Daily Reading: Daniel 1:1-7The situation these exiles find themselves in is similar to ours. Empires, like Babylon, sought to subjugate weaker nations using a variety of tactics. Sometimes these are through the power and violence of the military, but often this goes hand-in-hand with colonial strategies designed to transform the language, economics and cultural imaginations of the conquered people. The book of Daniel is a vivid account of Babylon’s culture-eradication campaign and how some exiles successfully resisted.
We live in a world that seeks to make us conform to its ways (Romans 12:2). The apostle Peter describes us as aliens and strangers in this world (1 Peter 2:11). The pressure to compromise that these exiles faced are similar to the pressures we also face.