September 2021
by Alistair Begg Pastor, Chagrin Falls, Ohio What does it look like to live as a Christian in a society that increasingly does not like what Christians believe, what we say, and how we live? Or to put it another way: What do we do when we realize that the place we are living is less and less like Jerusalem, and more and more like Babylon? For centuries in the West, and perhaps particularly in the United States, Christians have enjoyed being in the rooms where things happen. But now the wind of society is less at our backs and more in our faces. For the first time, perhaps, we need to learn how to live well in Babylon. And
cross them. we find the resources to do so in God’s word. The experience of most of God’s Resolve to Draw the Line people for most of the Scriptures was We cannot overstate the pressure that of living as a minority in a Daniel and his friends society that at best did not understand them, and We have much Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah were under when at worst actively to learn, for they arrived in Babylon: opposed them. instance, from their nation defeated, We have much the first exiles of their temple destroyed, to learn, for Israel — Daniel and now living in the instance, from the first exiles of Israel and his generation most glittering and powerful city in the known — Daniel and his world. They were enlisted generation. And one in the service of the king of lesson of Daniel for our Babylon — and they accepted it. Their increasingly post-Christian day education was that of Babylon — and is this: know God and his word, know they accepted it. Their names were where to draw your lines, and don’t
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changed to be those of Babylon — and they accepted it. Their food was to be that of Babylon — and Daniel and his friends drew the line there. “Know God and his word, know where to draw your lines, and don’t cross them.” “Daniel resolved that he would not defile himself with the king’s food, or with the wine that he drank” (Daniel 1:8). Daniel said, I can do this, and I can absorb that, but I cannot go any further. I have drawn a line; I will not cross it, and I am taking my stand here. A dead fish flows with the current; it takes a live fish to swim against the stream.
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