Daniel – part 1
Daniel grew up in a world much like ours, knowing firsthand the scary disruptions to normal life caused by the stupidity of egotistical politicians and the evil ambitions of power hungry psychopaths.
Daniel’s king Jehoiakim, king of Judah, for instance, endangered his people by “doing evil in the eyes of the Lord,” 2 Kings 23:37 – a really stupid thing to do because God had Nebuchadnezzar 11, king of the Babylonian Empire, besiege Jerusalem in 605 BC and cart Jehoiakim off to Babylon along with other members of the royal family, including Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah, Daniel 1:3-6.
So Daniel, probably still a teenager, finds himself in a country very different to the country he’s grown up in. And there’s no going back to the “normal” he knew back home either. His life for the next 70 years (or more) will be spent in a new world, with new customs, new rules, and very different views to his own scripture-based lifestyle and education. How then will he cope with such changes?
I can relate to that, finding myself in a world now that feels very different to the world I knew before the pandemic. Never in my life had I experienced lockdowns, required social distancing and masking, no jab no job mandates, censoring by social media, vaccine passports, regulations constantly changing, state control of media, respected doctors and academia deserting their foundational principles, families being irreparably divided, and threats of police action for daring to protest. And not ever daring to question “the science,” either.
I’d never experienced living in such a ridiculous, clownish world, made worse by outright lies and cover-ups of essential information that tore at my trust in just about every institution I had respect for before. Put that together with the unscriptural sexual lifestyles and ideologies being pushed by Christians and non-Christians alike and my mind was in a whirl.
How does one cope in such a world, where what we knew has been turned upside down, and the state wants to control our every thought, word and action?
But Daniel found himself in exactly that kind of world too, that didn’t tolerate any questioning of its authority or mandates either. So what did he do? And especially when the government went a step too far. How did he cope with that as well?….(part 2, March 24)
Buck To Basics 