Historian George Marsden once remarked that the previous generation of evangelicals were never quite able to make up their mind “whether the United States was Babylon or the New Israel.” With the declining numbers and the waning cultural influence of the church in many areas of the United States, many evangelicals have decided in favor of Babylon and have reacted in a number of ways. Many have fought today’s “exile,” entrenching themselves as part of the ongoing fight to “take back America.” Others have given up on the world, retreating to their homes and churches to avoid contamination from the outside culture. Still others have embraced the change of situation as a blessing, welcoming the country’s cultural changes as if they were, as a whole, a movement of the Spirit.
The book of Daniel, however, shows the church a different way, a way of purity and presence, a way of vulnerable dependence upon God. The book begins with a group of young men being taken into King Nebuchadnezzar’s service (1:3). This is the same king who razed Jerusalem to the ground and demolished the temple, the same king who stole everything valuable in the temple and placed them in his own god’s temple in Babylon, to symbolize his presumed defeat of Israel’s God (1:1-2). These young Jewish men were forced to serve a king who would have felt at ease in the company of Genghis Khan, Hitler, or Stalin.
What is most remarkable about the first chapter of Daniel, however, is the prudence the young Jewish men show. When it comes to a relatively minor matter of purity (consuming unclean food and drink), Daniel and his friends resolve not to compromise, no matter the consequence (1:8-16). They politely request to receive different food, confident in God’s ability to sustain them. When it comes to things seemingly more substantial, they are willing to obey because they see that they can do so without risking their purity. No knee jerk reactions here; they willing serve the Near Eastern equivalent of Hitler without resisting. They not only willingly learn the language and literature of the pagan Babylonians (and remember that this literature would have included a large chunk of Babylonian religion and myth!), but beat their pagan colleagues at their own game, excelling in their learning (1:4, 17-20). They are willing to be called the names of foreign gods, knowing, perhaps, that an idol is nothing (1:7; 1 Cor. 8:4)
Nebuchadnezzar no doubt recruited these young men in order to influence his Jewish captives, to make them good Babylonian subjects. Ironically, as the rest of the book shows, because they remain loyal, God is able to use them to influence Nebuchadnezzar and to be a redemptive presence in the Babylonian Empire.