Yesterday (Sunday, May 16, 2021) Troy Loether (pastor of Kettlebrook Church in West Bend, WI) was the guest speaker for Meadowbrook Church in Wauwatosa, WI where Candy and I worshipped.
His message was on Daniel 3, the familiar story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego being thrown into the fiery furnace for refusing to bow down to Nebuchadnezzar’s statue. The theme of the message was consistent character with the pressures of living in exile. The text and the message emphasized that the Jews were being pressured into idolatry. However, it is also clear that the call for “peoples, nations, and languages” (vv. 4,7) that this was a political attempt to bring all who had been conquered by Babylon into a unified empire.
The message identified three ways the consistent character of the Jews was been attacked.
Authority and Intimidation – the emperor
was commanding obedience
Conformity – everyone else was going
along
Penalty – the fiery furnace
The
message suggested ways we may feel similar pressures to compromise our
character in our daily experiences. Though nothing was said about the recent
developments with Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, I am sure I was not the only
one thinking of parallels to their situations.
Then, this morning I read the reflection from Richard Rohr of the Center for Action and Contemplation on the “banality of evil” which shed incisive light on my incredulous wrestling with so much these days. The Modern Disguise of Evil — Center for Action and Contemplation (cac.org)
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