Canter Bridge

Heroism is rarely alleged by those deemed to have achieved it. In contrast to the view from the sidelines, heroes are heroes only in retrospect. In the heat of choice, they simply find the resources to do the right thing.

Heroism is a tie that squeezes tight on the neck of the man or woman who knows better. She only did what she was trained to do. You would have done the same thing in my situation.

Maybe.

Biblical literature shares with a skeptical generation some reservations about heroes. More often than not, it is an identity forced upon them, unconsulted, with no patience for digging into facts and how things were.

Shadrac, Meshac, and Abed-Nego, Judean exiles wearing Babylonian names in the court of a foreign king, come with little friction into hero status. Yet the truth of the narrative is seen in its ability to tell the tale from the inside rather than from the whiteboards and fast hands of the hero-makers.

Faced with certain death in a fiery oven and uncertain divine response, the three men are quoted with a poignant realism.

‘If our God, whom we serve, is able to save us, he will save’, they tell the king at their pre-execution hearing. ‘But if not, let it be known to you, O king, that we will not serve your god or worship the statue of gold that you have set up.’

Most English translations whitewash out the twin conditionals of this straightforward summary of events. Some change it into an affirmation.

Our God is able to save …

Others lay hand upon separate contingencies. Though the grammar leaves some small room for maneuver, this exertion is essentially aimed at easing the scandal of uncertainty out of a life-and-death text where uncertainty is the warp and woof of the heart’s gyrations.

The New Revised Standard Version maintains a steady gaze.

If our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the furnace of blazing fire and out of your hand, O king, let him deliver us. But if not, be it known to you, O king, that we will not serve your gods and we will not worship the golden statue that you have set up.

These are not the precepts of classroom philosophy. Rather, they are the words of young men who have never been in quite this situation and could hardly lay pen to a declaration of precisely what God can and cannot do in a predicament like the one about to end their lives.

Yet the outcome is the same.

We will not serve your gods.

Heroism is not philosophical. It is the visceral decision to stand just here right now, because it matters more to do so than to shuffle right or left.