve. We reinforce the good that he or she enacts and dissent respectfully when necessary, rather than preferring to go it alone and disregard their authority, which would cause the whole unit to operate poorly. In junior leadership we are not only responsible for understanding, disseminating, and executing the commander's intent, we are responsible for finding appropriate ways to influence it, to find something in it to be passionate about, and to uphold it even at our own discomfort. We cannot subvert him or her, who serves as the head of the body of Soldiers in the unit. To do so is to be like a hand that waves off what the mouth is saying as if it doesn't matter. To ignore the presence of a malaise spreading through the body without sending signals to the head, however, would be just as wrong. Daniel strikes a graceful balance in his position. He and his friends have earned the king's favor through their discipline, candor, respect, and pursuit of excellence in a competitive, often compromising arena. The risks and the rewards are so like those of military service that I have seen these principles at work in the last year with my unit. More to follow...