We often feel we have one of two options when looking at the pressure of living in a secular culture: We can either separate or assimilate. The book of Daniel shows us there is a third option: We don’t have to separate or assimilate, but we can redemptively participate in the cultural moment we find ourselves in. God has called us to radically integrate into our culture in order to accomplish His redemptive purpose on the earth. Daniel shows us in order to do that we must be consecrated people, set apart and obedient to the Lord, all the while being totally present to our current cultural moment.
“Then King Nebuchadnezzar fell prostrate before Daniel and paid him honor and ordered that an offering and incense be presented to him. The king said to Daniel, ‘Surely your God is the God of gods and the Lord of kings and a revealer of mysteries, for you were able to reveal this mystery.’”Daniel 2:46-47(NIV)
“Modern man, however, seeks to be ‘true to himself.’ Rather than conform thoughts, feelings, and actions to objective reality, man’s inner life itself becomes the source of truth. The modern self finds himself in the midst of what Robert Bellah has described as a culture of “expressive individualism”—where each of us seeks to give expression to our individual inner lives rather than seeing ourselves as embedded in communities and bound by natural and supernatural laws. Authenticity to inner feelings, rather than adherence to transcendent truths, becomes the norm. This modern self, then, is not accountable to the theologians who preach on how to conform oneself to God but to the therapists who counsel how to be true to oneself.”
Carl Trueman - Strange New World