We live in a world that we can describe as temporally conservative. Here’s how we will define that. From a study of nature, it seems that nature will always try to take the path of least resistance. That is, instead of expending more energy, it will try to expend less. That’s demonstrated in a lot of different ways. One of the most well known ways is in a geodesic. If you look at a mountain, and you see a crease in the face of the mountain where water has obviously flowed before, that will form a geodesic. The water will find the most efficient, or that is to say, the route that requires the least energy as possible to get form top to bottom when it rains. There are other illustrations of this. Even in the world of linguistics. In the Greek language, we say of certain letters in Greek words that they quiesce. They are absorbed by something else. For instance, in some Greek words (Koine Greek), the letter "s" will not be written although it is implied to be in the word; but it would be absorbed by the next letter to it which would be a "j" (psi), because the "s" sound is implicit in the psi so why write it? It takes less energy.

Out here in West Texas, we quiesce a lot of things. We talk in a way that requires as little energy as possible. So we would say "J’eet?" which requires a lot less discipline and a lot less energy to say than to pronounce the words, "Did you eat?" Suffice it to say that if we wanted to, we could find a lot of illustrations for this principle. Ernst Mach, the physicist, wrote a book called "The Science of Mechanics" in 1883 in which he spoke of the economy of thought. That is, achieving deductions and insights as easily and as straightforwardly as possible with as little fuss and as few axioms as possible, as another illustration of this idea of the conservation of things. We will use the word "conservative."

However, when we think about the faith that we have been describing from the revelation of the Lord, we notice that that is not the case. In fact, faith requires great energy. To act in concert and on the basis of the examples that we have of faith in the Old Testament and the New, we see people having to believe things that are very difficult. It requires a maximum effort, a great deal of energy, to believe certain things than it is to believe other things. As an illustration, in the case of Abraham it is much easier, it takes much less energy, to believe that a man can have a child being at an advanced age with a younger woman who is fertile than to believe that an old man at the age of 100 and a wife that is not that far behind and who is biologically incapable of having children can have children. Which requires more energy?

So let’s use two terms. Let’s say that one is temporal conservatism and the other is temporal extravagance. Temporal extravagance is the thing that we want to try to highlight here. It is extravagant because it requires much more energy to believe. When we talk about faith, we require an absolute expenditure of human will. It may very well be that the presence of energy in the universe is another symbol of will, and particularly of the will of God. When you think about it, in the Old Testament and in the New, the will of God is often depicted in terms of energy. In Genesis 1, there is the will of God displayed in the energy that shapes the universe, that gives form and creates. In Genesis 6, we have the will of God being demonstrated in this energy that destroys the world with the flood. In Genesis 11, there is the confusion of tongues. Later on there will be the destruction of the cities of the plain in the days of Abraham. He brings judgment in a very energetic way against the people of Egypt when Moses comes in to extract the people from captivity. He demonstrates his will in the energy that kept the Israelites from being harmed by Pharaoh’s chariots all that long while that the Lord was using other energy to open the path from the Red Sea. Later there is the energy that is involved in the destruction of the city of Jericho, and on and on it goes.

We are on pretty safe ground to say that the will of God is often demonstrated and symbolized by tremendous energy—both the energy that is of a positive nature as far as we are concerned which blesses us. But then there is the energy of the negative nature, which corresponds to the curses. A great illustration of this is in the book of Exodus when the presence of the Lord settles on Mount Horeb and there is black smoke, fire, lightning, and the mountain burns with fire. This is a manifestation of the presence of God. It is a manifestation of the will of God. It is manifested or demonstrated in time as energy.

Now, to believe those things that stand against human-lived experience we have to exert great energy. Of course, temporal conservatism favors the flesh while temporal extravagance favors the spiritual side of things. Because we are here in the world circumstance and in the world situation, we often come to the conclusion that what is natural is good; but from the biblical point of view and this sense of temporal conservatism, we would say that the natural is not so good at all. Measurement is illustration of temporal conservatism. It is very intuitive. It is very easy to believe.

So at Kadesh Barnea, when the spies go over and they come back, ten of them say, "Well we’ve measured our enemies somewhat. We’ve looked at the walls and fortifications up to the sky. We have made an appraisal of the number of our enemies. We’ve seen the giants." It is intuitive, or that is to say, it is very easy to believe that they would be destroyed. It takes much more energy, it takes much more temporal extravagance to say in that situation, "Oh let us go forthwith across this distance and enter into combat with our enemies knowing that God goes before us to deliver them into our hands." It takes much more energy to believe that and not less.

This is a primary distinction between the spirit and the flesh as demonstrated in

1 Corinthians 2. In the latter part of the chapter, Paul is describing this man that is identified as the spiritual individual—the man with the Spirit as opposed to the man without. And he says in 1 Corinthians 2:12, "We have not received the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God that we may understand what God has freely given us." Now here we have a spontaneity because we cannot understand what God has for us unless that knowledge is "pushed" into us—unless it is mediated. And that mediation is spontaneous. So time is not a factor nor is physical or natural causation. Continuing he says, "This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, expressing spiritual truths in spiritual words. The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned."

Perhaps you have a man, or a woman, or someone in the situation that simply finds it too much to believe. It is too extravagant to believe some of these things stated in the text. In the previous chapter of 1 Corinthians 1 beginning in verse 18 it says, those who had considered what the gospel implied, considered it foolishness and a waste of time. It was not natural. It is not easy to believe. It is not straightforward. It is not effortless. It requires a great deal of energy. It is extravagant to say this or that from the biblical point of view about the world in which we live.

Well, in our case some may think that what we say about the material world in which we live, the relationship that God sustains to it, and our relationship to it is somewhat contrived. If we say based on Matthew 6, for instance, "Well God will take care of us because he said he would, he promised us that. We don’t know how what is going to come about; but we are going to trust God." That would seem somewhat contrived to the man without the Spirit, somewhat forced. Because that is not obvious and that is not easy to believe. It is difficult because it is counter-intuitive. Everything counter-intuitive is not easy to believe. Anytime we are temporally extravagant in this way, it seems to the world to be foolishness.

One of the immediate applications that we make of this is that we need to recognize that we have to be linguistically extravagant about the world in which we live. That is to say when we generate symbols based on the revelation of God we are saying things that require much more energy to state and much more energy to believe. Things that do not fit in well with experience in the material world. Things that the conservative element here, as we have described it could never find comforting, could never believe to be true. It is too much to believe. It requires too much energy. So because it takes too much energy, they consider it to be foolish. Well in all of the cases where faith is demonstrated, it was always linguistically extravagant. Consider the extravagance of Joshua and Caleb when they linguistically stated about Canaan, and about this upcoming experience, "let us go forth. God will give us the victory. Let us not delay. Let’s not turn back in faithlessness here." They said this in spite of the fact that the entire community except these two men was temporally conservative. They want to believe what is the easiest to believe. It is much easier to believe that they will be destroyed, and much more extravagant and harder to believe that God will give them the victory over these strong fortifications and over these diverse and large peoples.

Or in the case of Daniel Chapter 3, the idea is that when the three Hebrews faced the burning radiation from the furnace, the easiest thing to believe was that heat radiation would consume the flesh. It is much more difficult, it is much more extravagant to say of this experience (by an act of the will in the mind) that "we may be destroyed in this situation, but God is able to deliver us from it in spite of its intensity. He may not. But even if he doesn’t, which we know he can, we will not bow down to your image." It takes much more energy; it is much more linguistically extravagant, more temporally extravagant to say that about their situation. Now when we find ourselves in similar temporal circumstances what do we do? We often find it convenient to be temporally conservative. Let’s see what is the most obvious straightforward interpretation of these facts. Let’s find the easiest way down the hill. Instead of that, we should be extravagant—linguistically extravagant. If someone says, "We are in a very difficult situation here biologically speaking. I think it is going to result in our death," he would be using much less energy and would be temporally conservative. What he should have said, what God would authorize him to say, what he would be expected to say is "We might die from this, but our God has not abandoned us and he can deliver us from this situation; and he will deliver us from this, but even if he doesn’t, this is what we are going to do, and this is how we are going to state meaning about this situation." This would be extravagant from the temporal point of view.

There is a great illustration of this in 2 Corinthians 1:8. Paul and his companions are in trouble in the province of Asia. So he says, "We do not want you to be uniformed brothers about the hardships we suffered in the province of Asia. Here we have Paul’s flesh generating symbols; and we know that the flesh does not have a mechanism of consent to the Spirit. So he is stating something that is temporally conservative. It is very easy to see that this situation has intensified to the point of critical mass. They are in serious trouble. He thinks they are going to die. He says, "We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired even of life." He got to the point where he believed it was all over. This was the easiest thing to believe. It is the most obvious and straightforward thing to believe. In verse 9, the bottomed out. This took on real historical presence for them. "Indeed in our hearts we felt the sentence of death." So they had solidified this temporal conservatism. This is what was operating in their hearts when they had become hopeless. When they had despaired in that experience in Asia, it was because they were temporally conservative, and linguistically conservative in and about that situation. Now in the latter part of verse 9, he says, "But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God who raises the dead. He has delivered us form such a deadly peril and he will deliver us. On him we have set our hope that he will continue to deliver us, as you help us by your prayers."

There is a situation where Paul says, "We should have been linguistically extravagant about this situation. Instead of believing what requires less energy to believe, we should have believed what requires more energy. We should have been linguistically extravagant in this situation. We should have said, ‘Hey wait a minute. These people are trying to kill us, they have apparently more force on their side, we are apparently vulnerable, we are apparently defenseless, but let us represent this thing, let us state linguistically, let us generate symbols that are extravagant about this case." He learned this in that situation. He is teaching us as well. He admits he should have said, "The Lord is with us. We have not been dropped through a slat in the floor here. God has the ability to get us out of this. It is not too late. It is never too late with God. God even raises the dead." If you appeal in your generation of symbols to one who raises the dead, which is somewhat extravagant, it is a different matter. That is what he should have done, but they didn’t do it.

Now you and I get into economic situations, biological situations, and sociological problems like the saints in 2 Corinthians or in 1 Peter suffered, and we have the tendency to become somewhat temporally conservative. Or we entertain various scenarios, "Well what about this, or what about that, or this might happen" and then all of this hopelessness and despair comes rushing through the door because we are not linguistically extravagant. Linguistic extravagance leads us to being representationally extravagant, saying things that are hard to believe. Saying things that you can’t necessarily understand. It was not possible for Paul to understand exactly how that situation was going to turn out. In any of the confrontations that we have with our flesh, we don’t know how they are going to turn out. But we do know that the Lord knows more than we do. We have to agree with the witness of Nebuchadnezzar, who in Daniel 2 said, "Everything that the Lord does is right." It doesn’t matter what he does or what he allows. If he allows something, then it should have been allowed.

We talk about what is "better." But we don’t really know how to answer this question. For example, in the case of a child that becomes desperately ill, we would like to say that it is better for the child to live and to grow. That is the easiest thing to believe. But suppose that the child dies. Now we are confronted with a real dilemma. We don’t want to be linguistically extravagant because it requires a great deal more energy, and say, "Well perhaps it was better that the child would die." That is harder to believe. It doesn’t appeal to the flesh. We don’t like the way that sounds. But in the case of the brethren in 1 Peter or in 2 Corinthians 1, it was right that they should suffer in precisely this way. It is not easy to believe. It is counter-intuitive.

Our world depends and thinks a lot about efficiency, which is doing a lot less work with a lot less energy. We think that is very good. But when we talk about temporal conservatism it is not very efficient in the general sense. It’s hard to believe. The Lord has a great deal of fondness for resurrections. He didn’t do a lot of them in the Old Testament, but he does a lot of them in the New Testament and he promises that we will all be resurrected. Resurrections are hard to believe. Resurrections demand much more energy to believe than being left alone in the ground to decompose. In the case of Paul (2 Corinthians 1), when he was in Asia, he made a blunder. He said, "I don’t believe that this situation can be saved by God." They despaired. But he said, "I should have believed in resurrections." Resurrections are harder to believe. It is quite possible that when we find ourselves in circumstances and we cannot believe the more extravagant, it may very well be the case that we don’t believe in the resurrection of Christ at all. We say we do. We think we do. But maybe we don’t.

Something else is additional here. Temporal conservatism, by the world’s standards is classified as the "normal." Whereas temporal extravagance is classified as something very abnormal. We would be accused of believing in something that is beyond the range of imagination; something that is not right, not obvious, somewhat contrived. They would say that what we are thinking or proposing is not "normal." They might even say that our message is "dangerous" or perhaps "somewhat sick" or "prideful and arrogant." Now if we think, what we have learned so far from the book of Daniel, that non-situational explanations are shoved or pushed into the world situation; and also that non-situational outcomes are pushed into the world situation. That is a formula for temporal extravagance.

Daniel was temporally extravagant when he says, "I have the answer, O king, to your quest." He was temporally extravagant in his mind when he linguistically represented the situation when he was thrown into the lions’ den. When Mishael and Azariah and Hananiah were thrown into the fiery furnace, they were representationally extravagant. The generation of symbols that we bring about is a model or manifestation of temporal extravagance. For us it becomes routine. We are routinely extravagant.

I know about discouragement and low point. I know something about depression in the lives of other people. One of the great differences is that because some are temporally conservative. They are going to believe what is the easiest and the obvious to believe. "We've lost our job, now we are really in the "soup." We are not going to be able to make the car payment. We are not going to be able to take care of the house. We are not going to be able to take care of the braces for Susie and other such things. The insurance payments are going to lag." That is the easiest thing to believe. When you believe the easiest thing, you become discouraged and annoyed and you become anxious. But we are instructed in scripture to be temporally extravagant. We translate that into a linguistic extravagance, a representational extravagance. So we should say, "Well wait a minute the Lord is with us. The Lord has made us promises. The Lord never lies. This is going to be all right. I don’t know how he is going to work it out. I don’t have a clue as to how this can take shape. But I will put my trust in God to deliver me."

I even wrote a poem about this and I’ll share this with you:

God is good and that is in our favor.

God is great and that is even better.

That’s the truth of the situation, that is, a linguistically and representationally extravagant view about our circumstances. We go around with hangdog looks and downcast, despairing hearts precisely because we have a tendency toward temporal conservatism. That should have no place in our hearts. Temporal conservatism is, of course, very analogous to the flesh and to the will of man. But it is very anomalous to the whole idea of extravagance, which is what the Lord has called us to in all of these wonderful cases of faith.

In fact, temporal conservatism would be the antipode to temporal extravagance. Temporal conservatism is very pattern-like. We can see patterns of nature always trying to take the lowest possible energy level to achieve its purposes. It appeals to statistical regularity. It appeals to formal systems, either mathematical systems or inductive systems that in one way or another can be formalized. Temporal extravagance as the antipode does not have a pattern to it. It is very non-statistical. I suspect, its non-statistical so that the Lord can show the energy of his will against the backdrop of temporal conservatism.

When you look at the index column of unity between the eternal and temporal dimensions of reality, starting at the foundation of the column with the Holy Spirit moving up to revelation, you have temporal extravagance—how the representational power of the Spirit of God in his own person produces his revelation, which speaks extravagantly about the world of men. It is not conservative in any sense. It says, "Yes, you can walk on the water with the power of God. Yes, the Red Sea will open up. Yes, food will drop out of heaven. Yes, water comes from the rock when you need it. Yes the answer is not within you, but it is always within the Lord." Next in the index column, we have faith and the manipulation of symbols (built upon the revelation, which depends on the Holy spirit to link the two worlds of material content to the will of God), which also are temporally extravagant. This is the intelligence of God as being demonstrated in us—it is being pushed into us. We generate symbols that demonstrate the structure of this temporal extravagance. Its linguistic structure is a type of temporal extravagance as we express words and ideas linked to God’s will. When we face the world, and all the circumstances in it, we are directly instructed to be linguistically and representationally extravagant. We should believe that our backs can be healed, that our money circumstances can be resolved, that the biological issues we face, and that all the situations of our life are to be represented extravagantly by God. We are not crazy, we are not foolish to do that. We are right when we do that. We are commended by the Lord when we do that.

Revelation would be the grammatical structure of temporal extravagance. That’s quite a mouthful. The world says of us, if we do that, we are denying reality. We are linguistically and representationally extravagant. But the world hears this as foolishness. The structure of temporal extravagance has to be incorporated into our thinking. If we don’t, we will have trouble looking at a passage like James 5. Is any one of you sick? He should call the elders of the church to pray over him and anoint him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well. The Lord will raise him up. It he has sinned, he will be forgiven. Therefore, confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. Perhaps we are not extravagant enough linguistically in the prayer. Perhaps we are not extravagant enough in the number of prayers. Or in the link of prayers. We will have to find all of that out. But temporal conservatism will not allow us to put credence in the instructions of James 5. We can understand why. Because temporal extravagance is very risky. We have a strong risk-aversion mechanism in the flesh. We don’t like risk. We try to make sure that we are as secure as possible. Sometimes temporal conservatism, using as little energy as possible, is the best way to go. Peter, when he denied Christ was temporally conservative. He thought it easier to believe that if he championed the Lord at that point he would end up in the same position he was in. But he was wrong about that.

I can think of Gideon who repeatedly had problems with the Lord in being extravagant enough about the situations that he confronted as a judge in the days of old. The Lord kept saying to him, "I am going to give you the victory, go do this…" But Gideon keeps coming back to the trough to draw more and more assurance. He can’t quite slip out of the grasp of this conservatism. He wanted to believe what was easiest to believe. It is hard to believe that when you got twenty thousand or so soldiers facing a lot more than that of your enemies, you can be victorious. And much less when you send everybody home except 300. You have a serious problem. This is not easy to believe. It is extravagant. This is an extravagant representation of the situation. The Lord did this, and we are supposed to be doing this also.

When the Lord was arrested and prosecuted and murdered by his enemies, his death was considered to be a defeat. However, we learn from a biblically extravagant position that it was quite the opposite of a defeat—it was a victory. It’s easy to believe that death is a defeat when we are at the bedsides of our loved ones. It is easy to believe that death is a defeat. It requires much more energy to believe that it is a victory when we look at our fellow Christians that we have loved for so long and we see their bodies laying there before us and we cry—it’s easy to say this is a defeat. It is not a defeat—not in any sense of the word. It is a great victory. But it requires more energy to believe that. We are not denying reality if we are temporally extravagant because the reality is exactly what the Lord says it is—no more and no less. There is no such thing as objectivity. We are denying reality only if we are not temporally conservative.

In the case of Daniel, he is temporally extravagant. This shows up in a lot of different ways in his life. In Chapter 6, Darius is foolish enough to be manipulated into the publication of a decree that is the result of a conspiracy against Daniel. They know that Daniel trusts his God and they have decided to try to manipulate the situation to their advantage and therefore destroy him. It is going to turn out somewhat differently than they think, of course. He prays three times a day. He does not change his habit when the decree goes out against his praying to God. They know he won’t change this pattern and so they catch him in the act. Now what does he do? He’s in the world situation. But there is a non-situational intelligence that is pushing on his mind in the situation. It is going to show up in temporal extravagance in his response to the situation. So he will be spared from the mouth of the lions and spared from his enemies in the bureaucracy. There are repeated illustrations of that in both the Old and New Testaments.

(This will be continued in Section B of this study, which follows.)