From "Night Shift"

As I’m still on a break from blogging to finish a couple of major writing projects, here is another excerpt from Night Shift: On a Mission Crossing Borders in the Night, to be published in a few months:

There is another important distinction to be made about Daniel and his three friends as Babylonian Incarnationals. While we tend to emphasize their line drawing, what is forgotten is how much these four guys had really embraced the host culture. They had been taken as slaves to this alien world to serve in an anti-Yahweh government and they willingly did so with much devotion and faithfulness to their own God – all with the goal of blessing that godless nation.

During the Clinton administration in the 1990s, many in the American Religious Right were deeply opposed to the president du jour on the basis of spiritual allegiance. In that decade I loved to pose the question to my fellow American Believers, “Could a Christian serve in Clinton’s administration?” When I got the anticipated reaction (“Are you kidding?”), I asked them, “Could a Christian serve in a communist government?” (“Of course not”) The coup de grace to this line of thinking came when I would point out that Daniel and company served in Babylon’s government and at very high levels.

If anything is representative in Scripture of an anti-godly earthly rule, it is Babylon. In the New Testament book of Revelation, Babylon is synonymous with the “Great Whore.” You can’t get more unsavory than that when it comes to governments and rulers. More than any other geopolitical entity referred to in Scripture, Babylon has come to represent the epitome of human rebellion against God.

And what was the end result of such “compromising” on the part of these four Hebrew men? The unthinkable happened – King Nebuchadnezzar, the ruler of this very same Babylon, came to embrace and exalt the God of Israel!

In the early 1990s, my wife and I were in language study in Taichung, Taiwan…. We were enrolled in what was called a bushiban, a private non-accredited school, for learning Mandarin….

Most of these Westerners, generally much older than their youthful teachers, were Christians come to save Taiwan. Each tiny classroom was barely large enough for two people – a comparatively diminutive Chinese teacher and a hulking Western student – separated by a narrow desk, awkward and embarrassed knees almost touching. In the middle of this scattering of classes was a lounge where students could rest their exhausted brains and let loose with pent-up mother tongues.

In one of these frequent English gab sessions, a very concerned student brought up the danger to be faced in eating local produce. Taiwan, because of its warm climate, has a crop rotation of two to three times a year, enabling farmers to take advantage of the precious little arable land. This student was concerned that the intensive use of the soil robbed the crops of any nutritional value.

Like the story of Chicken Little, the discussion grew in intensity with each passing break. By the time everyone left for lunch, people were in distress that their bodies were being deprived of essential nourishment and their children were in danger of developing mental disabilities.

Back in the serenity of our own home, my wife and I pondered this rampant anxiety and decided that there must be more facts than we had heard with this rumor because while the natives might look thinner than us, few appeared overly malnourished or mentally disabled. The rumor proved unfounded and we went on eating the local fare, much to our benefit.

In the book that bears his name, Jeremiah addresses similar concerns among exiles that have been carried off to Babylon. The letter, found in Jeremiah 29 and probably written eight to ten years after Daniel’s removal to Babylon, is directed toward these displaced Hebrews. Whether or not Jeremiah and Daniel were acquaintances and regardless of whether Daniel even knew of the letter, we see in Jeremiah’s instructions the very principles that informed Daniel’s incarnational approach.

In his letter, Jeremiah lays down three basic principles and follows up with some promises and warnings. First he tells the exiles: Settle down. Unpack your cultural baggage. And don’t spend your time thinking about going back home. This foreign land is now your home….