Forming Faith Blog

Persecution, Faith, and Identity (Daniel 3)

Posted on November 18 2025 by Gregory Rawn

In a story set during the Babylonian exile, three young Jewish men were forced to choose between their faith and death. However, then and now, the bigger danger is the slow erosion of our faith and identity.

A fire. Three Jewish men had to choose between their faith identity and a fiery death.
Photo by Pixabay
Where Are We Again?

Happy Advent! In the Narrative Lectionary, we start the holy season of Advent with a story about… a gruesome (attempted) martyrdom. In the Revised Common Lectionary (which was created, in part, to support the church year), we would be hearing about the future appearance of the Son of Man (Matthew 24:36-44) and the future kingdom where we will beat swords into plowshares (Isaiah 2:1-5). So, Advent-y themes. But the Narrative Lectionary’s focus is on biblical education, not the church year, so we are just continuing through the prophets during the Babylonian exile.

Last week, the prophet Jeremiah wrote a letter to the elders of Judah who had been taken into exile by the Babylonians. One of the major points of this letter was that the people should settle in because they would be there a while. Now we are in the Book of Daniel, which is a wild combo of over-the-top stories and crazy dream-visions.

YHWH Defeated? 

The Babylonian invasion of the Promised Land, the subsequent destruction of Jerusalem, and the exile of the people were a massively traumatic series of events. War always is, but this had an added spiritual dimension. Their homeland was not just any piece of land; it was a gift from YHWH, their God, and an inheritance from the promise to Abraham and Sarah. Jerusalem was the capital, but more importantly, it was the site of the temple. The Judahites did not have multiple temples (or weren’t supposed to). This was the temple, the place where God dwelt among the people. And the temple was destroyed. Gone.

This was more than just the destruction of a beloved building and removal from a God-given land. In that period of time, many kingdoms had their own patron gods or goddesses. Every war was more or less a holy war. The humans might have been the ones who fought and died, but the real conflict was between the invaders’ gods and the invaded’s gods. The side with the more powerful gods won. [Note: This is vastly oversimplified.]

When the people of Judah were thinking about their God at all, they knew that YHWH wasn’t just one among many gods. YHWH was the ultimate divinity of the universe. If the other gods existed at all, they were nothing in comparison to YHWH. And, as God had demonstrated over and over again, God delivered God’s people from their enemies, from the time of Egyptian enslavement to the time of King Hezekiah. Now God’s people were utterly defeated, and God’s holy temple was destroyed. Did this mean that the Babylonians’ gods were more powerful than YHWH? Did their God get defeated? Or had God abandoned God’s people completely?

The Babylonian Problem

The prophets told the people that God allowed this to happen as a consequence of the people’s disobedience. Of course, God was more powerful than the Babylonians’ worthless idols. And God had promised never to forsake the people. YHWH wanted the people to repent, turning from their own ways to God’s way: to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with their God. In exile, God’s people were given a challenge: how to maintain their faith and identity in a hostile land.

I am certainly not a historian of this time period, but I imagine that the hostility of Babylonia toward the Jews was not so much the violence that was to come later (though I’m sure that did exist). It was the steady pressure to fit in, go with the flow, and be like their neighbors. Survive by being a little less Jewish.

But steady pressure does not make good stories or heroes of the faith. And that is definitely where the Book of Daniel comes in (and the Book of Esther). These stories took the pressure of loosening their Jewish identity and faith and portrayed them as court tales, exciting stories of Jewish heroes prevailing in foreign royal courts due to their courage and faith in YHWH.

Court Tales

There are three court tales in the Book of Daniel (two obvious and one less so): the introduction of the four young Israelites (Daniel and the three young men in today’s story) to the Babylonian court (Daniel 1), the story of the fiery furnace (Daniel 3), and Daniel and the lions’ den (Daniel 6). While Daniel 1 is certainly less dramatic, it fits a similar pattern and sets up the other two stories.

  1. The Jewish heroes are brought into the court/honored.
  2. They are pressured to loosen their Jewish identity and faith to conform.
  3. They rely on God and persevere.
  4. They triumph/are delivered by God.

In Daniel 3, the three young Jewish heroes (Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah, who were called Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego) had been brought into the court and honored in Daniel 1 (verses 18-20). King Nebuchadnezzar had made the ridiculous demand that all of his subjects bow down and worship an enormous golden statue upon pain of death. Bowing down to idols and worshipping other gods were big no-nos for God’s people, so Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego quietly refused to do so. Even when the king himself demanded that they do so, they refused, accepting death if YHWH decided not to save them. God did, in fact, miraculously save them, causing the king to praise YHWH.

Religious Persecution Today

Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah were threatened with harm and death because of their faith. They faced religious persecution. Religious groups, including Christians, still face threats of harm and death throughout the world today. This is a very serious problem.

But do you know which countries do not show up on the watch lists for religious persecutions (especially of Christians)? Most likely the country you are reading this in. The United States, Canada, Australia, and the rest of the Western world are not places where widespread threats against Christians are made. So, I get frustrated to hear Christians in the US (my country) talk about how they are being persecuted. No, we are not subject to persecution. Discomfort and unpopularity are not the same as persecution, and it is an insult to people who are actually persecuted to claim they are.

Would I Do It?

Going back to the drama of our three Jewish heroes, the natural “life application” question is whether I would follow their example. Is my faith strong enough? Do I have the courage to face death over this outward display of idol-worship? I know what my answer should be, but I have to be honest with myself. I think I would be brave enough to face death to protect my family and friends, and I hope I have the courage to try to save anyone who is in danger. But I can pretty much guarantee that I would go through the demanded motions if the harm was threatened against others rather than myself. But would I martyr myself? To be honest, probably not.

The Real Question

Again, I might be wrong, but I think that the real pressure on the Jewish exiles was the peer pressure to conform. The conformity could have eventually led to the dissolution of the Jewish faith and identity. God’s people would not be lost in a great battle or horrifying genocide, but would fade away into the dusty annals of history.

Christianity, the largest religion in the world, is not going away soon. It is too enmeshed in society, history, and power throughout the world to be lost in time. But what about me, both as a person of faith and as a representative of a particular theological tradition? Do I have the perseverance and courage to daily stand against the forces of cruelty, bigotry, and greed that fight to represent what it means to be a Christian (which I consider to be a bigger threat than secular culture or other religions)? Or the religious apathy of secular culture? 

Questions to Ask and Not to Ask

As you are teaching this passage, I would highly recommend that you not ask people whether they would follow Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah in martyrdom. There is really only one “right” answer, and people would either believe themselves to be super-Christians ready to martyr themselves or answer “yes” even if their honest answer would be “no.” If you want to ask it, assume (out loud) that the answer is “no” without condemnation. 

I think that the better focus is on how we can stand up for God’s love against the pressure of apathy, selfishness, and fear.

In God’s love and forgiveness,

Gregory Rawn (Publisher)

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