Thriving in Babylon

Recently I had the opportunity to read Thriving in Babylon, a book by pastor Larry Osborne focusing on living the Christian life in a hostile culture and nation. I found the book fascinating, not only as a guide for Christian living, but as an example of typical Christian thought.

Daniel in Babylon

Pastor Osborne, as his title will suggest, is looking primarily at the example of Daniel, who not only survived, but thrived, in Babylon. Pastor Osborne attributes Daniel’s success to three virtues: hope, humility, and wisdom. He seeks to teach us how we as a church need to improve in these areas to adapt to a now-hostile culture. I appreciated his admonition that we are in a spiritual conflict and must stay on our guard, looking to God for guidance in all areas of life.

That said, I knew from the beginning we were going to disagree, because Pastor Osborne begins by explaining that Christianity is not an “adventure story,” while I have based my life around the conviction that Lord of the Rings is a better depiction of the Christian life than most devotionals. But I’ll come to that later.

Just the Facts?

One of my main qualms with Pastor Osborne is his Biblical exegesis, which is shakier than one would wish from a prominent pastor. He has a disturbing tendency to bend the facts in order to better support his case.

For instance, in order to establish the lightness of our modern problems in comparisons with Daniel’s, Pastor Osborne overemphasizes the direness of Daniel’s plight by relying on historical speculation. Daniel, we are told, was castrated. His schooling experience was demonic and horrendous. Nebuchadnezzar was a cruel and capricious boss. Though he offers only paltry substantial support for these assumptions, Pastor Osborne returns to them with a fixation bordering on myopic.

Besides adding in historical facts when convenient, Pastor Osborne also selectively forgets Biblical facts. Case in point: he explains how his three virtues lifted Daniel from the depths of poverty and enslavement into a position of power. But this is simply untrue. Daniel had been brought to Babylon precisely because of his potential, and he was trained to develop that potential and then given commensurate responsibilities. There is not some mysterious formula of virtues that caused Daniel’s success; talent, hard work, and God’s blessing were all that was required.

Is the war lost?

I don’t think Pastor Osborne is consciously forcing his interpretation on the facts; I think, rather, that he has fallen prey to an incomplete view of the Christian life which plagues many, many American Protestant circles. I am speaking of the tendency to separate godliness from real-world considerations, to place virtue and one’s relationship with God in a separate realm from practical considerations both on an individual and a national level.

Now we come to my largest disagreement with Pastor Osborne.  He states flatly: “the culture wars are over. We lost.” But there is never a specific point in time when a culture war is “won” once and for all, when a culture settles in stone and stops changing. A culture battle can be won, but the culture war is an ongoing struggle between worldviews, beliefs, and acceptable standards of behavior. It is, in fact, spiritual warfare, only in another, society-specific guise. To resign oneself to losing this war is not only unnecessary; it is unethical.

Pastor Osborne, understandably, shares the concerns of many Protestants when it comes to mixing religion and politics. But you cannot separate spiritual warfare from people, and you cannot separate people from politics. And if you want to fight the spiritual battles effectively, you have to look at the whole picture.

How to Change the World

This limited perspective also accounts for Pastor Osborne’s insistence that local congregations are the only God-approved way of making a difference in the world because God works through “the church”. This is simply bad interpretation. “The church” in the Bible includes any gathering of believers. In schools. In businesses. In social work organizations. In missions. Not just on Sunday mornings.

In the end, then, I must disagree with Pastor Osborne’s conclusion that hope, humility, and wisdom will allow us to thrive in Babylon. If we want to make a difference in the world, we need more than individual expressions of cookie-cutter virtues. We need to broaden our perspective, coordinate efforts, and set ambitious goals. Why? Because when you see the world through Christianity’s eyes, we are all living in an adventure story. Because we are in Lord of the Rings, and someone needs to fight Sauron.

Will it be you?