We are now going to look at the second of the standard non-situational responses to situations, that is, faith. There are at least two segments from the book of Daniel to which we can appeal in order to understand how faith acts as a non-situational response.

Let’s look at Daniel 2:14-23, then at Daniel 6:23. To understand the context, let us renew a little of what has happened to this point in the text. Nebuchadnezzar has had a dream. It is very disturbing. It is so important to him that he cannot afford, he believes, to ignore it. And so he has called for all his enchanters and his wise men to come and not only interpret the dream, but before that to tell him the contents of the dream, which of course they could not do. He threatens them that unless they do this they will be cut to pieces and their houses will be turned into piles of rubble. But of course if they comply with his request, they will be raised to positions of greater eminence in the kingdom. Well they can’t do it so a death threat goes out. Arioch, the commander of the king’s guard is sent out to do this dirty job, and he comes to Daniel’s house to get him and his three friends, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah.

Chapter 2:14-23, which is a lengthy context for a reading on this tape, should be read in its entirety so that it is in our minds because we will draw a great deal from this passage. Beginning in vs. 14, "When Arioch, the commander of the king’s guard, had gone out to put to death the wise men of Babylon, Daniel spoke to him with wisdom and tact. He asked the king’s officer, ‘Why did the king issue such a harsh decree?’ Arioch then explained the matter to Daniel. At this, Daniel went in to the king and asked for time, so that he might interpret the dream for him." This indicates that he had access to the king. Continuing in vs. 17, "Then Daniel returned to his house and explained the matter to his friends, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah. He urged them to plead for mercy from the God of heaven concerning this mystery, so that he and his friends might not be executed with the rest of the wise men of Babylon. During the night (critical phrase here in vs. 19) the mystery was revealed to Daniel in a vision." So the Lord responded in a non-situational way to the situation.

Then Daniel bursts forth in praise to God. He says, "Praise be to the name of God for ever and ever; wisdom and power are his. He changes times and seasons; he sets up kings and deposes them. He gives wisdom to the wise and knowledge to the discerning. He reveals deep and hidden things; he knows what lies in darkness, and light dwells with him. I thank and praise you, O God of my fathers: You have given me wisdom and power, you have made known to me what we asked of you, you have made known to us the dream of the king." Suppose we take this tact and say that faith is a kind of terminology. We don’t want to reduce it uniquely to terms, but suppose that we think of it using that particular dimension. It is a kind of terminology. Here is the terminology that we shall apply based on the example of Daniel in his response to situations. The non-situational defines the situation. That is a statement that could be made uniquely on the basis of faith.

Now let’s turn to another passage where this idea is illustrated Daniel 6:23. Daniel is in trouble again with the Babylonian authorities because he will not violate the law of his God, which goes back to our previous non-situational response, which we call the isolation decision. He continues to pray in Chapter 6 when the Babylonian authorities have confiscated the privilege of praying to his God. In 6:23, after Daniel has been thrown into the lions’ den because he would not submit to the king’s decree, the statement is made, "The King was overjoyed and gave orders to lift Daniel out of the den. And when Daniel was lifted from the den, no wound was found on him, because he had trusted in his God." Now that is a clear illustration of the non-situational defining the situation.

In Daniel Chapter 2 when he is faced with a death threat, Daniel believed by an exercise of faith that the non-situational defines the situation. Other men did not take this particular tact. But this man of God did. So did his three friends in Chapter 3 when they are faced with the prospect of death in the superheated furnace because they again will not bow down to the king or to the gold image that has been set up. They will not surrender the revelation of God to these man-made symbols. They believed or at least they operated in such a way that we have no choice but to believe that they believed that the non-situational defines the situation.

Now think of the scandal that this represents especially to the contemporary mind. We are dealing with all sorts of aspects of the world situation—things that we don’t have control over. Now we take the extraordinary position that the non-situational defines the situation. In Matthew 6, a well-known passage from the sermon on the mount to which we have appealed many times, the Lord himself says, "don’t worry about what you will eat or drink or wear. I will give you all of those things." He is saying, is he not, that the non-situational defines the situation. When we look at Luke 12, the example of the rich "fool" who believes that only a situational response is wise. The Lord comes to him and says, "I pronounce you a fool because you came to the conclusion that the situational defines the situation or that human intelligence within the situation can define the situation or circumstance which stands in violation to the will of God. Only the non-situational defines the situation.

And we have a long history of pragmatic examples especially in the Old Testament relative to this fact. We can begin in Genesis 3, where in that context you have the pair in the Garden of Eden and they were told, "I am giving you a non-situational frame of reference about living in this garden. You must obey that non-situational reference if you wish to live within the situation because if you don’t, you cannot survive the situation. Well the serpent comes along and says, "That’s a lie and it’s not true. The non-situational does not define the situation. You define the situation."

Nebuchadnezzar had the same inclination. He believed, at least at one point in his reign, that the situational and he himself in the situation determined what was going to happen. He had a lot of personal reasons to come to that conclusion. After all, he was the head of an empire, he was a renowned military conqueror, he had sacked all of these empires before him that stood in his way. This man could get things done. He had no reason to believe that the non-situational would define the situation. He learns better in the book of Daniel, Chapter 3 when the three faithful Jewish young men are threatened by the fiery furnace and refuse to bow down. They are arrested and challenged by the king and he makes this renewed threat to them. He says, "If you’re willing when you hear the sound of the horn, flute, zither, lyre, harp, pipes and all kinds of music, if you are ready to fall down and worship the image I made, very good. But if you do not worship it, (here’s where he makes a situational mistake) you will thrown into a blazing furnace. Then what god will be able to rescue you from my hand?" This is a clear indication of a fellow who believes, without reservation, that he can define the situation.

Human beings think this. It is the way we respond to situations. That is why we seek control and power directly over situations. Yet we have biblical representations that are quite to the contrary. Nothing in Daniel’s experience, or in the lives of these three men, indicate that in any way that they believed that the situational is self-defining. You have this remarkable experience in Daniel 6:23. No wound exists, which is relative to the situation and these ravenous lions who later would crush the bones of the men who were thrown into the same pit before they even hit the bottom. No wound was found on Daniel because he trusted in his God. He was living in a situation, but the situation was not defined by any inherent dynamics. This is outstanding in its implication for us. "Because he trusted in his God" is a statement that tells us beyond question that the non-situational defines the situation. He believed that and he followed through on that commitment and that became the source of his renown and the source of his great encouragement to us as a man of faith through the centuries.

Faith, among other things that we have discussed previously, would be a vindication of this precise isolated discourse that we mentioned in the first one of the non-situational responses. Faith vindicates isolated discourse. We operate on that basis. These men stated certain things on the basis of faith about the circumstances that surrounded them. We found Daniel doing this in 1:8, where he spoke or would discourse isolatedly about the king’s table. He said, "I will not defile myself in this way." His faith is a vindication of that isolated discourse. The non-situational shapes the discourse, he follows through on it, and that faith is vindicated. It is stated of Daniel and these three young men that they were given permission by the grace of God to eat the way they wanted to eat, and maintained their purity before God to not be defiled in this particular way. Faith will always vindicate isolated discourse.

Here we are, living in space/time circumstances. Is it right, can we generalize adequately and correctly, beyond a shadow of a doubt that faith requires something of us? In this world situation are we not being urged, pushed, shoved, edged into this posture of stating a belief that the non-situational defines all situations. If that is not the case, then how should we look upon all of these tremendous biblical examples of men and women of great faith? What shall we say of David as he faces Goliath? Is it not true that in that case the non-situational defined the situation? Again at Kadesh Barnea, is it not true that Joshua and Caleb believed that the non-situational defined the situation and that is why they said what they said. That’s why they spoke in this isolated way. They believed. Faith is a non-situational response to a situation.

Now we know that this can be distorted. This is the essence of incommensurability. People do not like to be incommensurable with situations. Yet, whether we like it or not, or whether we think it is wise or not, this is exactly that to which the Lord has called us. We are called into a position of incommensurability. We are not seeking commensurability with the situation. We don’t want anything to do with the situation. Faith has created this gap, this gulf of incommensurability between us on the one hand, operating on the basis of faith, and the circumstance on the other. Just as the temporal is always forced and obliged to conform to the eternal so in this way all situations which are inherently temporal in their nature would be forced to conform to the non-situational faith and to the non-situational intelligence that stands up to the world system. It is the essence of incommensurability.

Why should Christians, why should believers shy away from incommensurability? We would do so only on the basis of ignorance. Suppose we say, and it is very difficult to talk about this and use exact language, but we’ll try to mull over this a little bit to see if we can make some distinctions here. Suppose we say that there are two kinds of faith open to us. That is really not true in the strictest sense of the word "faith," but for purposes of trying to make distinctions, let’s explore this for a little bit and we’ll excuse ourselves for not being as precise or accurate as maybe we would like to be. Let’s talk about the possibility of there being two faiths: (1) a non-situational faith and (2) a situational faith.

Let’s talk about the situational faith first. We know that a situational faith would have to be an immediate understatement of biblical faith. If we are going to allow terms from the world to shape our understanding of faith, then it is certainly understated. If we allow our understanding of faith to be stated in situational discourse, then clearly the truth of God about faith given to us from Genesis to Revelation has been understated. There are some terms that we might need to look at in our practice of faith to see whether or not those terms really belong there.

One illustration of that in the New Testament is James 1:6-7, where James is criticizing a man that he knows as a double-minded individual and the implications of that double-mindedness and the damage that it constitutes to his soul and to his relationship to God. In that segment, it says, "But when he asks, he must believe and not doubt." Not doubt what? Not doubt that the non-situational defines the situation. We know that’s the case because of statements made in other places in the book. James 5 is one illustration of that, which seems so incommensurable to the world situation as to be beyond the pale of belief. But when we ask, when we pray, we pray in belief without doubting. We do not doubt that the non-situational defines the situation because "he who doubts is like a wave of the sea blown and tossed by the wind." He is describing something that is at the mercy of the situation and not in a position of dominance over the situation.

In the case of Daniel and that of Hananiah, Azariah and Mishael, they were not blown around by the waves of the sea and blown and tossed by the wind. These are quite stable men. It would be very difficult to find any accusation that they operated on a faith that was defined by the terms of the situation. In the book of Acts when Paul has been arrested and he is shipboard being sent to Rome under the command of Julius, this great storm has developed at sea by the hand of God. Paul takes a faithful look at the circumstances and he is told by the angel of the Lord, "You see, do you not that the non-situational defines the situation? And the Lord has decided to strip the ship out from under you, but he is going to allow everyone to get to shore safely without being drowned." There are no terms enforced by the situational discourse.

Our response to situations has to be cleansed of this situational discourse. For example, we can’t say, "Yes, Matthew 6 says that the Lord will take care of us, but…" nor can we say, "Yes James 5 teaches us some things about biology and the circumstance of illness and he can help us, but…." That is the kind of formulation that is created by situational discourse. There are some terms that we have in our heads that do not belong there. Faith like this is always going to be modified by the situational. When we look at the example of Deborah and Barak, we find something very interesting about them in the book of Judges. Barak initially refused to go when told by Deborah that the Lord was with him and that the victory was his. His faith was modified by the situation. And Deborah said to him, "Well alright. But the glory of this has passed from you to a woman." This was scandalous to him no doubt.

We cannot afford to operate on a situational faith. Is it worth considering, one wonders, whether or not many of us in the churches of Christ have descended into a situational faith as we have defined it, where our understanding of faith has been shortened, understated, modified, formulated in terms of the situational discourse? If that is the case, then we are as guilty of being double-minded. We know that the Lord does not bless double-mindedness with what he has offered to us. This is a remarkable statement that James makes to us about the nature of our dependence upon God and about the cost of not being wholehearted in our faith, which means among other things that we believe that the non-situational defines the situation. In James 1:7 it says, "That man should not think he will receive anything from the Lord; he is a double-minded man, unstable in all he does." He does not believe that the non-situational defines the situation. So how can he really believe? Of course, the objection is well stated. He really doesn’t, does he?

Now let’s consider for a little bit the non-situational faith. Here is a faith that is purely a result of biblical discourse. It is a result of the creation of absolute symbols that have been made available to us through the work of the Spirit of God. That is what the revelation is. And it is given to us to produce this thing that we call "faith." We are calling it non-situational faith and we shouldn’t have to do that, but we are doing that because our conception of faith perhaps has been defiled (to use the terminology of Daniel 1:8). Non-situational faith is produced by the text so it is not to be subjected to modification by the situation. Non-situational faith is not shaped by the situation, but rather the situation is shaped by non-situational response. We believe this to be the case and therefore we must put no logical constraints on faith. We must put no logical constraints on this kind of terminology that states, that believes, that lives on this idea that the non-situational defines the situation. If we place logical constraints on that terminology, on that construction, it is not an action of faith. We have then crossed the line from a non-situational faith into a situational faith. That won’t do because that is not faith at all. It has some similarities, but they are only superficial. We have to be careful about what that means in terms of the way we look at theology.

Any theology that will allow for the installation of logical constraints on the revelation of God and on the terminology of faith would certainly be an enemy of our salvation and an enemy of God. This has been habitually practiced all the way through the revelation that God has given to us. Clearly at Kadesh Barnea the Israelites were guilty of what we might refer to as a situational faith. God had expressed himself to the people, they decided that they would understate it. They decided that they would state it in terms of the situational. They would make it analogous to situational discourse. They would allow what God had stated to them to be modified by the situation. This is faithlessness. For that sin, they were sent back to the desert to die over the next forty years. So Joshua and Caleb are the sterling examples of what we call a "non-situational faith." These two men take the position to trust in what the Lord stated about the land. They don’t try to modify it by any of he realities that they experienced in the land, i.e., the fortified walls, the Anakites, and the numerous peoples that outnumbered the Israelites. They chose not to put any logical constraints whatsoever on what God had revealed to them. Daniel puts no logical constraints on faith. That means he put no logical restraints on a kind of terminology that said that the non-situational defines the situation. That is taken as a reality to him and from that point forward, he operates on that basis.

Faith as a non-situational response to a situation becomes therefore to us a powerful restraint on two things: Faith that is non-situational puts a powerful restraint on the human mind. In any given situation, our minds are constrained from thinking certain things. Our minds are constrained from crossing the line into situational faith. Our minds are constrained from operating on the basis of the inherent dynamics of the situation. Our minds are constrained against measurement techniques. Faith, as we have described it here—a faith that maintains that the non-situational defines the situation—is a powerful constraint on the situation itself. When we are talking about faith we are not just saying that it is a psychological palliative to get us through or that it is uplifting language. Quite the contrary. The faith upon which we operate--this terminology that says the non-situational defines the situation--constrains our minds within the situation and it constrains the situation.

We see this all the way through the book of Daniel. His mind was constrained in Chapter 1 when he says, "I am not going to defile myself with that food over there." Then the Lord constrains the situation and he makes this possible for Daniel. He does not allow any problems from the bureaucracy. Chapter 1:9 "Now God had caused the official to show favor and sympathy to Daniel" so it works out in Daniel’s favor. The Lord is operating in this situation. He constrains the circumstance.

In Chapter 2, Daniel’s mind is constrained to think what the Lord wants him to think within a certain framework. He says to the king, "There is no man that can tell you what you wish to know. But there is a God in heaven. I will talk to him about it." He operates in this apparently dangerous cauldron that surrounds them. A death threat is out on the wise men of the empire. But yet the situation is constrained by God. This shouldn’t be a surprising thing to Christians. If we operate on a faith that we approximate as a kind of terminology for our purposes here (again we are not restricting it to terminology) this is one of the ways it manifests itself. We believe that the non-situational defines the situation. It constrains what we think about any given situation and about any given circumstance.

That is why we are not overly burdened with fear, anxiety, worry and concern. Because the Lord has constrained our minds and the way in which we think about certain things. Anything and everything could happen. We don’t deal with those predictabilties. We don’t deal with the range of probabilities. This is an area of the pronouncement of God. When Christians die to themselves, and die to the world and pick up their cross and follow the Lord, we are responding when he asks, "You believe that he non-situational defines the situation, do you not? Do you believe that that is going to be the nature of your life and the way you will commit to me now and from this day forward?" And if we do that, we are qualified to be baptized for the remission of sins so that when we come up out of the water, we know that our minds are constrained. We know furthermore that the situations that surround us are constrained. They are going to be constrained to do exactly what God wants for them to do.

A remarkable illustration of this is in the book of 1 Peter. God tells the believers that he is going to let them be persecuted. And what he wants them to do is to think in a constrained way, according to his revelation, about this situation. He also wants them to understand that the situation is not operating on its own. It is not operating on some kind of inherent, internal energy apart from him. He is running the situation. This has come upon them so that their faith can be proved and it will be worth more than silver and gold. This faith is perhaps the most powerful force in the universe. Of course, human beings like to think in terms of tangible, circumstantial power. For example, when India detonated some atomic bombs, people were thinking this was a grave thing because there is no greater power on the universe than that. They are wrong about this.

In James 5, contrary to what the double-minded man thinks (that the non-situational can’t define the situation), that is exactly what it does. Vs. 13: "Is any one of you in trouble? He should pray." (He should appeal to the non-situational. The situation is not outside the purview of God or outside the control of the Lord). "Are any of you sick? Pray." Now if we pray and the Lord says well I decided to take you home with me, that is an added benefit to us according to what Paul said in the Philippian letter. He tells us he would much rather depart and be with the Lord than be down here. He says he is staying because this situation is under control of the Lord, and the Lord has placed him there and he is going to stay until the Lord is through with him.

Think of the impact of this. We are talking about a certain species of constraint. Instead of casting constraint off and setting the situation free—giving it free reign—we are told quite the opposite is true. This constraint, among other things, is one of how to understand situations in both the Old and New Testaments, directly and indirectly. This results in enlightenment, knowledge and wisdom. And that’s what we need. In the book of Ephesians, Chapter 1, Paul prayed for the enlightenment of the brethren. We pray for wisdom. We are told in Daniel 6 that Daniel was always praying for help. This is not a bad constraint. It is a purposeful constraint. It is a constraint of our terminology. Faith constrains our minds and reshapes our appraisals of things. This leads us to a remarkable, significant generalization about the constraint of faith and what that means to us on a daily basis.

Faith, as we have described it, constitutes a powerful constraint on two things—on the human mind and it is literally a constraint on the situation. That is why the Red Sea opens up. That is why Lazarus is raised from the dead. That is why a little dead girl rises to play and to delight her parents again. That is why we have hope in the resurrection from the dead. That is why manna falls from heaven and water comes from a rock. That is why God says that we don’t have to worry about anything because he will take care of us. Our obligation is to be faithful to him.

We are talking about a speciess of restraint. Here is one of the great generalizations that come from this startling principle open to us from the book of Daniel. The mind is related to the situation in a unique way. How are our minds related to the situation? Who does the relating? That is the Lord. Our minds are related to the situation by faith. That is a remarkable statement that we can generalize from this text. The human mind apparently was never invented to relate on its own life to the situation. Genesis Chapter 3 starts that whole discussion. In essence, the Lord would have said to the pair in the garden, "Now listen to me, you are living in this situation. I and I alone, through my revelation to you, will relate you to this situation. You on the other hand will not take it upon yourself to relate yourself to the situation."

Well isn’t what we’ve done in human-lived experience? Of course, this is our preferred posture to the situation. "I think we ought to do this. I feel that is the way to go." "We, the intellectuals and the scholars and we the leaders and we the political advisers believe that this is what needs to be done." The human mind always thinks that because God has given us the ability to act as an intelligence and to operate on common sense we can take these things seriously and can relate our minds to the situation adequately. This is an illusion. Worse than any kind of an illusion, it is an outright lie. Only the Lord can relate our minds to any given situation. Well let’s think about some of the situations.

Are we depressed? How do we relate to that situation? God relates the mind to the situation. We don’t. Counselors can’t do that apart from the wisdom of God—a pushed intelligence. How about material circumstances? What about biology? What about economics? What about sociology? What do we do with this external world and all of the pressures that we deal with regarding all the things that surround us? The Lord must relate the mind—he must pick the mind up and say, "Here is how your mind relates to this world situation." This relationship does not vary over time, nor does it vary over circumstances. We know that this is true because of the statements made by the Lord himself in the New Testament when he comes along and he indicates we are operating on the cases of these men of old. We are following Abrahamic faith.

The apostles, all of them, challenged us to be related to our circumstances in the same way that these men of old always related to their circumstances. That is why in the book of Psalms and in the book of Deuteronomy, the Lord said, "Here is what you are to do with your children and the children of your children and the children of their children, etc. Their minds have to be related to the world situation. I will do that. You will teach them that I will do that. You will teach the revelation to them, and you will show them how to let me relate their minds to the situation."

This would transform the world of scholarship and the world of rational mechanics, as we know it. Furthermore, there are direct statements in both the Old and New Testament that tell us that this truth is eternal, it is never historically specific (that is, it is not specific to only one historical time framework and no other), and it is written against the backdrop of all of time and of all human activity. In all of those situations that occurred during the time of Daniel and that would occur to us in the framework of modernity, we believe that the non-situational defines the situation. That relationship between the non-situational and the situation does not vary over time nor does it vary over circumstance.

This is an interesting insight from the book of Daniel. What happens if we don’t allow the Lord to relate our minds to the situation by faith? Well then, it results in what we can identify as "Nebuchadnezzar’s situational error." Here is the nature of his error. Nebuchadnezzar believed (although the same is stated in different places throughout the book of Daniel of the thought processes of other kings such as Belshazzar and Darius, we are going to focus on Nebuchadnezzar), that his power and his might and his skill and his intelligence could relate him to the situation. This is his error. This is a situational error. It is an error he precipitated within the situation. He believed that his power and his might and his skill and his intelligence could relate him adequately to all world situations.

Read Daniel 2:5-6: "The king replied to the astrologers, ‘This is what I have firmly decided: If you do not tell me what my dream was and interpret it, I will have you cut into pieces and your houses turned into piles of rubble. But if you tell me the dream and explain it, you will receive from me gifts and rewards and great honor. So tell me the dream and interpret it for me.’" His power, his might, his skill, his intelligence—that is, what he believed he needed to relate himself to the situation. In Chapter 3, the same attitude is prevalent in this man. Verse 4-6: "Then the herald loudly proclaimed, ‘This is what you are commanded to do, O peoples, nations and men of every language: As soon as you hear the sound of the horn, lute, zither, lyre, harp, pipes and all kinds of music, you must fall down and worship the image of gold that King Nebuchadnezzar has set up. Whoever does not fall down and worship will immediately be thrown into a blazing fire.’"

In Chapter 4:28-30, we find him openly ignoring the previous year’s declaration to him from the Lord himself. The Lord had given him a dream of a big tree and everything in the tree is nourished and protected by the tree, but then comes one to cut the tree down. Daniel was called in to administer the non-situational interpretation of the dream, and he says, "Well it’s you, O king, and you have done some really bad things before the Lord. You are a cruel man. You think that your power and your might and your skill and your intelligence can relate you to the world situation. You are about to learn that this is not true." Verse 28-30: "All this happened to King Nebuchadnezzar. Twelve months later, as the king was walking on the roof of the royal palace of Babylon, he said, ‘Is not this the great Babylon I have built as the royal residence, by my might power and for the glory of my majesty?’" He learned differently.

In the same way human beings today have the propensity to believe and to recommit Nebuchadnezzar’s situational error that power and might and skill and our intelligence can relate us adequately to situations. We can extend that list. Some people believe that their intelligence is all that is necessary to relate them to the situation of the world. We have a lot of observer-dominant schemes where man believes that truth is a function of our central nervous system. Some believe that we discover truth by the central nervous system. Others believe (mostly now associated with the post-modern faction) that truth is simply created by the central nervous system. But observation is the basis for that. They believe that our ability to observe adequately will relate us to the world situation. They believe that measurement, sometimes statistics, is adequate to relate us in an understanding way to the world situation in whatever area that we wish to study or observe or measure. Some people believe that greed and lust will relate them to the world situation, so they act upon that. Hitler did that. Josef Stalin did that. Mao Tse-tung and others have done that.

Others believe that objectivity—their ability to supposedly be objective—is all that is necessary to relate them to the world situation. This is Nebuchadnezzar’s situational error. Some believe that needs relate them to the world situation. In Exodus Chapter 17, when the people of God had arrived at the place called Rephadim and they found no water there, they believed that their needs were all that was "real" to them in that moment and that these needs and wants and desires and requirements of the flesh were the things that should relate them to their world situation. They were wrong about that and they were chastised by the Almighty for having put him on trial, for having tested him. Others, a little more timid, believe that their fears relate them to the world situation and that’s why they take the tact in life that they do. Others operate on the basis of pride. This is an error.

However, we learn from the book of Daniel that we and the situation are constrained by the revelation of God and by the power of God. We learn as people of faith (if we operate on faith) that we are constrained. And the situation is under constraint. In Daniel 4, there are two verses that indicate this. Verse 17: "The decision is announced by messengers, the only ones declare the verdict, so that the living may know (key word) that the Most High is sovereign over the kingdoms of men and gives them to anyone he wishes and sets over them the lowliest of men." They are constrained and the situation is constrained. And the way we better think of about situations is constrained. Next look at Verse 26: "The command to leave the stump of the tree with its roots means that your kingdom will be restored to you when you acknowledge that Heaven rules." That acknowledgement constituted a constraint on his mind and on his understanding of the situation and on the situation itself.

We are going to face any number of circumstances of various descriptions in our lives. One crisis after another. One testing-of-faith experience after another. And in this we are being taught by the Lord to avoid operating on Nebuchadnezzar’s view of things—not to commit his situational error. It is an error to believe that our power, might, skill, intelligence, observational ability, remarkable skill of measurement, the cumulating and extrapolation of statistics, greed, lust, wants, objectivity (as it is generally accepted), and even our needs, our fears, our sense of pride, can adequately allow us to be related to the situation. It is only faith that relates us to the situation. Paul would state in his epistles, "I know how to be content in any and all circumstances." How could he make that statement? It was not his own prowess, ability, skill, power and intelligence that related him to the situation. He was related to all of his circumstances uniquely by faith. That is what the Lord is calling us to do.

In addition to Nebuchadnezzar’s situational error, which is ignoring the constraints that his mind and the situation were under, he suffered something that is most lamentable. Because of this error, Nebuchadnezzar suffered the death of his mind. In the Chapter 4, there are several verses that indicate the starkness of this death of his mind. Verse 4:16: "Let his mind be changed from that of a man and let him be given the mind of an animal, till seven times pass by for him." His mind died as a functioning entity. Verse 4:23: "You, O king, saw a messenger, a holy one, coming down from heaven and saying, ‘Cut down the tree and destroy it, but leave the stump, bound with iron and bronze, in the grass of the field while its roots remain in the ground. Let him be drenched with the dew of heaven; let him live like the wild animals, until seven times pass by for him." He suffered the death of his mind because he thought he was not constrained by the presence of God or by the revelation of God. There are people in the world, there are people in churches that have committed Nebuchadnezzar’s situational error. Horror of horrors, sometimes leaders in churches suggest that we should be related to the world situation on the basis of such things as our power, might, skill, needs, wants and our own intelligence. If we do this, we will die. We will suffer a mental death.

In 4:25: "You will be driven away from people and will live with the wild animals; you will eat grass like cattle and be drenched with the dew of heaven. Seven times will pass by for you until you acknowledge that the Most High is sovereign over the kingdoms of men and gives them to anyone he wishes." Until his mind was willing to accept this terminological restraint that the non-situational defines the situation, he would suffer a death, a mental death. Hopelessness and despair were his only partners in this unholy deal. In 4:32: "You will be driven away from people and will live with the wild animals; you will eat grass like cattle. Seven times will pass by for you until you acknowledge that the Most High is sovereign over the kingdoms of men and gives them to anyone he wishes.

In 4:34, he realizes finally that his mind can no longer be situated on his own, that his mind can no longer be related to the world situation by himself. Man can’t do this. So then he says, "At the end of that time, I, Nebuchadnezzar, raised my eyes toward heaven, and my sanity was restored." This was a resurrection. The resurrection of his mind. (No less a death, no less a resurrection that should be precipitated in the waters of baptism I would be persuaded). "Then I praised the Most High; I honored and glorified him who lives forever." Now, how was he being related to the situation? The situation is there, but he is now basically saying, "God is now relating me by faith to the world situation. Not as before." There are grievous consequences associated with this error. Not the least of which is the death of mind, the death of our abilities, the death of self in so many ways.

He continues talking about God, "His dominion is an eternal dominion; his kingdom endures from generation to generation. 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. (We are under constraint here, he says, and acknowledges his error). No one can hold back his hand or say to him: ‘What have you done?’ At the same time that my sanity was restored, my honor and splendor were returned to me for the glory of my kingdom. My advisers and nobles sought me out, and I was restored to my throne, and became even greater than before. Now, I, Nebuchadnezzar, praise and exalt and glorify the King of heaven, (he has learned his lesson. His situational error has cost him grievously. He has repented of this). "Because everything he does his right and all his ways are just."

We can’t know that unless your mind is related by faith to all situations. We can’t know that at the death of a child or at the loss and forfeiture of something of great value to us. We can’t know that unless our minds are related to these situations by faith. And those who operate believing that power, might, skill and their own intelligence and ability to observe and to measure, their greed, their lust, their wants, their supposed objectivity, their needs, their fear and their pride can relate them adequately to the situation—"those who walk in pride (God) is able to humble." I would suggest that the death of the mind describes adequately some of the experiences in our contemporary world, and in world history. Why people with dead minds would take the king of kings and crucify him and bring him to open ridicule and shame and torture. Or why Christians as they are described in Hebrews 11 would go about clothed in animal skins, living sometimes-difficult existences of whom the world was not worthy unless they were acted upon by men who had suffered a mental death. Why would those people in Romans 1 have looked around at all the things that had been created and represent them from the basis of a conscience that the Lord had instilled in them; and later decide that God is dead, that he is no more, that these things are the creation of their own symbols? The only way they could have done that is if they suffered the death of mind. It says of them three times in Romans 1, "and God gave them over to a reprobate mind."

Why is it that certain things happen in our experience? Why is it that the world takes the tact that it does? Why do people often relate to Christians like in the book of 1 Peter in such a way so as to persecute, to harass, to destroy, to violate their freedoms and their message. These things happen because of people who have suffered the death of mind. The world as is described by the Lord himself is dead. But we are described as those who are alive to Christ and alive in him. We ought not to be guilty of the recreation of Nebuchadnezzar’s situational error. Only the Lord can relate us to the world situation and he chooses to do so by faith. Therefore, we are not in error as people of the world have often stated of the true believer.

Nebuchadnezzar’s correction is noted in this book because he now is related by faith to the situation. That is stated repeatedly in the book. For instance, in Chapter 4:25, he did eventually acknowledge this reality. In 4:34, he is willing to acknowledge the Lord; and because of that acknowledgment, restoration comes his way. Daniel is related to the death threat in Chapter 2 by faith. Daniel is related to the death threat in Chapter 6 by faith as he is thrown to the lions (that being the world situation). Hananiah, Azariah and Mishael are related to the fiery furnace by faith. That is the correction that we must suffer.

Wouldn’t this be one of the primary purposes for the revelation itself? We are to be reproved and to be rebuked as Paul wrote in the book of 2 Timothy to his young lieutenant faced with a world situation. Paul wrote to him as he writes to us in order to emphasize the fact that the non-situational will always define the situation. We are called to believe this. Gideon was an example of an individual in the Old Testament in the book of Judges who had such a very difficult time, especially at the beginning, trying to believe that this was true—that the non-situational defines all situations. So he kept asking the Lord for confirmation, and he put out the sheep skins and other things, until the final confrontation between the forces of Israel and those who had conquered the land, where he with 300 men faces a much larger military force. But he learns, as we must learn through all of these circumstances that are given to us as pragmatic examples of faith, that the non-situational always defines the situation.

I would suggest that this tells us something about the nature and the burden of teaching. Those of us who are teachers are faced with an obligation and a glorious task, and when you think about it, one that is too delicious not to chew on. As teachers, our purpose is to help students learn to relate their minds to the world situation by faith. That is the way in which we choose to approach the reading of the text. Why are we reading scripture? Why have we found it convenient to generalize from these marvelous passages about all contemporary experience? Because we want our minds to be related to all situations on the temporal side by these marvelous examples. All of these examples are germane to the present truth that the non-situational always, always defines the situation. When we consider the case of the miracles of Jesus in the New Testament, he is making a statement to us about the non-situational defining the situation. In this famous case of John 2 at the wedding feast at Cana, he makes it quite obvious beyond a shadow of the doubt that this is the way the universe operates and therefore our minds have to be related to an external force. Our minds have to be related to those situations that surround us by the non-situational intelligence of God. Therefore, faith as we have struggled to describe it, becomes a basic, or as we have chosen to call it, a standard non-situational response to a situation.

The index column, which is composed of the Holy Spirit, revelation, faith on the part of the believer and our manipulation of symbols (or the discourse we choose, which is an isolated discourse) is relational in this very same sense of the term. It exists to relate us to the temporal side on the basis of faith. Because of that, we face the world in a way that is very different than our peers. The church operates and lives and functions on the basis of this faith. When we face the realities of a concrete nature that surround us, we do so for no other basic response than faith. We are not simply stating that faith is the collection of doctrines like baptism, repentance, grace of God—all of those things are there—but we cannot understate the nature of faith. And we do that if we allow it to be situationalized.

We never want to be guilty of Nebuchadnezzar’s situational error. We do not want to run even the slightest risk of the death of our minds. Our society has suffered this. No amount of human intelligence and will and wisdom can help them recover the life they have lost. This requires a resurrection. Jesus has come that we might have life and that we might have it to its fullest. That promise requires a resurrection. The Lord has given us that privilege. This is stated in John 1 and John 3. The great truth lies open and clearly stated before us. Our faith can be conceived as a kind of terminological relationship to the external world—to all world situations—stated basically that we believe that the non-situational defines the situation.