Faithful Living in a Faithless World

There was a day, not so long ago, that most people in North America and Europe would have called themselves “Christians”. However, it doesn’t take a professional sociologist to recognize that a big shift has taken place over the past few decades. Those of us who have grown up in places in which most people professed some form of Christianity now are having to learn to live in a world in which that is no longer true. To use the analogy that sociologist Peter Berger used in his book The Heretical Imperative, we currently live in a supermarket of worldviews. When we have headaches, we can choose from a variety of painkillers in the store. In a similar way, Berger says, people now choose from a variety of understandings of the world.

This shift has led to a society in which the most important value is tolerance. Indeed, the only thing that we dare not tolerate in our society is any group of people who claim they have found the truth. Of course, as followers of Jesus, we know we have placed our faith in the one who said he is the truth and that no one comes to God the Father except through him. We must now wrestle with how we live in a world in which we encounter antagonism when we profess that there are truths that must be believed and ethical/moral norms that we cannot surrender.

To all of this, the life of Daniel, recorded in the Bible, speaks into our current situation. He also found himself in a society that was hostile to his faith, one that tried to re-shape him into becoming a person who was conformed to the patterns of his world. The story of how Daniel lived as a believer in a world that rejected his faith is one we must hear in the 21^st C. Daniel and his friends show how to be salt in the world and preserve our saltiness even as we bless those around us. They are examples of how to be light in this world rather than lamps hidden under a bowl (Mt 5:14-15). I am praying that, as we see the gospel in the life of Daniel, we will learn more about how to be in this world but not of it (Jn 17:16).