That? That's the current banner from my
church's website, on rotation for the next few weeks as our pastor & leadership team walk us through this series appropriately titled,
Culture Shift.
I'm going to eventually come back to this and update the podcast link, but that's after the web masters upload it for the rest of us to see & share it. I took copious notes as Pastor Jeff unpacked this for us, and wanted to reiterate them by way of translating them from my notebook to this page. You know, repetition, repetition, repetition: the easiest way to begin committing something to memory starts with simple, intentional repetition.
So here it is, from the Son-Rise prompted format, with my own spin. Please note that I'm
not taking credit for the content, but... well, it's meant to be shared. All disclaimers aside, here we go.
Okay, so first things first: For those of you who are familiar with Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego [& the story for which they're best known], you'll have a comprehensive edge on this before we even start. If you have
no clue who they are, it's okay - I can explain.
If you're more of a visual learner with a sense of humor, watch this:
The summarized backstory on Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego:
About 600 years before Jesus was born, there was King Nebuchadnezzar: the king of Babylon and a real stand up guy [except not really, at least not at that point] who conquered Jerusalem and extracted some of its best & brightest young men to mentor into his service. King Neb = Tyrannical recruiter. He had help, namely from his right hand man/Chief Official Ashpenaz. I know, their names are really somethin' else. So the king and his chronies besiege Jerusalem, and among the young
scholarly men, they take with them these four:
Daniel (you know him as Belteshazzar)
Hananiah (you know him as Shadrach)
Mishael (you know him as Meshach)
Azariah (& you know him as Abednego)
Envision the most able-bodied, handsome, intelligent young men that a city has to offer: the best of the best, if you will. Well, that's these guys, and the king wants to train them for 3 years on Babylonian literature, language, food and overall culture.
Ashpenaz (the king's right hand official) was charged with overseeing the training and forced integration of these guys into the Babylonian culture, which included their dietary regimen. Since Jewish people had specific disciplines in that area, what they consumed had a direct impact on their identity.
To keep this short [you can find this story in the first chapter of Daniel, FYI], Daniel propositioned to Ashpenaz that he and the other three be allowed to consume vegetables and water for 10 days [now known as
The Daniel Fast]. a way to test their resilience and overall appearance in comparison to their peers who chose to adopt the Babylonian diet. At the end of those 10 days, they appeared healthier and had stronger minds than the other trainees, and were ranked at the top of their peer group. As King Nebuchadnezzar expanded his reign, he demanded that refusal to worship idol gods be punished by death - specifically burning in a furnace.
I'll stop there. That's a lot to absorb, but that's just the backstory that parallels and supports the theme of today's installment in the Culture Shift series.
*****
It's 2015.
Let's not pretend that our culture has changed overnight. Let's also not pretend that we as a collective society have not changed as a result of shifting culture. There is a lot to balance in our culture: our religious beliefs, morals & values, political beliefs, social beliefs.... I mean the list is endless. It's a world of decisions. It's a world of pressure to make those decisions. It's a world of pressure to stand by those decisions.
So culture is shifting. Let's agree on that.
The question that lead the discussion today:
How Am I Responding To It?
We broke into the little notes insert to fill in some blanks. The first of which was this:
1. Culture will try to rename me.
> This hit me hard, and it was only the first bullet point.
>> What do you mean, "rename me?"
>>> It's simple. When we fall prey to letting culture dictate who we are, what we are, and what we're worth, we are letting it re-name us:
Future Scholar Stupid, boring, useless.
Beautiful Child Ugly, fat, unlovable.
Impactful Dull, unimaginative, nothing.
If you were wondering why each of those four guys a little further up had two names, here's why:
When they were taken out of Jerusalem, the Babylonians changed their names.
Here are the translations, and how those were intended to shift their focus:
Daniel: "God is my judge." (Hebrew)
Belteshazzar: "Lady protect the king." (Babylonian)
Focus shifted from God.... to man.
>> The change implied that man [the king] held more worth and fortitude than God, and that Daniel's role in that relationship was to be objectified and identified only as someone whose purpose in life would be to protect him [the king].
Hananiah: "Yahweh has been gracious." (Hebrew)
Shadrach: "I am fearful [in this context, "afraid"] of God." (Babylonian)
Focus shifted from 'God is good'.. to 'God is bad.'
>> This intended to support the belief that God is not compassionate, instead a list of rigid rules to be followed.
Mishael: "Who is what God is?" (Hebrew)
Meshach: "I am despised, contemptible & humiliated." (Babylonian)
Focus shifted from confidence.. to cowardice.
>> Perhaps the most obviously mocking change; the name Mishael, in Hebrew translated to the question of who could be what God is already. It was a name honored by the hope & confidence in pursuing a life that mirrored God, and would be honored as such. Meshach was a name given to the weak, feeble and cowardly.
Azariah: "Yahweh has helped me." (Hebrew)
Abednego: "Servant of Nebo." (Babylonian; Nebo = an idol god)
Focus shifted from son.. to slave.
>> I saw this as the most literal of the four: The Hebrew name plainly giving glory to God for help & relationship, and the Babylonian identifying him now as a servant or a slave.
Right out of the gate, these four were re-named. Their literal identity was changed. They were left with the decision of whether or not they would change.
We in the present are constantly left to decide whether or not we will adjust our identity to reflect some sort of label, title or other form of identity placed on us by the culture we live in.
The second point:
2. Culture will try to tame me.
> Daniel 1:8 - Daniel has resolved not to defile himself by adopting the food of the Babylonians. He is not arrogant in doing so, but knows his values and is, determined to keep them.
>> In what situation have I been challenged to compromise one of my beliefs, be it political, social, religious or otherwise formed, to conform?
>>> Ashpenaz [the chief official] hears Daniel's resolve and responds out of his own fear of MAN [aka, the king]. Daniel's response?
'Thanks, but no thank you. Let us eat this veggie+H20 diet for 10 days and see if we don't outshine those other guys we came with. What do you think?' And let's not pretend that Ashpenaz suddenly had a change of heart when he heard that; there
was a divine intervention and the men were allowed to adhere to their fast for 10 days. They came out on the other side stronger, brighter & more able to fulfill their duties than anyone else. Daniel became the king's advisor, where he continued on to interpret some of the king's dreams and advise in other areas.
How am I being challenged by culture to be tame?
.. And how am I responding to that? Am I caving to pressure, or am I staying resilient to my values & convictions?
3. Culture will try to claim me.
> The defining moment in the Shadrach, Meshach & Abednego story came when King Neb decided that all of Babylon should bow and worship one of his self-proclaimed idol gods. The price of denying was death, by way of being thrown in a furnace to burn alive. Sounds fun, right? :/ S, M & A refused to worship a false idol, insistent that their loyalties would stay with the God they served. Their choice not only earned them a fiery death sentence, but enraged Neb so much so that he ordered the furnace to be 7x hotter than usual for the occasion.
>> S,M & A were thrown into the furnace with the expectation of it being a quickly-completed affair.
NOPE.
The story goes on to show that the king & his team looked into the furnace, and instead of three men dying, saw
four figures standing in the flames, completely unaffected by them. King Neb beckoned them out, and
three emerged, untouched. They claimed God had protected them, and with the visual proof before his own eyes, Neb had no choice but to declare his respect for their God.
Sure, he was still pretty backwards about the whole consequence=death thing, but it was a step in the right direction.
So how that applies to me [& us, really]:
Culture
will try to claim us. We will be swallowed whole by the pressures & expectations of the world in which we live, if we don't know ourselves and our resolves. We'll flounder without direction if we don't set our boundaries. If we exercise arrogance, pride and reckless behavior instead of humility, gratitude and intentional determination, we'll lose ourselves to culture's demand, and by doing so lose our identities. We'll become nothing more than the embodiment of culture's expectations; a shell of the person we were specifically designed to be, by a creator who loves us as He made us.
I don't know about you, but I don't
ever want to be that.
*****
So in closing, PJ had us ask ourselves this:
Will I change the world,
or will the world change me?
From where does my identity come?
... From my body image?
... From my grades?
... From my worth in my career?
... From how other people view me?
Or....
... From God? From the one who designed me from the inside out, before I was ever conceived in the flesh? Wouldn't that make more sense?!
It's a whole bunch to absorb, I know. I walked out of church today with my head spinning, and wasn't sure how I'd reconstruct my makeshift notes into something with some sense of chronology. It's still fresh in my head, so hopefully I was able to accomplish that.
If you've stuck it out through this entire entry, kudos to you!
And, if you have any questions, ask away and I'll do my best to answer you - or at the very least, point you in the direction of some mentor whose wisdom in the matter surpasses mine.
Go change the world, blogbots! You're built to make an impact, and we believe me, you can. ;)
Love & HONOR to you!
xo | cmd
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