Feeling like you don’t fit…

When we were decluttering our bedroom a month or so ago, I came across a book that I’d bought at Spring Harvest years ago and never read. It was about the book of Daniel so I thought I’d save it and read it this month as I go through this book of the Bible.

‘Stretch’ by Gerard Kelly was published in 2005 as part of a Spring Harvest series. Gerard and his wife Chrissie founded the Bless Network and now live in France and are establishing a missional community there.

In the introduction to ‘Stretch’, Gerard Kelly points out that the true courage and power that Daniel displays is to swim against the tide of majority opinion. It’s interesting. The Book of Daniel is all about faith in God and yet none of the action of the book takes place in a temple or is about ‘religious’ life. The narrative is all about real life – getting on with a job in the real world in a foreign land. A man working out what it is to live for his God in the secular world of his day.

And the backdrop to this challenge is that the faith of all God’s people has been shaken by the events unfolding before them. It’s hard for us to understand the profoundly spiritual effect of what has happened to God’s people. When God brought them out of Egypt all those years ago, He made promises to give them a land and keep them safe and provide for them. Now He has allowed foreigners to invade their land and desecrate their holy places and drive God’s people into exile. God seems to be turning away or worse still, impotent to do anything about it. This destruction of God’s holy city calls into question the very existence of an all-powerful God. As God’s people travel to Babylon, they are stripped of their power and prestige as the chosen people of the one true God. God does not even seem to be a viable deity any more. God has been beaten by the surrounding nations and is doing nothing to restore His name. Is God even still God without His people and His temple and His city?

And so Daniel has to deal with these immensely difficult questions without the traditional structure of his religion to lean back on. There are no priests to go to to talk it through with. Daniel finds himself in a place where the language and customs are alien to him. Foreign gods are worshipped there. The values and aspirations of the people are different to those that he grew up with. All the traditions and rituals of his faith are no longer in place. All that once was, all that Daniel has ever known, is on the other side of a great cultural and religious divide. And it’s up to him to find a way to face hostility and suspicion and to find a relevant expression of his faith to people outside that experience.

Daniel realises that he must keep alive the dream of God’s greater purposes. If he forgets, there is no one to remind him.  Page 4, Stretch

Daniel’s faith runs so deep that he does not need the external props of his faith to stay strong. He has an intrinsic faith that is so deeply rooted in his life that it shapes everything that he says and does. Even though there is now a measurable, physical distance between Daniel and the land of his faith, his faith travels with him in his whole being. He has the strength to resist the idols of the new context and culture in which he finds himself. For him, it’s not about fulfilling a duty or acting righteously because he’s being watched by his community. He continues to trust and obey God because there’s a desire in his heart to trust and obey God and nothing is going to stop him. And actually, it’s clear form Daniel’s experience that everything around him that threatens to shake his faith to the care actually stretches his faith to its full potential. Through this experience, Daniel’s faith becomes more resilient and far deeper. This exile serves to purify his faith.

We may feel that we are living in a foreign land. Most of us are not living with the actual physical struggles and challenges of being displaced from our homes and countries like Daniel (but there are plenty that are and plenty of opportunities for us to be showing God’s love and compassion), but the place of Christianity in our world is definitely shifting and Christians are finding themselves in a more marginal minority. The traditions of the Christian faith in our country are not what they were. The temptations to compromise and conform are far greater than ever before.

We may be discovering that we have different values to those around us, that we’re speaking a foreign language.

But there is hope.

If Daniel can stay true to his God despite all the clever and seductive attempts to assimilate him to the new world he’s living in, then perhaps we all can.

Faith is possible in our confusing world.

There are exciting new faith adventures waiting for us out there.

Ways to express our faith in fresh, relevant, accessible ways.

There’s some great stuff going on at the margins. It’s time to get out there and join the faith revolution.

It’s definitely not time to hide away and cling onto the past and do things the way we’ve always done them behind closed doors.

Because such challenges can build faith not destroy it, strengthen faith not weaken it, purify faith not taint it.

Build resilience.