Live Free - Die Hard

Anonymous

This trip in many ways has caused me to push boundaries. I'm normally the type of person who likes to stay within the comfort zone: I know my favorite foods, my favorite things to do, and so on, and I don't really like to stray from those things. Being in a different country, however, forces you to step outside the comfort zone. You just have to compromise sometimes.

We're not the first group of people that has encountered challenges in a new land or with the imposition of a different culture. The ancient Israelites also faced these difficulties. Should they compromise their religious identity or should they blend into the Hellenistic culture? One place we see this struggle is in the court tales of Daniel. In Daniel Ch 3, King Nebuchadnezzar constructs a golden idol and commands everyone to worship it. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednago refuse to do so, for it goes against their religion. When the king confronts them, they respond: "O Nebuchadnezzar, we have no need to present a defense to you in this matter. If our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the furnace of blazing fire and out of your hand, O king, let him deliver us. But if not, be it known to you, O king, that we will not serve your gods and we will not worship the golden statue that you have set up" (Daniel 3:16-18). They refused to take the easy route by compromising their religious identity and instead relied on their God to protect them.

Yesterday we visited a Byzantine monastery that is still a functioning monastery. This location to me represents the same uncompromising attitude as the Isralites did. Instead of being swayed by worldly pleasure or earthly wealth, monks have retreated to this monastery for a thousand years. They have turned away from the temptation to assimilate into the culture around them and have instead relied on their religious identity. By refusing to compromise their religious identity and preserving it above all else, both the characters of the Daniel story and the monks of the Osios Lukas monastery demonstrated how integral religion can be to one's sense of self. If either group had compromised their religious practices, they would have lost a key facet of their identity - one they were not willing to lose.