The sixth in our study of standard non-situational responses we identify as "confidence" in God, confidence in the Lord. The textual citation is Chapter 2:45 and also Chapter 9:1-3 of the book of Daniel.

Chapter 2:45 makes this statement, "This is the meaning of the vision of the rock cut out of a mountain, but not by human hands—a rock that broke the iron, the bronze, the clay, the silver and the gold to pieces. The great God has shown the king what will take place in the future. The dream is true and the interpretation is trustworthy." Daniel has confidence in something or in someone outside his own experience. That is always easy to say, but it’s not always easy to perform. He has confidence in someone outside of the world situation in which he finds himself, which at this time in Chapter 2 is very tense because the death threat has gone out and Daniel and his three friends are implicated. He has confidence therefore in something or someone outside of human rational thinking. According to Chapter 2:45 as Daniel interprets the dream and finalizes the meaning that it has for Nebuchadnezzar and for the kingdom, he demonstrates that he has confidence in the unseen. Or in the language that we have been using, he demonstrates confidence in the non-situational.

Suppose we use the word "morphology." A morphology, generally, means a kind of shape. Caterpillars have a certain morphology. Then they go through a metamorphosis and they change shape. Here we are talking about a particular type of shape when we are discussing the confidence that this man has in something or someone outside of his own rational thinking. We are going to say that his confidence in God has a particular shape, a design to it, something that can be identified as a morphology. Let’s try to demonstrate this. We have a unity once again. We have the eternal on the one hand and we have the temporal on the other. We have a linkage between the two that completes the triadic structure. In the world of men, in the situational, we have what we call the "grounding." This is where confidence is grounded. This is where it touches the tissue of living experience. It takes place within the world situation.

Daniel believes in God and he knows that God is present. Therefore because of that he knows how to see the ground. He knows how to see the world of temporal reality. There are a number of statements in the book of Daniel that demonstrate how it is that Daniel saw the situation or the place where confidence is grounded—where it touches. In the parlance that we are using, grounding means to touch, to directly effect the reality of life in which we find ourselves in the world situation. In Chapter 1:8, he says that he will not defile himself by the king’s food. This is a ground. This is one of the things that will be touched by his confidence and trust in God. In Chapter 2:18, he prays in the middle of a world situation that seems quite dangerous according to all observation. Nebuchadnezzar has sentenced the wise men to death. Daniel has pleaded for a certain amount of time from Nebuchadnezzar so that he might be able to interpret the dream. He prays. Here is a dangerous, tension-filled circumstance where nobody really knows what the outcome is going to be. This becomes a ground for his trust, for his confidence in God.

In Chapter 3:17, when Hananiah, Azariah and Mishael are arrested and they are subsequently about to be thrown into the fiery furnace, they make the statement that even if "we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to save us from it, and he will rescue us from your hand…but even if he does not, we want you to know O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold that you have set up." Here’s another situation where the confidence that these men have in God is grounded. It touches; it is embedded in the situation.

In Chapter 4, after the incident where Nebuchadnezzar has been given a dream about a big tree, he is subsequently driven insane by the Lord. Later his sanity is returned to him. In vs. 4:35, he says, "All the peoples of the earth are regarded as nothing. He does as he pleases with the powers of heaven and the peoples of the earth. No one can hold back his hand or say to him: ‘What have you done?’" The material world of the empire and the actions of men are a ground. This is where confidence in the Lord touches and brings effect on the temporal world.

In Chapter 5:26-28, Belshazzar is given the vision of the handwriting on the wall. Daniel, of course, is called in to interpret it. He says to Belshazzar at this moment, "the Lord has numbered the days of your reign and brought it to an end, weighed you on the scales and found you wanting, and your kingdom is divided and given to the Medes and Persians." Material circumstance is a ground and Daniel has confidence that this is going to happen.

In Chapter 6, Daniel has been arrested because he has prayed to God against a royal decree, and he is thrown into the lions’ den. In vs. 22, Daniel says, "My God sent his angel, and he shut the mouths of the lions. They have not hurt me, because I was found innocent in his sight. Nor have I ever done any wrong before you, O king." This is a real-life situation. Its danger, possibilities, physical realities all become a ground that is touched by one’s confidence in God. God’s presence seems sometimes static if we don’t know how to see the grounding. King Darius seemed to have power, but his power was not the key to this situation. The lions had power to kill Daniel, but their power was not the key to this situation.

Now on the other end of the unity that we are describing here is the source of that confidence—the non-situational generator of that confidence which is the Lord himself. God’s presence is not static in the universe. But quite to the contrary, it is most active. Daniel 1:8-16 says that God is active. The Lord worked in this situation to make sure that Daniel could have the kind of food that he and his three friends needed and wanted. In 2:18, in the midst of a difficult situation, the Lord responds to Daniel and the prayer of these four men as they seek his mercy. In 3:17, these three young men as they face what looks like certain death in the fiery furnace are dependent upon the active reality of God in the universe. In 4:35, Nebuchadnezzar has come to recognize that the action of God has brought him low and now has restored him. There is confidence here. The Lord’s actions generate confidence. In 6:22, we see that God is active, not static, in the affairs of men as he shuts the mouths of these ravenous beasts so that his servant will not be harmed in any way. God generates confidence in us albeit at what we might refer to as a kind of "distance." That is, distance as perceived by the human mind as fallible as it is.

Then there is the ground of the confidence--the place where our confidence is exerted. There is a unity—a connective linkage between those two. Suppose we were to describe these two poles in different language. Let’s say that the Lord has required of us a "categorical reaction." Confidence then would be a categorical reaction to the Lord and to his revelation. Anything that is categorical is unqualified. It is unrestrained and it is unrestricted. In these cases, when we see Daniel and his friends operating on faith, they made a categorical reaction to the Lord and to his word. Their reactions were unqualified. They were unrestrained by logical considerations. They were not concerned nor restricted in any way. They made categorical reactions. That is what confidence is.

There is another aspect of this confidence that we can discuss. This has to do with the way in which the ground (the world situation in which confidence is grounded and exerted) is demonstrated. We will refer to this as a kind of "treatment." How do we treat the world situation? Here Daniel is demonstrating an "uncloaked treatment" of the world situation. A situational treatment that is built out of confidence and which turns the world situation into what we have decided to call a "virtual vacuum." We will call it a virtual vacuum because suddenly in the presence of overarching confidence in God, the world is rendered void of any kind of contesting interest. Even the pursuit of self-preservation is not a contesting interest as we see in Chapter 3 or in Chapter 6. Especially in Chapter 3, when Hananiah, Azariah, and Mishael were bidden to bow down to an image. They were given a second chance to recant their position in order to live. They decided not to do that. Why? Because the world became to them a virtual vacuum. The fire is real, the threat is real, and there are men who can carry through on the threat. It looks like all ingredients are arranged for personal disaster for these three young men. But they believed that because of their overarching, categorical reaction to God, they had no choice but to treat this situation in an uncloaked manner. They were open. The mysteries of the situation were laid bare before the Lord. They knew that. They couldn’t see all of that; but to God the situation was uncloaked and to them their treatment of the situation was uncloaked. This turns the world situation into a virtual vacuum. This means that it is void of contesting interests.

Money is not a contesting interest. The pursuit of wealth in general, materialistic concerns, personal comfort, personal interest, personal ambition are not contesting interests. Even social preservation, physical preservation, economic preservation, biological preservation—these are not of sufficient strength to compose any kind of contesting interest to those who have overarching confidence in God. That is a whopper of a statement to make. But it is certainly carried through by these great men of faith.

This creates an effect. The effect is an eclipse. When they categorically reacted to the word of God and when they proceeded with an uncloaked treatment of the situation, they eclipsed themselves and their own personal views, limitations of that view and they eclipsed the circumstance itself. The circumstances they faced were quite weighty. The potential that the human mind could register about possibilities in these situations was of an enormous dimension from the human perspective. But they eclipsed the situation. These men were not destroyed either in the fiery furnace, or when Daniel was thrown into the lions’ den. We have to eclipse "self." This is part of eclipsing all circumstances. All these cases that are demonstrated in the book of Daniel teach us the truth that the effect of a categorical reaction to the revelation of God and an uncloaked treatment of the world situation amounts to an eclipse of causation and time. This is a biblical truth. Whether one chooses to believe it or not will not change the fact that the text instructs us in this manner.

The question is then, how does this eclipse take place? It takes place by two things: a categorical reaction to God and an uncloaked treatment of the situation. That is how we do it. The question I had in this study was could we capture this morphology—a morphology built up of these things, a categorical reaction to God and an uncloaked treatment of the situation? And could we regard this morphology as a "freed abstraction" or what we call a "generalization." Could we go to the text of Daniel, and could we see this morphology, this shape, the contours, and the design of his confidence in God as we have distilled it into these two things? Could we take that and free those observations from the text? Could we put them in our minds and carry them around with us? Could we use them to bolt down on our own mentality, our own rationality or rationalism, and force it into that morphology? Could we do that? Could we make that a generalization about human rationality? Could we make it a standard non-situational morphology subsequently to become a morphology of human rationality? Is that possible? Could that be done? Should that be done? It seemed to me that the answers were all in the affirmative.

Daniel’s morphology of thought is a morphology of representational thinking. If we could generalize from that morphology, we could take that, use that, absorb that into our own rationality. The use of our own intelligence could be shaped by this. Confidence in God would be a very large, arching, dynamic effect on human rationality because it eclipses human rationality and not only that, but it eclipses the world situation. Now that is a deal that is just too big and too valuable to pass up. A lot of the time, human beings entertain what are referred to as secondary effects. Secondary effects are illustrated in a lot of different ways. But here is an easy illustration to use. If we go to the leaning tower of Pisa and we carry up to the top a feather and a bowling ball and we proceed to drop both of them at the same time from the tower, we will learn that the feather will not hit at the same time as the bowling ball, although we know that all objects will fall at the same rate. The difference, of course, is the secondary effect of air friction on the feather. There will be air friction operating on the bowling ball, but not nearly as pronounced as it will be on the feather. Gravity is the first effect, which will oblige both of those to fall to the ground. But air resistance is a secondary effect that will cause the feather to hit the ground much later than the bowling ball.

In certain scientific readings, it has been stated that scientists may come upon an insight that has tremendous far-reaching consequences. If they are somewhat frightened from the reaction they may get from their peers, they might have the tendency to "bury" this insight in the footnotes of their technical writings instead of being open about it. They don’t know about secondary effects, they are a little worried about how it will work out and so they are a little afraid. They are not going to make a categorical reaction to the situation. So they put it in the footnotes. A categorical reaction with footnotes to the word of God is all bad. There is nothing good about it. In our relationship to things and to situations, we often read the word of God in such a way as to conclude that the Lord is with us, but…and then we start to worry about secondary effects. At Kadesh Barnea, they might have been willing to say, "God is with us, but you realize that they have fortifications to the sky over there, the people are giants and we are outnumbered." They might be so disposed to make a categorical reaction with footnotes.

In Matthew 6, when the pagans are criticized because they would rush headlong struggling and striving mightily for these things of material existence, a Christian might read that and say, "Oh yes. The Lord says that he’ll take care of us but…you have to take into consideration certain secondary effects—how you are going to get a job, how you are going to make money." This would certainly apply to the way we approach biological concerns. "Oh yes, God is with us but…" We might ridicule that as being a sort of categorical reaction with footnotes, which is really not a categorical reaction at all. This is not in any sense enjoying a similitude to the non-situational morphology of human rationality.

We might be able to determine that there are two morphologies of human rationality that are depicted in this text. One, of course, is the non-situational morphology that is pushed into the world situation. It has to be pushed into the world situation because it could never be there otherwise. This is not native to human thought shaped by a particular culture or by experience. This is the non-situational shape of rationality. It is added to the world situation. Revelation adds it to the world situation and helps to shape our rationality. This is much more than a doctrinal position. It is how thinking itself is done. There is yet another morphology of human rationality. Let’s call it a situational morphology. Its baseline would be human analysis, human observation, quantification procedures, and it will indicate without any kind of reservation that non-situational morphology is foolish. The situational shape of thinking will say that the non-situational shape of thinking is "risky" and is "dangerous." So if you become ill and decide to pray as a response to the situation, it would appear risky, dangerous and foolish as a means of handling illness. The non-situational morphology will state or insinuate that non-situational morphology is irresponsible given the realities of the world situation. Sometimes in some places, it would be considered quite illegal. The situational morphology with its baseline in observation will say that non-situational morphology is an exercise of ignorance.

In a recently published book by E. O. Wilson, the famed biological investigator, called "Conciliation: A Unity of Knowledge" he talks about ignorant-based metaphysics. What he is referring to in that book is what we call "non-situational morphology." The situational morphological point of view would say of the non-situational that it is "obscuritist." This is a term from the Middle Ages that refers to a willful obscuring of the way things really are. They would probably say that "hopefully the human race has escaped the vagaries of this kind of superstition and here you people are bringing back those obscuritist views." They might even say of the non-situational that "its basis is rooted in pride, or arrogance." Or at the very least, the situational morphological point of view would say of the non-situational morphology that "it is an act of stupidity." We see this demonstrated in a lot of different places in both the Old and New Testaments. There is a persistent clash. We are talking about a kind of thought that is built on confidence in God, confidence in his word so that we precipitate a categorical, unrestrained, unqualified, unrestricted reaction leading to an uncloaked treatment of all situations. This is what we are identifying as the "morphology."

Now, we could draw this in a lot of different ways to indicate graphically a distinction between these two. The first indication we have of this morphological difference lies in the first two verses of Daniel Chapter 1. In 1:1 it says, "In the third year of the reign of Johoiakim king of Judah, Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came to Jerusalem and besieged it." If that’s all we were to read, we might infer a situational morphology. That certainly wouldn’t be hard for one to do. Nebuchadnezzar thought, until his encounter with God in the fourth chapter, that his power, might, and intelligence had brought this result about. He was the empire builder. He was the one that would aggregate all these subsidiary and inferior kingdoms to himself. He would sit at the head of this huge, monstrous organizational system and control things by his own will. In Chapter 4, he believes that he had done all of these things. This is a situational morphology. It is not calculated to a categorical reaction to the revelation of God nor to an uncloaked treatment of the world situation.

In 1:2, we have the opposing and the much larger view. "And the Lord delivered Johoiakim king of Judah into his hand, along with some of the articles from the temple of God. These he carried off the temple of his god in Babylonia and put in the treasure house of his god." Take note of the construction, "And the Lord delivered…into his hand." God was doing this all along, but in order to understand that fact, one would have had to be in possession of a non-situational morphology of thinking. The shape of thinking would have had to be such that this awareness could have been understood and divined within the situation. In Romans 1, there were those who departed from a non-situational morphology of rationality. These are the ones, who although they possessed a basis of revelation that had been instilled in them (in their conscience) by virtue of their creation by God, decided to walk away from the understanding that God exists and that he is in control of the universe. They turned their thinking into a situational-shaped kind of thought—a situational morphology. They were wrong when they did that. They thought they had a better grasp on the truth, but they were in darkness. It says of them in Romans 1 that "their minds were darkened." Their reasoning had become poisoned. This is the situational morphology. We can see the two mindsets clearly depicted in the first two verses of the first chapter of the book of Daniel. One mindset says all this has been done by strategic thinking, tactical genius, visions of empire, the resolute character of the king, and unshakable determination; that these things have created this kingdom of Babylon that has brought down the walls of Jerusalem and has destroyed this temple. The non-situational morphology would have understood something very different than that; and that is, that God was at the base of this. God was doing all of this. He puts people on thrones and he makes them great and then when they violate his will, he does something about that too. Now this would tell us something about the way in which the world looks at such terms as "right" and "wrong." If the situational morphology is allowed to determine the difference between "right" and "wrong" then of course we will descend headlong into the wrong. If the situational morphology distinguishes between "true" and "false," then no distinction exists at all. This is what I believe has happened in the world.

Wisdom from the biblical point of view is a non-situational morphology of representation. That is what wisdom is. It is not just always knowing supposedly the right answer given in any particular situation. But we are told in the Old Testament to visit the elders and in the New Testament to go to those who have wisdom, the reference being to people who would have died to the situational morphology to be resurrected into a new kind of thinking—a non-situational shaped rationality. They would possess and operate upon the basis of a non-situational morphology of representation. Situational morphology has one great thing that it considers to be an asset; and that is, its apparent success. When looking at the world the situational mind would say, "Here’s what works. We can set goals, we can achieve goals, and when we achieve our goals, we have achieved success." Success defined this way would vary from one person to another as well as the way it is apprehended and how it is interpreted, etc. But the principle is that human beings can set goals and can direct all actions and resources toward that goal that is set firmly; and once the goal has been achieved, they have achieved success.

But it is "apparent" success. As far as Nebuchadnezzar understood, the situational morphology was apparently successful in every category of his life and every category of empire building and all the areas that embraced his massive personal agenda. But that apparent success was just that--apparent. It was an illusion. He was quite mistaken in that appraisal because he was operating on a situational morphology of rationality. I would submit that this is in large part one of the great pressing problems that Christians face. Not just today, but in every generation of men. Who will set the standard? The situational morphology sets the criteria and even is the criteria for truth or accuracy if we don’t oppose that with something that is outside the system. The question would be the same one that confronted Daniel when he came into the Babylonian empire and with which he had to deal on a regular basis. Do we have confidence in something outside the world situation? Do we have confidence in someone outside of human rationality? Do we have confidence in the unseen? Do we have confidence in the non-situational? We know whether or not we have confidence in that if we are willing to make a categorical, unqualified, unrestrained, unrestricted response to God and to his revelation. We know if we are willing to commit to an uncloaked treatment of the world situation, thus turning it into a virtual vacuum void of contesting interests.

Nebuchadnezzar was not willing to do that. He would not have thought it prudent. It would not have seemed wise to him. That’s because situational morphology had a monopoly on the criteria for rationality. In 1 Corinthians 1, Paul would say the same thing prompted by the Spirit of God about this issue—that the wise people of the world would hold in derision the revelation of God, the wisdom of God. Why? Because a situational morphology is a clash of mindset with the non-situational. It is a clash of two distinct morphologies. A Christian must understand that.

Again, let’s refer to Daniel 1:1-2. We can draw a structure that will help us graphically depict what is happening in this situation. On the one side of the page, we write "world of objects, material concrete circumstances, tangible, visible" and then we have the "world of events." There were a lot of events that were swirling around Daniel. We might refer to this as the "world of human content—what we hear, the things that are stated, and the ideas by which men operate." On the opposite side of the page, let’s write "situational morphology." As we have studied earlier under another rubric in this series of standard non-situational responses, we learned that Nebuchadnezzar was guilty of a particular personal error. He believed that his mind could self-relate to the world of objects, events and human content. He believed that he could self-relate on the basis of his own skill, his own personal might, his energy, and his own intelligence, which we would certainly not want to defame. He was a man of some intelligence, albeit situational intelligence. He could self-relate to this world of objects, events and content on the basis of his observational ability. He thinks he has built an empire on this basis. It comes to light later that he is wrong about that and he realizes that it is God who has set him on the throne and it is God who has allowed him all of these victories. It is the Lord, himself and his will who is using Nebuchadnezzar as a rod of iron to punish the people that he brought out of Egyptian captivity. He is leashed and he is limited but at first he doesn’t understand this fact because he is blind. The thing that has blinded him is a situational morphology.

Continuing with our conceptualization, outside of the "situational morphology" but encompassing it so as to be over it write "non-siuational morphology." This non-situational morphology is the agent. It is the morphology that opens our mind to the Lord to see the revelation, to appraise truth, to recognize the value of those things that come from the Spirit. This is an ancient way of thinking. It is "ancient" because it preceded the world and its created order. The Lord is the primary revealer of this way of thinking. It is ancient. Far older than we are. Far older than the human race because it resides first in the Lord himself. Through his beneficence and his grace, he has decided to share that with us. It is "pure" because it is untainted by anything situational. Therefore, when an individual detaches this morphology from the text, and begins to clamp it down on its own brain, on the way his own intelligence works, on the way his intelligence takes shape, he has the opportunity to enjoy in this ancient, pure morphology that is uncloaked.

This is the thing that I am persuaded we can see so clearly depicted in Daniel’s prayer in Chapter 2. When it says of him in vs. 22 that, "He reveals deep and hidden things; he knows what lies in darkness, and light dwells in him." In his second letter to the Corinthians, Paul addressed the individual whose mind was veiled—a mind that could no longer detect the light. There was nothing wrong with the light. The light had always been shining. The problem was with the perceptor. He couldn’t perceive the light. But in Christ, Paul stated, "the veil is removed." Perhaps its fair to say that in Christ, a situational morphology that veils the mind is removed and replaced with something most extraordinary, something that is ancient, far older than the world itself, far more ancient than the human race. It is pure because it is untainted, it is not contaminated. In the language of Daniel, it is not defiled by anything within the situation. It is purely uncloaked. This is a remarkable blessing to the human race, if we are willing to bow down to it.

A non-situational morphology acts upon two things at least. (1) It brings its powers to bear on the world of objects, on the world of events. It brings itself into the situational world of content—what men think, the content we derive from our association with the things of material, temporal existence. It comments on them. The non-situational morphology was obviously active in the way in which Daniel denied that he would allow himself to be defiled by eating the king’s food. This is part of the world of objects and events and content. There was meaning there. He knew that he was there to conform. But the non-situational morphology of a categorical reaction to God and to his revelation and of an uncloaked treatment of all situations changed the meaning of that world of objects, events and human content for these four men. The non-situational morphology comes to bear on the same world of objects, events and human content including the content of human-lived intelligence, human-expressed intelligence which is a large part of our lives. It brings itself to bear and it interprets such things as heat radiation as we discover in Chapter 3 that was used as a potential weapon against these three great men of faith and as matter in motion in Chapter 6 in the lions’ den. The non-situational morphology is much larger than anything in the situation. The four men operate on a non-situational shape of thought. That is called "faith."

Not only does the non-situational come to bear, with all of its considerable power, on the world of objects, events and human content.

(2) It also comes to bear on this whole concept of a situational morphology. It critiques it, it consumes it, it attempts to overturn it, and it attempts to debase its credibility. It makes every attempt to show that it is riddled with not only inaccuracy, but that it is a fraudulent view of the universe and the way in which the universe operates. This classic illustration in the first two verses of Chapter 1 demonstrates this. The world of objects, events and content would have been the city of Jerusalem. Here we have the intelligence of this king and his enormous power coming to bear in all of its situational glory on Jerusalem, and concluding fundamentally the wrong thing about the entire situation and about how this situation came to be in the first place. We see the distinction very clearly. In Chapter 1 and 2, we find that here is a king and his satraps and his administrators and nearly everyone in his kingdom that would have operated on an improper basis for understanding the world around them. Certainly the Jews were guilty of this too. But in Chapter 9, here is Daniel praying and he says, "I know why this has occurred to us—because we have sinned against you. We did not heed the word of the prophets. You sent those men to us, but we didn’t hear. Nobody in the street heard. Our princes did not respond. Our fathers did not respond. Our kings did not respond. No one in the land responded. So we have been carried off into this captivity." He knew what he did because the non-situational morphology explained to him exactly what had caused this disaster and how it could have been averted.

One would suggest perhaps from this appraisal that confidence in God becomes epic in the proportions of its significance for us. It is possible to survey the book of Daniel and to look at a number of categories or ways or instances in which the situational morphology expresses itself and presents itself to be a contradiction to the non-situational. One of these is found in 1:3-5, with particular attention placed on vs. 5: "The king assigned them a daily amount of food and wine from the king’s table. They were to be trained for three years, and after that they were to enter the king’s service." This was after they had been carted off to the Babylonian captivity and these situationally attractive types like Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah were picked out of the lineup to be used by the kingdom.

Here are some manifestations of the situational morphology.

1. It looks for the utility of persons, ideas and abilities to the prevailing system. They were there because they had utility, or at least they were thought to be men who could ultimately provide a certain usefulness to the prevailing system, which was Nebuchadnezzar and the bureaucracy of the empire. We hear a lot today in the business world about how individuals are often consumed and used by companies and then when there is nothing left that is needed from them, they bring someone else in at a much lower payscale as their replacement. We find that there is often indifference to the well being of people in our world and often it is because certain people are not considered to be of great utility to us, to our world, to our needs, and to our circumstances. This would also apply to the utility of ideas. Certain ideas coming from scripture are not considered to be of utility to the prevailing system as judged by a situational morphology. Often and lamentably, some of us in the church are guilty of that same kind of thinking. We wonder what is of utility to us. Often, in terms of representational considerations, some have concluded unfortunately in the long run for them, that these thoughts are not of much utility to the prevailing system. That is a mistake.
2. In Chapter 1:9-10, there is another manifestation of the situational morphology. It depicts a situational philosophy of realism. "Now God had caused the official to show favor and sympathy to Daniel, but the official told Daniel, ‘I am afraid of my lord the king, who has assigned your food and drink. Why should he see you looking worse than the other young men your age? The king would then have my head because of you.’" This man experienced a great deal of anxiety because he had a certain philosophy of realism. He knew he was dealing with a hot-tempered, perhaps unpredictable personality. He had been given direct orders. He was responsible to see that they were executed. A situational philosophy of realism will drive men to their graves with worry, anxiety and fear and all under the wrong apprehensions. I would suspect that those of us in the body of Christ that are overwhelmingly depressed, swept away by material concerns, and worried unreservedly about things and about circumstances and about our future well being might be gripped by a kind of philosophy of realism. We are all going to have a philosophy of realism. The question is what kind? Will it be situational or non-situational? This official over Daniel is depicting a decidedly situational philosophy of realism. So did the individuals in Chapter 6 who tried to trap Daniel. They believed that would be the way realistically to remove an obstacle, a rival, to make their ascent in the kingdom a much more seeable reality. A lot of people operate on the basis of a situational philosophy of realism. So their hearts are anxious about certain prospects.
3. A third manifestation of the situational morphology is to be found in Chapter 2:8-12, which illustrates that a situated mind, a mind shaped by the situation, will often make a situational response to a divine initiative. God will act, and people in the world will make a situational response. In this case, when Nebuchadnezzar is given the dream by the Lord and he can’t interpret it, he knows it’s too important to dismiss. He calls for the wise men of the kingdom and requires them to tell him the content of the dream and also to interpret the significance of it. They find themselves unable to do this. God now has placed this dream in his head, but he responds situationally to it. The response is one of anger. There is a response of overbearing power. He reaches out and throws out a blanket death sentence over these wise men. He certainly demonstrates fear. The dream has troubled him somewhat. There is frustration. He can’t achieve what he wants done. There is even mutual manipulation here where these situational types try to manipulate the king to save their lives—"No one has ever required this. Just tell us the dream and we will give you the interpretation." Nebuchadnezzar knew he was subject to being manipulated. There is the presence of suspicion here. He doesn’t trust them, they don’t trust him. All of this because of an initiative taken by the Lord himself. I think in a lot of ways this is how all of us react. Another illustration is in Chapter 9, where Daniel in his prayer will say, "You sent to us the prophets. We didn’t heed them. Now all of these curses have been poured out upon us just as your word told us would happen, and still we have not come to you to seek repentance." There was a situational response to a divine initiative. They should have responded. Daniel is demonstrating that once again.

Here we have an opportunity to eclipse the world in which we live. We are told that people of faith have eclipsed, by virtue of the power of God, all world situations. We are going to have to learn to make a categorical reaction to God, the generator of our confidence. We must respond by an uncloaked treatment of the situation, making it void of any contesting interest. In so doing we are projecting enormous confidence in something outside of our own consciousness, something outside of the world situation. We can discover that this confidence is much larger than some bold statement about the presence of God. It is a way of thinking. For the lack of a better term at this point, we have decided to refer to it as a non-situational morphology of human rationality.