Dare to be a Daniel

My lament in this space two weeks ago shouldn't be taken out of context. I noted how we're passing through still another election cycle in the United States without a serious representative of evangelical thought and action stepping forward as a candidate for president. But we shouldn't kid ourselves. The reason we have such a shortage of candidates for president who know how to apply biblical thinking to all of life is that we have an equally serious shortage in just about every other vocation.

You can't suddenly develop expertise in providing Christian insights and leadership for 260,000,000 people, through all the complexities of public policy, if you haven't first honed your Christian insights and leadership on lesser levels and in smaller contexts. We don't have anybody ready to play in the major leagues simply because we haven't been very faithful at building a good system of farm teams.

Daniel, while he was still a young man and long before he became a famous prophet, set the standard for Christians who would hold public office. He was serious about the work of statecraft, but he was even more serious about being known as a servant of God, determined to follow God's precepts no matter the cost.

Daniel, in fact, deliberately set out to demonstrate how different he was from others in public life. He set up a high-profile test to make the point. He said to Nebuchadnezzar, in effect, "My reference point is the living God. Check that out with the reference point of your other folks, and let's see who wins."

Our society could use a few more political leaders like Daniel. But even prior to that, and perhaps more to the point, we could use a few leaders like that in other walks of life.

For far too many evangelicals in America, faithfulness in calling has been reduced to faithfulness in witness. By such a standard, once you've shared the gospel two or three times a year and tastefully displayed a fish somewhere in your workplace, you've met the mark.

That's one reason why the Christian presence in our society at large is so impotent. Until the truth of the gospel is woven into the fabric of everyday life within every calling, it will always be seen as superficial. Once such careful and painstaking weaving occurs, however, the reality of our faith will be as real and powerful as Daniel's was in the public square of Babylon.

So in the typical business place, it means much more than simply sharing the gospel. Instead, it involves re-thinking issues like just compensation and benefits for employees, telling the truth to customers, building products that last and make the customer happy, giving customers full value for their money, humble reflection on what it means to be a "boss," and scrupulous attention to the requirements of even an unjust state.

For Christian lawyers, it might mean putting a greater priority on justice and truth than simply winning a case. It might mean helping clients pursue reconciliation instead of a divorce, even if the fee is smaller.

For Christian educators, it means not just a neutral, even-handed exploration of things, but a commitment to God's truth. It means seeing the student not just as a sterile vessel to be filled with facts and opinions, but a unique image-bearer of God with strange and wonderful potential.

For Christian health-care providers, it means high proficiency in the technical sciences of healing, but it means much, much more than that. It also means pursuing a better understanding of how broken hearts and broken souls relate to broken bodies, the role of sin in sickness, and a host of other issues where the Bible offers uniquely profound insights.

And on and on-even in journalism! WORLD magazine is only one facet of what needs to be a global effort to do journalism in a biblical way. We've only just started to learn that task ourselves, and sometimes we're embarrassed to be such a short distance down the path. Hundreds and thousands of people are needed to join the effort.

In every vocation, in every calling, God calls his people not just to wrap a Christian veneer around what they do-but radically to reform all such tasks through biblical insights and Spirit-provided power. Only then will people know we are Daniel and not some of Nebuchadnezzar's other assistants whose names history has long forgotten. And only then, after we've done this faithfully in the trenches for a generation or two, do we really have any right to expect someone to be ready to step forward competently to lead a whole country by the same principles.