NON-SITUATIONAL RESPONSES
A Study of the Book of Daniel
RESPONSE FIVE: Humility
PART ONE
By J. Michael Strawn
This is the fifth of the standard non-situational responses to situations in our study of the book of Daniel. This is the practice of humility. We are going to try to pull the concept apart and take a look at it from the book of Daniel and draw in also some other observations that we can find in related texts to try to help us understand exactly what happens in this practice that we call humility. What is it?
Let’s suggest that the world in which we live is a semiotic entity. That is to say like all signs (the word semiotic comes from the Greek word "semeion" which means sign) always points to some external reality. It symbolizes something else. So in Romans 1, we can take a look at the celestial spheres as the scripture says that men were to do and they would symbolize something other than themselves. Until the pagans decided that they would reject that semiotic truth built into human consciousness in the universe by God. They displaced God’s truth as the point of reference to understanding the universe and reverted to self-reference. So the semiotic world began to change. The world became whatever we said it was. The last part of Romans 1 shows the ultimate result of that which boils down to all these heinous crimes and sins committed against the Lord and against people.
Semiotic, we will say is a unity between symbols and meaning. In Hebrews 11, it is stated of Noah that he condemned by the world by his faith. That means that faith is a semiotic action, or a semiotic structure. If we condemn the world by our faith, we are commenting about the world, we are projecting meaning on to the world on the basis of faith and that becomes semiotic. It is meant to symbolize things.
Another illustration that we can use comes from entomology. There are ants that have been studied and they emit chemicals that are known as semiotic compounds referred to as pheromones. They have discovered that some of the chemicals that are emitted will have meaning to the fellow ants. Some pheromones will suggest the trail to follow, others might suggest presence of food supply, and others will encourage mating. This illustration is part of a larger reality that suggests that the world we live in is created by God in just this semiotic way. Even the ants depict a semiotic structure in their biology through the presence of these semiotic compounds.
In the same way, words and actions are equally semiotic structures. In the world that God has created, we respond not directly but we respond to semiotic structures. We respond to words, to the revelation of God first and foremost and because we respond to that the Lord takes it as a personal and direct response to him. But from our point of view, we respond to the Lord primarily to all of these statements and propositions, all of these words that he has given us. Actions as well should be considered semiotic structures because actions say something. Actions relate to something outside of themselves.
Now in the book of Daniel, in all the actions that he and his three friends, Hananiah, Azariah and Mishael, took were suggestive of a larger world, of a larger set of realities by which they operated and according to which drumbeat they marched. That makes their actions semiotic. Suppose that we suggest in this particular discussion that humility be identified as the head of a class of actions, and that we call this class of actions semiotic actions. So we could suggest that we operate within the world situation, and semiotic actions take place within that context. We are going to say they are semiotic because they bring meaning to bear on the world situation. Humility brings meaning to bear. It is not just a simple action disassociated from any other and greater reality, but yet quite the opposite. It brings meaning that is eternal, that is shaped by the presence of God and his revelation, to bear upon the world situation. A humble person is making a statement in his actions, by the very practice of humility, by the very posture of humility, about the world in which he lives. It establishes his relationship to those things based on his relationship with God. We can also say they are semiotic actions because they are interpretive. These interpret the world in which we live and the action that needs to be taken on the basis of our relationship to God. Certainly semiotic actions call for a response from the social order: "Why are you living that way? Why are you conducting your relationship to all things and to us in precisely this way?" It calls for a response.
Humility, then we are going to suggest in this segment of our study of the standard non-situational responses to situations might be viewed as a model or an example or at least an illustration of all other kinds of actions that we can refer to as semiotic. I shall make the leap and say for the benefit of our study that humility stands at the head of this class of semiotic actions.
Humility perhaps at the heart is a simple recognition that spiritual realities are superior to temporal situations. This recognition would be manifested at several levels:
1. God is superior to the individual. He is superior to us, superior to our intellect. That’s one level at which this is played out. An individual, who has not recognized that the Lord himself and his intelligence are superior to him, to the individual, is certainly not humble.
2. The unseen is superior to the seen reality. If we humble ourselves to this recognition, then we have to relinquish self-reference. It is the unseen that becomes the point of reference for us. It is the unseen to which we make all actions and all thoughts relative. This becomes decidedly and immediately important. To fail to recognize that the unseen is superior to the seen is not an action of humility; it is an action of pride.
3. The power of God is superior to temporal physical forces. In the book of Daniel, these four men were faced with a number of physical circumstances with a lot of physical force. For instance, there was physical force threatened in Chapter 2 when Nebuchadnezzar had the dream and then all of the wise men of the realm were sentenced to death because of their failure to interpret the dream. In Chapter 3, the three young men were cast into the fiery furnace. These are temporal physical forces, but in their statement they express to the king that they believe, in their humility, fully and firmly that the power of God is superior to temporal, physical forces. This is not an act of arrogance. This is an act of humility. If it is a question of boasting, it is a question of boasting in the Lord. Paul makes much of this in his writings.
4. The will of God is superior to dynamic situations. Human beings have a tendency to think of situations as dynamic. Often we can sit in business meetings, congregational meetings or in general conversation and we consider situations we think as dynamic. They are always moving, always changing. There are a lot of forces and factors moving into, filtering into, flowing into the situation which have to be taken into consideration. One often concludes that if we can take note of the dynamics of the situation, then we will be better prepared to deal with it. Such a case might be at Kadesh Barnea, where when Moses arrived with the tribes of Israel at that point, he basically said something like, "Let’s all unpack and go take the land from the Canaanites." Some representative leaders of the tribes came to Moses and said, "Well let’s think about this. Let’s send a reconnaissance party over." What they wanted to know was what were the dynamics in all this? When they came back after the forty-day reconnaissance mission, they were simply aghast and they acted decisively in that case, but without humility because they failed to believe, or they failed to have this recognition that the will of God is superior to dynamic situations. Well when was that truth cancelled out of the universe?
There are dynamic situations all through the book of Daniel especially in these noteworthy instances where Daniel or his three friends were brought into great conflict with the Babylonian power structure. In Chapter 6, there are dynamics over which Daniel had no direct control when the satraps and administrators set up this collusion against him to try to frame him and have him executed. There are dynamic situations in Chapter 5, when Belshazzar sees the handwriting on the wall and Daniel has to come in and say, "Here’s the problem and here’s the rendering of the meaning and here’s what it means for you." These dynamic situations are ever present and if our minds are not operating on the basis of humility we are always going to miss the correct recognition about what these things mean. Although we deal with economic realities, biological realities, sociological realities, psychological realities, and any other categorizations, we have to put things in their proper structure. And that is that even in spite of the fact that situations may appear to the central nervous system of the human mind to be dynamic, they still are inferior to the will of God. The will of God is always superior to dynamic situations. The Lord has taken great pains through the long history of the development of the revelation to prove this to us without question.
situational intelligence of man. This is not the only and the final categorization that we could use to make a statement about this recognition, but it’s true. The non-situational is always superior to the situational. A failure to see that, to recognize that, to believe that is a failure at humility. We have failed to act humbly and to walk humbly with our God.
These are some of the implications that this casts for us in our understanding of this particular non-situational response to situations. So in any and all circumstances, we take a posture of humility. Therefore, we could conclude, provisionally, that humility is a kind of "condition." It is a kind of condition of life. We might refer to it as a non-situational structure, or a non-situational ordering of life, where certain things are above and certain things are below.
In Daniel 4, Nebuchadnezzar has been warned, through a dream, that he is in jeopardy personally because of his arrogance and because of his pride; because he has not made this basic recognition which is repeated several times in Chapter 4. For instance in 4:17, "The decision is announced by messengers, the holy ones declare the verdict, so that the living may know 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." Later on, it is stated of him that he was prideful and arrogant and that he would not make this recognition that the non-situational is always and in every case and condition superior to the situational. He attempts to continue to operate on this basic premise which is wrong.
Now after he loses his mind in Chapter 4, he raises his eyes toward heaven and he repents and his sanity is restored. He makes the statement in 4:37, "Now I, Nebuchadnezzar, praise and exalt and glorify the King of heaven, because everything he does is right and all his ways are just. And those who walk in pride he is able to humble." Now that is a manifestation of a properly ordered universe. He is no longer walking in pride and he says in the final phrase of that verse. "And those who walk in pride he is able to humble." Now who is proof-positive of that? No one other than King Nebuchadnezzar.
Humility is a kind of condition, a kind of structuring, and a kind of ordering that we put on things by an act of the will because of our recognition that the non-situational always controls the situational. This sin of pride is the one that is so sharply condemned in the book of James 4:13-17 of the businessmen who made the statement, "Together we will spend a year and go over there and make money." He accuses them, (the Holy Spirit, through the medium of James) of walking in pride. And those men will be humbled. That is what the message is supposed to do. The word of God humbles us. The word of God structures things. The word of God creates what we are going to refer to as a textual condition on all situations.
What does humility do? It imposes a textual condition on all situations, on all circumstances. In other words, we could say it like this, "the non-situational is to humble the situational." It is an ordering of life that serves in some ways to create the world for us. It serves to order our situation. It acts on the situation in some way or another albeit
in my mind some of this is a little bit mysterious. But it would be clear that a man of humility necessarily imposes textual conditions on his situation. We can think about a lot of circumstances in which we will find ourselves as individuals and from which we will not be able to escape. And over which we will not be able to exert a great deal of influence or direct control or to change the situation in any way directly or indirectly.
But there are things that we can do and should do and must do if we are going to be practitioners of this all-important non-situational response to situations. We have to throw textual conditions upon all situations. If we have biological concerns, our immediate and one of the primitive steps is to throw a textual condition on that situation. If we are facing financial circumstances and I would assume that these might be reverses, a textual condition has to be thrown out. The humble mind does this in the way it sees the situation. From our reading of the book of Daniel, we know that God respects the humble and because of that situations are forced to correspond. Humility is key to responding in the situation itself. It is a significant truth for us to digest and for us to apply. Humility is one of the premiere requirements, we might be able to say, for dealing with or treating all mundane, material, temporal situations.
Semiotic actions will occur at one terminus of a unity. We’ll draw the unity this way. On the right-hand side of the page, we’ll write "semiotic actions." Semiotic actions will occur on the temporal terminus of the unity. They occur in the temporal world in the middle of all of these spatial concrete realities that surround us. Now there is another terminus. This one stands outside human lived experience and outside of human consciousness. We are going to refer to this as a "semiotic presence." In the case of Daniel, the presence of God and the presence of a revelation were a semiotic presence. That is to say, it brought meaning and interpretation to bear upon the situation. It called for a response. It also demanded that textual conditions be placed on all situations. Therefore, it itself is a semiotic presence. Semiotic actions refer us and point us to the semiotic presence.
Humility is a non-situational response to situations because humility is a non-situational constant. And it is composed of three parts. Therefore, it is triadic. As we look at this unity, we have a non-situational semiotic presence, which is the Lord, and his revelation will determining what happens in the world of men. Often to our loss scripture is not seen as a semiotic presence. There are other things, however, that try to usurp the role that should belong to the Lord himself and to the revelation. What would be some of the things that try to occupy our minds as a semiotic presence? One of these would be cultural and social elaboration--the way society operates, the way norms are defined, the way we are socialized. The way society attempts to elaborate things really becomes a semiotic presence for us. It fulfills that purpose in the mind. It occupies our thinking, it controls our thinking, it shapes the way we respond to things and it has usurped the role of the semiotic presence that ought to be reserved uniquely for the scripture.
Quite routinely human beings have thought that we can take the revelation of God and then connect it to human-lived experience. And that if we got the two together, we would have a complete structure. The problem with this is that if that happens, the revelation of God is no longer seen as, nor is it permitted to operate as, a semiotic presence. We have the entire history of Israel that proves that to be the case. They were warned about this repeatedly. For instance, in the book of Deuteronomy, in another series of studies on the rules of agency, we apprised ourselves of this reality—that for the nation of Israel to survive and to prosper; that is, for their fields to grow, for their biology to function well, for wealth to be incremental, for their geopolitical safety to be assured, and for their psychological peace and harmony to be maintained, the covenant had to occupy the position of a semiotic presence. If it didn’t, the foundations would come unglued, which in fact they did and Daniel is proof-positive of that. He lived through the tremendous upheaval when Nebuchadnezzar was sent at the behest of God to destroy the culture of Israel and destroy the temple and to carry these men off to captivity. In Chapter 9 Daniel states in other words, "Because of social and cultural elaboration, we failed to obey your will Lord and all of these curses have fallen upon us because of that." The word of God was not a semiotic presence to them.
There is another thing that occupies that position that should be reserved for the Lord, and that is "the past." A lot of people believe that their past experiences should be the basis for the way in which they inform themselves about the present—the way in which they respond to things. So the past says to the individual, "Here is how you should respond to this present situation." Well the past is never expected by the Lord to be a semiotic presence. The only history that can possibly qualify from the Lord’s point of view as a semiotic presence is the revelation of the Lord himself. He was quick to point this out to the leaders of Israel. "You must teach your children that the law is the semiotic presence. This is what must always inform your actions in the situation." The revelation of God will produce non-situational semiotic actions. And this has to do with biological concerns, economic concerns, psychological concerns, and sociological concerns. The personal past has to be obliterated as that which could possibly fulfill this role of the semiotic presence. All too often, however, we allow this to happen. This happens not only to individuals. It can happen congregationally, where the past (the history) of that congregation really becomes the semiotic presence. Or perhaps the wishes to escape the past can fulfill that same role.
Another thing that often fulfills the role of the semiotic presence is education--what we have learned through the socialization process of education that has shaped the way we look at the material world in general, the way we conceive of the temporal realities that surround us. Another one of these would be prejudices. Our personal inclinations, our likes and our dislikes, have a tendency to "color" everything that we see. Certainly one thing that often acts in human hearts as a semiotic presence would be personal ambition. "These are the things that I want to do—my direction in life, my inclinations, what I would like to accomplish, what I want to achieve, how I see my life unfolding." These things can displace the scripture as a semiotic presence. We must seek a semiotic presence built on the revelation of God creating in us the response of non-situational semiotic actions to situations.
Therefore, from the book of Daniel, we can generalize something about the way in which belief is connoted. Belief is to see scripture as a semiotic presence. We can’t uniquely boil it down to that. But largely we can make this statement. If we are believers, scripture is seen as a semiotic presence. It directs thought and it imposes conditions on the human mind. In the book of Daniel 10:12, Gabriel has come to announce some things to this good man in his concrete world situation. He says to Daniel, "Do not be afraid, Daniel. Since the first day that you set your mind to gain understanding and to humble yourself before your God, your words were heard, and I have come in response to them." The word of God is a semiotic presence to the mind of Daniel. He operated on this basis. Going back to Daniel 1:8, why did he decide he would not defile himself with the king’s food? Because it was a semiotic presence operating in his mind. His decision not to defile himself was a semiotic action. It brought meaning to bear. It put a textual condition on the situation in which he found himself and he would not violate that condition.