Even though we knew all this

In the Book of Daniel, King Belshazzar of Babylonia is referred to as the son of Nebuchadnezzar the Great, who had destroyed Jerusalem and the Kingdom of Judah in 586 B.C. In brief, Nebuchadnezzar had seen in a dream, interpreted by Daniel, that he had not humbled himself before God, that he would be driven from society and his mind become like that of an animal for seven years. And it was so. He went insane. He lived in the wilderness, his hair and his nails grew long, and he ate grass like a wild creature.

When he humbled himself before God, his sanity was restored. And lest we misunderstand the nature of Nebuchadnezzar’s abuse of power, it is made clear by one of God’s demands of restitution: “mercy to the oppressed” (Daniel 4:27).

Back to Belshazzar. You may remember the story from Sunday School: he was hosting a banquet and commanded that his servants bring in the holy cups and vessels, plundered from the Temple in Jerusalem, so the guests could drink wine from them. A hand appeared before them all and wrote a message on the wall. The king was terrified. Daniel was called again to interpret the writing. He prophesied that because of the king’s irreligious arrogance, the kingdom would be taken from him.

Daniel reminded Belshazzar of Nebuchadnezzar’s divine punishment for his own pride in greatness and denial of the sovereignty of God. Then Daniel proclaimed, “You, Belshazzar his son, have not humbled your heart, even though you knew all this!” Daniel could well have said, “You have not learned from history. Even though you knew history, you disregarded its lessons.”

It was the philosopher Hegel who wrote, “What experience and history teach is this—nations and governments have never learned anything from history, or acted upon any lessons they might have drawn from it.” Later, George Santayana, in his work The Life of Reason, concluded, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Our world has proven itself to be a poor scholar with a poor memory, making the same mistakes again and again.

How many times will hurricane- ravaged New Orleans be rebuilt again and again below sea level? It took three wars for Britain to learn that it could not defeat Afghanistan. It took the Soviet Union ten years to realize it could not conquer Afghanistan. Did anyone learn from history? The U.S. was at combat in Afghanistan for almost 20 years! Speaking of the repeated mistakes of his own nation, Conrad Adenauer, one-time chancellor of West Germany, said, “The good Lord set definite limits on man’s wisdom, but set no limits on his stupidity.”

Daniel L. Smith-Christopher of Loyola University reminds us of history: We see in Belshazzar’s blasphemous use of the holy relics of another culture one of the most insidious elements of imperial power and oppression: the destruction of faith and identity, the attack on a culture as well as a people. The intoxication of power releases the ruler from maintaining any further pretenses: We are the conquerors; we are the superior culture. Let us parade their treasures and mock the defeated.”

What did the prophet declare was the sovereign trait required by God: mercy, and the humility to know when one’s mercy requires attention. And if we needed a history lesson, we received it on the National Day of Prayer from the Canterbury Pulpit, in the plea of Episcopal Bishop Mariann E. Budde to our President: “Have mercy!”

Will we fail our history lesson even though we knew all this? Or will we choose our own lives to be prophetic: will we now excuse ourselves from Belshazzar’s table?