Daniel (1) - Monday 2nd June 2008

I’ve been reading through the book of Daniel recently. The first half has the well known stories; the second half can be quite heavy going – but it is definitely worth it.

In the beginning we read that King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon besieges Jerusalem and overthrows it. He then takes some of the articles from God’s temple to put into the temple of his god. He then orders for some of the royal captives to be brought to Babylon and begin training.

Imagine what it would have been like for Daniel and the rest of the captives. After suffering the defeat of battle they were marched hundreds of miles not knowing their future. Whatever their devotion to God beforehand, the feeling of total abandonment and loss of faith would have mixed with fear and amazement as they were taken into a city much larger than any they’d seen before. And unlike Jerusalem, this city would not have had just one temple that was central to everything; it would have had hundreds of temples and altars. In many ways the Babylonians were very religious. Possibly, they were more religious than the Jews they had defeated who had abandoned their God and many parts of their religion.

To me, this is a very clear picture of the difference between religious and righteous. And whilst there is a definite link between religion and faith, it does not follow that the more religious we are, the stronger our faith.

So how do we ensure that the religious things we do are beneficial to our faith and not merely ritualistic nothings?

The answer is, very simply, Jesus.

In his novel Small gods, Terry Pratchett invents a world where a god’s power is in direct proportion to the amount of belief in them. One god, however, despite having the largest organised religion devoted to him has lost nearly all his power. The reason turns out to be that all but one of his devotees have stopped believing in him and started believing in the religion.

The challenge for us is to ensure that Jesus is the purpose, power, motivation, reason for what we do. When we worship it’s not because we enjoy singing it’s because we want to tell Jesus how much we love him. When we read the bible it’s not because we think we should but because we can learn more about Jesus.