Keeping up with today’s national and global developments can feel like living in a cauldron of political pressure. If we’re not in the storm ourselves, the sheer volume of political twists and turns can make us feel numb to the news. Yet, looking to those who have withstood the storm and triumphed shows us that responding with grace and confidence in good starts with the truths we hold in our heart.
The Bible offers compelling examples. Consider the spiritual clarity and bravery of four individuals: Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego, and Daniel. They’d been taken from their home in Israel and were being indoctrinated by their Babylonian captors. Yet they held in their hearts strong spiritual truths – and got to witness dramatic turnarounds.
In Babylon, the pressure – political, religious, and cultural – was ferocious. One of the world’s most powerful kings was insisting that all his subjects worship a lifeless statue (see Daniel 3). When Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego refused, the king threatened them, but they held to a remarkable truth in their hearts: God was more powerful than this ruler. And they stood their ground.
The Hebrews were confident in what the author of “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures,” Mary Baker Eddy, describes as the omnipotence of divine good – even on earth. Offering a spiritual interpretation of the fourth line of the Lord’s Prayer, she writes, “Enable us to know, – as in heaven, so on earth, – God is omnipotent, supreme” (p. 17).
The king had the three men tossed into an extra-hot furnace. But then he himself saw them walking around unharmed in the furnace, along with a fourth figure. The king exclaimed, “The form of the fourth is like the Son of God.” This earthly king had just glimpsed the Christ – God’s power on earth.
The three men were safe from the flames – and the king was moved, his hardened heart melted. If there’d been newspaper coverage, one headline might have read: “King reverses course and honors the Hebrew God.” What a turnaround – because of a timeless truth held in the hearts of three men.
Many years after the fiery furnace episode, when there was a different king in power, Daniel was the top official in Babylon (see Daniel 6). This inflamed other officials’ envy, and by persuading King Darius to decree that anybody petitioning any God or person other than the king for 30 days would be thrown into a den of lions, they conspired to “cancel” Daniel in the most lethal way.
Despite the danger, Daniel continued to put everything aside three times a day to pray to God, divine good. The plot seemed successful, yet Daniel was untouched by the lions. As he explained, “My God hath sent his angel, and hath shut the lions’ mouths, that they have not hurt me: forasmuch as before him innocency was found in me.”
By holding to his God-given innocence, Daniel triumphed over both the physical threat and its source – what Mrs. Eddy calls “animal magnetism,” which is the “false belief … that evil is as real as good and more powerful” (Science and Health, p. 103). Isn’t this belief at the root of every conflict-related headline?
Daniel’s clarity regarding the fact that he could totally rely on God led to his deliverance – and to a remarkable turn of events in what had been a brutal period of political conflict and religious persecution. Not only was Daniel safe, but imagine the next day’s headline story reporting, “King Darius’ latest decree declares, ‘The God of Daniel … is the living God, and stedfast for ever. … He delivereth and rescueth.’”
Two decades ago, when I became Africa bureau chief for The Christian Science Monitor, I carried one conviction in my heart: that the Christ was already at work across the continent. Mrs. Eddy defines “Christ” as “the divine manifestation of God, which comes to the flesh to destroy incarnate error” (Science and Health, p. 583). I expected to see evidence of error – disharmony, conflict, crime, etc. – destroyed.
Yes, there was political turmoil, including civil wars that had lasted years. But I also witnessed resilience, forgiveness, bravery, and neighborly love. And I saw concrete evidence of progress, including a sharp decline in the number of wars. By the time the assignment ended, I was deeply hopeful about Africa’s future.
And Africa’s progress has continued. Despite a recent upsurge in headline-grabbing conflicts, wide swaths of the continent are seeing fresh economic and social dynamism. For instance, Africa has the fastest-growing household income of any continent.
When headlines get intense, we can meet them, mentally and spiritually grounded in God’s omnipotence, confident in humanity’s innocence and goodwill, and expectant of evidence of the Christ in action. With these truths in our hearts, progress isn’t wishful thinking. It’s something we can expect to see.
