18. Faithful in Exile
18
Faithful in Exile
Good faith Christians love their neighbors, believe in God’s power at work in his people, and live into God’s call to be agents of reconciliation.
“It’s like we’re living in a modern-day Babylon.”
I recently overheard two Christian friends discussing today’s seemingly out-of-control culture. One of the guys felt like an ancient pagan civilization was the closest analogy he could find.
And his friend immediately agreed. “Definitely!”
Babylon.
Why would Christians reference an ancient culture to describe today’s society? If you had to describe mainstream culture in a single word or phrase, what would you choose?
Complicated.
Complex.
Pleasure-seeking and narcissistic.
Spiritual but godless.
Strong and powerful yet corrupt and immoral.
Confused about right and wrong.
In ancient times, Babylon was an empire that, like empires before and since, overwhelmed other lands and peoples with military and commercial power and sought to obliterate competing cultures. In the seventh-century BC, the king of Babylon, Nebuchadnezzar, laid siege to Jerusalem, and the kingdom of Judah fell to the empire. To complete Babylon’s dominance of Judah, Nebuchadnezzar took captive most of the noble families, craftsmen, artisans, soldiers, and other prominent citizens, carting them all off to the empire’s capital.
One Hebrew, in particular, stood out.
Daniel, a member of a Judean noble family, was human plunder of a military conquest, a victim of human trafficking. He came from the ethnically and religiously homogenous culture of Judah and was taken by force to the cosmopolitan and religiously plural capital. It was something like The Hunger Games, if you think about it. All the “districts” of the Babylonian Empire were coerced into sending their best and brightest to serve the interests of the capital.
It’s not hard to imagine that Daniel and others who were taken captive felt outnumbered, dislocated, and culturally out of step—the very feelings many Christians and other believers are experiencing today.
We believe our faith community today faces an emerging social context that demands we learn to be Christian in a new way, described best as being “faithful in exile.” We are no longer the home team, even though our physical location hasn’t changed. We’re playing on Babylon’s turf.
A Call to Hope
Exile. Many people think this is a depressing prognosis for the church. Yet in the last few years, in doing public talks on this topic, we’ve found that it resonates with many Christians. The idea that we are in a new age—a modern-day Babylon—especially connects with pastors, parents, and grandparents who are trying to understand the kind of culture that is forming the next generation.
We need an accurate handle to describe living in today’s culture. While to some this description may seem over the top, exile fits what many Christians are experiencing.
As people of good faith, we hope for the world one day to come but must describe the world as it is today. As Max DePree says, “The first responsibility of the leader is to define reality.”1 Leaders in the church today need to understand our times in order to shape a God-oriented future. We think the phrases “modern-day Babylon” and “digital Babylon” effectively describe today’s complex systems of human-centered activity. And the idea of exile aptly describes what faithful Christian living looks like under this regime.
Maybe the idea of exile works for you. Maybe it doesn’t. You may wonder, when we use the metaphor of exile, if the two of us have simply given up hope.
No. Exactly the opposite!
We could not be more hopeful about the future of the Christian community, even in this most complicated and accelerated of contexts.
Embracing the exile metaphor means we retain at least two important theological views: that God is sovereign and that God has plans for his people. According to the biblical writings on exile, God uses exile to purify his people and reorient them toward his purposes.
As Christians, we believe God knows what he is doing and is not surprised or confounded by ungodly civilizations. Daniel, perhaps the Bible’s most famous exile, says as much to King Nebuchadnezzar in Daniel 4: “The Most High rules over the kingdoms of the world. He gives them to anyone he chooses” (v. 17). When we maintain the belief that God knows where all this is headed—toward his ends and purposes—we don’t have to worry about the direction of culture. We just need to be faithful to God and to his calling.
In exile, we learn to trust God.
Good Faith in Exile
Let’s take a look at three lessons we can learn from Daniel and other biblical exiles. They show us that being faithful in exile means providing a prophetic, countercultural response to the spirit of the age.
Love: The Power of Actions, Language, and Respect
What we do and say matters—and how we act and speak matters too.
We have attempted to weave this theme throughout Good Faith. Aggressors tend to lose. When Houston’s lesbian mayor subpoenaed the sermons and correspondence of five local pastors who opposed the city’s bill expanding public access to transgender men and women—including to restrooms—the backlash was immediate. Many people on both sides of the political aisle concluded the subpoenas were “intended to intimidate and to bully pastors into silence,” and the mayor was forced to withdraw them.2
There is a world of difference between confidently asserting what we believe and being aggressive in faith-driven “beast mode.” There will be times when Christians are essentially minding our own business and are swept up into some larger public debate or quarrel. That’s what happened to Gordon College, an evangelical institution of higher learning north of Boston. The college’s accreditor, the New England Association of Schools and Colleges, threatened to withdraw accreditation unless the administration adopted a position and policies related to homosexuality that would violate its values and mission.
Gordon College didn’t go looking for a fight. But when the fight came to them, they responded with confidence in Christian orthodoxy while acting and speaking with respect for their opposition. And in the end, the NEASC relented and religious liberty won the day.3
Regardless of the circumstances, the principle is clear: what we do and say and how we do and say it are all critical to good faith.
Daniel understood this.
When King Nebuchadnezzar demanded that someone interpret his nightmares, all the pagan philosophers chickened out—and for their cowardice earned themselves a death sentence. Daniel, however, advocated for their lives to be spared. And then, in one of the most famous biblical examples of good faith speaking truth to power, Daniel told King Neb the meaning of his dream: he was about to lose it all. The next in a long line of empires, Persia, was on its way to bring him down.
The prophet was confident and assertive but delivered the bad news with utmost respect.
Whatever you think of Pope Francis, his actions and words of respect for all sorts of people have had a measurable impact on perceptions of the Catholic Church. When he greets children or those who are disabled or disfigured—who are often last to receive society’s respect—his face glows with delight. His commitment to the core doctrines of Christian orthodoxy seem to be unchanged, but Francis’s words and deeds shine with good faith.
Jesus’s ministry offers one lesson after another on the importance of acting and speaking with respect. His Sermon on the Mount could (and probably should) be our textbook in this regard. Jesus says, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God” (Matt. 5:9 NIV). He’s not talking about mere peacekeeping, like being an impartial referee who breaks up a hockey fight. He’s saying people of good faith should make peace. Doing so requires words, actions, and respect.
When he says to “go the extra mile”—one of many Jesus phrases still in the modern lexicon—he is talking about a countercultural act of respectful service.
When he goes to Zacchaeus’s house, he acts with undeserved respect toward the tax collector and social pariah.
When he reminds the woman at the well about her many illicit relationships, he speaks truth with respect, not with condescension or insult.
Acting and speaking with respect demonstrate our love for people and for the God who created them.
A second lesson we can learn from Daniel is how to act on our beliefs in a hostile culture. It is our firm conviction that orthodox Christianity is relevant to all people in all times. But how can we hold these beliefs in an increasingly pagan culture? Daniel’s unwavering commitment to God, his active prayer life, and his desire to see God work in miraculous ways are examples to us.
In Daniel 9, the aging exile prophet writes about the influence of Jeremiah on his faithfulness. He says he has been reading the scrolls of Jeremiah, and we might presume to imagine he has in mind Jeremiah’s remarkable instructions, written nearly one hundred years before, to those who would be caught up in the coming exile:
This is what the LORD of Heaven’s Armies, the God of Israel, says to all the captives he has exiled to Babylon from Jerusalem: “Build homes, and plan to stay. Plant gardens, and eat the food they produce. Marry and have children. Then find spouses for them so that you may have many grandchildren. Multiply! Do not dwindle away! And work for the peace and prosperity of the city where I sent you into exile. Pray to the LORD for it, for its welfare will determine your welfare.” (Jer. 29:4–7)
Jeremiah’s predictions came true. Daniel and his peers were now under the power of a cosmopolitan, godless society. And these young Hebrews had to make sense of and live faithfully in a culture that didn’t just decimate its enemies; it brainwashed them too. Babylon’s brutal education was a form of moral and spiritual imperialism; their “training methods” were designed such that the empire’s worldview would take root in the hearts and minds of its captives.
In spite of this totalizing imperial strategy, the most remarkable story of faithfulness in exile emerges: these young men routinely stood up for their faith, putting their lives on the line when threatened with flames and ravenous lions.
Their belief was steadfast. And God honored their faithfulness.
His supernatural power intervened on behalf of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego when they were thrown into the fire for refusing to worship the king. His supernatural power safeguarded Daniel in the lions’ den when he was sentenced to death for praying to the one true God.
We aren’t responsible for the outcome, but we are responsible to be faithful.
When God’s people trust the biblical witness and are faithful to Christian practice, God brings his power to life in them. He may not always save us from the fiery furnace (or the militant’s sword), but his power will manifest itself in ways that cannot be denied, even by those who oppose him.
Live: The Power of Vocation
The final lesson we learn from Daniel relates to following the call of God on our lives. It’s unlikely we would know about Daniel at all if he had not pursued his vocation. He essentially became the secretary of state for one of the most pagan civilizations in human history. He served at the pleasure of three kings, leaders of a triad of ungodly regimes that rose to power in quick succession.
Our love and orthodoxy bring good to society when we pursue our God-given calling. This includes our career—entrepreneurs, public officials, scientists, writers, teachers, pastors, dental hygienists, and so on. But it also encompasses how we parent, how we practice hospitality, how we steward our sexual lives, and how we engage in conversations. We are called to be faithful in all of life’s complexities. Our love and belief should compel us to become agents of God’s reconciliation through Christ in whatever sphere of life he has called us to inhabit.
Jeremiah’s how-to-survive-in-exile instructions are as applicable today as they were thousands of years ago: plant gardens, build houses, and plan to stay. Work for your city’s peace and prosperity, for its flourishing will be your flourishing. As a community of God, work for the common good: that which is orderly and right, abundant and generous, beautiful and flourishing with life and relationships.
Hopeful expectation in exile is a biblical perspective. Not only do we have examples of actual exiles like Joseph, Esther, and Daniel, but much of the New Testament also calls us to live “in the world but not of the world.” Peter says we are sojourners, strangers in the world. Paul and the writer of Hebrews offer practical wisdom for fine-tuning the church’s role in relation to the wider culture. “Bless those who persecute you,” Paul writes. “Don’t curse them; pray that God will bless them. . . . Live in harmony with each other” (Rom. 12:14, 16). “Work at living in peace with everyone,” Hebrews says, “and work at living a holy life” (12:14).
This is the argument we have done our best to make in Good Faith.
The Christian community is called to be a counterculture for the common good. We are countercultural when we:
love others well
remain committed to orthodox beliefs
make space for those who disagree
ask the right questions
live under God’s moral order
offer a vision of human intimacy beyond sex
practice hospitality
do the good, hard work of racial reconciliation
value human life in every form, at every stage
love our gay friends and trust God’s design for sex
build households of faith
are theologically grounded and culturally responsive
make disciples
practice the sacred art of seeing people
make disciples and faith communities that are Christlike
We have a lot of work to do. At times, you may feel irrelevant or be labeled extreme. But you are in good company. Through the ages, the Christian community has faced pressure—even persecution—and endured.
We are called not to determine the outcome but to be faithful.
Led by love, grounded in biblical belief, and ready to live as a counterculture for the common good, we trust that our good faith will be used by God to renew the world.