Walking With Christ

Daniel 1:7–8  (7)And the chief of the eunuchs gave them names:  Daniel he called Belteshazzar, Hananiah he called Shadrach, Mishael he called Meshach, and Azariah he called Abednego.  (8)But Daniel resolved that he would not defile himself with the king’s food, or with the wine that he drank.  Therefore he asked the chief of the eunuchs to allow him not to defile himself.(ESV)

Babylon didn’t simply take Daniel from his home.  It began trying to tell him who he was.

Daniel had been taken from Judah while he was still young.  He was removed from his family, his culture, his language, his familiar worship, and almost everything that had helped form him.  Then Babylon began rebuilding his world.

He would learn their language, study their literature, eat from their table, and serve their king.  They even gave him another name.

Daniel became Belteshazzar.  Hananiah became Shadrach.  Mishael became Meshach.  Azariah became Abednego.

Those names weren’t merely convenient nicknames.  They were part of a much larger transition.  These young men were being absorbed into Babylon.

Everything around them was saying the same thing:

This is where you live now.

This is how we do things here.

This is what you’ll learn.

This is whom you’ll serve.

And this is what we’ll call you.

Daniel answered to Belteshazzar.

We never see Daniel throwing a fit because someone called him by the Babylonian name.  Nebuchadnezzar calls him Belteshazzar.  Others know him by that name.  Daniel apparently understood that there were battles worth fighting and others that weren’t.

But there’s something fascinating about the book that records his story.

It keeps calling him Daniel.

Babylon gave him another name, but the new name never replaced the old one as his identity.

He could answer to the label without allowing the label to define him.  There’s a difference.

Captivity still does this.

Alcohol can begin as something a person drinks and eventually become the thing around which life is organized.  Pornography can begin as something viewed and eventually become secrecy, shame, habits, isolation, and a way of thinking.  Debt can become more than a financial condition.  Divorce can become more than something that happened.  A prison sentence can become more than punishment for something done.  Failure can become more than an event.  Eventually captivity starts naming the captive.

Addict.

Dirty.

Failure.

Unwanted.

Criminal.

Broken.

Hopeless.

And sometimes that new name doesn’t whisper.  It screams.  It demands attention until everything else about the person becomes difficult to hear.  It wants to drown out every other truth until it becomes the lone descriptor.

Not a father who is struggling with alcohol.  An alcoholic.

Not a woman who survived abuse.  A victim.

Not a person who sinned and desperately needs repentance and restoration.  A failure.

Not someone carrying wounds.  Broken.

The new name wants more than recognition.  It wants ownership.  It wants to become lord.

That’s why the first response is always the same:  Turn to Jesus.

But what comes next may look very different.

Alcohol addiction may require treatment, accountability, removal from environments that feed it, and people willing to walk closely beside you.

Pornography may require confession, accountability, hard boundaries, changed habits, and removing access that has repeatedly become a doorway back into captivity.

Sin may require repentance, restitution, and reconciliation where reconciliation is possible.

Abuse may require distance, protection, and refusing to return to someone who continues to cause harm.

Grief isn’t something to repent of at all.  It may require mourning, patience, and allowing God to carry us through something that can’t simply be fixed.

Debt may require discipline, sacrifice, and years of slowly repairing what can’t be corrected overnight.

The first step remains Jesus because the question of lordship has to be settled first.

But Jesus doesn’t require us to pretend that every captivity is identical.

What’s trying to own you matters because the faithful response to it matters.

Some labels may describe something real.

A person struggling with alcohol shouldn’t pretend the alcohol isn’t a problem.

A person trapped in pornography shouldn’t deny the captivity.

A person who has done wrong shouldn’t pretend the wrong never happened.

Daniel never pretended that he wasn’t in Babylon either.  He was.

The problem begins when a description of our condition becomes the definition of our identity.

There’s a tremendous difference between saying:

“This is something I am fighting.”

and saying:

“This is what I am.”

Captivity wants the second one.  Because captivity becomes much stronger when it convinces us that there’s no longer a person underneath it.

Daniel lived in Babylon.  Daniel worked in Babylon.  Daniel learned the language of Babylon.  Daniel became extraordinarily successful inside Babylon.  People even called him by the name Babylon gave him.

But Babylon never became the deepest truth about Daniel.

That had already been established somewhere else.  His name itself carried a reminder:  Daniel — God is my judge.

Babylon could evaluate his work.  Nebuchadnezzar could determine his position.  Officials could decide what to call him.  Kings could decide whether to reward him, imprison him, or kill him.  But none of them received the authority to tell Daniel who he ultimately was.

That belonged to God.

Maybe captivity has given you a name.  Maybe you’ve heard it so many times that you answer without thinking anymore.  Maybe you even use it when speaking about yourself.

The question isn’t whether the captivity is real.  Daniel’s captivity was painfully real.

The question is whether you’ve allowed something that happened to you, something you did, or something that currently has a hold on you to become the final answer to the question:  Who are you?

Babylon called him Belteshazzar.  Scripture keeps calling him Daniel.

You may be living in Babylon.  That doesn’t mean you belong to Babylon.

And the name captivity gives you doesn’t have to become the name by which you know yourself.