The central theme of our discourse today revolves around the profound necessity of enduring love amidst tumultuous times, as articulated by both Lao Tzu and Jesus Christ. We delve into the historical contexts of Victor Hugo's "Les Misérables" and the Book of Daniel, exploring how these narratives provide insights into maintaining steadfastness in faith and love during periods of societal upheaval and personal adversity. The episodes of rebellion and exile serve as poignant reminders of the power of compassion and understanding over violence and discord. We are compelled to reflect upon the implications of our actions and beliefs in the face of authoritative figures, drawing parallels between the challenges of the past and those of the present. Ultimately, we advocate for a commitment to love and integrity as the most potent responses to the complexities of our contemporary existence.

This episode offers a profound exploration of the historical context that informs both Victor Hugo's Les Misérables and the biblical book of Daniel. Joshua Noel embarks on a thoughtful dialogue that examines the political and social turbulence of 19th-century France, particularly the June Revolution of 1832, an event that profoundly influenced Hugo's narrative landscape. He draws parallels between the struggles depicted in Les Misérables and the trials faced by the Israelites during their Babylonian exile as recounted in Daniel, thereby elucidating the shared thematic elements of suffering, resilience, and the quest for redemption.

Noel's examination begins with an in-depth analysis of Hugo's experiences and observations under Napoleon III's regime, highlighting how these realities shaped his literary voice and his portrayal of characters like Jean Valjean and Bishop Muriel. He argues that while Les Misérables is steeped in historical fiction, the narratives within Daniel serve as folk tales that convey moral truths rather than strict historical accounts. This distinction invites listeners to appreciate the complexity of these stories and their relevance to contemporary issues, particularly in times of political and social strife.

As the episode unfolds, Noel emphasizes the importance of steadfast love and faith in navigating adversity, urging listeners to reflect on their roles in fostering compassion and justice in a world increasingly marked by division and fear. By drawing connections between past and present, he illustrates the timeless nature of these themes, encouraging a commitment to love and mercy as foundational principles in both personal and communal contexts. This episode serves as a reminder that, even in the face of overwhelming challenges, the enduring power of love remains a beacon of hope.

Takeaways:

1. The historical context of Victor Hugo's Les Misérables is intricately linked to the June Revolution of 1832, reflecting societal upheaval.
2. The Book of Daniel presents a narrative of faith amidst persecution, emphasizing the importance of steadfastness in belief.
3. Both Hugo's and the biblical texts illustrate the profound impact of love and compassion during times of political turmoil.
4. The parallels drawn between historical leaders like Napoleon III and contemporary figures highlight the cyclical nature of power and oppression.
5. The act of rebellion, while significant, may serve more to expose injustices than to effect immediate change, as seen in both narratives.
6. The importance of patience and the opportune moment in enacting love and compassion is a recurring theme in both stories.

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Lao Tzu asks of all seekers of the way, do you have the patience to wait till your mud settles and the water is clear? Can you remain unmoving till the right action arises by itself?

Jesus once said, the love of many will grow cold, but the one who endures till the end will be saved. This is Be Living Water, a show that seeks to find a way to imitate Christ that's beneficial to all and in conflict with none in our modern context.

I am Joshua Null. I am a Taoist Christian who seeks to be true to himself and true to Christ to the best of my abilities.

I may not always be the smartest in the room, but I am committed to be honest about who I am and to look to both Christian and Taoist traditions for wisdom from sages, pastors and theologians who have paved the way before me. Today we're going to be getting into the setting of the books of Daniel in the novel, Victor Hugo's novel Les Miserables.

We keep saying we're going to get into the story. We're going to get into it a little bit here by starting with the setting.

What's going on, where do the books take place and what was the world they were written in? Because that really impact the story that's told is where the author was when it was written.

So we're going to look at both the historic setting of when it was written as well as the setting of the actual stories today. You know, I've said before, I don't really have a plan with this.

So I don't know if we're going to do like some Daniel, then some Les Mis, or we're just going to do both every time. I don't think that's going to be the case. I think I'll probably do like Daniel One soon or an episode on just the Bishop Muriel from Les Miserable.

But today we're going to start with the setting. We're going to get into some of the historic stuff, some of the stories, setting as well, and just start to kind of get our.

Get our toes wet in these fascinating stories. The other way first. So Victor Hugo's novel Les Miserables kind of like historic fiction.

The history of it is real. The specific characters aren't real. Real character. There wasn't A real Jean Val, necessarily. He might be based on someone. I'm not sure about that.

There wasn't necessarily a real bishop, Muriel. But the history of what took place in the story was real. The Book of Daniel, there's a lot of interpretation.

So I do not think that the story of Daniel is history. I don't think it's meant to be read as if this really happened, because otherwise Daniel's like almost a hundred years old.

Given the time, place, everything, it's just like that. It doesn't seem very likely that he outlived so many different kings.

Rather, what I think happened with Daniel is Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego.

There's a lot of these stories of these heroes during the Babylonian exile that I think the Israelites were killing one another to help them keep faith.

And later a redactor came along, took some of these stories and compiled it into a whole narrative that makes wonderful sense, has a lot of truth to it that's really powerful. But I think these are more like folk tales that were compiled in a way to tell a greater message. And that's what I think Daniel is.

Some people are going to disagree, say this is actual history. This is really what happened.

I don't think that necessarily matters to the meaning of the story, but I just want to be transparent where I'm coming from and how I'm reading it, because I think that is going to be important when we get into these both, both stories of Les Misera and Daniel. First, let's go back to those verses I started with. I usually don't do this.

I usually just going to leave them as like, cold and let y' all think on it, whatever. But I want to go back.

So first I started with something from the Tao te Ching, Chapter 15, where Lao Tzu writes, do you have the patience to wait till your mud settles and the water is clear? Can you remain unmoving till the right action arises by itself? He's writing this. He kind of answers it. He kind of doesn't.

Because that's what Lao Tzu does. It's more of like, if you've seen Pirates of the Caribbean and Captain Jack Sparrow, you know, Captain Jack, he.

He does this thing where he's like, you just have to wait for the opportunity, moment savvy. And the idea is like, listen, things might look bad, things might look like I'm betraying. Things might look like this. Wait.

And when the right moment arises, you'll know. Act then. And that's kind of what Lao Tzu is getting at.

It's like things might be hard, things might seem overwhelming, you might be stressed out right now. Like anxiety, everything, like life just seems like too much.

What Lao Tzu is saying is like, sometimes wait, let things calm down, see where things lie after you give the mud time to settle that anxiety. Is the mud that, like, stressed out? Like, like life.

Sometimes it's just muddy and you just need to let things play out a little bit and wait for that opportune moment stuff. That's what Dao Te Ching is getting at there.

The main one I really want to go back to, I read from the book of Matthew where Jesus says, the love of many will grow cold, but the one who endures till the end will be saved. That's actually from Matthew chapter 24. I want to just kind of unpack this a little bit more, right?

So before he gets to that, he's talking about how people are looking for the end of times. Jesus says the temple is going to be destroyed, which is ironic. There's so much irony in this tale.

Like, it's hard for me to get to, but this is the second temple that was built after the rebuilding of the temple the first time, right? So Solomon, son of David builds a temple to the Lord in Jerusalem for the people of Israel. That was the worship place.

Josiah really emphasized that whenever you go, like what I believe when redactors go back and like add and like re. Emphasize some verses that we have in our Torah, Old Testament books now, right?

But then during the Babylonian stuff, the Babylon in like 580-something-BC destroy the temple. But when Jerusalem, when the Israelites get their land back for a short period of time, they build a second temple.

Then the Romans end up destroying the second temple later on after the time of Jesus. So this during the time of Jesus, this is the second temple. It's going to.

Historically, we know that the temple, that temple gets destroyed shortly after Jesus's life. So Jesus talks about the destruction of the temple and it's kind of like, maybe it's about him, but maybe it's about the actual temple.

We're not sure. Talks about the signs of the end of the days. And he's saying, like, listen, people are going to tell you this is the end times.

They're gonna point to wars, rumors of wars, all this kind of stuff. He's like, chill out. You won't know when the end times come. And that's what he's going to hear.

He's talking about like, there's gonna be false prophets. They're gonna be deceiving you, saying, look, this is the end time, so follow after me. This is this life couldn't possibly be worse.

That's why you need to follow me.

You might know people like this, they might not call themselves prophets, but you might see people in our own time, whether it's politicians, pastors, whatever, who are pointing to things around the world going, this is the end of times. Or maybe they're just pointing, going, look, life is so bad, everything could collapse at any moment. America as we know it's gonna end.

That's what Jesus talked about. He's calling those people false prophets, saying, you're not going to know when the end times come.

And what's interesting is he says whenever people start deceiving people in this way, verse 12 says, lawlessness will multiply and the love of many will grow cold. And then we go to the one who endures till the end will be saved. Talking about love. The one who endures in love till the end will be saved.

The one who doesn't give in to these false prophecies, this fear mongering, oh, it's the end times or America's gonna end, you know, whatever. The ones who don't give into all that, who don't give into the fear, but instead embrace love till the end, they will be saved.

That's the good news of the kingdom, Jesus says, and it's going to be proclaimed to all nations.

Then he goes back and he's still warning more about these false prophecies, these people who are fear mongering, saying, oh, it's going to be the end times. Whatever he says, there will be a real end of times to do what Jesus says. And he starts talking about the Son of Man.

He even quotes the prophet Daniel. So he's talking about there going to be a destruction of this second temple.

He's quoting Daniel, which took place during, right after the destruction of the first temple. So he's pointing to a lot of things in the book of Daniel. Often, as you know, verses 8 through 12 is going to be this prophecies of the end time.

And a lot of people, especially before revelation, that's what they pointed to. For here's how we know when the end is going to come. Jesus is saying, you're not going to know when the end is going to come.

The next simple, this temple is going to be destroyed too. Just like the first symbol. Jesus is pointing to a lot of truths. And what he really wants people to get is you will not know the day or hour.

It'll be like a thief in the night, he says, so remain faithful. Hold on to love. Don't give into the fear mongering, the false prophets, the false teachers. Hold on to love. Be steadfast, do the right thing.

Because you don't know when the end's gonna come. So just do the right thing. Just love.

Just hold on to your faith and trust that God knows what's going on, that Jesus will be coming back when the time is right. You don't need to justify bad actions. You don't need to give into these false prophets or do all the fear mongering or freak out or anything.

Just know when the time is right, God will come back. I don't know if this is meant literally or not because Jesus says a lot of this weird, like the kingdom is now, but also, hey, the kingdom is coming.

So it's like here but not yet. And I'm not sure how I feel about the afterlife. If I think it's real or not, I'm not sure. But I also don't think it matters.

I think regardless, it is important that we know to hold on steadfastly to our faith and to love. My faith is in Jesus Christ. Not that one day I will go to heaven or not go to hell.

For some people that's an important part of the faith and I get it. To me, I have a hope. I hope that there's a heaven, that we all will one day be rectified and joined him. I hope there's no hell.

Personally, I don't know, but my faith isn't in that. My hope might be there, but my faith is in Jesus. And when you go to the book of Corinthians, what Paul writes is faith, hope and love.

These three will last forever. So for me, hope is great. I will hold onto my hope. I will hold onto my faith in Jesus. What he says is the greatest of those three is love.

So I think that's the main thing. Even here Jesus is saying when he talks about what to hold on to during all the false prophets and the fear mongering and stuff.

Jesus says, hold on to love. The love of many will grow cold, but if you endure till the end, you will be saved. So hold on to love is what Jesus is saying.

No matter what fear mongering going on, no matter if you think the end times are here or that America is about to end, or that the liberals are taking over our country or the conservatives are destroying our country, whatever, hold on to love. Don't Give in. The false teachers, the false prophet, the fear mongering, hold on to love. That's what Jesus says.

So, and I think that's important messages when we're thinking about what these stories are about. Because both in the time of Victor Hugo and Les Miserables as well as in the time of the Book of Daniel, fear was everywhere.

People thought it was the end times. People felt persecuted because they were being persecuted. There was a lot of polarization.

I'm going to draw a lot of parallels to what's going on in America with Donald Trump, because I think Donald Trump is a man who habitually commits wicked actions. I don't think he is wicked by nature, but I think he's behaved wicked so consistently that we have to push against that.

I know some people will disagree with me, so I'm going to try to make some of those parallels and hopefully you can see where I'm coming from. But even if you don't, I'm not going. I'm not advocating we have to go fight Donald Trump. I'm advocating we have to hold on to love.

Despite whether or not Donald Trump is like these other men or if you think the liberals are like the other man, whatever circumstance, we still have to hold on to love. I still think it's important to make these parallels.

So you see where I'm coming from, why I think we are in a similar time as Victor Hugo with Napoleon III and the people of Israel when the Babylonians.

I think some of our current situation parallels and we need to be cautious, don't think he's exactly the same as those people, but I think Donald Trump is someone that we need to be cautious of. We need to be pushing up against the people of God, need to speak out against the wicked actions of him in this administration.

I'm going to make those parallels and if you disagree with me, that's fine. Let's still hold on to love, steadfast faith together.

So talking about Victor Hugo and Napoleon iii, if you don't know, Victor Hugo is the one who writes Les Miserables. So going over like his life is really interesting.

Napoleon III starts off his first few years gagging the media. He's taking like the. The news, whatever, and he's silencing the media outlet so that people aren't able to hear everything that's going on.

It seems like there's a lot of like false votes and stuff happening. And it's just very shady all around what he's doing. And he's trying to silence people who are trying to speak out.

He also is very keen on making what his country like, his stuff that he's doing in state, showing off his accomplishments so that people don't notice how his international policies were really failing pretty badly. One of which I really like is he had a great train system set up in France. Like Napoleon III did some really great stuff.

He also did a lot of awful stuff and just overall wasn't a very good leader. But he was good at pointing to the good that he did so that people didn't notice the other things.

He has the republic vote themselves out. He dissolves the representatives. He dissolved basically the democracy as a whole, so that he now is the sole leader.

They got rid of all the balance, the checks and balances on his own rule so that there's no longer a democracy, it is now an empire. And this was the second empire of France.

Starts writing a lot of stuff. He even writes a lot of satire. There's one, I forget the French name for it, but it's little Napoleon.

And he just writes story about cute little Napoleon III and just making fun of him and he just vicious stuff. Also really funny.

If you read it, I think you'll get a lot of enjoyment of it remembering this is the same guy who wrote Les Miserables as well as the Hunchback of Notre Dame, also writes some really good satire, some funny stuff. So that's kind of what's going on with him in Napoleon iii. Later we'll talk about the June rev.

Satire, writing everything to speak out, even from afar, using his voice to try and make a difference. All right, so now we're going to go to the Bible. We have Nebuchadnezzar, the king or prince of Babylon. And we also need to know.

I'm going to do that thing where I pretend I know how to say Hebrew names. Jehoiakim, which is Jehoiakim, which is the son of Josiah, he was the king of Judah. So there's two different kingdoms of Israel at the time.

There was the northern kingdom, which was Israel, and the southern kingdom, that was Judah. Israel's already been taken care of. Judah was the last to go.

For a while, Babylon was letting, leaving Joachim, the son of Josiah, as king kind of in Judah, even though Babylon already kind of claimed that territory after a failed attempt to go up against Egypt. The Joachim thought, oh, now is our time. Now we're going to revolt. We're going to go up against.

And that's when people, like, supposedly Daniel and the other three Hebrew children, other people start getting brought into Babylon, start being exiled from Jerusalem completely after that failed revolution. That's when the story of Daniel is taking place. There are a lot of questions on when it was written. We're not sure now.

Again, I still think that it was probably a lot of folktales during the Babylonian exile that lasted a long time. Right?

People talking about Daniel or talking about Shadow, Meshach, Abednego and later a raptor came in and put the stories together for a complete story. That's what I think happened. Some people think it was all written as history right after it happened.

Some people think it wasn't written at all until the Greeks take over Jerusalem after the time of Christ. And that's when you are before the, right before the time of Christ with Alexander the Great, you have the story of the Maccabees.

But if that's the case, it's really interesting that the Maccabees aren't mentioned at all. So the reason some people think that is there's a lot of reference to the Greco Roman kingdoms in the prophecies of Daniel.

There's a few different ways to interpret that.

Some people think that that must mean the book was written after and it's kind of a commentary on the Greco Roman empires and what happened in Jerusalem. Again, if that's the case, it's weird.

The Maccabees aren't mentioned, but could make sense because the book is trying to show that revolutions fighting isn't always the answer, but could be why the Maccabees aren't mentioned. If that's when it was written.

Other people think it was written still during the Babylonian exile or right after Babylonian exile when they got the Second Temple rebuilt because the Book of Daniel kind of lasts up until the Assyrians are in charge and right about the time when the Israelites were being brought back to Jerusalem. So that kind of makes sense as well. There's a few different theories on that.

So just know when it's taking place is right after Jehoiakim's failed attempt to revolt against Nebuchadnezzar in Babylon, that more Israelites are being exiled from Jerusalem into Babylon. That's when it's taking place.

When it's being written is either during that Babylonian exile, when Israel re got their land with the Second Temple, or during their exile under Greek rule, or they weren't really exiled, their subjugation under Greek rule, I guess you could say. But one of those is when it was written.

The setting of when it happened is a little bit easier with this, the Book of Daniel, than the historic setting of the writer.

I think it's important that we actually hear out some of these similarities. So again, if you disagree with me, that's fine. The point is that we hold to love, we hold to our faith, not to these men.

But I want to make these comparisons. So you see why I think these stories are important to our Time right now, all three are going to really put an emphasis on this strong man imagery.

Putting up a good show, right? So I think Napoleon III does a lot of I'm the greatest. We don't need the republic, we don't need these balances and checks.

He does a lot of, like, look at my railway, look at the stuff that I've done. And trying to point away from his failed attempts across the sea. Nebuchadnezzar as statues built, all this stuff.

Donald Trump has gold, blood in the White House, shares all this stuff on social media. Always talk about, I'm the greatest president to, you know, whatever the strongman imagery, that putting up a show, they have that in common.

They all three making the nation great again. Nebuchadnezzar talks about this Babylon excellence that's been prophesied by their gods.

Napoleon III talks about Napoleon the first and the great French Rome, the French empire that he's going to restore. Donald Trump has make America great again. They all have that in common. They all belittle others.

Whether, you know, Nebuchadnezzar literally taking people as slaves from other countries. Napoleon III belittling the republic, belittling the push against him to say, no, I'm the greatest, you don't matter.

And also does try to take over other countries.

Donald Trump belittling the people who come to our country, who speak a different language, who look different than us, who maybe aren't here legally yet or on green cards, that kind of stuff. He also belittles people of the Middle East. He also belittles people who sexual orientation is different, etc. Etc.

The belittling of others is very prevalent in all three of these leaders. All of them are grasping for more power and pushing boundaries. Napoleon III literally dissolved the republic so that he could have an empire.

Nebuchadnezzar is constantly taking new lands and when they try to revolt completely is like, you know, we're going to destroy Jerusalem and you're all exiled now. Donald Trump is trying to take Greenlee and trying to take all this other stuff, trying to.

He has stuff passed in the court so that some of the balance checks and balances on him are no longer as valid. Giving more power to the executive branch.

They're all grasping for more power, pushing the boundaries of what they're allowed to do and not allowed to do in their own respective kingdoms countries. They're all subject to minority in the mind and the marginalized.

They all do this populist appeal of like, oh, so many people like me Even if that's not true, sometimes they all try to appeal to that in their own times, their relationship to institutions. You know, we talked a lot about Napoleon and the Republic. Nebuchadnezzar does the same thing.

There's a lot of rules of what he can and can't do that he completely ignores. A little bit easier, given the Babylonian setup.

Donald J. Trump, constantly trying to push things to the Supreme Court, ignoring Supreme Court ruling sometimes on things that he did to see if he can get things changed in his favor, pointing his judges, you know, stuff like that. Trying to constantly get more power, push the boundaries of institution. What if he is and is not allowed to do.

And I think the main thing too is to look at nationalism and the religious justifications.

So nationalism, for those who don't know, isn't just like this term that was invented one day to be like Christians who want other Christians to be leaders. No, that's cool. Nationalism is basically saying that your country is the best. It's like a worship of the country. Your belief is in your country.

Babylon thinks that it's the greatest nation of all time. That's why it has a right to take these other countries. Napoleon, same thing. Donald Trump, same thing.

That's why other people, he doesn't want other people from other countries in our country. That's why he wants to get rid of all the immigrants.

That's why he belittles people from the Middle east, because he has this belief that America is the greatest and should be, and it should be pure and everyone should be like him. That's what nationalism is. All three have that in common. All three also use religious justifications. You know, God's with me, the church is with me.

You know, I'm. When you go to Nebuchadnezzar, he says, the God's appointed me. Is this as leader.

When you go to Donald Trump, you have this like, I am your retribution, I am your savior. You kind of try to take that title from God, from Jesus even a few times. I don't think he does it verbatim, but he says these things and he.

And you have these, these religious leaders around him constantly trying to build them up. A lot of people do that, like Donald Trump, Adolf Hitler comparison. And I think it's fair. I think they're pretty darn similar.

But I think you can also see these in other places that maybe we don't push up against as much as, you know, Hitler's like the go to bad guy.

But you also have people like Napoleon iii, You Also have Nebuchadnezzar who do these similar things of using nationalism, using religious justification, of belittling others, of pushing the boundaries of institutions, of trying to get rid of checks and balances on their rule, that you can look to be like, Donald Trump is doing very similar things to these leaders as well. So, again, it's not just Hitler, it's all kinds of people.

And when we go through these stories, that's why I think it's important, especially for myself in America, but plenty of others around the world today, to think about these stories now of Les Misra, of the Book of Daniel, because so much of it does mirror these leaders. Mirror are mirrored in Donald Trump.

I think as believers, it's important for us to look to these stories to see what other people said about truth, faith, love. In times with leaders such as these, I'm going to move past that for now.

Some of the people of France try to rebel against Napoleon III's rule. And it's ultimately pretty quick failure. The thing is, though, they knew it wasn't going to succeed.

It seems like historically that they did not expect to succeed in the rebellion, but they thought by doing would expose how Napoleon Third has taken the power, what he's done to France. They thought by rebellion it would expose that. I think it did. And a lot of times that's the point of rebellion.

And just to expose what's happening more than it is to we think we're going to win. It's rather a on principle we have to rebel against this. And also maybe by rebelling, others will see what's happening is wrong.

The Babylonian exile, again, is right after a failed revolution, similar to what happened in France, except for instead of a, you know, civil revolution, it was Israelites going up against the Babylonians who have already claimed their land. But Jerusalem should be God's land in the first place. So a little bit different as far as the geopolitical atmosphere goes.

But these Israelites are being brought in under subjugation simply because of the failed revolution. So when we're looking to Les Misra, we're looking at the revolution as it happens.

And what does it look like to hold on to steadfast love and faith as that kind of thing is happening? Violence in the streets is happening. The book of Daniel is after that failed revolution.

When we're subject to an evil king who's proven his power, how do we still have love? How do we still have faith when we've lost our land, our people, our identity in many ways? How do we still have faith in times as these?

That's what Daniel is going to be getting at. Both stories are going to show that love being steadfast to your faith is what saved people, not the war. Right. Daniel happens after the war.

No good really happened from it. They're just exiled now.

But what you see is through the story of Daniel and the other three Hebrew children, is that by holding onto their faith, you're doing what they believe is right. Staying true to their tay that we talked about in past episodes and just worshiping God, praying Still, they were persecuted. They didn't fight back.

And eventually the king saw God's blessing on them. The king saw is by them just remaining faithful and Nebuchadnezzar saved and then lost and saved and then lost and like it's a whole thing.

I think it's because the point of the stories, there are multiple stories. I don't think it was just one story. I don't think Nebuchadnezzar was literally like, oh, I'm saved now, but next chapter, I'm coming for you.

I think they were just different stories and that's just how they were compiled. But the point is, like, Nebuchadnezzar doesn't necessarily end up a Hebrew at the end of the story.

He doesn't necessarily end up worshiping God by the end, but each story he sees a little bit more of the truth of God.

The truth of God is revealed to the people of Babylon through their inaction, through them just deciding to worship rather than fighting to just hold true to what they believe. That spoke clearer and louder to the people of Babylon than the fights ever did.

Same thing in Les Miserable, Jean Valjean's act to not attack, to not execute Jean when he had the opportunity. Bishop Muriel's choice to show mercy to a child who robbed him. These moments of inaction spoke way more.

They did way more good, Bishop Muriel helping the poor and the needy and the those in the hospital. They did way more than this revolution did. The revolution did accomplish something. It showed how the Powers being misused by Napoleon iii.

But what accomplished more was just that love, that steadfast faith that showing mercy to others when maybe they don't deserve it. In these stories, inaction proves to be greater, to have a bigger impact than the violent revolutions did. But I still think both might be necessary.

Again, it was because of the revolution in France that exposed what Napoleon was doing and let people see what was happening in the first place. Now, I still think that inaction did more, but. But I don't think that revolution was pointless. Same thing.

I think it was good that Jehoiakim tried to push back on Babylon. This is God's land. Probably learned that from his father, Josiah. Ultimately, that pushback, it may have exposed what Babylon was doing.

The people of Israel knew who Nebuchadnezzar was now, that he wasn't a benevolent leader, just letting them have their land.

But what did more, whether real or not, was these examples of people like Daniel Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego who said, we're going to obey God, we are going to pray to our God, we are going to show love, be faithful. Even in these times of persecution, even in these times when we are the marginalized, we will be faithful.

And that spoke louder than the violence and the revolutions.

So when I make these comparisons to Donald Trump, or if you want to make similar comparisons to a Democratic leader, whoever comes after Donald Trump, maybe I think it's important for us to remember violence isn't the answer. Yeah, hey, let's speak back. Let's write satire like Victor Hugo did. That's great. We'll talk about Little Trump, Itty Bitty Trump.

That'd be a great book. I'd read it.

But I think what accomplishes more that these stories show us is to just be faithful, to love those when it's hard to love, to show mercy to those who maybe would not show mercy to us, to let the mud settle and see the opportune moments where we can show mercy to others, love to others, take those moments, take the moments when they arise to show love. And that's going to be more powerful than any violent revolution or anything like that.

So whether, again, you're with me on Donald Trump being like these men, we need to do something and say something cool. Let's do it.

But let's also remember, if it's Trump, Biden, Obama, Bush, whoever, what's going to do more than pushing back against them is to find our fellow man, whether in a fight amongst us, whether it's the people persecuting us, the people persecuting others, our neighbor friends.

The simple acts of just showing love, mercy and being steadfast in these times that seem like, oh no, they're the end of times, everything's falling apart. Remember what Jesus said, yeah, don't fall for that. Don't fall for the false prophets, the false teachers. Don't fall for the fear mongering.

Instead, let's show steadfast love. Let's show mercy.

Let's find those moments right now where we can just be true to ourselves and show love to our neighbors, our neighbors being anyone around us that we can see and have compassion for. And that's going to do more. It's going to do more than any of these other things.

As always, I do want to end with three takeaway questions and a point of meditation. Our three questions today how important is grandstanding? Remember, the revolutions were grandstanding. They fought back.

They made an example and showed people whose empire really was. Grandstanding is also what Donald Trump, Nebuchadnezzar, Napoleon III do. You know, they make statues, they put gold plating in the White House.

They, you know, make giant railway systems, which actually was a good thing. Again. But how important is grandstanding?

Whether it be to show that we're a great leader or whether it be to show leader really is, how important do you think grandstanding is? Can you wait for the opportune moment?

Are you able to, like, even though maybe terrible things are happening in the geopolitical atmosphere of our world or people are complaining about halftime, Super Bowls and you want to just react immediately, or someone cut in front of you on the highway, whatever, are you able to let the mud settle? Wait for the opportune moment where you can show mercy and love and compassion. Instead, can you wait for the opportune moment?

That's question number two. Question number three is going to be, what does compassion look like for you in this moment where you are right now?

What ways can you show compassion to your fellow man? So again, our three today, how important is grandstanding? Can you wait for the opportune moment?

And what does compassion look like for you in this moment, our point of meditation today, or this week or two weeks, whatever, Whenever you're listening to this, find a quiet place. I want you to think on some times when others had to wait on you or they were patient with you.

It could be a little time like someone was waiting on you in line or waiting for you in the restroom or waiting for you to finish dinner before going out to play. Maybe it's bigger things. They're waiting on you to see you were wrong about something, waiting on you to apologize.

Maybe they were waiting on you to say I love you first in a relationship. Just think of signs where others had to wait on you had to be patient with you.

I rather than providing you with any clear answers or instructions on what to do with your life or how to find wisdom.

I hope this conversation instead has helped you struggle with and ponder how to best be true to yourself as a unique individual and to be true to Christ as the true source of all life. Remember, we are to be water, beneficial to all and in conflict with none. We are to be Christ loving everyone, laying down our own lives for others.

Thank you for joining me in my own struggles to love myself, others and God better and I hope this has encouraged you to continue to be living water. Sam.