Proverbs 22: 6 Dedicate your children to God and point them in the way that they should go, and the values they’ve learned from you will be with them for life.[1]
Yesterday we looked at the importance of faith training. Daniel and his friends would have been trained in the faith of the Jewish people as young men. Now they had been transported to a foreign land with different ways and a dissimilar religion. They would have been schooled in Babylonian literature, religion, math, history, and agriculture. Their Babylonian teachers would have done their best to brain wash them to the Babylonian ways. This would have been necessary because Daniel and his friends were to become upper-lever government administrators and advisors.
This brain washing went so far as to even give these teen age boys different names. Daniel 1: 6 From among Judah’s exiles, Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah were selected. 7 Ashpenaz, chief of the royal eunuchs, gave them Babylonian names to signify their new identities in a foreign place: Daniel he renamed Belteshazzar; Hananiah, Shadrach; Mishael, Meshach; and Azariah, Abed-nego.[2] Each of the new names had to do with the Babylonian gods. This would have been done to tie them into the language and mythological literature of Babylon.
These young men had no say in what they were taught nor in what their new guardians required of them. But Daniel had already decided to follow his God no matter what. Daniel 1: 8 But Daniel was determined not to defile himself.[3] As we shall see in the coming days, this will make a difference.
It is still much the same today. Many young people may be taught in the church as youngsters, but things seem to change when they get older and influenced by those outside the home. As teachers and parents, we must realize that the world has a different agenda for our children than we may have. We need to prepare our children for what they will face because it is important that each child settle in his mind who he will follow. Will it be God or the world?
To hear more about Daniel and his situation, listen here: https://podpoint.com/light-of-christ-church-podcast/series/daniel-a-man-of-character/following-the-lord
[1] The Passion Translation®. Copyright © 2017 by BroadStreet Publishing® Group, LLC.
[2] The Voice Bible Copyright © 2012 Thomas Nelson, Inc. The Voice™ translation © 2012 Ecclesia Bible Society
[3] Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188.