The Book of Daniel is the story of God's lordship over all creation, including kings and empires. Throughout the book we will see God setting up and then removing kings as He pleases.
The story of Daniel and his friends being taken into captivity has much to speak to our Church today. Daniel, you will have read, refused to defile himself while in Babylonian captivity. Their efforts to assimilate Daniel and his friends into their own culture and mores was met with resistance. And this resistance was respected by the king.
Would that the Church would learn to be this resistance as well. I'm not talking about resisting the culture of rap music or dressing like you don't care about your reputation, no. In fact, I think the Church has been going along with our culture by playing the prim church lady shaking our proverbial finger at "kids these days" when the real decay in our communal life goes much more deeper than swear words and short skirts.
The church has gone along with our culture and allowed itself to be assimilated into world that has used it and thrown it away for political and financial gain. The church has turned a blind eye to the needs of the poor and for advocating for the least and the lost and the lowly in order to keep its invitation to the country club elite. We can discuss the poor over wine and pray over the lost on Sunday mornings but we dare not turn that discussion or those prayers into action or we risk being expelled from the hoi polloi.
And so we see the church used and abused in our political process. God, evidently, can tell politicians to run for office but then He better keep quiet when it comes time to legislate.
No, we would do our memory of Daniel well to say, "Thanks, but no thanks" to being a cultural institution. A Christian's presence in the room should make people uncomfortable, not comfortable.
