Deeper ReflectionWhen the world seeks to falsely accuse faithful followers of
Jesus of wrong, even when they are innocent, we should not
be surprised that it succeeds. When the religious leaders
brought false accusations against Jesus before Pilate, for three times
Pilate’s response was: “I have found no guilt in this man” (Lk 23:4, 14, 22).
But Jesus was crucified, anyway. “A disciple is not above his teacher, nor
a slave above his master,” says the Lord Jesus (Matt 10:24).Daniel’s enemies succeeded in their false accusation against him through
their malicious scheme (vv.4-13, 16-17). We may label Daniel’s discipleship
story in Daniel 6 as “Daniel’s costly quiet time”. We are not permitted to
think of biblical discipleship without counting the cost of discipleship
(Lk 14:28-29). It can be an ongoing cost that we are paying. Or a cost we
are confronted with: Devotion to the Lord or den of the lions?Consciously or unconsciously, our Christianity has been influenced
and shaped, at both the church and individual levels, by Christianity
in the West, which we often embrace uncritically. Hence, we may find
that what commentator Iain Duguid says about Christianity in the
West is also true of us: “…in the prosperous and supposedly tolerant
West we have come to expect our lives as Christians to run smoothly
and successfully, at least if we are faithfully following the Lord. We
think that the slogan ‘God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your
life’ means that our lives should be protected by God from any form of
unpleasantness. This is a false belief, however.”
4
Is this true of you?
4 Iain M. Duguid, Daniel, Reformed Expository Commentary (P&R, 2008), 93
