May 2, 2022

Daniel 4: 8 (NIV)

“Finally, Daniel came into my presence and I told him the dream. (He is called Belteshazzar, after the name of my god, and the spirit of the holy gods is in him.)”

As Christians in the Middle East and Africa face hideous violence, American Christians shouldn’t feel overwhelmed in the face of relatively minimal persecution.*

I think I speak for all Christians in the USA when I say that I feel like a stranger in my homeland. I don’t think the world is any worse than it ever has been but this country has never been so far from God. What is our battle plan? Perhaps we could learn a few things from Daniel.

Daniel was among a group of young Israelite men of noble or royal birth who were selected to be immersed in Babylonian culture, and trained for three years before entering service to the king. In this verse, we learn that King Nebuchadnezzar, the ruler of Babylon and conqueror of Judah, has renamed Daniel in honor of one of the king’s gods. Read Daniel’s story though and you will find a man who stood firm under the tempting influences of a pagan culture. He was separated from his own religious heritage but he did his best to worship God in accordance with the Law. 

Our current circumstances are not so different from Daniel’s - surrounded by an alien culture and unable to avoid every aspect of it.* In many ways, Daniel’s pursuit of religious purity was just a matter of inconvenience and making an extra effort . . . until the law of the land didn’t just make it hard to worship God - under a new administration, it became illegal to worship anyone or anything other than the king. Now Daniel must defy the law in order to honor God. No matter what the penalty. 

Jesus predicted that we would be hated because of him and it is a fact that we are. Will we be prepared to hold on to our faith when inconvenience turns to persecution? As Paul reminds us in Philippians 3: 20, our citizenship is in heaven, and that is where our Savior comes from. We should get used to being aliens in the world.

The current American political climate tempts Christians to be more interested in being right than in being righteous.*