Tag Archives: daniel

A Vision of the Last Days

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From December 2017 through February 2018, I wrote a series of short articles for MennoMedia’s Adult Bible Study Online. Over three weeks I am reproducing those here in my blog. Here is the article for January 28, 2018, based on Daniel 10-12.

“The last days.”

In popular Christian parlance, the phrase suggests the final strands of earthly, human history. The thread of history stretches back before us to the dawn of time, and ahead of us, at some future point, this thread ends with “the last days.” For many Christians this phrase also conjures up images of portents in the heavens and cataclysms on earth. “The last days” is the end of it all, before God wipes the slate clean and creates a new heaven and earth.

If this is our understanding, it might be disconcerting to learn that this kind of language is used in Scripture to describe happenings within human history, including what is, for us, past history.

This is the case here in Daniel 10-12. Daniel’s vision describes “the last days,” even “days yet to come”—that’s more literally the wording of Daniel 10:14. This sort of language continues throughout the vision with the phrase “appointed time” or “time of completion” (11:35; 12:4, 9). Yet scholars are agreed that the visions describe historical persons and events in the second century B.C.E., now more than 2,000 years ago.

This is also the case throughout the New Testament. Peter’s Pentecost sermon applied Joel’s vision of “the last days,” with all its heavenly portents and earthly cataclysms, to Peter’s present day (Acts 2:16-21). Paul declared that Jesus’ birth occurred “at the fullness of time” (Gal 4:4), and he described himself and his readers as those “on whom the ends of the ages have come” (1 Cor 10:11). The author of Hebrews declared that “in these last days” God has spoken to us through his Son, Jesus (Heb 1:2). And John the Seer stated that his apocalyptic visions described realities which were present in his own time, or were very soon to come about (Rev 1:1, 19).

It’s enough to make you think that perhaps we’ve gotten the whole “last days” thing quite badly wrong. But then, what is the point of all this “end times” language in Scripture?

Its main purpose is reassurance. This language is intended to reassure God’s people that, regardless of how bad things might seem in the present, God is in fact working within human history to bring about God’s good purposes. And its main focus is on Jesus. Jesus’ birth, life, death, and resurrection have inaugurated the time of fulfillment. We are in “the last days” right now: God’s good purposes have already been accomplished through Jesus, and now God is working out those good purposes throughout the earth.

In a world filled with the bad news of nuclear threat, civil wars, economic injustice, racism, divisive politics, sexual abuse, and more, this reassurance is the good news we all need.

A Prayer of Confession, a Plea for Forgiveness

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From December 2017 through February 2018, I wrote a series of short articles for MennoMedia’s Adult Bible Study Online. Over three weeks I am reproducing those here in my blog. Here is the article for January 21, 2018, based on Daniel 9:1-19.

The study guide helpfully prompts us toward reflection on personal confession of individual sin. But there is another angle on this prayer of Daniel that has often struck me: this prayer is a personal confession of collective sin.

Daniel, according to all the stories in the book which bears his name, was a righteous man. It was not his fault his people were in exile. Yet he prays as if the guilt of his forebears is his own. He includes himself among previous, sinful generations, in order to make a clean break with the sins of the past and allow God to move him and his people toward a better future.

Is it appropriate for children to bear the guilt of their parents, or even their grandparents? Most of us would cringe at the idea. The Bible itself gives mixed messages on this (Exod 34:7; Ezek 18:20). Yet there are some helpful lessons for us that derive from the Bible’s personal confessions of collective sin.

One lesson is that sin is not merely an individual, private matter. Collective, even systemic, sin runs just as deep among us. If we think of “sin” as all the ways in which we harm one another and the rest of creation through our attitudes, words, and actions, then it’s not hard to see how sin has both individual and collective dimensions. Churches can develop settled attitudes that run counter to God’s life-bringing ways. Societies can nurture values that encourage abuse of power or the use of violence. Nations can enshrine injustice in the very laws that are supposed to ensure justice.

A second lesson is that sometimes what’s needed to break from the collective sins of the past is collective soul-searching and confession. This has nothing to do with whether or not we ourselves are personally guilty for the wrongdoing. Rather, it has everything to with naming the wrongs of our forebears, recognizing our inclination to continue in those wrongs if nothing is done, and committing ourselves to doing better, rectifying those wrongs if we are able, avoiding those wrongs as much as we can. This is why initiatives such as the recent Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada are so important.

There’s a third lesson for us. Daniel’s prayer confesses, “We have not listened to your servants the prophets” (9:6). In every generation God sends prophets to speak truth, to call God’s people to faithfulness, to warn of the consequences of unfaithfulness, to promise the blessings of faithfulness—and yet, all too often, we crucify these prophets instead of heeding them (see Matt 23:29-39). Who are the prophets of our generation, calling us to renewed faithfulness to the way of Jesus? Are we willing to listen, to repent, and to obey?

Trial by Fire

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From December 2017 through February 2018, I wrote a series of short articles for MennoMedia’s Adult Bible Study Online. Over three weeks I am reproducing those here in my blog. Here is the article for January 14, 2018, based on Daniel 3.

When I was a child this was one of my favorite Bible stories. There’s an evil king with a fiery furnace, a supreme act of heroic courage, and the good guys win in the end. The heroes even have uber-cool names: “Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.” What 10-year old wouldn’t like this story?

Even as adults, the story appeals to our natural desire for a clear “evil” and an obvious “good.” You don’t have to get far into the Ten Commandments to know that bowing down to a 90-foot idol is probably a bad idea.

If only the idols of our world were so easy to identify. If only avoiding idolatry in our day and age were as straightforward (if still as demanding) as this story suggests.

One way into this story for us is to reflect on two ideas: “civil religion” and “civil disobedience.” Civil religion, as the study material notes, is when the state or its leaders take on the role of a “god”: demanding allegiance expressed in acts of devotion, grounded in a founding narrative and reinforced with meaningful symbols and rituals. It isn’t difficult to spot these elements of civil religion in American or Canadian society.

Civil disobedience, particularly of the “peaceful protest” sort noted in the leader’s guide, is an appropriate Christian response to the idolatry of civil religion, especially when there is a clash of allegiances between God’s kingdom and the earthly kingdom in which we live. As Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego refused to bow down to Nebuchadnezzar’s idol, so we can thoughtfully and nonviolently, yet resolutely, refuse to participate in the civil religion of our day.

However, to be effective this needs to be more than simply refusing to say some words about a flag. It requires us to examine the deeper supporting structures of our nation’s particular brand of civil religion—the power imbalances in society, the ethnocentric nationalism, the coercive manipulation of truth, the belief in redemptive violence—and reflect on how we can challenge or even change these realities.

How specifically do you see civil religion in American or Canadian society? How have we as Christians unthinkingly bought into this civil religion? How does this lessen our allegiance to Jesus as Lord or weaken our witness to the gospel of Jesus Christ? What specific steps can we take to challenge or even change the deeper structures that support American or Canadian civil religion?

Holding on to Identity as a Minority Faith

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From December 2017 through February 2018, I wrote a series of short articles for MennoMedia’s Adult Bible Study Online. Over three weeks I am reproducing those here in my blog. Here is the article for January 7, 2018, based on Daniel 1.

Christianity is the largest religion in the world, with an estimated 2.3 billion adherents. As of 2015, three-quarters of Americans and two-thirds of Canadians identify as Christians. We are hardly a minority faith.

Still, it is true that Christianity’s public influence has declined. Christianity is no longer the touchstone of North American culture that it once was. Christianity no longer defines social values or public policy in quite the way it once did. The institutions of Christianity are not as prominent or as powerful as they once were, and the institutions of our western society are no longer exclusively or even predominantly Christian—if they ever were. Christendom is no more.

This means that although Christianity is not a minority faith in North America it can often feel like it is. For some, this presents a challenge, even a catastrophe. I think it presents an opportunity.

This changed situation is an opportunity for us to reflect on and sharpen our identity as Christians: What does it really mean to be “Christian”? What marks us off as “Christian”? What distinctive beliefs or rituals or symbols or sacred stories are at the heart of this thing called “Christianity”?

The story of Daniel and his three companions in Daniel 1 is a story about early Jewish identity. Ostensibly about Israelites exiled in ancient Babylonia, yet really about Maccabean Jews under pressure to Hellenize, the story remains for Jews a powerful symbol of maintaining their religious and cultural identity in the face of enormous pressure to assimilate. For us as Christians, it can stand as a biblical call to reflect on our identity as Christians, asking those same questions forced upon us by our own post-Christendom context.

So, what does mark us off as “Christian”? Contra Daniel 1, the New Testament insists it’s not our diet—“all foods are clean,” Mark concludes based on Jesus’ teaching (Mark 7:14-19), and Paul declares that “the kingdom of God is not food and drink” (Rom 14:14-17). Likewise, it’s not the observance of holy days like the Sabbath (Rom 14:5-6; Col 2:16-17) or covenant rituals like circumcision (Gal 5:6; 6:15).

For Christians, beliefs, rituals, symbols, and sacred stories have tremendous value in nurturing the things that matter most, but they are not themselves those essentials of Christianity. Rather, as markers of Christian identity Jesus and the Apostles consistently point us to a cluster of lived-out virtues: a trusting, obedient faith, a persevering, persistent hope, and, above all, a self-giving, other-delighting love, all in the way of Jesus, all nurtured by the Spirit.

Adult Bible Study Online Supplements

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I’ve not been blogging much here lately, but I have been writing short weekly pieces for MennoMedia’s online supplements to their adult Bible study curriculum. That began the first week of December and will go through February 2018.

UPDATE: These are now posted on my website. Links are updated to reflect this.