Aliens and Strangers

It was inspiring to listen to the FIEC national director, John Stevens, at the Leaders’ Conference recently. The theme of the conference was “Aliens and Strangers”, chosen because Christians in today’s Britain feel increasingly marginalised. We mourn the passing of a Christian society. We sometimes wonder whether God has abandoned His people, or is punishing them for their sins, or even whether He has failed.

Using the book of Daniel, Stevens assured us that this marginalisation is actually not unusual but normal, because Christians are always aliens and strangers in this world. Nostalgia is pointless. We need to learn how to serve God in exile, to know how far we should conform with the prevailing society and how far we should resist. It is thought-provoking to study where Daniel and his three friends drew the line. They didn’t resist being drafted into the Babylonian civil service. They didn’t even resist when forced to ditch their names and assume Babylonian ones. They drew the line somewhere else: eating forbidden food and praying to pagan gods. Are we equally careful to pick the right battles at the right times?

The book of Daniel affirms that nothing happens outside of God’s control. Under His direction, His faithful people in exile have a massive and unexpected impact on their oppressors.

Pagan kings seemed to have humiliated the God of Israel, totally defeating His people and destroying His temple. But in fact the proud king Nebuchadnezzar ended up being humbled by God; the defiant king Belshazzar ended up being slain at a word from God; the sympathetic Persian king Darius was used by God for His own purposes.

Our day has this difference from the time of Daniel: because we live after Jesus’ resurrection, we experience both the kingdom of the world and the kingdom of Christ. We are in exile, but we know that God has already won the definitive victory in Jesus. His kingdom has broken in to our time. This is the tension that we must live through, but we are right to feel triumphant hope.

Hope is the defining characteristic of God’s people. Energised by hope, we enter into the culture in which we find ourselves, but keep pure and speak truth to power, knowing that God will glorify Himself over the long haul.

Who might be the Daniels in your church, the ordinary men and women through whom God will get honour for Himself in the midst of an alien world?