We began the 2024-2025 academic year at Houghton University as we typically do, with worship at our Fall Convocation. Now in the 4th year of our FEARLESS campaign, I have had the opportunity to share depictions of Godly strength and courage from the Old and New Testaments. These include, but are not limited to, the lives of Moses, Joshua, Esther, Mary the mother of Jesus and the Apostle Paul. This year, I selected the 3rd chapter of Daniel as the text for my fall convocation message, and I lifted Hananiah (Shadrach), Mishael (Meshach), and Azariah (Abednego) as models of courage for our students to consider. Their story is well-known and often told. I will not retell all of it here, but as our students are beginning a new academic year, I wanted to remind them of another group of talented, hardworking and courageous young people who loved God, with the hope that their fierce courage and convictions might inspire our own.

The Courage of Their Convictions

I reminded our students that these young men, as Israelite exiles, had been newly appointed to positions of honor, respect and authority in Babylon. Then, relatively soon after their appointment, with the threat of imminent execution by fire, they faced the question of whether they would follow the order of an earthly king and bow down and worship a golden image or remain faithful to their God and continue with their refusal to bow down and worship. Everyone else around them was bowing down and worshipping as commanded, exiled Jews and Babylonians alike. But even with the threat of death, these young men refused. Their courageous response to the king comes in Daniel 3:16-18:

“King Nebuchadnezzar, we do not need to defend ourselves before you in this matter. If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to deliver us from it, and he will deliver us from your Majesty’s hand. But even if he does not, we want you to know, Your Majesty, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up.”

I believe Houghton students and all faithful young Christians, even in our American context, have quite a bit in common with Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego. No, Houghton is not Babylon, and our students are not living in exile. But like these young men, Houghton students are talented, God-loving young people. They find themselves in a socio-cultural and political environment where rulers and officials are demanding that they bend their knees to images, beliefs, ideologies, and practices that are radically and offensively incongruent with their faith. No, our students are not faced with the threat of immediate execution by fire, but in 2024 they are faced with the very real threats of cancelation, being blackballed or blacklisted and labeled publicly as intolerant bigots for simply living out their faith. Young Christians are often threatened with such punishments, not because they would attempt to force their faith on others (that’s not how Christianity works), but because they would refuse to personally and publicly bow down to the world’s ideologies, norms and expected behaviors.

Challenges to the Faith

There is no clearer or more widely recognized area of forced ideological acquiescence for Christians today than the adoption and spread of gender ideology in schools, higher education and public policy, with serious implications for safety, fairness and public life in the United States. With the expectation of respect and kindness for all persons regardless of beliefs or lifestyle no longer being enough, young people who hold to traditional Christian beliefs regarding sex and gender, who love and respect people but who refuse to acquiesce to a gender ideology that is at odds with their faith, find themselves in precarious positions in their communities.

It is not uncommon for young Christians to be mocked and shamed in academic settings if they believe in and assert a God-centered view of creation, including the belief that God created men and women intentionally and bearing his image. It is not uncommon for education administrators, teachers, professors and managers to try to force young Christians to affirm tenets of gender ideology, and force them to speak, write, identify themselves, and behave in a manner that violates their faith and conscience. It is now common for schools to force sexual content and the tenets of gender ideology onto alarmingly young children, sometimes behind the backs of their Christian parents, violating the rights of those parents to raise their children according to their religious beliefs.

Called to Courage

The lived experiences of young Christians in the U.S. in 2024 may, in fact, be less like my experience as a student and young professional in the 1990s and early 2000s, and more like the experiences of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in Nebuchadnezzar’s Babylon. For most of my career, it did not matter that I was a Christian and tried to live in alignment with my Christian faith, while colleagues and friends lived their lives according to their own beliefs and principles. As a Christian student and young professional, I was never forced to acquiesce to ideologies and belief systems at odds with my faith as a precondition for respect or acceptance. The lived experiences of Christian students, young professionals, and parents today is now quite different.

Yet and still, my strong encouragement to Houghton students and young Christians everywhere is to be strong and courageous—to be the faithful and loving men and women your Christian faith teaches you to be. Continue to love God and love people, even when you are labeled as intolerant and hateful. Continue to love God and love people even when standing for your Christian faith might result in missed career opportunities, loss of social status, and being ostracized in your community. Remember the words of our Savior as he prayed for his disciples: “I have given them your word and the world has hated them, for they are not of the world any more than I am of the world” (John 17:13-14). Expect the world’s rejection but love and serve people passionately and fearlessly anyway. With hearts filled with love and courageous conviction, refuse to bow down to the world’s images, idols, and ideologies, knowing and proclaiming as Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego did, that the God you serve loves you, is always with you, and is able to deliver you.