Here is a man who is thanking God, praising God. In Chapter 9, there are other statements made that constitute the praise of the unknown God who has direct connection to all events. In thinking about the concept of praise, just exactly what is it? Perhaps there are other ways, and better ways, to express it but here is one way at least that we can talk about this capacity that human beings have. In praise, we know very well that it elevates God above the situation. He is detached from the situation and elevated above the situation. This is done by an act of the will. In other words, we are constructing an "imaginative picture" of the universe. I say "imaginative" not because it is a fantasy, but because it takes place in the human mind. It is an imaginative picture. For us to see God in our own hearts and in our own minds elevated above all situations and in a controlling posture relative to all situations, is an "imaginative act." Or we can call it an "imaginative picture" of the universe. It is an elevation in our minds of God.

Now we draw a distinction between our minds on the one hand and absolute reality on the other. In terms of absolute reality, there is no question that God is elevated. That is literally the case. Now let’s consider the case of our minds. In our minds, God is elevated. Now that is an interesting kind of bifurcation. When we are praising God, we are trying to draw a unity between the reality that is and the way in which we conceive of reality. Now let’s see if we can talk a little bit about that. We know that absolute reality is what it is because of God’s existence, because he maintains a direct relationship to all entities in the world including us. He controls, he shapes, he is the creator, and he is the maintainer of the universe. His word is supreme over all events. We can say that this is absolute reality.

Now let’s talk about human conceptual ability on the other hand—our ability to think, to put a larger picture together. Human conceptual ability is to be conformed to absolute reality. Now that is what has happened here in this act of praise. It is the creation of a kind of unity between a mind that can conceive that is independent of God, that has the ability to think independently of him if the mind so chooses. Of course, we have a large number of illustrations of that in both the Old and New Testaments, where people could act independently. In the book of Daniel, there are people acting independently of the mind of God, acting upon their own resources. In Chapter 9, Daniel would say of the people of Israel that they were destroyed because they separated their minds from the absolute reality. It is disaster when this separation occurs; and God warned them of this in Leviticus and in Deuteronomy. When a separation occurs between a human mind and absolute reality, then disaster is certainly going to ensue. There is no way to avoid that.

In Chapter 9, we see that this is exactly what happens. There is disaster because the minds of the Jewish people were separated from absolute reality. The mind in the middle of material circumstances and situations snapped its unity with the absolute reality. Now praise is one way of reconstituting that unity. It elevates God above the situation and it reconnects the mind buried in the situation of life back to unity with the absolutely reality.

We could say that praise is a kind of "parallax." A parallax is a change of position, it is a shift. For instance, if you were to hold your thumb extended in front of you between both of your eyes and close one eye and look at the thumb, and then close that eye and open the other one and you will see that the thumb appears to have shifted position. It is a parallax. In the same way in shooting, this is very important. I am what we call "left-eye dominant." I taught myself to shoot a pistol right-handed because everyone else did. Which meant that as I held the pistol out in front of me instead of sighting down my right arm with my right eye, I was unconsciously sighting across my left eye, which would create a parallax, and so I was shooting way off the mark. That is not a good thing to do. The parallax is very important.

In this situation, we have a kind of recursive model, a kind of demonstration. We have a parallax where the emphasis is taken off of the primacy of the situation and it is shifted to the primacy of the invisible God. That cannot be underestimated. This is an imaginative act. It is an act of connecting in a subordinate way a situation to the invisible God. But what ultimately happens among other things is that attention and focus is shifted off of the primacy of the situation—its ingredients, its dynamics—and placed on something else more primary which is the presence of the invisible God. We can refer to this as the primary parallax.

The concept of the primary parallax constitutes a shift of focus. This is the way we will try to discuss the whole concept of praise as it shows up in Chapter 2:20-23. Daniel and his three friends are under a death threat because King Nebuchadnezzar has required the interpretation of a dream and the contents of the dream to be revealed. During the night, this knowledge is given and granted in answer to the request that they have made relative to this crisis that has developed. Then after that Daniel begins to praise the God of heaven and he says, "Praise be to the name of God forever and ever, wisdom and power are his." The parallax moves off of the situation in terms of appearance and/or observation and on to God’s primacy over the situation.

In this situation, this man and his three friends had some decisions to make. They could operate on the world of appearances or they could operate on the basis of human observation. We have talked a lot about observer-dominant schemes and how man has a tendency to think that if he can analyze the situation based on the criteria he provides that he can basically understand reality. World thinkers have always done that. They look at a situation, they arrive at conclusions that they believe are in concert with their observations. They trust their observations. They go out and make decisions based on them and they take actions relative to them. Here in Daniel 2:20, when he says, "Praise be to the name of God for ever and ever; wisdom and power are his," he is saying this about the way in which God has responded to his situation. He is, in other words, saying wisdom and power belong to God. Appearances and human observation will never be able to replace the reality of God. So the shift is away from appearance or observation over to the primacy of God. God is prime. But we have to come to that conclusion because of the statement that he makes boldly in vs. 20, "wisdom and power are his."

What he means is that wisdom that comes from God is superior to appearances and superior to human observational skills to understand all situations. Power, the power of God, to directly affect situations is prime. It is primary over the world of appearances. It is primary over human observation and the logic that is associated with those observational skills. God is prime and the situation is not. The situation is connected in an imaginative way now to the absolute reality. It has to be. When Daniel says wisdom and power belong to God, then the situation isn’t detached and floating out there. It isn’t a loose end. Rather in Daniel’s imagination an action is taking place. He is reconnecting the situation to God. In this scheme of things, in this parallax shift, the situation becomes connected to the primacy of God, to the wisdom and to the power of God. That takes place in his mind. He believes that and he sees that. Well it would seem only obvious that we need to do the exact same thing. We often operate on the world of appearance, on the world of measurement, because it is very easy to do and it is so seductive to convince us that it is "right" and "accurate." Daniel did not see things this way because he understood that a parallax had to take shape in his thinking.

So when a crisis presents itself, what do we do? There is an immediate shift. The human mind, coached by the revelation of God, drenched in the truth of the revelation simply performs a parallax shift. We move from one "eye" to the other one. We move from a human observational dominant scheme built on human experience over to the primacy of God. That is a parallax. That is an imaginative act. I would imagine (to continue the theme) that this is what had to take place in all the other great illustrations of faith that we know anything about in the Bible. Daniel is but one of a long line of people who experience this parallax. When David faces Goliath, the primacy of focus goes onto God and off of appearances and observations. Appearances and observations would have been quite arresting in that given situation with a man nine-feet tall and well armored and backed up by this experienced Philistine army. We see the same thing with Joshua and Caleb at Kadesh Barnea. God is prime and appearances and observations are not. There has to be an imaginative act of a shift, of a parallax that takes place in the imagination of man. God is conceptually elevated here which is absolutely in concert with the reality with which Daniel had to deal.

In 2:21, the statement is made, "He changes times and seasons; he sets up kings and deposes them. He gives wisdom to the wise and knowledge to the discerning." We might be able to say that there is a kind of resonance here at this particular point. Let’s discuss the idea of "resonance." When he states that God changes times and seasons, it gives us the impression that God is directly involved. He sets up kings and deposes them. He is moving people around as he chooses. He is creating governments at will. He is deposing governments at will. He is setting up all sorts of matrices. He connects people with other people. He creates and destroys empires. Therefore, we can conclude that all situations are resonant; that is, they are resonant to the power of God. The "being" of the situation (all the elements associated with it) is not separate from the resonance. The situation directly vibrates to the pulse of the Lord himself. When he says that God changes times seasons, sets up kings, gives wisdom to the wise and knowledge to the discerning, he is saying that men who seek to follow the Lord will also be resonant. There is a resonance between man and God and between the situation and God. They vibrate alike.

Now in the case of man, they vibrate alike because of the commitment that people of faith make to the Lord. All situations are resonant. Now that tells us something about the parallax shift and the way in which the mind would conceive of God. We can say of him in this particular verse that God is "acute" over situations. He acts and the situation responds. He acts and wisdom and knowledge go forth into the minds of men into the world of circumstances. God is acute, the situation is not. God is acute and the situation is resonant. If we ask, "what is meaning," then this is a way that we could begin to answer the question. Meaning is the resonance that vibrates in us that originated not from us, not within the situation, but from outside the situation in the non-situational intelligence of God. We are asking about its resonance aren’t we if we ask what is the particular meaning of the situation? Now this is critical I think.

In any given situation, if we can conclude form verse 21 that God is acute and situations are resonant. Then when we ask, "What is the meaning of this situation," we are really asking about its resonance. How is it affected by God? When we talk about a situation, that is really what we are trying to understand. Its meaning cannot be separated from the idea of its resonance. So in Nebuchadnezzar’s case and in the lives of others he mentions in this dream, these successive waves of kingdoms move to the vibration of God. They respond as he acts. If you take a tuning fork and you hold it in your hand and strike it against a hard object, it will resonate to the vibration that you have given it. You’ve controlled it; you have induced this resonance. It will vibrate because it is supposed to do that.

All situations will resonate in exactly the same way. A crisis is going to resonate to the acuteness of God. God is quite acute. He changes (signs and seasons), he sets up (kingdoms) and he gives (wisdom and knowledge). He changes, sets up and gives. This is energy pushed into the world situation and the world situation will always resonate. When we ask ourselves about the meaning of any given situation, we want to know how this situation is resonating to the acuteness and the power that is exerted from the invisible God. We may not always have an answer that to us is quite satisfactory especially in some of the more difficult crises that we face—death of loved ones, suffering of the vulnerable, injustice toward the innocent. The Lord knows these things happen. We ask ourselves well if God is there, why does he not involve himself? The only way that we have been able to deal with devilishly difficult questions (such as why God allows certain horrible things to occur) is that we do know that above all of those other questions, there is an overarching set of truths that are outside of the parameter of the question. These truths are much larger than the question, and one of these is that all situations resonate to the power of God.

In Chapter 3, we see that God is acute with these three men facing the fiery furnace. We find that the situation resonates to the power of God. We find the same thing true in Chapter 4, when Nebuchadnezzar has another dream and Daniel is called in yet again to interpret it. And he states that Nebuchadnezzar is in trouble with the Almighty. He has not responded to the kindness of God. He has not seen that he is on the throne and has been given this power and eminence because of the resonance of God in his life. That is stated very clearly in Chapter 1:1-3, "In the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim king of Judah (a real place, a real bureaucracy, a real group of people), Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon (a more imposing group of people) came to Jerusalem and besieged it." Now here is the situation, but what is the "meaning" of the situation? Well the book of Daniel is indicating to us that idea of "resonance" as we see in verse 2, "And the Lord delivered Jehoiakim king of Judah into his hand, along with some of the articles from the temple of God. (Among which will be the goblets mentioned in Daniel 5, when Belshazzar decides to use them in a drunken party one night and toasts to his non-existent, false gods). These he carried off to the temple of his god in Babylonia and put in the treasure house of his god." Now in just the first two verses of the book, it shows us that God is acute and all situations resonate according to his power.

When we are in the middle of circumstances, we are simply going to have to remember to function in terms of this parallax. We have got to praise God. I suppose at one time, I would have thought that this is just "trying to rise above the situation and put the best possible spin on it." We will praise God even though we don’t like what’s happened; we may be a little bit mad at God, but we are going to force ourselves to praise him because we think that if we can just convince ourselves of that long enough that somehow or other it will ameliorate the suffering. I doubt that this is the case. We are not talking about an attempt to try to "feel good" about the situation. We are talking about a parallax—a shift of position—that elevates God above the situation. We are talking about an imaginative act—this is significant—that connects the temporal world with the unseen world. That is a very important thing for us to do in any given situation.

We face all sorts of stresses, problems and things that we cannot understand and things that we cannot directly control. Well that is alright. We can live with that. What do we do? We must depend upon making non-situational responses, like praise. Praise as an imaginative act, connects the mind of man in a responsible, biblical, accurate, truthful way to the absolute reality that stands outside of the situation in the mind of God. When that connection is destroyed, then disaster will always ensue. We see that in Chapter 4, where Nebuchadnezzar is driven insane because he refused to take this imaginative act. He refused to praise God. He refused to acknowledge God as the one who sets men on the throne and deposes them. That statement is made more than one time in the book of Daniel. It is stated about Nebuchadnezzar again in Chapter 5, when Daniel is interpreting the dream to his son Belshazzar and it’s stated of Belshazzar himself. It is stated indirectly about Darius who ultimately had to make that acknowledgment. It is a primary issue in the book of Daniel and is a case of connecting our situations to the absolute reality of God in a unique way. This is something that we can do. Praising God isn’t just a camouflage for our feelings. It is an accurate connecting in an imaginative way of the two worlds—the eternal and the temporal. It becomes a tremendous act of the human will.

Verse 2:22 states, "He reveals deep and hidden things; he knows what lies in darkness and light dwells with him." Let’s talk about what we can call a "sensible horizon." All situations will have a sensible horizon. Now a sensible horizon is literally what the words purport it to be. It is a horizon as far as we can see and it is established by the ability of our senses to detect. In any given situation, you can only see so far and you can’t see any further. Everything beyond the horizon is outside of our way of knowing. People who operate within the sensible horizon are coupled to the situation. Now here in verse 22, we discover among other things that God is unbounded. Here’s the shift. "He reveals deep and hidden things"—things that could not be known by man within the sensible horizon. "He knows what lies in darkness—that’s beyond the sensible horizon--and light dwells with him." If we are going to get a source of light that will illuminate the situation, give us knowledge and understanding, we have to go to only one source. God is unbounded. He does not dwell within any sensible horizon.

But what does that say about the situation? We know that every situation has a sensible horizon. It is a sensible horizon because it is made up of what our senses detect. Therefore, the horizon is synonymous with our intelligence. We might say that we could create a synonymity between the situation and the sensible horizon. We create a "symmetry." When we say that the situation is the same thing as the sensible horizon, and we respond to the situation in this way, it is a mistake. If we believe that the situation and the sensible horizon are the same, then we are not going to trust God. We would say of Kadesh Barnea well the sensible horizon indicates that there is no way that we can defeat this Canaanites. People look at circumstances and they create a symmetry. If a man looks at a pretty woman in terms of pornography, he has created a symmetry between the sensible horizon and the situation (the woman, set of symbols, pornography or anything else). He does not believe that God is unbounded. He has not been pulled out of the situation. He hasn’t made this primary parallax shift. The non-situational intelligence is pushed into us in the situation and then it pulls our minds out of the situation. Our imagination is reconstructed. We don’t want to say that the sensible horizon (our ability to observe the situation) is synonymous with the situation itself, which they did in any number of cases in the scripture. Abraham did this. He said the sensible horizon is that an old man and a woman who is barren cannot have children, so "we’ll do something else." He created a symmetry between the situation and the sensible horizon. The same thing happened at Kadesh Barnea and at the Valley of Elah. The Israelites believed in the sensible horizon, which indicated that the Philistines were well armed and they outnumbered them and that this was the situation. Now if Daniel and his three friends had done that, they would never have been able to operate on the basis of faith. They would have said the sensible horizon is that the furnace is really hot and we are just made of flesh, so it is not wise to put ourselves in this danger. Or Daniel would have avoided defying Darius decree and said, "Why don’t I just postpone praying to the Lord for thirty days. After all, I’ve prayed three times a day forever anyway. Surely the Lord will credit me thirty days of inactive prayer." But he didn’t do that. He didn’t create a symmetry between the sensible horizon and the situation. That is when we fail. That is at the root of faithlessness.

We also need to consider that God is responsive: In verse 2:23, Daniel says of the Lord, "You have made known to me what we asked of you." God is responsive. He has made known. Therefore the situation is reactionary. Now here is the thing that I subsequently came to think about. I repent of it. I’ve often asked, what are the dynamics in any given situation? I’ve asked that a lot. But I see that that is a mistake. There is no indication that I can think of now in the book of Daniel where situations are to be conceived of as "dynamic." I wish I’d have a nickel now at every men’s meeting or elders meeting that I have sat in and people were considering, "Well what are the dynamics operating here in this situation? What do we have to be aware of?" I just automatically thought of situations as dynamic instead of reactionary. And what I did personally was to try to create a dynamic map of situations. I would grid that off and say well here is a dynamic and there’s a dynamic and here’s how they all relate together. Finally, I guess people would have inferred to me directly or indirectly that the whole of life is a dynamic process.

In Matthew 6, the pagans who were running after material things were wondering about the dynamic process of life and that if they don’t have these things, they are going to be in trouble. In Luke 12, the rich fool, he saw that there were dynamics from which he had to insulate himself or at least counteract those dynamic forces that would be working against his well being. That is why he stockpiled and put great store in the accumulation of things. In James 4, these men are looking at dynamic processes and see a way to go over to another place, spend a year and make money as opposed to not making money. In James 5, what if we saw illness as a dynamic process? Why would we pray if we believed it was a dynamic process? If you believed that economic survival was a dynamic process or physical, biological, sociological survival were all dynamic processes, why would we pray? People who believed these situations were a dynamic process, they would say, "Well what are we going to do relative to this material problem we are facing?" Suppose I say, "well I am going to pray?" Then they would say, "But what else?" And I would say, "That’s all." And they would say, "Well what do you mean ‘that’s all?’ You are running a terrible risk aren’t you?" I wonder why anyone would say we are running a terrible risk when we would pray as a response to illness. They wouldn’t unless they had already created a dynamic map of the situation.

A dynamic map has to be the product of deduction. In scientific discovery, we are trying to find the various functions of things. We are trying to understand various forces that come to bear on material reality. I would think that inductions in general are rudimentary in the production of a dynamic map. I can think of the illustration of the disciples on the Sea of Galilee. A storm is building up and they already had a dynamic map of the situation. You have a lot of forces blowing across the deck of this little ship and you have real trouble. There the master is back there, all knowing and all wise and asleep at the wheel. A person who works in the business world might say, "I’m not like a preacher insulated from the realities of the world. I have to deal with corporate realities and material and economic realities. I have a map worked out for my life. That is why I went to Harvard Business School to get my MBA or that is why I’ve spent all these years gaining capital within the company. I know how these things work." This is a person who operates on a dynamic map to guide his career.

We always have an inclination to create a dynamic map. We all have a tendency to say, "This is going to happen this way. If we don’t stop that, this is going to happen. If I do that, then this will happen." We just get consumed with these things. We think if we can understand the dynamics in any situation, then we can make predictions. Well Nebuchadnezzar predicted that if you throw someone into a furnace, they get consumed. Darius predicted that if you throw some guy into the lions’ den, he will be destroyed. They had a dynamic mind in their mind. Anybody, who goes up to oppose another city, such as Nebuchadnezzar when he attacked Jerusalem, would have a dynamic map for battle. He would have drawn up the order of battle. He knew what units he would commit, when and where and how. He knew how provisions would be taken care of. This is so characteristic of Peter when he denies Jesus. He has a dynamic map in his mind, "If I link myself with Jesus publicly, they might arrest me. I know how these men operate." He had a dynamic map. We all have dynamic maps.

In Exodus 17, the Israelites create a dynamic map. "We know what’s going to happen here. There’s no water out here. We didn’t bring enough with us and there is no where to get more in the large quantities that we are going to need. So it’s reasonable to believe that we are going to die." Or the famous case in 2 Corinthians 1:8 and following, where Paul says of his circumstance in Asia, "We are going to die." He looked at all the dynamics and he thought he understood all the dynamics and then he made a prediction, "We are going to die." He later says in this passage that he was wrong about that probability and he learned something from that whole experience. That is, that we can’t make dynamic maps. We can’t think of situations as dynamic. We need to think of them as reactionary.

So in any situation our focus must shift off of the sensible horizon, off of the independence of the situation, off of appearances and off of observations over to the fact that God is prime over every circumstance because all wisdom and power belong to him. He is acute because he changes, sets up and gives situations. He is unbounded precisely in the way that human beings are bounded. So when he sees the horizon of something, it is tantamount to a reflection of his own intelligence. People were found to be criticizing God when they challenged his appraisal of things. For instance, in Kadesh Barnea, when the spies came back and said, "Yes, God has said that we will inhabit this land and we will conquer our enemies, but that is really not possible," They insulted the intelligence of God who has established the actual horizon of the situation. They were operating within the sensible horizon. They operated based on their observation of the number of enemies that they calculated they would have to fight against. They saw various advantages of the people in the land. The Anakites dwelled among the inhabitants of Canaan. There were fortifications up to the sky. So operating within the sensible horizon pitted human intelligence against the intelligence of God. Once again here we have another manifestation of the conflict of intelligences.

It is the intelligence of man against the intelligence of God. It is not just the world of events and the world situation. We have to get past that. Any time we are in a situation, we have to understand a number of things. One of which is that what’s involved here is not just the rock-hard temporal concrete realities of the situation, but something of our own creation which is the sensible horizon, which is nothing more than a manifestation of human intelligence. God is not bound by any of this. He reveals, he knows, and light dwells with him—very different situation. Therefore anyone who defies the truth of God, who defies the revelation of God has insulted the intelligence of God and had elevated the intelligence of man to a primary position over the intelligence of God. In other words, no praise can possibly take place.

Now let’s ask a question. Have we performed the imaginative act of praise? Do we acknowledge that God is necessarily elevated above all situations? Are we connected to the eternal and unseen God on the basis of that act of the will—this imaginative picture that is created in our minds by an act of the will because we believe God or not? If we go into worship services and we are there to praise God, and in our minds we have not performed this imaginative act of elevating God above all situations, we cannot praise him and this failure shows up in the way in which we deal with particular concrete situations. If in these situations of life we have not done that, if we have operated on the basis of situational responses, then we have challenged the intelligence of God and no matter what comes out of our mouths during worship services, it is not praise. It could not possibly be praise. Praise can be understood. God can define it and we can know whether or not our praise is honest and whether or not it is genuine. If we haven’t performed this imaginative act of elevating God above all situations, then we are still operating within the sensible horizon. It is very easy to do that—hold on to a certain doctrinal structure that has been prescribed and has been accepted and it seems traditional and it seems right and it is convenient for us to follow, but actually we have not broken out of it. The imaginative act that is required of us that we call "praise" has really not taken place. Therefore, it is very possible for us to talk about a situated kind of praise as opposed to a non-situational praise as we have discussed the same difference in terms of faith and in terms of prayer. This is a serious matter for us to be concerned about because of the implications that it has.

Let’s take a look at Daniel 2:23, "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." This situation is reactionary. It is reactionary because all of the facts will conform to the representations that are given. On the other hand it is responsive. How do we know that? Because of the statement mentioned there in Daniel 2:23: "You have made known." That phrase tells us that God is responsive; and therefore, the situation is reactionary. All of the facts that conform to the representations that God has given are reactionary. Now if they are reactionary, that also creates a problem for what is generally referred to as objectivity. You see on the situational side, we have to overcome the presence of human intelligence. Human intelligence performs an imaginative act. Again we hasten to add this imaginative act is not fantasy. It is a mental operation trying to create a symbol; trying to create an abstraction in our minds of how we see the universe functioning and of how we see the relationship between the seen and the unseen as we respond to any situation. So we say it’s the creation of an imaginative picture, not one of fantasy, nor of fiction. The mind is linked by this imaginative act to the absolute reality.

In the creation of that unity, God is responsive from our point of view because he makes known and this makes the situation purely reactionary to what God reveals. In a sense, it makes the mind of man reactionary as well because we are reacting to the situation on the basis of the revelation of God. We are reacting on the temporal side from the perspective of God who stands outside the system. Praise does this. Therefore, we see a rather enlarged picture of what it means to praise God—to elevate God above the situation. We could adequately describe it as a kind of parallax, shifting from one to the primacy of another. One is subordinate (human consciousness) the other (God and his revelation) is prime, acute, unbounded, and responsive to the needs of man. This creates a deep unity.

As we take a look or as we discuss the nature of this deep unity, we can clearly demonstrate that the deep unity is between God and human consciousness in the situation. This act of praise creates this unity. But this unity is not between human observation and the situation. I guess as a child growing up, I had the impression that praise was purely an external worshipful act. That is, a bunch of believers would meet in one large room and we would pray and say nice things about the Lord and we would open our hymnbooks and sing things about him. But I never thought of it as a creation of a unity between two worlds. That is precisely what praise is. When we praise God in the midst of all sorts of circumstances, things that are burdensome, weighty, and demanding, things that can inflict upon us some degree of damage and pain, or things that require of us conflict, we are creating a unity. Praising God in the midst of all that creates a deep unity between the Lord himself in the situation and our minds within the situation. We abandon any pretense of trying to maintain a unity between the situation and our observation of it. Because if we do that, it is the very opposite of praise. We could refer to these as antipodes, could we not? They militate one against the other.

So when we meet together to praise, it is not just an act of worship in a congregational setting with songbooks in front of our face or projected songs up on the wall. It is more than that—it is the imaginative act of creating this unity between our consciousness and the revelation of God. Out of that unity the voice speaks, out of that the heart cries out to God. The praise occurs at one terminus of this unity—the situation. What does that therefore make of the situation? It turns the situation into a platform. The circumstance--the realities that make up this situation, the concrete things that cannot be denied, that are as touchable and tangible as any other concrete reality--becomes a platform for praise. It becomes the platform for the primacy parallax. It becomes the place that God has granted to us to make a kind of imaginative shift from the observation that the human mind makes of the situation (the sensible horizon) to something much more prime, much greater and much elevated above the situation (the unseen God). I think it is of great significance that the Lord puts us in circumstances that are so demanding. In 1 Peter, we learn that brethren in the northern reaches of Asia Minor had a very unique platform for praise—the circumstance of persecution. From that they were to praise God. There had to be a parallax shift of our consciousness from the situation to the unseen God. He requires that of them.

Here, in the book of Daniel, these circumstances become platforms for praise. Is that a realistic view of any and all situations? Yes, it is. Because we now understand the relationship that exists between the unseen and the seen, between the invisible God and the all-too visible situations. We know where praise takes place. It takes place on the situation terminus of this unity. It is a unity so therefore we make these observations. All situations are obligated to be where God is. All situations are obligated by the Lord to be reactionary—to be resonant, to be established by the horizon not of man, but of the wisdom of God. So all situations have this obligation thrown out over them. The obligation is not a light one. It is a significant obligation and we need to emphasize that it goes out over the situation and over the minds of believers embedded within these situations. We move from appearances and observations to the primacy of God, to his acuteness and to his unboundedness and to his responsiveness. Because that is the case and because we believe it to be true, we praise God. Just as Daniel and his three friends did in the middle of this threatening circumstance in Chapter 2.

As we deal with the realities that surround us and think about the impact that they have on us, we contemplate time. Our minds (even though they have been commanded to look beyond the limitation of time) still have this element ticking within them. We still have a clock in our heads and we try to rationalize the kind of affect that this is going to have over us in a given situation over a protracted period of time. The contemplation of the element of time in any situation would have a tendency to lessen, or to diminish the strong connection of unity between the two worlds.

We don’t praise God just to ameliorate the situation—which would not be a legitimate motivation for us. We praise God because we understand the absolute reality that governs the universe. If the scripture does anything, we have concluded, it exists to teach us about the way that the universe is governed. We have here again the manifestation of a cosmology that leans on us and makes demands. We understand how absolute reality comes to bear on any and all situations. Because that reality has been revealed to us, and because we have believed it, we make an imaginative act which changes the situation inherently. It changes it in our imagination which has a great salving affect on our emotions and on the way in which we contemplate and handle ourselves within any and all given situations. Daniel is a great example of that.

So we have a requirement which may be one of the more difficult requirements that the Lord has put upon us in terms of our behavior. We are required to grab our own mind around its throat and bringing it to yield, bringing it to a point of recognition. Acknowledgment is a key term here as much as any other word that we could find that has to do with praise. Acknowledging God, praising God for who he is, for what he has done, recognizing that man and his ability has been overreached by the power of God. If our minds can conform, if we can make our imaginations bow to this, if we can create that imaginative picture, which is the creation of a unity, then great blessings can come our way. This was always stated of the people of Israel in the first five books of the Old Testament. The imaginative act of praise is much, much more than a kind of worshipful act. It is the construction of a cosmology; it is the construction of a true symbolic universe in our own minds and in our own hearts.