Now I, Nebuchadnezzar, praise and exalt and glorify the King of heaven, because everything he does is right and all his ways are just. And those who walk in pride he is able to humble.
Daniel 4:37
 
But you, Belshazzar, his son, have not humbled yourself, though you knew all this. Instead, you have set yourself up against the Lord of heaven… You did not honour the God who holds in his hand your life and all your ways.
Daniel 5:22-23

Daniel told the truth. He told unpalatable truth to tyrants with absolute power. He interpreted their dreams, however damning, as the Lord revealed them to him. His friends told the truth when threatened with death by fire. They told the truth because the God of heaven was their very breath. In the end Nebuchadnezzar accepted the truth that came from the Most High God, and his last recorded words before he disappears from the story are words of praise and worship.
 
But his successor didn’t seem to know Daniel, who may have been in retirement. All we know of Belshazzar is that he held a great feast, got very drunk, and used the drinking vessels from the Temple to entertain his wives and girlfriends and the powerful of Babylon. And then the moving finger wrote on the plastered wall, and eventually Daniel was called to face this drunk and rather scared bully and to read the cryptic signs.
 
So once more Daniel stood up to tell the truth. In doing so, he was uncompromising, scathing in his criticism, refusing any reward. He told the king that he had learnt nothing and that judgment was about to fall. The next day Belshazzar was dead and Darius the Mede was in charge.
 
But this is complicated truth. It is not truth of the ‘Did you break that window? Yes or no?’ type. It is truth that arises out of a close relationship with the Lord, letting God’s wisdom, God’s law, God’s character inform understanding. It is truth that is fed by a sympathetic and careful assessment of the politics and culture of the surrounding world. It is truth mulled over in prayer with close advisers. And it is truth delivered in different modes. With Nebuchadnezzar it was truth that allowed the king space to think it all through, so that eventually he was a changed man. With Belshazzar the truth was hard-hitting judgment.
 
How do we speak the truth?