Well, we’ve been working our way through the book of Daniel over the past month, and today we finally arrive at the last chapter. Since Deanna preached for me last week, I’ve actually had two weeks to sit with this passage, reflecting on everything else that’s come before it and how it all fits together. I’ve reread my sermons, listened to Deanna’s, and carefully studied the chapters that we skipped over. And now, thanks to all that, I can confidently tell you that I’ve got nothing.
I just don’t know.
As I noted way back on the very first week of this sermon series, many people turn to apocalyptic literature and take its ambiguity as a challenge. They consult numerology and symbology and do complex mathematics to attribute concrete meaning to these kinds of passages. They make sure to spread their predictions as widely as possible, and their confidence doesn’t seem to be shaken even when they turn out to be completely wrong.
But I’m going on the record to say that I don’t know.
None of the commentaries I read this week were much help, so it seems I’m not alone in this. They make note of the fact that as a whole, Daniel models the sort of civil disobedience that Martin Luther King, Jr. advocated, and that therefore the conflict depicted in Daniel’s visions is most likely referring to SPIRITUAL warfare, not literal military warfare. Other than that, though, not much. No indication of a timeline, no definitive suggestions of what makes one “skilled in wisdom” versus “wicked”, no guesses, even, as to who the figure in white linen represents, beyond noting that he’s likely some sort of heavenly representative.
I don’t know, either.
On multiple occasions over the course of my ministry, I’ve expressed my readiness to admit when I don’t know something about religion, God, or the Bible, and it appears that today, it’s time for me to put my money where my mouth is.
I just don’t know.
Part of the reason I’m choosing to declare this so publicly is because I’ve noticed that this is something that our society seems to struggle with: an unwillingness to admit when we don’t know something. And I suspect it has to do with our collective preoccupation with power. We’ve all heard, of course, that “Knowledge is power.” In fact, Scripture contains a similar sentiment in Proverbs 24:5: “A wise person is mightier than a strong one; a knowledgeable person than a powerful one.” So clearly, there must be some kind of correlation between knowledge and power. We should all be able to agree on that much in principle.
But somewhere along the way, we’ve extended the logic of this statement to mean that in the absence of actual knowledge, the APPEARANCE of knowledge is just as good. And even though there’s no evidence to support this proposition (biblical or otherwise) we act as though it’s equally true. If I pretend that I know everything, then I’ll have more power than someone who admits that they DON’T know everything. Eventually, many of us become so invested in the charade that we lose sight of the reality that we don’t, in fact, know everything. And at that point, it becomes nearly impossible for us to distinguish between actual knowledge and “alternative” knowledge – but we no longer care, because the perception of power is the same either way.
Recently, I got in a protracted argument online about – what else? – politics. Normally, I would have stayed out of it, but this friend of a friend was supporting her argument with Bible references, so I figured I could help with context to explain why her arguments weren’t as strong as she thought they were. But as I explained how being an ancient Jew in occupied land is vastly different than being a modern USAmerican Christian, or how there WAS no difference between religion and government in the First Testament Kingdom of Israel, or how (and I really had to explain this) the Ten Commandments aren’t so much CHRISTIAN principles as Jewish ones, not once did she say, “Huh, I didn’t realize that!” or “Oh, I didn’t know.”
In fact, she didn’t respond to my contextualization at all. Instead, she pivoted to a completely different argument each time, which meant that our dialogue quickly veered into unrelated territory, and we weren’t able to make any progress at understanding each other. (In case you were wondering, at least once I said, “Oh, I didn’t know that; could you tell me more?” but it turned out that her claim had been based on misinformation. To her credit, she admitted that she’d been wrong on that particular point, but she still doubled down on her original argument.) She preferred to be confidently wrong than to accept that there was a gap in her knowledge. She didn’t want to relinquish that power. And eventually, after two weeks of seeking genuine dialogue, I had to cut off the conversation for the sake of my own personal wellbeing.
When we fill our brains with information that’s simply not true, it’s like filling a drinking cup with mud instead of water, just so that our cup isn’t empty. This means that when we DO encounter water, there’s no room for it. Of course, we can always dump out the mud to make room – but that’s inevitably a messy process that gets mud everywhere (some even mixed in with the water). No wonder so many people would rather just stick with the mud so that they don’t have to do the work to clean out their cup.
It’s much simpler to just leave the room for the water in the first place – to admit that we don’t know. But it does mean that we have to live with an empty cup for a while. And that, I think, is ultimately the closest I can come to an interpretation of what this passage is about. In chapters 7-11, Daniel describes for his readers these fever-dreams that he’s had, visions depicting monsters and angels and kings and warfare and global destruction. The details are so vivid and bizarre that it’s no wonder centuries of would-be theologians have tried to decipher them. But although there’s plenty of material to work with, the meaning of these visions remains muddy.
After the last vision, Daniel includes this postscript. It serves as a divine epilogue of sorts, where Daniel sees someone asking what he himself was probably wondering, certainly what years of biblical scholars have asked: “When will these astonishing things be over?” When can we expect all this to happen? How will we know that we’ve made it safely to the other side of this holy war? God’s emissary in white offers two different answers, which are perhaps even more mysterious than the visions themselves – “For one set time, two set times, and half a set time. When the breaking of the holy people’s power is over, all these things will be over.”
Maybe he misunderstood. That sounds like not only gibberish, but gibberish in which power is lost, so Daniel makes another effort to fill his cup by asking in a different way: “My lord, what will happen after all this?” The emissary offers some more seemingly random numbers (which some scholars believe aren’t original to the passage), but more importantly, he offers an exhortation: “Get going now, Daniel, because these words must remain secret and sealed up until the end of time.” In other words, stop asking questions that you aren’t supposed to have the answers to! Take what you’ve been given and be satisfied. You will receive your reward at the end of days.
Daniel could have wound things up with his own interpretation of these visions. The book is named after him; he could have given himself the last word. He could have filled his cup with mud and called it water. But he didn’t. He let God’s secrets remain secrets, he let the man in white linen have the final say, he made his peace with not understanding.
We aren’t *meant* to have all the answers. We aren’t *supposed* to know everything. Only God has complete knowledge, so pretending that we do is a form of idolatry. Besides, practically speaking, it’s a waste of time and energy. Instead of trying to be the most knowledgeable person in the room, we could be building relationships with others so that we can SHARE knowledge. Instead of pretending that we already know everything – that our preferred news sources are sufficient, that our own perspectives are all-encompassing, that our current understanding is perfect – we could be clearing room in our minds for ACTUAL knowledge. These might not be the “power” moves that will win you every argument or make you feel like you’re better than everyone else, but they’re inarguably the more faithful options.
Yet it’s one thing to recognize this theoretically, and an entirely different thing in practice. The first step in accepting that you don’t know everything is to practice saying it out loud, so that it becomes less intimidating. So let’s say it together: “I don’t know.” Again: “I don’t know.” One more time: “I don’t know.” Okay, now – that was the easy part. The next step is to figure out what it is that you need to stop pretending to know. Maybe, instead of trying to fix or discount someone else’s problems, you need to empathize and support them: “I don’t know. That sucks. How can I help?” Maybe, instead of telling someone else what they’re doing wrong, you need to focus on your own self-discovery: “I don’t know. I’m still trying to figure that out for myself.” Maybe, instead of assuming that you and those just like you have the answer, you need to defer to someone else’s experience or expertise: “I don’t know. What do you think?” Stop trying to fill your cup with mud. That’s how we wind up with a culture of mudslinging. Be satisfied with its emptiness for now. You don’t NEED to know everything.
You could make the argument that, in talking at you for over ten minutes about this passage, I’m undermining my own claim of not knowing. Maybe this sermon is just one big ol’ cup o’ mud itself. And maybe that’s true. I never claimed not to be in need of a healthy dose of humility myself. But if nothing else, at least I’m entertaining the possibility – out loud – that I might not have all the answers – a possibility that, in time, I’m certain will prove to be true.
Will you join me? Will you practice admitting that you don’t have all the answers? Will you hold fast to your empty cup until God leads you to the fresh, clear waters of truth? Of course, that’s yet another thing that I don’t know. But I sure hope you will. I hope we all will. Amen.
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