Living Faithfully in a Secular Culture

Feb 12, 2024

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“But something happened to them along the way, and they have lost the cutting edge of their witness. Their faith in God and Christ has become privatized under the pressure of the kind of attitude that characterizes my society. You don't do God in public. Well, ladies and gentlemen, I do do God in public. And I think it's enormously important that we fight against that currency of thought that suggests that God is a purely private matter. The creator of the universe cannot be a purely private matter.”
“Daniel, he didn't lose his piety, he didn't lose his devotion. That's often the case. But he didn't lose his cutting edge public witness. And when I approach this book, one of the big questions I ask is, can we learn anything from his experience that would put steel into our hearts and give us the guts to go out and face the public with what we believe to be true? What was the secret of his stability and his courage in the public space?”
“Now, Babylon was a polytheistic culture, and we'll talk about that in a moment. But the main point I want to make tonight is this, that here were teenagers. Normally, people were enrolled, so far as we know, in the University of Babylon at about 15. They lose their family. They lose most of their friends. They're just four lads together. And the amazing thing about them is that Daniel rose to occupy a position in world history that is unique. That is, he rose to rule, essentially, under the emperor over two consecutive empires. That has never happened before.”
“The point is that when you just get rid of the extraneous theistic God's language from Babylon, they are like contemporary naturalists or, more accurately, materialists. And therefore, Daniel is facing a culture in the University of Babylon later that's very similar to our culture, particularly in Europe. And that makes this book enormously relevant. How do you deal with that kind of pressure?”
“Treating Scripture as literature is very important because I discovered in my young days that my problem with the Bible was I treated it as less than a book. I wasn't even applying the ordinary canons of thought that I'd apply to any book. And therefore, I got very little out of it. So, I was very glad to have a mentor who helped me to see. And Daniel is one of the clearest.”
“So with that very rapid background let's look at one or two of the principles that help daniel maintain his stability just to give you a flavor of the idea now here's the very start of the book in the third year of the reign of jehoiakim king of judah nebuchadnezzar king of babylon came to jerusalem and besieged it and the lord gave jehoiakim king of judah into his hand so that the book begins with a historical annotation but it's not merely a historical annotation it's a very unusual and we might say a very daring interpretation of history the lord gave jehoiakim who was a very weak king of a tiny state into the hand of the great emperor with all the vast armies at his disposal and any contemporary historian would say this is absurd you see if it had said and the lord gave nebuchadnezzar into the hand of jehoiakim that would have been pretty impressive but it doesn't it says the lord gave jehoiakim into nebuchadnezzar's hand and any secular historian would say don't be ridiculous this is simply a matter of the survival of the fittest this is the big state the big empire with all the weapons trampling on very easily a very weak state and yet daniel risks the criticism he says god was behind it now think about it this is a global seismic shift in history it was traumatic for daniel and his friends and yet he believed that god was behind it and this raises something very important and one of the secrets i believe open secrets of what helped him he had a sense of the god of global history and he had a sense of the god of his own personal history and you know it's very easy to believe in a god of both histories if everything's going well but if global history interferes with your personal history and leads to pain and suffering and uncertainty and doubt and despair and horror that's a different matter altogether”
“But then you see, that sense of the hand of God behind history, both global and personal, is one of the most stabilizing things in life. It is a magnificent thing to know that God is, in that ultimate sense, and it's very complex. God's control is unfathomable, in my view. And you see examples of it in Scripture. But I think that what Daniel's doing, he's writing as an old man, and he's writing about the big things in his history.”
“Now, let's just think about that for a moment. Because our first issue was history. Now we're moving to something utterly crucial, then and now. And that is the question of values. Now, to Daniel and his friends, those vessels symbolized absolute value. Now, there's a question for the 21st century. Is there such a thing as absolute value? Is there such a thing as absolute truth? Or is everything relative? It always amuses me. The people that insist on telling me that everything is relative, and they expect me to take that statement as an absolute. It's hard, isn't it? But that's curious, inverted, incoherent thinking.”
“And the only thing that's protecting us from absolutizing the relative is that we regard God as absolute. Now, there's a Christian version of this. And you've probably prayed it. Our Father, hallowed be your name. Hallowed means set apart as absolute value. And it's one of the secrets of our witness to the world, the Apostle Peter says, that if we're going to be able, as he commands us all to do, to be ready to give a defense to anybody who asks us a reason for the hope that is within us, please notice, ladies and gentlemen, that that is not preaching. Give an answer to people who ask you. That isn't preaching. That's dialogue. It's conversation between two people or three. You've got to be ready to do that.”
“And this is a wonderful city to study. But your name, God is my judge. I mean, does it surprise you that he overcame you if you have a name like that? What a grim idea, having a god that's always watching you. And now I hear the voice of Christopher Hitchens in one of our debates saying, your god is like a North Korean dictator in the sky, always watching you. And I said, Christopher, you make me really sad. Do you know, I have somebody watching me all the time. And I don't mind it a bit. She's called my wife. And the reason I don't mind it a bit is because she loves me. And your caricature of God is a tragedy. Because if you once begin to understand that God loves you, you will be very grateful that he watches you all the time.”
“Law, you're studying law and what i found out in studying bioethics is there's one question that people avoid they avoid it in medical ethics they avoid it in business ethics they avoid it in ordinary legal procedure and everywhere else and it's the question who said so what is the authority of your ethics nobody wants to answer that and it's most interesting studying cases complex ethical cases in the high court where you see them floundering they don't want to pin down the source of their ethics that's why we're in such confusion in europe by the way we've denied the transcendent source of law that's been there for centuries and now it's all relative and nobody knows on what to base law”
“There are two ways of gaining significance ladies and gentlemen one is to restlessly try to push our way into making a name for ourselves and it's a method that is all too common push the other guy out of the way if you have to but above all create an identity for yourself or we learn to be content with the identity that god gives us and that isn't always easy for christian people people of difficulty with their name who are they and as they see other people who are more intelligent brighter wealthier all this kind of thing the doubt creeps in”
“So god is prepared to give us a name however little it may appear to other people or however great if it's significance coming from god it gives us a true identity”
“And daniel it says resolved not to defile himself with the food and the wine that was served up and there are all kinds of thinking about this was it to do with israel's food laws it could well be and there are various reasons that i cannot develop now but i want to suggest that he was protesting against the world view that was behind the education now why do i suggest that well because he wasn't simply protesting about the food everybody concentrates on the food in the scholarly articles i've read most people forget the wine daniel was not teetotal he liked south african wine actually but anyway you can read later in the book that he hadn't let wine pass his lips for a number of weeks which showed that he normally drank it so this is not a teetotal protest well what is it then well think about it”
“I accept the education i accept the education now how do i protest it's not easy to answer that you will notice that the book of daniel tells you what they did in their time it doesn't tell you what to do in your time you have to work that out yourself and so i believe that daniel was protesting in a simple and powerful way”
“The issue ladies and gentlemen is not identity it's image how big an issue is that huge if you know anything about what's happening to many of our young people with self -harm with the horrific cyber bullying that's going on on the internet the loss of self -esteem the collapse of image it's a huge problem in our society today people want an image image and the babylonian culture was very much image good looking young people do you remember the beginning why should he make see you looking different you've got to look the same”
“I'd never known pressure like that in my life i was only 19. i couldn't help thinking that if i'd been an atheist and he a christian doing that he'd have lost his job the next day but it was okay to do it to browbeat me so in the end i just said well sir what have you to offer me that's better than what i've already got and he came up with the philosophy of emile berkson which i knew about because i'd read c .s lewis and i looked at him and said if that's all you've got i'll stick with what i've got and i'll take the risk and that's one of the reasons i'm sitting here it's one of the reasons i wrote this book on daniel because in that day steel entered my heart and soul and i resolved that if ever i had the chance to be in an academic position i would present to the public as fairly as possible the evidence in the case of god and science and everything else and not try to browbeat people but allow them the dignity of making up their own minds the book of daniel is a book about swimming against the flow”
“And it's the first evidence in the book of stopping believers practicing their own faith up until this point if you look carefully you'll find that the pressure is to get believers involved in pagan practices but here is a step a very serious step in a negative direction you're not allowed to practice your own faith and ladies and gentlemen it's happening in all of our countries today stealth laws we call them they're put on the statute book and what do they do you see normally for centuries the law of god and the law of the land have run in parallel don't murder don't murder and so on but now laws are being deliberately introduced that force a clash that if you obey them you cannot obey say scripture and in our country they are coming like a flood and how long it will be before there are christians sitting in prison not because they have done something wrong but because they have followed their christian faith i just don't know”
“Image and identity are hugely complex things. And for the sake of the exposition and getting some ideas across tonight, I separated them to a certain extent. But that is only the beginning. I was emphasizing the importance. And for a Christian, the New Testament has a great deal to say about finding our identity in Christ. One of the radically new concepts of the New Testament that you don't meet in any classical religion or philosophy is the notion of in Christ. You never get Greeks talking about in Zeus or anything like that. And therefore, it's very important to realize that these Old Testament stories, they raise questions, but there's much more to be thought about them when you come to the New Testament.”
“I find that sometimes Christians who have been Christians a long time have never really understood the gospel in the sense that they've never really grasped forgiveness. And they're constantly fighting against themselves because they can't forgive themselves. And they don't realize that one of the most powerful things about the message of the cross is Christ knew all about this and he has died for it. But that sounds to them remote and sometimes just over -theological, but they can't grasp the fact and accept they're forgiven. And that can mess up their sense of peace and identity and everything else with it.”
“Because if you don't value your spouse enough to pray with them, there's something badly wrong if you're a Christian. Forgive me for being so blunt. But I have seen marriages repaired, my wife and I. We've seen all kinds of amazing things happen to people's sense of peace, well -being, and identity by simply getting them into those few minutes of scripture a day. The enemy will do anything to stop you doing that.”
“The world is full of silent Christians who have non Christian friends but they never talk to them because they don't know how to begin well when I meet somebody new do you know what I tried to do I play Socrates I keep asking questions until they ask me one try it it is fascinating and I don't mean complex questions I mean about their families and their interests and so on and sooner unless they're total bores they will ask you a question and you befriend them that way people love being asked questions because it is a demonstration of interest and you can ask them all kinds of simple questions arising out of the daily news when there's some catastrophe you can simply say to a friend you know do you have resources to cope with this awful kind of thing and don't then give them your little message we are all desperately inclined to give them our little message one shot and we only get one shot they'll never listen to us again but that business of questions to build up confidence and the way to learn is once you get a question you can't answer you say to a friend look I honestly I've never met that before and I don't know how to begin but I'd like to think about it could we meet for coffee next Tuesday evening and I'll try and think it out people think that's marvelous you'd actually spend time on my question and then you'll do some work I tell you and you'll never forget the answer and when you go and present it you'll get another question and that's the way to develop ways of communicating with people that are natural and not preachy as I said Peter envisages always be ready to give a reason to people who ask you so the onus is upon me to stimulate questions not a preach at people does that make sense but honesty and vulnerability is the main thing”
“There's no shortcut to that you see we've got to have a revolution in our attitude to Scripture a lot of Christians need to get converted not to receive forgiveness and salvation but to change their minds radically about what they think in Ellen?scripture is. You can never get anywhere by reading the Bible five minutes a night and jumping into bed. Especially young people who are in education. You've got to learn to take scripture seriously.”
“And the idea of law didn't begin with a codification of law, either in the Code of Hammurabi or in Scripture. Because, as the New Testament points out, there is something written on our heart, or as we would say, on our conscience, that we're aware of. And for centuries, by and large, the law of states has, certainly in the West, in Europe, has followed that kind of law that we recognize in the Bible. We're not talking about things that are specifically Christian. We're talking about right and wrong as intrinsic concepts. Once you start imposing religious law, whether it was Christian or Sharia law, and so on, that can lead to a lot of trouble. The problem comes, as Daniel indicates, when legislation is passed that begins to change the basic parameters of existence, and redefine things that we have accepted as correct for centuries. And particularly in the area of human relationships, we know that that is happening.”
“And the danger is that we're coming to a point where the state can exceed its powers. Now, if you are put in prison because you say that a certain part is...scripture is still valid, well, you'll have to go to prison. There's no way of avoiding it. And there are people sitting in prison in several European countries, precisely because they say, without being demagogic about it, that scripture still applies today.”
“And that trial then becomes crucially important. What is the Christian stance? And Pilate, who was no fool, conducted the trial himself. He didn't even have a trial lawyer. He did it himself because it was such a sensitive case. Was this person a threat to the rule of Rome? Are you a king? Well, not in the way you mean, said Jesus. My kingdom isn't of this world. Otherwise, my servants would have been fighting. To this end I was born. And to this end I came into the world so that I should bear witness to the truth. And Pilate, hardened soldier that he was, what is truth? And he went out and said Jesus was innocent. He realized, what all of us need to realize, that the one thing you cannot do with violence is impose truth. Especially if it's truth about forgiveness, the love of God, peace with God, and salvation. And we need that message in our societies today.”
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