When people disagree with you… in this time of moral outrage…is there a path of faithfully witnessing your faith?
Today, many followers of Jesus wonder how we are to live in a world whose daily norms, with each and every passing day, seemingly grow more out of step with God.
Can we, dare we, publicly express an opinion, informed by the Bible, that is different than the growing mainstream norms of this age.
Rod Dreher, author of The Benedict Option writes it is the “inevitable fate” of “Christians who hold to the biblical teaching about sex and marriage have the same status in culture, and increasingly in law, as racists,”
In an effort to magnanimously express toleration, we are told more and more that our faith is fine, so long as it is faith in private. (As if we were somehow uninformed all these years about what is, and is not, appropriate).
Yet when you are not private, when you express an opinion that others disagree with, their moral outrage is stunning.
John Lennox notes, “Strong currents of pluralism and secularism in contemporary Western society, reinforced by a paralyzing political correctness, increasingly push expression of faith in God to the margins, confining it possible to the private sector…To the relativist and secularist, public witness to faith in God smacks too much of proselytizing and fundamental extremism. They therefore regard it more and more as a threat to social stability and human freedom.” (Lennox, Against the Flow, pp.1-2)
Here I will, for the moment, not engage the broader theological and philosophical questions of what a society’s values should be built upon. Instead, I return to the question of, “How then shall we live?”
To put more of a point on it, “When people disagree with you…
in this time of moral outrage…is there a path of faithfully witnessing your faith?”
The Book of Daniel answers this question of how to live as people of faith in a culture that is not only foreign, but hostile. Further, point of fact, the faith of Daniel is a faith that makes absolute claims about this world, and more.
Amid these societal pressures and their own religious system, Daniel and his friends find a way not merely to survive, but to thrive. It flows from deep within themselves, informed by their God and His Holy Scriptures.
As we proceed in unpacking the Book of Daniel, we will begin slowly, seeking to set a Frame of Reference, one that transcends Daniel’s day, and I pray will speak to our day.
Before we press on, let me ask, “Do you feel as if your world is becoming one where 1. You are out of step with the trends, and 2. You should not speak about it?