In the midst of everyday life I often find myself struggling to live as if God is really there; I find myself feeling distracted, too focused on the day-to-day to live with a Gospel perspective. This week, our sermon from Daniel 1 showed me an example of living life with a God-centered perspective in the midst of a world that does not share that perspective.

At the start of Daniel 1, an earthly perspective would make it look like God had lost. Israel was conquered, and their place of worship had been looted - how easy could it have been for Daniel and his friends to lose all hope in the sovereignty of a God who didn’t (or even couldn’t) prevent this? And yet, even as they were carried off to a hostile new world, Daniel and his friends still remembered who they were, and who God was - faithful, just, and worthy of their worship. In the face of intense Babylonian efforts to give them new identities (through renaming them) and new worldviews (through re-educating them), they maintained their faith in God, and that faith led them to follow His commandments even in the face of opposition.

What are ways that my culture tries to alter my identity and worldview? I am presented with a subtle but ever-present barrage of alternative standards - be an empowered woman, eat green superfoods, buy the perfect house, boost my productivity, KonMari my kitchen, grow a big bank account. The identities and values that my culture offers me may seem less hostile and more innocuous than those presented to Daniel, but day by day they still shift my view of myself and my view of what is important in the world around me. My literal name may not have been changed from Daniel (“God is my judge”) to Belteshazzar (“Baal protects his life”), but so often I think that my paycheck, not my God, is what protects my life. I so easily forget that my identity is found in God’s finished work on my behalf and that my view of the world around me should be informed by that work.

When my head and my heart forget what is true, I find myself sacrificing my life to the myriad gods of health, wealth, work, marriage and home. I am constantly participating in worship systems that appear to offer me value and salvation, but will never truly save or satisfy me. And in the process, I sin. I sin against God when I place these things above Him. And I sin against others when I envy them for having been more successful than me according to my distorted value system, or when I assign them less dignity because they have been less successful than me.

So how, in the face of both external and internal pressures toward alternate values and identities, can I maintain my identity in Christ? How did Daniel do it? We see later in Daniel that he was disciplined and faithful in prayer (Daniel 6:10). And he had his community in his friends Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. We know from Daniel 2:18 that they prayed for each other, and we see here in Daniel 1 that they supported each other as they worked out their faith in the midst of hostile circumstances.

I have been so thankful for Christian community in my life, for providing Christian women who have prayed for me and reminded me of Christ’s love for me even when my home, career, and marriage may be in shambles. If I see someone who is striving after something other than Christ, am I bold enough to direct them back to Him? Too often my insecurities prevent me from pointing even Christians to Christ, and the example of Daniel and his friends encourages me to pray for that boldness. May we as a church continue to encourage each other to seek after Christ, and may we lift each other up in prayer, that we can be faithful to Christ even when our world encourages us to chase after other gods.