Christian, although we find ourselves living in different times than we did twenty years ago, the Christian’s job description remains the same: keep poised, keep persevering, keep proclaiming, and keep performing the duties that God has prepared in advance for you to do.

This year I am working with a committee from my high school in planning our twenty-year reunion. I am looking forward to seeing people I have not seen in a long time. It will be a joy to hear about their families, where they are living, and what they are doing with their lives. One thing will be certain: changes have occurred. A lot happens in twenty years.
I have the privilege of serving at a church in my hometown where I graduated. As I have been reflecting on the past twenty years, I have noticed there has been a major change in the spiritual landscape of my community. Many churches that were once thriving are now struggling. Even though there has been a significant population increase, churches have not seen growth. As I talk to other pastor friends around the country, I am hearing the same things. What has changed in the last twenty years?
When the twenty-first century began, our society entered the Innovation Era, a new technological, digital age. I distinctly remember sitting in my dorm room working on my large computer and waiting minutes for my internet to dial up. Now, I can connect online in a second. This digital world enables us to talk to almost anyone anywhere at any time.
The Innovation Era has brought about a lot of good. Technology has played a role in the growth of the kingdom of God by making it possible to reach many people with the gospel who were previously unreached. Christian colleges and seminaries that provide online learning are educating the masses. Along with all the progress this age has brought, there has also been great harm. Pornography has ruined marriages and ministries. Work is much more difficult to turn off. Countless worldviews are being shared as anyone who can get online has a public platform to discuss their ideas. Unfortunately, many in our society are buying into these opposing worldviews and are drifting from the Lord and His church.
The world I find myself living in is a world like Timothy’s, where “people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths” (2 Tim. 4:3–4).
In 1 and 2 Timothy, Paul warned Timothy about false teachers who were coming from inside and outside the church (1 Tim. 1:6, 19; 4:1; 6:10, 21; 2 Tim. 2:18). There were four issues that kept coming up in the church from their teachings:

Myths that referred to Old Testament figures from extrabiblical writings would excuse immoral behavior (1 Tim. 1:4; 4:7; 2 Tim. 4:4).
The Jewish law was wrongly interpreted, and heresy was being taught (1 Tim. 1:7; 2 Tim. 2:18).

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Nebuchadnezzar’s humility is the prelude to praising the King of heaven: “Now I, Nebuchadnezzar, praise and extol and honor the King of heaven, for all his works are right and his ways are just; and those who walk in pride he is able to humble (Dan. 4:37).” This kind of praise is the proper human response to God’s goodness and glory. But pride disorders our minds so that we ignore God and become less than human. Paul urges us to reflect on Christ’s humanity so that we can embody his mind (Phil. 2:5). When we see the character of God shining in his humility, it humbles us and leads us to praise. Like Nebuchadnezzar and like Jesus, we must humble ourselves to ascend to our full humanity.

Daniel 4 stands out in the Old Testament as the only story in which a human being appears to be turned into an animal. It may remind you of the classical trope of metamorphosis—think of the sequence in Pinocchio when the boys morph into jackasses or the many tales from the Roman poet Ovid when the gods transform humans into creatures that represent their fatal flaws. Here’s how the text depicts Nebuchadnezzar’s fate:
He was driven from among men and ate grass like an ox, and his body was wet with the dew of heaven till his hair grew as long as eagles’ feathers, and his nails were like birds’ claws. (Dan. 4:33)
Victorian scholars, hoping to discover a plausible historical explanation for this description, suggested a diagnosis of clinical lycanthropy. It is hard to read this and not picture something like Beauty and the Beast. Is this the stuff of fairy tales? What happened to Nebuchadnezzar and what does it mean?
This is neither a fairy tale nor a description of psychosis but a theological account of how God teaches the proud to praise him.
Nebuchadnezzar and the Animal Mind
Daniel 4 opens with Nebuchadnezzar at his leisure in his palace when he receives a symbolic dream. In the dream, the king appears as a giant tree that reaches to heaven and provides food and shelter to all the birds of the sky and beasts of the field. But a decree comes down from heaven that the tree must be cut down (Dan. 4:13–17). The tree is an image of strong, benevolent kingship (see Ezek. 17:23–24; 31:4–7, 9), and the animals in the dream are the subjects that the king is provisioning and protecting.
But this tree has a hubris problem—in its power, grandeur, and leisure it ignores God (Dan. 4:30). “Chopping down the tree” is a symbolic description of the King’s punishment. Verse 16 describes the punishment in straightforward, if incredible, language: “Let his mind be changed from a man’s, and let a beast’s mind be given to him.” Since pride floods Nebuchadnezzar’s mind, God gives him a new one.
Nebuchadnezzar’s body becomes the canvas on which this profound change is illustrated. He lives exposed and subsists on vegetation like an ox. His body goes unkempt until his appearance becomes avian. No consistent comparison, however, is developed to an ox or a raptor or any other kind of animal. Rather, Nebuchadnezzar becomes animalistic. His outward appearance is affected, but only in ways that any person’s would be if they had an animal mind and lived for years out of doors like a beast.
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To be double-minded is to break the first great command to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength (Deut. 6:5; Matt. 22:37–38). The double-minded aren’t fully committed to God; they don’t truly love him with their whole selves.We strive for perfection in our spiritual disciplines. Doesn’t Jesus himself say, “Be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matt. 5:48)? The book of James appears to support this line of thinking when it states that an individual must pray “in faith, with no doubting,” because a “double-minded man” is “unstable in all his ways” (James 1:6–8).
Portions of James’s letter are difficult to understand, and what he says about prayer appears unattainable. Do any of us truly possess perfect faith when we pray? James states that if we have doubts in our prayer life, we shouldn’t expect to “receive anything from the Lord” (v. 7).
To answer this pressing question requires us to identify the double-minded person. Once we understand who James has in view, then we can better understand what James says about prayer.
Who Are the Double-Minded?
James is the only New Testament writer to use the terminology “double-minded” (dipsychos), and he doesn’t come right out and define the term. So we must determine what it means from the context of James and by comparing his language to similar writings of his era.
It could be that the double-minded are immature believers—a view that would fit with James’s emphasis on the need to press on to maturity in our faith (1:4; 3:2). If so, the double-minded are those not yet mature in their faith. This is possible.
A better option is to understand the double-minded as hypocrites who outwardly behave as Christians but inwardly live as unbelievers. The double-minded in James are analogous to the “double-hearted” in the Psalms, who are the enemies of God’s people (see Ps. 12:2). In Psalm 119:113, the psalmist declares his love for God’s law in contrast to the “double-minded” person. Though James’s word for “double-minded” isn’t specifically used in the Psalms, the concept does seem to be there to describe those not truly committed to the Lord.
Another similar concept is “double-tongued,” an idea found in noncanonical Jewish literature (Sirach 5:9) and in the New Testament (1 Tim. 3:8). The double-tongued are fundamentally divided in the ways they use their tongues (see James 3:9).
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