STOP THE TRAFFIK

Saturday, April 02, 2005

Thinking about Daniel...

The book of Daniel was written in 2 languages, Hebrew and Aramaic and is an account of events 500 years before the birth of Christ. The book is "chiastic" in structure which means that the first chapter is in parallel to the eighth, the second to the seventh, the third to the sixth and the core are the fourth and fifth chapters. It was explained by concentric circles.
The emphasis lay in the fact that Daniel was an alien in a strange land. He was uprooted from all that was familiar to him, the place where he could worship God in the temple, where the food was prepared in accordance to the law, where he spoke the language. He was chosen with his friends because they were intelligent, strong and handsome. They weren't to be tortured into submission but assimilated. They were offered the finest food, stayed with the king and entered into a three year training programme. They were all given new names which all took their meaning from worshipping the Babylonian gods. Surprisingly, Daniel didn't object to this. As far as we can tell, he took the name with no fuss. It is telling however that 60 years later when the Queen mother remembers Daniel's talent for interpreting dreams she asks for the servants to get Daniel and not Belteshazzar.
Daniel decides to make a stand on food, eating only vegetables and drinking only water. It's possible that he did this because the meat was offered to the Babylonian gods but it was likely that the vegetables had been offered in this way too. Basically I think that Daniel decided where was going to make a stand and he didn't compromise on that. And Yahwey honoured them for that as they grew stronger than all the others.

The parallel for us is that we are living in a post Christendom society. At one time the rulers were Christian and based all their laws on biblical principles but this is not the case now. We are God's people living in an alien land. We have to decide how much we compromise and where we draw the line.

One discussion point was Jerry Springer the Opera. Where did we stand? Did we make a fuss or not? The general consenus was that we as Christians should be known what we are for rather than what we are against and to try not to be seen as complaining whingers. Steve Chalke seemed to think that because there was a campaign to take it off the air, the BBC were put into a position where they COULDN'T back down and take it off air. They have so many complaints about everything that is aired that if they caved into pressure then our screens would always be empty. It was a matter of principle and the louder the Christians shouted, the more the BBC dug their heels in.

The question has to be, what do we want to known for in this alien land?

4 Comments:

At April 02, 2005 8:01 pm, Blogger Paul said...

If the Alien them resonnates, you might like to read stuff by Stanley Hauerwas. Like the blog btw.

 
At April 02, 2005 9:30 pm, Blogger Helsalata said...

Thanks for that Paul. I've just ordered "Resident Aliens: Life in the Christian Colony" from Amazon. Looks right up my street.

 
At April 02, 2005 10:57 pm, Blogger Paul said...

A good overview of his work is also 'transforming fate into destiny' by Sam Wells, or on an aside used to be a vicar in norwich. You can get 2nd hand versions of it in spck i'm sure.

 
At April 06, 2005 8:08 pm, Blogger Carl said...

I think I'm with Steve on the stuff he says about Jerry Springer. I'm not sure I saw much of Jesus in the Christian protests.

 

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