We know that the non-situational pushes its influence into the world situation. Now to sort of give this a graphic depiction, we write on the left-hand side of the page "non-situational intelligence" and a large arrow pushing into a three-sided box, which represents the "world situation." We place a stick figure in the middle and then draw a large circle around that entire box and we refer to that as the "ignorance bubble." It is an ignorance bubble because even pushed intelligence has to consider its limitations. Even a pushed intelligence doesn’t know everything that the Lord knows. So while our arc of knowledge is greater than the worlds, there are many things that we do not know which certainly is in concert with the condition of the world. So we have to concede our limitations. We are going to operate to some degree and always in something that we can call and "ignorance bubble." Daniel did not know everything that was going to happen. When he was given access to the dream that Nebuchadnezzar had in Chapter 2 and his ability to interpret it shows him that while the Lord was specific about how things were going to unfold, Daniel did not know the particulars and so he himself operated in some kind of an ignorance bubble.

In spite of the fact that we live in an ignorance bubble as we have described it here, we are never ignorant of how to respond to certain situations. The believer is never ignorant of how to respond correctly to situations. So we know among other things that we are ignorant of most of what the Lord is doing in the world situation. We see a few things here and there, but we don’t know everything that he is doing and that is not made available to us. We are not privy to everything that he is doing. We are ignorant of most of what the Lord has done in the world situation. We have a bible, we have revelation and he has told us a lot of things that he is involved in, but that wouldn’t touch the hem of the garment in terms of all of the things that he has done. We are also ignorant of most of what the Lord will do in the world situation. And how he is going to respond to all sorts of things. We have these things that we can generalize upon in the scriptures. However, we still understand that to some degree, however large or small, we act within what we are going to call the "ignorance bubble."

Since we don’t know most of what the Lord is doing, has done and will do, we never act on that ignorance. We never come to a conclusion well we don’t know what God is doing so we’ll do something. That would be a mistake. We never act on the ignorance, but we have to act within this ignorance and therefore we have to remember that there is more going on than we think or that we always are in a position to recognize. We are apprised of the fact that a prescribed response to the world situation has been given and that prescribed response is always and only non-situational.

We are going to try to uncover what we can identify as the non-situational memory and its profile. A number of things that God has put into us via the revelation that he shaped in us through our capacity to generalize from the revelation from these pragmatic exemplars of people who are operating in the real situation also operating in a kind of ignorance bubble and we can formulate the things that we most need to remember from these cases and apply them to our thinking as we operate within the ignorance bubble. There are ten of these that we will discuss.

1. In the ignorance bubble remember to depend upon the non-situational. (Chapter 1:3-16)

There are a lot of things that come to light here that are very significant. In Chapter 1:3, we are told that the king ordered Ashpenaz, chief of his court officials, to bring in some of the Israelites from the royal family and the nobility and then in 1:4, he describes the aptitude that these young men had. They had no physical defect. They were young and handsome. They showed aptitude for every kind of learning. The scripture says they were well-informed, they were quick to understand and they were qualified to serve in the king’s palace. They had the ability to absorb the Babylonian language, culture and literature. Now notice that these are young Israelites. In verse 1:8, we draw a distinction between all of those other young Israelites and four young Israelites that we know as Daniel, Hananiah, Azariah and Mishael. We see that these four had committed themselves not to be defiled by the king’s food. This gives us the impression that the other young Israelites did do that. The impression is that the other young Israelites operated on a situational basis. They ate the king’s food; they perhaps themselves became defined by the Babylonian system as is described to us in verse 5. After all, when they were given access to the Babylonian language, culture, and the literature, they were expected now to be redefined by the Babylonian system.

However, Daniel and these three young men dissented according to vs. 1:8. This is not the only time that they will dissent from the Babylonian system. The indication is that in this ignorance bubble, not knowing everything that is going on, not knowing totally how God is operating in any given situation, that these other young Israelites failed to remember that they needed to depend upon the non-situational. This is not a factor in the thinking of Daniel and Hananiah, Azariah and Mishael. In vs. 1:9, we can see Daniel knew that the non-situational intelligence works everywhere and everywhen because there we are told that God had caused the official to show favor and sympathy to Daniel. Now that covers everywhere. They are not in the land of promise any more. They are in Babylonian captivity. It also covers every when. In this particular moment, in this particular set of circumstances, the non-situational intelligence of God is always working.

This may be a problem with some of the other young Israelites. It seems obvious that if we don’t handle correctly our presence within the ignorance bubble, then that ignorance bubble becomes an opportunity for some bad things to happen or perhaps it becomes a field for either defection and/or what we can identify as atavism. Let’s describe atavism. According to the dictionary definitions, atavism is the reappearance of certain forms derived from an ancestor. It’s also referred to as a reversion to primitive instincts. So where there was great violence supposedly in other more primitive cultures and then several generations passed but now suddenly it erupts again within a society. This is called atavism. Or physical characteristics that skip over generations and suddenly show up in yet another generation associated with that bloodline. This is what is referred to as atavism. Now in the same way there can be atavistic tendencies show up in believers operating within the ignorance bubble if they don’t handle that correctly.

For instance, if these other young Israelites indeed decided that they would be defined by the Babylonian system and no longer operate on the basis of their covenant responsibilities and obligations or their covenant connection to God, then they are reverting to "type." They are reverting to the way the world was before they were part of God’s chosen nation, to something outside of the covenant that God has given to them. It is a reversion to the situational. Maybe not wholesale defection but certainly worldly ways begin to show up. This is a partial list that gives us the idea of how this looks when a Christian starts to revert back to the "old self" prior to their entering into the kingdom relationship with God.

1. Discouragement can be an atavistic manifestation. Is there any reason ultimately for discouragement within the kingdom of God? Well, no because ultimate security will always be the outcome for those who were operating on the basis of faith. Yes we know there will be suffering. Yes we know that there will be difficulties by the carload. But ultimate discouragement is not to be found among us. Paul would make that statement in the second Corinthian letter. "We are beset, we are put upon, but we are not overcome." So discouragement is taking place because we are not operating on the non-situational within the ignorance bubble.
2. Another manifestation might be resignation. Perhaps these young Israelites have decided to resign themselves to the situation. They are in Babylonian captivity, they have no power over their own destinies, they are not in a position to negotiate, they might consider themselves very fortunate to have been picked out of the lineup and now afforded this rather sumptuous treatment at the hands of their enemies. Maybe they have resigned themselves to this kind of influence.
3. Conformity to the cultural and sociological expectations of the Babylonian system might be another.
4. Assimilation—being assimilated by the situational. Being assimilated by the world culture, in this case by the Babylonian system.
5. One of the most common might be the question of identity, where someone asks, "Who am I?" This certainly applies to the other young Israelites especially because they had situational desirability. We get the impression by the contrasting behavior of Daniel, Hananiah, Azariah and Mishael that the other young Israelites were going to act on that situational desirability instead of depending upon the non-situational. We know that because of the clean break that the activities of these four men represent in relationship to these other young Israelites who were also picked out of the lineup and selected for positions of significance within the Babylonian system. "Who am I?" What was their identity? Perhaps they began to think of themselves as Babylonians with a new system and a new set of challenges in front of them. Daniel and his three friends, of course, have made a commitment that they are not going to act on any kind of situational fact or reality. If these young Israelites indeed decided to function on the basis of their situational desirability, it would be atavism—a reversion to something outside of the kingdom. This is not just a primitive instinct. It is a reversion to a faithlessness that was certainly the cause of their being carted off to Babylonian captivity in the first place.

1. In the ignorance bubble, to remember not to rely on situational appearances. (Chapter 1:1-2)

As we read these two verses, we learn that Jerusalem has been sacked. The temple has been destroyed. Articles such as the golden goblets about which we will read later in Chapter 5 have been taken from the temple of the Lord. These things have been put in the treasure house of false gods and clearly, although it doesn’t state it directly in the first two verses, we know that the people were carted off into captivity. So we see that situational appearances here are running from bad to worse. Now when situational appearances run from bad to worse there is a temptation to conclude things that are not true. Part of it is that we are within the ignorance bubble.

The other fact is that we are relying on situational appearances within the ignorance bubble. For instance, Israel might conclude that they are not the chosen people. After all if Judah and Israel were the chosen people, then why would they have been carted off into Babylonian captivity in the first place? Perhaps that was just a part of their past, of their mythic self image that was handed down from generation to generation by religious leaders—the people of the law, the people of the covenant, the chosen people. But now they have been stripped of their position and they have been submitted to poverty, to disenfranchisement economically, and in some cases death. So maybe they would have concluded that they were not the chosen people if they rely on situational appearances. We get that impression over in Chapter 9 because even up to that point they had not decided to seek the favor of God.

They might have concluded that faith in Jehovah was a disappointment or at very best a deception. The Lord says he is with them, they remember praying to their God when the Babylonians were at the city gates asking God to act. But the fact of the matter is that he was acting. But he was acting on the other side. Because all of this had been levied in the presence of the people for a long time by the prophets who had come to bring the truth to them about their obligations. But now because they rely on situational appearances, they might conclude that it is a disappointment to believe in Jehovah--Why not pray to other gods? Why don’t we defect?

They might conclude that all is hopelessness and irreversible. The temple of their God has been destroyed; the city walls of Jerusalem have been destroyed. There is nothing left. This is hopeless and irreversible. Of course, we are discovering through the statements of Jeremiah that nothing with God is impossible and certainly nothing is irreversible. They might have concluded that situational realities like physics and physiology are the true grand pillars of the universe. After all, in the first two verses, you have exposure to a lot of physics and physiology. They have come with battering rams to the city gates. They have come to the ramparts. What do they do then? Who is running the show? Power, majesty, might, money, military power. These are the grand pillars of the universe and it is reasonable to believe that Nebuchadnezzar was firmly a believer in physics and physiology as the grand pillars of the universe. But he learns later, of course, in Chapter 4 that this is not the truth. The grand pillar of the universe is the absolute consciousness of God.

They might have concluded that human situational rationality is their best and only hope. Perhaps we all are prone to this. When we find ourselves in difficult circumstances and when situational appearances are running from bad to worse, there may be a tendency to think that our only hope is to be rational. We might say, "We have to think rationally. This is our only hope. We have to reach right conclusions. We have to draw the right analysis here because that is all we’ve got going for us." However, we don’t see this inclination in Daniel to believe that human situational rationality is the best and only hope. This was also shunned by Daniel, Hananiah, Azariah and Mishael as a lie!

They might have concluded that religion was a mere posturing or perhaps even a coping because it didn’t save them from Babylonian captivity. They might have concluded that situational realism is a fundamental fact for them to accept. A situational realism that says, "Well we’re in it now and we need to just do the best that we can in order to get along because these Babylonians are not going to conform to us. It’s going to have to be the other way around." So a situational realism begins to set in. Why? Because they are learning to rely on situational appearances. Or maybe they would have concluded that the most important thing is just merely to survive and that becomes the key for them.

Situational appearances we are told in the book of Daniel should never be allowed to obscure the non-situational truth about anything. They should not be allowed to obscure non-situational responses to situations. In chapter 9:13, in Daniel’s prayer, he says, "Just as it is written in the Law of Moses, all this disaster has come upon us, yet we have not sought the favor of the Lord our God by turning from our sins and giving attention to your truth." The non-situational truth had been obscured even by those situational appearances. It was going on before the Babylonian destruction of their city and their culture, but it’s still going on after the Babylonian captivity. Daniel warns them sharply about this and other prophets will carry the same message.

It turns out then that thinking according to situational appearance is itself obscurantist. Anything that is obscurantist, by definition, is opposed to new ideas or to enlightenment and avoids clarity. The religious is seen by the situational mind to be obscurantist because of its opposition to worldly ideas. But now we find that the situational mind is not going to be allowed to monopolize that term and use it against us. It would be those who rely on situational appearances that are obscurantist because what they are obscuring is a non-situational truth and they are obscuring how the non-situational mind must respond to the situational. Thus it violates another situational convention about revelation and about revealed truth. According to the scriptures, one who opposes the non-situational mind, one who opposes the pushed intelligence is an obscurantist.

In Chapter 1:2, the scripture says, "And the Lord delivered Jehoiakim king of Judah into his hand…" There is a lot crammed into that one phrase. The term, "And the Lord" refers to the absolute non-situational intelligence. "Jehoiakim king" refers to a situational specificity. It is a particular king in a particular time. "delivered into his hand" is also referring to something with situational specificity—Nebuchadnezzar’s role in all of this. Now notice that the non-situational intelligence always has situational specificity. This is important to us for this reason. Notice that it is clear that Nebuchadnezzar’s power over Judah as evidenced in the first two verses is an analog of something. It is an analog of Judah’s failed relationship to the Lord. That is a key concept. Why were they being carted off into Babylonian captivity? Why does Nebuchadnezzar (a pagan) have power over the city of Jerusalem? Why is he able to tear the temple of God down? Now tearing the very temple of God down is quite a thing. In the latter part of the book of Jeremiah, we learn that he took the bronze sea, this huge vessel that had been cast in one piece. It was torn down and ripped apart and broken down into many pieces and the pieces that were carted back to Babylonia could not be counted.

Then later in Chapter 5, we have Belshazzar who is playing around with a few golden goblets from the temple—hardly on a par with tearing down the Lord’s temple. Why is it that God allowed the temple to be destroyed in one instance, and put this other king to death for drinking wine to false gods out of the golden goblets? Well, because Nebuchadnezzar had been given power over the situation and his power was an analog of the failed relationship that Israel had to their God and its implications. Situational appearances often smother the truth of the situations. The truth is that God had not failed them. They had prayed for the intervention of God. He had perhaps intervened, but he was on the other side. Israel couldn’t see that the power of Nebuchadnezzar was an analog of their failed relationship to him, although in Chapter 9 and in other places, it is certainly indicated. They couldn’t see it in spite of the fact that they had the prophets. In Chapter 9:6-8,we get the impression that the prophets came but no one listened. So they were punished.

In 1 Peter, people also were finding the power that the state had over them as an analog of their relationship to God. But in their case it was not punishment; it was refinement. In any instance, what it would mean is that what happens to us is not random, but analogical. Our failed relationship can allow an analogical power to summon us and to bring us to our knees. A correct relationship with the Lord can summon analogical power that can also bring us to our knees. God can punish us or cause us to suffer in some way to prove our faith genuine. Physical punishment is an analog as well. So in this world we are going to suffer. There is more going on than what we think when we are suffering. In the middle of this ignorance bubble, we dare not rely on situational appearances because it obscures what is actually happening to us within the situation.

2. In the ignorance bubble, remember not to allow your ignorance to attribute inactivity to the Lord. (Chapter 2:1-16)

Nebuchadnezzar has been given this vision. Daniel is called in to interpret it. In this situation that Nebuchadnezzar finds himself in, it is very easy to miscue. He is minding his own business one day. He has a dream. The dream is very disturbing to him. He knows it’s too important to ignore but he just really can’t get into the substance of this dream. He can’t figure out the meaning of it. Later he will set up a 90-foot tall golden image on the plain of Dura; and he will require everyone in the kingdom to bow down and worship this image. Human ignorance should not be a pretext to think that God is inactive. Because if we reach a conclusion formally or informally we are really saying that since God is inactive that means that everything is physical or attributed to natural causes or to human causation as the case may be. In this context, we can talk about two principal appraisals that the world makes about the universe in which we live.

If God is inactive, not doing anything, we might conclude that the essence of the universe is basically reductionistic or holistic. Reductionism is a philosophy about how to deal with the material world, where the entities of nature are discreet and they are constant and where we are encouraged to operate on what is called break-apart analysis where we separate things into manageable chunks. We understand how those various fields operate and then we synthesize the parts to bring it back to a whole to try to understand how the whole thing operates as some kind of mechanism. That is how we have dealt with the world of nature in general. It is how we have a tendency to think about the resolution of certain problems. We are certainly reductionistic. However, reductionism has another great rival we are told in the world that we can boil down to the term holism, often associated with oriental concepts where all the elements of nature are seen as blended together, inseparable and yet they are constantly changing—the yin and the yang concept. There is harmony. Sometimes the term "holistic" is applied in this country when we discuss these kinds of things, where we might apply local rules not universal laws to the world of material reality. People will now in our society and in scientific circles speak about complex systems. Chaos theory and in association with that is such a thing that they call the "butterfly theory" where supposedly a butterfly can flap its wings in the Atlantic Ocean and create a chain of events that ends up producing a typhoon in the Pacific—that sort of thing. In the concept of quantum mechanics, there is a kind of blending of reductionism and holism, which constitutes what we have outlined as complimentarity, which can be understood by reading some of the things that Niels Bohr observed about the world of nature.

As Christians, as people who are trying to operate on non-situational intelligence, who are trying to be opened to a pushed intelligence that comes from the Lord, we simply don’t think of it quite that way. When we are in the ignorance bubble, and we don’t know what God is doing, if we operate on what seems to be obvious, we may reach a conclusion that God is not as active as scripture indicates that he is. Nebuchadnezzar is certainly someone who lives in an ignorance bubble to say the least, and all these other kings do too. One of the great mistakes that they make in that ignorance bubble is to attribute inactivity to the Lord. Perhaps Nebuchadnezzar got a lot of help in reaching that conclusion because he is the one that has destroyed Judah. He is the one that has taken the city of Jerusalem captive and all of its wealth will be in his warehouses. Now many of their young and brightest men are in his employ. He would have probably thought of himself as the 400-pound gorilla (matter in motion), concluding that God is inactive. He certainly knew something about human causation and what it takes to get a project such as the destruction of a neighboring culture brought to completion. He might not have thought about reductionism or holism from contemporary points of view. But he did attribute inactivity to God. This dream that is flushed into his life is going to disabuse him of that ignorance.

God is not inactive. Now in terms of its application to our thinking, we cannot be guilty of thinking in terms of reductionism or holism. Where does reductionism come from? Where did the concept of holism come from? These concepts are largely being injected into the thinking of a generation of young people and have now for some time. Reductionism appeals to the scientific community in technology and the development of it. Holism is being manipulated, handled and becoming a social tool in our contemporary culture. We don’t accept these concepts of reality because we know on the basis of revelation that God is not inactive. Nebuchadnezzar’s dream constitutes an alert. In fact all of the revelation that the Lord has ever given us will serve as an alert. It teaches us that the Lord is never inactive whether we can understand all of what he does. We will never get out of the ignorance bubble as far as that is concerned while we are on the earth. We are never free however to reach a conclusion that God is inactive.

We must avoid thinking in terms of reductionism and/or holism in the way we handle health issues, economic issues, or other situations. We can see this manifested today in recent controversies or recent discussions in our society regarding health issues about the issue of religion and prayer—how prayer can be a great coping mechanism and participation in a religious community can be very encouraging when we are facing dire health circumstances. It’s a kind of holism. A kind of blend-the two-together concept.

However, as believers in the representational nature of revelation we have come to another appraisal about the nature of the universe. We will refer to it as a "plenary universe." A plenary universe is composed of the parts that we can see, the part that we cannot see and the index position that links the two together. We do not believe that it is a reductionistic universe, subject to reductionism and that the practice of reductionism (separating it into its component parts for study) will yield to us the mysteries of the universe. Nor do we believe nor do we ever put ourselves in a position to trust the holistic concept of the universe. But rather it is a plenary universe, which calls for an entirely different consciousness. That is the reason none of the wise men of Babylon could explain the mystery that was demanded by Nebuchadnezzar. The fact that we are in an ignorance bubble and the fact that there is a force that exists outside the ignorance bubble and it conducts itself the way it chooses confound every situational approach. Nebuchadnezzar did not understand that fact. He is confounded by God. We are confounded when we ask, "How does God work?" All situational approaches to trying to understand the non-situational are going to fail because God has arranged in this universe to confound them. Therefore any situational approach will obscure. It will never answer. Situational intelligence you notice came to an absolute standstill. They admit this in vs. 2:11, "What the king asks is too difficult." Situational intelligence hits a wall. It comes to an abrupt halt. It is brought to a standstill. Plus these astrologers discounted access to the non-situational. We know that’s the case because they stated in vs. 10 "No one can reveal it to the king except the gods, and they do not live among men." They discounted access to the non-situational.

That’s what happens when we attribute inactivity to God. We don’t say directly that we are confounded and therefore we are going to take a situational approach. We don’t say that overtly. We discount that access to the non-situational can’t be had. But we just act that way by operating on the basis of the situational which has already been confounded. The way in which the Lord relates is by pushing his non-situational intelligence into the situation. If we want to understand all of it, the plenary reality, the plenary universe, then we simply cannot rely on anything that will confound our understanding of it. And we have done that. Reductionism is a manifestation and holism is a manifestation of operating on indiscriminate ways of thinking. Those things show up. We are attributing inactivity to God. When we periodicize the text of the Bible, we are saying, "It is a book of history and all of this stuff happened way back there, but what does that have to do with us in the contemporary world?" We say in essence that it has nothing to offer in the contemporary world other than some moral guidelines and it gives us some great examples about men of courage and that sort of thing. But actually it doesn’t do much for us in the present but indirectly. We mustn’t attribute inactivity to God while we are in this ignorance bubble.

If we are not handling the ignorance bubble correctly, it will only confound what we most desperately need. God, according to the book of Daniel, is spontaneously in relationship to everywhen, to everywhere, and to everybody. The meaning of the dream that Nebuchadnezzar has been given will largely occur outside of Nebuchadnezzar’s time. That wouldn’t make any difference because in terms of spontaneous relations God is not constrained by time, or by physical or natural causation. It may look to us that he is inactive. That would be a mortal error. In any given circumstance in our lives, there is going to be a strong tendency to attribute inactivity to God. We are going to do that almost immediately. We are not going to think about it as inactivity; but the way in which we handle situational realities is going to teach us that this is the case. We are going to say that, we are going to act on that basis because we don’t know how to relate to situations non-situationally, which doesn’t confound. It doesn’t give us all the answers we might want, but on the other hand we are never confounded. And we never reach a conclusion that we don’t have access to the non-situational. In fact the Lord is always saying, "You do have access. Come talk to me, pray to me, seek wisdom, come to me and I will give you this abundantly. Listen to my word. Listen to me." He was always sending his prophets. The non-situational is not inactive. "You are caught up with making your money. You’re caught up with your own concerns. Listen to me," he would say. All of their situational approaches were nothing more than a way of confounding their intelligence. They hit the blank wall, there is no where else to go. God is spontaneously in relationship to all things.

Now in the ignorance bubble, when great crisis befalls us and we are overwhelmed, outmanned, outgunned and outflanked and we don’t know what to do and we don’t know which end is up, we have to remember that we are in an ignorance bubble. And in this ignorance bubble there are several things we have to do. (1) We have to remember to embrace the non-situational. (2) We never rely on situational appearances. So when representatives of the medical community come in and say well it’s this bad, those are situational appearances. They may go from bad to worse, but we know that there is more going on than we think. (3) We also know that within that ignorance bubble we do not have the prerogative of attributing inactivity to God. Therefore finding a pretext for operating on our own likes would be a great mistake.

3. Remember that the ignorance bubble provides great latitude for the realization of the situational malady: the ignorance-foolishness unity. (Daniel 3).

In this context, Nebuchadnezzar sets up his gold image on the plain of Dura. He requires everyone to bow down and to worship this image. It is to be done on the threat of death if they dissent. This follows Daniel’s exposition of the significance of a dream that Nebuchadnezzar was given in Chapter 2. We learn from this among other things that Nebuchadnezzar allows his ignorance to make him foolish. He sets up a temporal image. Notice that the dream and its significance were revealed to him spiritually but now he tries to rely on the temporal for his understanding. It was the Lord that had stuck this dream into his consciousness. Over in Chapter 4, he’ll have another dream that will be forced into his consciousness. In Chapter 3 Hananiah, Azariah, and Mishael are equally ignorant of the details of God’s work just like Nebuchadnezzar. Now they know more than Nebuchadnezzar does obviously because they are children of the covenant. So they know more about the Lord. If we talk about relative ignorance, theirs would be relative to Nebuchadnezzar’s. They don’t know all of the details. Daniel doesn’t know all of the details in these situations. Even though they were operating on a kind of ignorance bubble, they did not become foolish. Now one of the manifestations of foolishness would have been if they bowed down to this gold image. Crisis certainly can precipitate foolishness. In Chapter 3:13, the text says, "Furious with rage, Nebuchadnezzar summoned Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego (their Babylonian names). So these men were brought before the king." In Chapter 2, someone that Nebuchadnezzar couldn’t see or touch or face to face talk to (that is, the Lord) told him about what was going to ensue after the Babylonian empire (his empire represented by the head of gold). Rather than acknowledge God, whom he can’t see, he set up something he could see. This is the situational malady. The Lord leads us spiritually and then we look to the temporal, we look to the situational. The Lord tries to lead us non-situationally and then we look to the situational to inform us how to respond to situations. This happens in churches around the clock with great regularity. Situational responses to situations are by definition foolishness. Here we see a kind of reversal. Up to this point, we have spoken of non-situational responses to situations. But this is a situational response to the non-situational. Any situational response to the non-situated intelligence is by definition foolishness. That’s what this man is guilty of.

Now human beings are prone to respond situationally to the non-situational. This is a great problem. This is not exclusively to be laid at the doorstep of the ignorance bubble. But that certainly is part of it. We have to remember that there are certain ways that we have to handle ourselves and the way in which we have to think is precise as we live in this ignorance bubble so that we don’t allow the great latitude that the ignorance bubble will give us to realize this situational malady. We don’t ever want to respond in local churches situationally to the non-situational. Yet we do this apparently without much thought. This is part of our situated mindset--the way in which our intelligence functions. We know not only from Daniel but from other places in the bible that man was created to respond correctly to the non-situational. Romans 1:18 and following verses tells us that God created the celestial orbs and they should have been understood correctly. If they had not driven God out of their consciousness, they would have had the proper understanding. They would have been able to respond correctly to God.

Genesis Chapters 1-3 tells us the same thing—we are expected to respond correctly to the non-situational. Israel very rarely did that. In Rephadim in Exodus Chapter 17, they complained. They questioned the veracity of the Lord. That’s not anything less than a situational response to the non-situational. Both situational responses and non-situational responses turn out to be great watersheds in the direction of a situation’s outcome and the resultant impact and consequences the situation will have on us. The situational response is at once a response to the non-situational and a response to the situational. It is characterized by ignorance and by foolishness. A non-situational response is also both at the same time a response to the non-situational intelligence of God and also a response to the situational, characterized by wisdom and by understanding. Our responses should always and only be non-situational, within any world situation no matter what that situation may be.

We will continue our discussion of the generalizations from the book of Daniel that we need to remember and apply to our thinking as we operate within the ignorance bubble in Part II.