Stop Trying to Change the World

And be a little more like Daniel

[Note: We’re in finals week at Bushnell. Christ, have mercy! My beloved students are fast at work, putting as much information (and caffeine) into their brains for their exams as possible. Pray for them. But also pray for me. I’ve felt both overwhelmed and surprisingly sad in the latter part of this semester. Not sure why. By God’s grace, writing has been centering me—for which I’m deeply grateful. Still, I’m tired. Perhaps some of that end-of-semester angst comes out in this week’s offering. Either way, thanks for reading. And for allowing me to be in your life.]

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“But Daniel resolved not to defile himself with the royal food and wine...” (Dan 1.8)

How does someone who loves God change the world? 

The love of God brings on a kind of existential homelessness.¹ God’s covenant people are never really at home in the Bible. One of the most instructive biblical stories detailing how faithful ancient Israelites sought to transform the world in which they were strangers is an account of four Hebrew exiles named Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah. Their narrative is told in the book of Daniel. A little backstory: around the year 587 BCE, the Babylonian Empire conquered the Southern Kingdom of Judah under the ruthless leadership of King Nebuchadnezzar. The Assyrians—who had previously overwhelmed and conquered the Northern Kingdom of Israel just a century-and-a-half earlier—opted to practice something known as ‘intermarriage’ as their preferred colonial policy. The Assyrians assimilated their vassals through forced marriage as a way of weakening family and ancestral ties. Most readers of the New Testament know well the name of the community that is the result of these intermarriages: the Samaritans. 

Babylonian policy was noticeably different. Unlike the Assyrians, their approach was to take the captives back to their capital city of Babylon to be assimilated and retrained for service in the Empire. And so, after conquering Jerusalem and being told his father had died, King Nebuchadnezzar returned to Babylon with about 3,000-5,000 of the best and the brightest in all of Israel, intent on assimilating them into Babylonian culture. Those forced to walk their trail of tears to Babylon are known to history as the ‘exiles.’  

The prophetic book of Daniel is called “exilic literature” because it closely follows the story of four colonized Jews who find themselves among hostile, foreign people who do not share their religious or cultural commitments. The importance of Daniel lies, in part, in that it provides us with a model vision of how the covenant people of Yahweh were to live in the world yet remain set apart from it. The reader will see that these Israelites are in dangerous territory. But they are stunningly creative in their engagement. 

Their approach was marked by two things: cultural involvement and theological differentiation. In reading Daniel 1, we find, on the one hand, that Nebuchadnezzar has had the names of the four Hebrew men changed to Babylonian names: Belteshazzar, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. As colonizers often do, the modification of one’s indigenous name served as a power-play in an attempt to destabilize one’s identity and cultural sense of self. History has too many examples of this. However, the exiles aren’t reported to have resisted this change. Nor do they resist working for the Babylonian Empire as skilled leaders who serve the regime. They “enter the king’s service.” (Dan 1.19) These men became helpful to the Babylonians because “God gave knowledge and understanding of all kinds of literature and learning...Daniel could [also] understand visions and dreams of all kinds.” (Dan 1.17) This reveals that the four exiles opt for a posture toward the Babylonian culture in which they are engaged. And equally non-combative. 

On the other hand, however, these Hebrew exiles refuse to partake in other activities, one in particular. In Daniel 1, the Babylonians invite the Jewish men to eat the Babylonian food at the king’s table. They resist. Given that a would center their sense of identity in the world partly through how they eat—by eating according to kosher laws—this identity boundary could not be crossed. They request that they eat only vegetables and water. And God provides excellent strength and nourishment to these exiles in light of their faithfulness. There is similar resistance in Daniel 3 when the king of Babylon demands that all Babylonians bow down and worship a statue in his image. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego refuse and soon find themselves in a fiery furnace where God would miraculously rescue them. 

These acts of resistance—eating kosher and only worshiping Yahweh—serve as what scholars call “hidden scripts.”² These were small but enormously intentional ways to communicate to God, each other, and the world that they were different and set apart. In part, they were their way of declaring who they were and weren’t. They serve as little winks and nods that Babylon may be where they lived. But it wasn’t their home.

Understanding this sophisticated approach to missional life is enormously formative for us. Christians have endured a long-standing debate about how we engage with our world. For some, there is an approach that says the church should distance itself from the culture. This separatist and sectarian approach says, in essence, “Let the world be the world, let the church be the church.” For others, the church must fully enter the world, take over, and change it. In other words, the church should be the lord of culture and seek to control it through power and witness.

I understand the impulse behind both extremes. Both have their merit. But I wonder if Daniel and his friends were seeking to show us a different way. In the Parable of the Good Samaritan in Luke 19.25-37, Jesus extends the commands of love and mercy not only to one’s brothers and sisters—but also to one’s neighbor. Love knows no boundaries. Just as one would care for one’s family, one must also take the call of discipleship seriously to care for whomever one stumbles across daily. Paul would outline a similar ethic in Galatians, saying, “Do good to all men, especially those of the household of faith.” We easily over-focus on the especially of Paul’s writing here. But the commandment to love and ‘do good’ is extended to ‘all men.’ This is not only the people with whom we share a faith. Should Christians be involved in the world? It is difficult to read these texts and not agree that they are. It is hard to love an enemy when you don’t know one.

Yet, other biblical texts underscore that the Christian witness can expect nothing but tribulation and pain due to their faithfulness. “Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong,” Peter would write, “they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us.” (1 Pet 2.12) Note that Peter assumes the context of Christian faithfulness is being misunderstood and “accused.” Jesus was even more explicit: “In this world, you will have trouble.” (Jn 16.33) These texts seem to suggest that the people of God will inherently be rejected and misunderstood by the world. Jesus would go so far as to tell his disciples to consider themselves “blessed when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me.” (Mt 5.11-12) Being rejected is baked into true discipleship.

Years ago, I remember being turned on to an article by Miroslav Volf entitled “Soft Difference” that wrestled with Peter’s theology of the church’s engagement with the world.³ Within, Volf contends that the Christian community that sought to embody the way of Jesus should expect to simultaneously evoke contrary emotions from the world in which they found themselves. They would both offend and attract the world to their gospel cause. By examining Peter’s description of this engagement in 1 Peter, Volf offers a compelling alternative vision that side-steps the temptations to seek to abandon culture or control culture. Peter’s vision, all the more, wasn’t even about culture. Peter’s vision was about following Christ with one’s entire existence. This is the most subversive act a Christian can undertake.

For Volf—and I think the exilic writings of Daniel—being a covenant person entails being subversively engaged in the culture we find ourselves in. While being present, we always understand that we are but a quiet, small witness. Yet, recognizing that we are not of this world, we seek to undermine its ways with the grace, mercy, and love of Christ. In short, we change the world by not trying to change the world. We change the world through a faithful walk with God.

As the late Dr. Tim Keller rightly pointed out years ago, the person who says that the church should pull away from culture should be asked if the church should refuse to advocate for the slave, the child, the unborn, women, the immigrant, and the like. Of course, we must! But this is not the goal for the Christian. Instead, these are by-products of loving God with one’s whole self. Because in loving God, the Kingdom of God invariably comes. And when the Kingdom of God comes, it shapes everything back to the good. All must be done in love for the King. As the Puritan Henry Zylstra would wisely put it: 

Nothing matters but the Kingdom of Jesus Christ, but because of the kingdom, everything else matters.⁴

Zylstra’s point? The way to change the world isn’t by changing the world. No. The way to change the world is by seeking Christ and his kingdom. Nothing else. In doing so, it seems, everything will be transformed, healed, and remade. Only Christ’s Kingdom matters. But when we seek it, the foundations of the world are shaken at their core. Or, again, to borrow Keller:

Cultural change is always a by-product, not the main goal. The main goal is always loving service. If we love and serve our neighbors, city, and Lord, it will definitely mean social changes, but Christians must not seek to take over and control society as an end in itself. If we truly seek to serve, we will be gladly given a certain measure of influence by those around us. If we seek power directly, just to get power and make the world more like us, we will neither have influence nor be of service. Everyone around us will view us with alarm, as well they should.⁵

This brings me back to Daniel. Daniel had clear marching orders, as dictated in the Old Testament covenant code, about how to eat. He knew his boundaries. Yet, there is something beautiful about the tension between Daniel’s willingness to work for Babylon and not eat in Babylon’s cafeteria. That, friends, is subversive engagement. What is remembered about Daniel is not how he sought to change the laws of Babylon nor that he sought to run away from Babylon. Ultimately, he did the most challenging thing possible: he sought to love God as best as he could in his own exilic moment. 

Why does this matter? The older I get, the more honest I become with time. And my lack of it. I realize that I won’t live forever. As a result, I increasingly want my life to be devoted to things I know will outlive me. How can I change my university? How can I mark my son? How can I leave a family that is healthy, good, and devoted to the right things? How can I help care for my church so that it seeks Jesus far after my departure? 

Not that I’m planning on dying anytime soon—Lord willing. But I am learning that the way I leave my mark on these things is not by doing the work directly. I can’t change my church, my son, my family, my university, or my city. I can’t change anything directly. Whatever work I do is always done indirectly—through, like Daniel, seeking to love God as best as I can. That’s the mark I leave—the mark we all leave. The Christian work of leaving something behind in the world only comes by not exerting control over the world but by carrying a cross and following Christ in the midst of it. In so doing, everything—literally everything—around us becomes transformed. 

In that sense, the only way to change the world is to stop trying to change it. 

And by loving God in your exile.

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Thanks for reading my work. As always, you can always find me wasting time on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. Or you can listen to my podcast, Slow Theology. If you found this content helpful to your journey, yay! Consider enjoying my most recent book The Gift of Thorns: Jesus, the Flesh, and the War for our Wants which was released with Zondervan in February of 2024. Within, I explore what the topic of human desire from the perspective of Scripture, theology, and experience—with particular interest to how we can be formed into the image of Christ through our desires. In short, it’s about why our cultural mandate to “you do you” is so profoundly unhelpful to the follower of Jesus. You can support my work by reading it! And sharing with me about your experience. Click on the image below to get yourself a copy.

1. The most comprehensive treatment on this theme—with a particular interest in the ecological realities of our world—can be found in the brilliant book Steven Bouma-Prediger and Brian Walsh, Beyond Homelessness: Christian Faith in a Culture of Displacement (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2008).

2. See James Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008).

3.  Miroslav Volf, “Soft Difference: Theological Reflections on the Relation between Church and Culture in 1 Peter,” Ex Auditu 10, no. 15–30 (1994): 23. I have made the article available here. The particular article that drew my attention to Volf’s work was Dr. Tim Keller’s little article entitled “The Bible on Church and Culture.”

4. As quoted in Rick Ostrander, “The Distinctive of a Christian College,” in The Soul of a Christian University: A Field Guide for Educators, by Stephen T. Beers (Abilene, TX: Abilene Christian University Press, 2008), 39.

5. Again, the quote can be found here.