By Pastor Marcus Blair, Grandview Baptist Church
Daniel 1:1-21
To set the stage here, let me tell you a little bit about the Babylonians. They were a pagan society that believed in multiple gods. They were also very warlike, and they loved to conquer other societies. They came and conquered Israel, and when they did, they took all the best people with them back to Babylon with the intent to assimilate them 
into Babylonian culture. You see that here in the first chapter: Nebuchadnezzar, the pagan king of Babylon, wanted all the best and brightest people, especially youths, to be taught the language and literature of the Babylonians. He even gave them new names. And often they would leave or kill the weak, the uneducated, and the old, and they’d take artists, doctors, teachers, scholars – basically, they would kill one society and enrich their own with new people, and only the brightest and best, as they saw it.
The strategy was clear – you don’t just take over another nation, you absorb them into your own. You get them to speak like a Babylonian, not like a Jew. You give them a Babylonian name to take the place of their Jewish name. You get them to eat and drink like a Babylonian, and dress like one. You start filling their head with teachings and customs of the Babylonians, and before you know it, you have a young generation that is ready to be outstanding members of Babylonian society. All you have to do first, is kill who they were raised to be. You have to take away and confuse their identity.
Is any of this sounding eerily familiar? I hate to say it, but that’s the kind of assimilation and brainwashing I see going on around me in today’s society. Especially with our young people: society wants to ensure that anything our youth have learned about God, and respect, and morals, and family, and patriotism, be flushed down the tubes and a new programming be installed in them. A programming of atheism, tolerance of sin, acceptance of immorality, and ultimately, the total corruption of their identity in God. Are people confused about their identity these days? Oh yeah. People have lost the concept of who they were created by God to be.
For the complete column, see this week’s edition of the Centralia Fireside Guard
