Deeper Reflection
When 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?

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⁴ Iain M. Duguid, Daniel, Reformed Expository Commentary (P&R, 2008), 93