We continue from Part I our discussion of the generalizations from the book of Daniel that we most need to remember and apply to our thinking as we operate within the ignorance bubble:

In Chapter 4, Nebuchadnezzar has another dream and he is going to have to contend with this. He is going to search for the meaning and try to understand it because as far as he’s concerned it’s too important for him to simply ignore it. Now if we look at 4:4-5 some interesting things are stated. "I, Nebuchadnezzar, was at home in my palace contented and prosperous." Things are going well. Let’s draw a circle to represent the "ignorance bubble." This ignorance bubble is made up of what Nebuchadnezzar knows or thinks he knows or what he thinks or what he feels. At a certain point, he is contented and he is prosperous. That, of course, is subject to revision. He knows he’s in charge of the universe. For instance, in Chapter 4:27, it will be stated of Nebuchadnezzar that he is an oppressive man. He oppresses the weaker and Daniel encourages him to be kind to the oppressed. But in any event, verse 27 certainly tells us that this is a powerful man. He knows this. He furthermore would believe that he is a man in command of the situation. After all, he has had an unbroken string of victories and he is the possessor of this marvelous capital city and this marvelous palace. He would think of himself as very secure. These are some of the things, not nearly all, that he was thinking and thought he knew about the situation. These were some of the feelings that he had. He is operating in the circle that we have identified as the ignorance bubble but what he doesn’t know is going to be a shock to him. Because what he doesn’t know is that there is more going on than what he knows, or thinks he knows, or feels.

What he doesn’t know, what’s going on is that the Lord is displeased with him. Nebuchadnezzar’s continuum, his life, is now in disregard of God’s will. More will be made of that in Chapter 5, when Daniel will say of this man that he had great position, that God had given him all of this. But in 5:20 he says, "But when his heart became arrogant and hardened with pride, he was deposed from his royal throne and stripped of his glory." Nebuchadnezzar’s continuum is in disregard of God’s will. This continuum is going to be suddenly challenged. In Daniel 4:5, he says, "I had a dream that made me afraid. As I was lying in my bed, the images and visions that passed through my mind terrified me." So he has two things with which he must contend. Which one of these two things is really misleading him? Is he being misled by what he knows, by what he thinks he knows, by his feelings, by his appraisal of the situation or is he being misled by this dream that occurs on his bed one night?

Or another way of phrasing the question, is the non-situational misleading him? He has to answer that question for himself. We know initially in the first half of Chapter 4 that he believes that the non-situational is misleading him. Daniel has come in and interpreted the dream and says to him, "You are the big tree. You are going to be cut down. You must acknowledge that God rules and until you do, you will forfeit this kingdom, your power and your sanity." But he believed that the ignorance bubble was really telling him the truth. It’s very intuitive; it’s easier to believe. It’s easy to supposedly document from human experience. All he has to do is to go down and say, "Give me the list of all the peoples I have subjugated and that’s plenty of proof of my power." This is what he thinks he knows. But he doesn’t know that God is unhappy with him. So from his point of view as Daniel opens up the significance of this dream, the non-situational meaning to which he is exposed is foreign to the king’s mind. It certainly is counter-intuitive. What other god had ever ripped any other king off of his throne? That just doesn’t happen. Perhaps he considers the statements of Daniel, the non-situational meaning that is being shoved into his face, as counter-factual—this just doesn’t bear up to the facts. Even Daniel himself, who has full access to the significance of this dream, was terrified.

Which one is misleading the king? It turns out in chapter 4 that the ignorance bubble, with all of its magnetism, all of its attractiveness, will prove to be misleading to the king in at least four ways:

1. He is misled thinking that God is not in power over world structures. Statements will be made in the fourth chapter that it is the Lord that will take the throne from Nebuchadnezzar. And the reason it will be taken from him is because the throne doesn’t belong to him. It belongs to another. The throne in Babylonia belongs to the Lord. So he would say, "This God Jehovah will take this throne from you. He will drive you insane. Then when he’s ready, he’ll give it back to you. Where will the kingdom be in the interim? Right where it’s always been. Non-situational thinking was not misleading. It was the key to his survival. This becomes patently clear in the fourth chapter. We are misled if we come to believe that God is not in power over world structures. Then or now. World structures have always been the province of the Lord. They have never been anything other than his personal province. Later in the book, Nebuchadnezzar will say, "All the peoples of the earth are regarded as nothing. He does as he pleases with the powers of heaven and the peoples of the earth. No one can hold back his hand or say to him, "What have you done?" God is in power over world structures. Nebuchadnezzar failed to apprehend that fact because he believed that the ignorance bubble was telling him the truth and that the non-situational meaning was misleading. Before, during and after, the Lord is always in charge. If we don’t think that, then we are being misled. The only possibility for being misled is that the ignorance bubble is giving us what we think the truth is. It is extraordinarily misleading.
2. He is misled thinking that the will to power is exempt from absolute justice. In Chapter 4, Daniel preaches to the king and interprets the dream for him. Verse 4:27, tells us that this man is oppressive. It tells us that he is wicked. It tells us that he is a sinful man. But he is not exempt. The statement is made in vs. 35 that proves that. "All the peoples of the earth are regarded as nothing." He is one of "all the peoples." Later in the text, the angel will say. "The Lord gives the thrones to whomever he will. He will put the lowliest of men upon these thrones." He is talking about Nebuchadnezzar. Thinking that the will to power is exempt form absolute justice is an example of human self-reference. This man will pay a dire penalty for being misled. The thing that misled him was that in the ignorance bubble, he believed based on human intelligence that what he thinks he knows or what constitutes knowledge for him and his feelings about things are telling him the truth. While the non-situational is quite foreign, counterintuitive and perhaps even counter-factual. Maybe all of those things. But it is nonetheless true. This man will discover that the will to power is not exempt. All across the face of the earth today people are learning that the will to power is not exempt from absolute justice. People are being taken off thrones. People are being thrashed by God. How can we understand these things? Simply reverses of empire? It’s much more than that. God is not inactive. One must not put himself in danger of being misled because he lives in the ignorance bubble and the only way we are going to get around that is if we are operating upon the non-situational.
3. He is misled believing that the situational intelligence determines the issues in history. We see this in 4:28-30. The dream is given. Daniel interprets the dream for the king. He is told to repent, to change his ways, to renounce his sins, to renounce his wickedness, no longer oppressing people. A year passes, we are told (vs. 29) and still he has not repented. Still he is being misled by his dependence upon the situational. A year passes and Nebuchadnezzar does not act on the issues presented by the non-situational intelligence. Very familiar circumstances for humanity. American society is consumed with two things at least—prosperity and self-gratification, mostly likely that boils down into human sexuality. Because we have come to the conclusion that situational intelligence determines the issues in history. Nebuchadnezzar made the exact same mistake. Other cultures made the exact same mistake. Judah made the exact same mistake. They were carted off into captivity. A year passes. He is told directly from the word of the mouth of the prophet. "God is not happy. Neither you nor your intelligence will ever be able to determine the issues in history. The Lord alone determines what the issues are. You have not acted on those issues presented to you by the revelation. You will suffer." In other parts of the world they’re concerned with development. They’re concerned with the generating of greater wealth. That’s not to say that we are against people having better circumstances in which they live. But these are not the issues in history—not the issues posed by God. Yet we are consumed by these things thinking that situational intelligence has that ability to determine what the issues are. As if to say we have the ability—our minds have the capacity and the right and privilege of determining what the issues in our life are going to be. That’s not what the scriptures say. We are in many cases doing the same thing that Nebuchadnezzar is doing. He did not act on the issues presented by the non-situational intelligence. He will suffer. Cultural, social and other kind of national issues are not what they should be. This is a problem. We are not given this privilege of determining what the issues in history are. Yet we in the church have often done exactly the same thing as Nebuchadnezzar. That’s why we think we are free to manipulate our time and businesses and our general flow in life anyway that we choose because after all after you have been baptized and you assume a moral profile, we have completed the requirements of God. This is a grave mistake.
4. He is misled by eliminating spontaneity as a motor fact in the shape of events. In 4:30, Nebuchadnezzar states, "Is not this the great Babylon I have built as the royal residence, by my mighty power and for the glory of my majesty?" A year after the dream, God’s judgment is executed. Time is not a factor in the judgment of God nor is it a factor in his blessing of people. Spontaneity throws a wrench into cause and effect. We have to stop thinking about this in terms of cause and effect relationships of the situational variety. We can no longer allow ourselves to eliminate spontaneity as the motor factor in the shape of events and links the will of God with the world situation. We do not believe that it is a reductionistic universe subject to reductionism and that practice of reductionism will yield to us the mysteries of the universe. Nor do we believe nor do we ever put ourselves into position to trust that it is a holistic universe. Both of these concepts advocate a belief that the universe operates on forces apart from God’s power and will, and would imply that God is inactive. Rather it is a plenary universe, which calls for an entirely different consciousness that has to embrace the whole of plenary reality. This becomes fundamental for us. A lot of times people ask the question, "Where is the Lord?" When God is not seen fulfilling his promises, we may leap to a very unhealthy, and from the scriptural point of view, very regrettable conclusion that we are free and should and must attribute inactivity to the Lord in direct ways or in indirect ways.

1. In the ignorance bubble remember absolute spontaneity is the master of all situations. (Daniel 5:18-30)

The situation is that Belshazzar has now come on the throne and he throws a party for a thousand of his companions in the palace. He summons for his servants to bring the golden goblets that Nebuchadnezzar had taken out of the temple of God and they together drink toasts and they praise the gods of gold, silver, bronze, iron, wood and stone. This is offensive to the Lord. He is greatly offended and has determined to put this man to death in just a few hours. He breaks in upon the scene because Belshazzar is as ignorant as his father was at one point of the unhappiness of God. He has forgotten that absolute spontaneity is the master of all situations. He is ignorant of this. He didn’t have to be because the Lord had done what he needed to do to impress this factor on Belshazzar’s thinking through the events that had happened to his father, but to no avail.

In 5:18 something very interesting is revealed. We are told that absolute spontaneity displaces some things. What it displaces will be personal, social, cultural, historical and physical dynamics. Here’s how we know that. In his presentation to Belshazzar, Daniel says, "O king, the Most High God gave your father Nebuchadnezzar sovereignty and greatness and glory and splendor." So he would say, "If you’re thinking that your father came to power because of personal, social, cultural, historical and physical dynamics you have suffered a shortfall in your understanding. He was given this position by the most high God. Judge for yourselves, but in my opinion the truth displaces all dependence upon personal, social, cultural, historical, and physical dynamics. Now let’s continue in verse 5:23. He says, "…You praised the gods of silver and gold, of bronze, iron, wood and stone, which cannot see or hear or understand. But you did not honor the god who holds I his hand your life and all your ways." All his presence in the Babylonian empire had nothing to do with these other aforementioned dynamics. Those are to be discounted. They have been displaced. So in the same way, we are going to have to remember that in all circumstances that absolute spontaneity is the master of all situations. Absolute spontaneity should have had an effect on his thinking because it is supposed to excise some things—cut out, cut off, remove. We learn that absolute spontaneity excises the validity of situational propositions. Let me illustrate this in three ways.

1. It excises propositional myopia. (Chapter 5:1-4) Belshazzar and his companions are in a great banquet. His nobles are there, they are drinking wine and then he gives orders for the goblets to be brought. They drink from them. Now the reason why they are doing it is because there are a bunch of propositions operating in their heads. They cannot see the out-of-situational. They are myopic (shortsighted). Situational propositions are running that show. That’s why he could say, "Hey let’s have a party. We’ll get a bunch of wine together and some of our supporters, friends, and chums. It will be a big banquet and we will do whatever takes shape." One of the things he thought about before, during or after was to drink toasts out of the golden goblets. But in any event, from the beginning this whole circumstance in Chapter 5 is the result of propositional myopia. He has some situational propositions in his head that are precluding his recognition of the out-of-situational. This is significant. If we have propositional conceptions in our head that we are not willing to submit to the text then they are going to produce a kind of myopia. The prophets always attacked that and sometimes we find ourselves objecting to these things. We object to the situations of a non-situational variety that are shoved into our thinking. We can hold on to a battery of propositions that won’t allow us to conceive of the out-of-situational. That’s what happened when the prophets came along in Israel. They had propositional myopia. They were not disposed to listen to what the prophets were saying. The propositions they already had in their heads made it impossible. Our dependence upon absolute spontaneity would excise that propositional myopia and allow us to see what we need to see. If we are not growing in our appraisal of the scripture, then we have no choice but to consider ourselves gripped by propositional myopia.
2. It excises a kind of propositional disability. We could call it a handicap. In 5:22, it says, "But you his son, O Belshazzar, have not humbled yourself, though you knew all this." He had a disability. He could not convert what he had learned about his father’s relationship to God into the right kind of propositions. There was no propositional conversion that took place. We talk and we study these things and then wonder why in our own lives sometimes things don’t change. Preachers are forever saying I preach and I preach and I preach, why have we not seen corresponding changes? It is because there is a propositional disability. Propositional conversion, converting what we learn from God into non-situational propositions, didn’t take place. There was a kind of a handicap that makes all things sort of equal. Paul writes in the 2^nd Corinthian letter that the God of this world has blinded the minds of the situational so they can’t see. They are handicapped in precisely this way. There is a propositional disability that Belshazzar had in his life. It should have been excised. He should have converted what God had revealed into non-situational propositions upon which he could then relate to the situation. I am concerned more and more about a proposition that I have entertained. That is, if someone were going to ask me the question, "Mike why do you study the scripture this way and why do you keep at it? What is the driving force? Is it that you like to learn or like new ideas?" I’ve come to settle that question in my own mind. The reason why I study and why I am absorbed by this book is this reason. The more I learn from God, the more aghast I am at what I don’t know. I am aghast at the potential propositional myopia. I have been guilty of that. And propositional disability. I have been guilty of that. I don’t want to be guilty of that. I have to have the ability to have propositional conversion. We have to take these texts; we have to "see," we have to convert them into non-situational propositions that we generalize to the world situation.
3. It excises the wrong propositional cosmology. In verse 5:4, when these people were drinking toasts to these false gods, they were in the grip of an erroneous cosmology. In verse 5:23, same statement is made of these gods that cannot see or hear or understand. This is a cosmology that existed nowhere except in situational propositions created by men. The other cosmology, the biblical one, exists everywhere including propositions. It is extra-propositional which gives validity to the propositions that we make. They were operating on the basis of idolatry. Idolatry turns out to be nothing more than the worship of situational intelligence. These things must be excised.

Now going back to some of the major ideas departing from those subscripts that we just mentioned, we learn that absolute spontaneity pushes non-situational propositions into the human mind. Verse 5:24 says, "Therefore he sent the hand that wrote the inscription." This non-situational proposition that shows up on the wall in his palace is pushed into his awareness and it is an opposing set of propositions. It will produce a clash. It’s like the dream of chapter 2 is pushed into world history. The key, of course, is to create propositions that tell us what God is thinking--to consider non-situational propositions as the same thing as the situation. That’s very important. When the hand appeared writing on the wall, Belshazzar should have come to a conclusion, and certainly Daniel did, that the non-situational propositions that had been pushed into that context and showed up written on the wall were the same thing as the situation. The situation is the handwriting on the wall. Daniel would state that in one way or another to the king. When the words "MENE, MENE, TEKEL, PERES" showed up on the wall, Daniel would point and say, "Do you want to know what the situation is? THAT is the situation. Your days have been numbered and brought to an end. You have been weighed on the scales and found wanting. Your kingdom is divided and given to the Medes and the Persians. Those non-situational propositions ARE the situation."

This is much different than isomorphism. It’s a kind of exactitude. Non-situational propositions have had their effect or should have had their effect on situational propositions. Situational propositions should have been excised. In James 5, non-situational propositions from God are the situation. Human propositions are not the same. We seek to have propositions that are an analog of what the Lord speaks. He is the true one that develops non-situational propositions. Those are the propositions that ARE the situation. Not ours. Ours are simply analogic. They don’t affect the situation. They don’t affect us. They do affect our relationship to the Lord. But it’s the non-situational propositions that are the same thing, as far as we’re concerned, as the situation.

That’s an important principle. In Exodus Chapter 17, when they were at Rephadim without water, they were hot, dry, thirsty, uncomfortable, and unhappy. They believed that their propositions were equal to the situation. "We’re here without water. We have nowhere to get water. There are not sufficient supplies. We don’t have time to return to any large body of water and get the resources that we need." So they believed they were going to die. All of these propositions, situational as they were, as far as they were concerned defined the situation. They were wrong about that. Our propositions don’t determine what situations are. God’s propositions determine what things are. Absolute non-situational propositions and analogic propositions are different. Analogic propositions don’t determine the situation. They tell us how to relate to the situation. But they don’t control it.

We have to face a fact. Non-situational propositions can be understood as fiction or as fantasy. They can also be understood as delusion. Or are non-situational propositions what define any situation? That is a question. In 4:34-37, these non-situational propositions from Nebuchadnezzar’s point of view (newly found point of view incidentally) were identical with the situation. When we teach people, we have to understand this. Non-situational propositions in the bubble of ignorance can often be understood as fiction, fantasy or delusion. That has tremendous significance. It imposes a great burden upon us. If we write in fiction, the possibility is that they will understand that the non-situational propositions are the same thing as the situation. If we write in other ways, or if we preach in other ways, we end up with potentially the same difficulty. So we’re faced with seeking a way of analogizing non-situational propositions. We do not take the position now or ever that non-situational propositions are fictional. We do not take the position that non-situational propositions are fantasy nor do we take the position that they are delusion. We take the position quite to the contrary that they are identical with the world situation. We have to make a distinction between the two. We are told to run to the Lord. Especially in the Psalms, we find the writer saying let us run to God. God is our refuge. Well we are running to the name of the Lord. When we are running to the name of the Lord, we are running to non-situational propositions. We are clinging to those because his name is synonymous with those propositions. It becomes significant to us that in the ignorance bubble absolute spontaneity and the spontaneity that exists between non-situational propositions and analogic propositions will have to be considered the master of all situations. Therefore certain displacements must come about. The dynamics that we mentioned earlier—personal, social, cultural, historical, physical dynamics—must be displaced. They are displaced first and foremost in our thinking. That is the only conclusion that we can come to because it is the Lord who has always manifested mastery over all situations.

1. In the ignorance bubble remember that outcomes are not nested in the world situation. (Daniel 6:1-24)

Suppose we draw a circle. In that circle we list certain outcomes that are associated with this situation in chapter 6. The administrators were hoping to achieve their purpose, which is to maintain more control over the flow of goods, money and wealth. Because the king wanted to appoint administrators so that he might not suffer loss, he wanted to elevate Daniel as the number one administrator. But because he is an honest man the rest of the administrators wanted to get rid of him. We are told that Daniel is never negligent, never corrupt, trustworthy and he is very intelligent and there is no way it would have served their purposes for him to be over them because he would likely expose them if his accounting and theirs did not match.

There are two outcomes here that are uppermost in the minds of these men. (1) They want to achieve their purpose and (2) they want Daniel killed, which is involved in achieving their purpose. Suppose that this circle of outcomes is nested in some situational things like:

1. Their plan. They hatched this plan. They knew that the only way they could ever find a basis for charges against Daniel was if it had something to do with the revelation that came from God. So their plan is part of this panoply of things in which they will nest these outcomes.
2. Vanity of the king. They appeal to Darius to think of himself for thirty days as a god and he issues the decree.
3. Observed habits. We know that Daniel has a habit of prayer. Three times a day he goes up to his room with the window open facing toward Jerusalem and he prays. These are observed habits. They are going to make predictions made on these observed habits.
4. Character of the legal system. They knew what they were doing and arranging this and how the legal system operated on the Medes and the Persians. They had this put in the form of a written decree.
5. Limitations of the king. Once the decree was put in writing there was no way for the king to back away from this. It would have to be implemented to its full range of completion.
6. Pure physical force. The marshaled physical force necessary to get Daniel into the lion’s den to liquidate his fragile life or so it would seem.

Take all of those things and see the outcomes. They were nested outcomes. You can extend the idea of nested outcomes to nested ideas. They are nested in their own thought world. This is going to be challenged by something. This is a problem in James 4 when some men say "Let’s go over there and spend a year and make money." They nested the outcome in their own thought world. That’s a basic mistake. We in the church cannot afford to do that. We can’t nest the outcomes in our life in the elements of the world situation—our own intelligence, our hopes, dreams and things that we have going for us and things that stand against us as obstacles.

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 III.