Now we begin with that obvious truth that spiritual realities exist regardless of whether we wish to acknowledge them or not. The spiritual realities exist regardless of our relationship to them or lack thereof. When we face circumstances as Christians and when we operate on non-situational intelligence, then something happens that would not happen otherwise. We deliberately interject spiritual reality into every circumstance that exists within the world situation. I believe that it is safe to say that the interjection of the spiritual reality into world situations can be identified as the definitive human action. We will push this particular kind of interjection into the situation.

I call it definitive because I couldn’t think of any other action that so defines ideally what the human being has been placed on the earth to do and to be. He deliberately interjects spiritual reality into world situations. This is what we are here to do. This is what we have been commanded to do. When we go back and look at the nation of Israel. We read some of their history or we entertain statements in the book of Deuteronomy or the book of Leviticus and are instructed that these people interjected the spiritual reality into every aspect of their life on the basis of the covenant and what they knew about spiritual reality (because it was revealed to them). This included farming. This included the creation of wealth. This included their herds, flocks, families, health, and relationship to other nations. Everything depended upon interjecting the spiritual reality into these things.

It is a definitive human action. This is man at his best. It is a deliberate action because he decides to do this, as an expression of personal will. One of the results that comes from this interjection is that it amends the situation. Let’s say that primarily it amends the situation from our point of view—the limited point of view of man located within the horizon of the world situation. He can’t see everything but he knows God does. When he interjects spiritual reality into the situation as these three boys did, then they witness that the situation is amended because of the presence of God and what he reveals.

Let’s read the two verses in question. Verse 7: "Therefore, as soon as they heard the sound of the horn, flute, zither, lyre, harp and all kinds of music, all the peoples, nations and men of every language fell down and worshiped the image of gold that King Nebuchadnezzar had set up." Now that’s the situation and, of course, there are going to be requirements. If they do not worship when they are called, they are to be cast into the burning fire.

These men interject spiritual reality into that situation. Verse 17: "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, O king. 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 you have set up." What they did was interject the spiritual realities of the presence of God and the truth of the covenant into the situation. That amended the situation from their point of view. It amended it in favor of greater accuracy, of greater truth. Nebuchadnezzar, however, is thinking in a very different way. He sees the situation as something controlled by physics and physiology. You have the living tissue of these three men. You have the intense heat radiation of the furnace. They are not going to be able to last long. He has the political clout. He has the marshaled authority. He has these burly soldiers who stand ready to bind these men hand and foot. He can get enough matter in motion going because of his authority to throw these men into the fiery furnace, which is in fact, what happens.

He considers it as an "unamended" situation. Unamended because it does not speak of spiritual realities. That is not part of this thing. It is simply a matter of the physical realities that surround these men and the will of the king and the will that is expressed through the leadership into the Babylonian empire. Now we know that that is the case because of a statement that Nebuchadnezzar makes to these men. In Chapter 3:15, when they are arrested and when they stand before him, he says, "No when you her the sound of the horn, flute, zither, lyre, harp, pipes and all kinds of music, if you are ready to fall down and worship the image I made, very good. So he is willing to give them another chance. But if you do not worship it, you will thrown immediately into a blazing furnace. Then the key phrase, "then what God will be able to rescue you from my hand?"

He doesn’t see this as a situation that involves a spiritual reality. He sees only what he can understand on the basis of his experience—the heat, the vulnerability of living tissue, and his power to get them into it, and the authority of what he has decreed in the realm and the arc of his own power and majesty. He sees nothing of an amendment here. But these three young men do. Pushed intelligence, that intelligence that is acquired from the Lord, because he is generous enough to expose it to us and share it with us and to develop it in us, interjects spiritual reality into the world situation. That is not what situated thinkers do, but biblical thinkers do that. Pushed intelligence forces the interjection of spiritual reality from outside the situation into the world situation. That is what these three men did. They are examples of pushed intelligence. They are interjecting spiritual reality into the situation.

An active faith also interjects outside reality into world situations. Therefore it would be impossible to draw a distinction between a pushed intelligence and an active faith. They are in fact one and the same. They are much, much more than synonymous. They are quite identical. This act, this definitive, deliberate act of interjection of the spiritual reality could be understood as the watershed of situational treatments. Of all treatments, this becomes one of the most significant, if not the most significant. Here is how we might extrapolate that.

We often face circumstances of one variety or another, and we may say something like this about those situations, "What are we getting out of this. What are you getting from this? What are you drawing out of this situation?" Literally, we don’t draw out anything from situations. We map meaning on to situations. But we speak that way. When we talk about "drawing out" of the situation, we are talking about inductive procedures—all the experiences that we have had and how they relate to this situation and how they can be compared. We are discussing measurements, how we can measure certain things. We are talking about comparisons, about appraisals that can be made. We refer to analysis and make observations. These are all part of what we think of as drawing out of the situation.

In traditional forms of psychotherapy, the therapist openly invites the client to express him or herself—to talk about the situation. "How does this make you feel? What do you think about this? How does that affect your life? So please come forth and express yourself. What do you get out of this? What is your analysis? What are your observations? What do your feelings tell you?" However, there is a contradiction between that treatment of the situation and what is clearly depicted, authorized, and encouraged by God regarding how we treat situations.

Here it is. It is not what we get out of the situation by analysis that is important, it is rather what we interject into a situation that is important. This is what makes the difference. Whatever the situation--loss of a job, economic reverses, moments of health difficulties, family crises—what matters to us most is not what we get out of a situation, it is what we interject into the situation because every circumstance has what we can isolate as a situational architecture. Everything we experience has some shape to it, some form, some design to it. We lump all those phrases together and we refer to them as the situational architecture. This situation in Daniel 3 has an architecture. But these young men are not treating the circumstance on the basis of what they can get out of it—their comparisons, observations, appraisals, etc. They are interjecting something into it hence it becomes the watershed of situational treatment.

What is the situational architecture here? Let’s draw a block on a piece of paper and on that block, we write the words "spiritual reality"—the Lord, his will, his word, his power. These are realities. Now let’s draw a smaller block that sets on top of the other block and we will label that one with the words "temporal elements." The temporal elements in Daniel Chapter 3 are the furnace, heat coming from it, the physical weakness of human flesh and its susceptibility to being destroyed by fire, the power of the men to bind them and to throw them against their will into the fiery furnace. Those are the temporal elements. When we talk about situations, we might find ourselves really describing the temporal elements. If something occurs in our life, and somebody says, well what is the situation? Almost inevitably, we will begin by describing all the temporal elements and we think that the temporal elements really are the situation. That would be a mistake because the situation is composed of the temporal elements and the spiritual realities plus the linkage between those two. In other words, those two blocks and the connection between those two blocks—that is the situation.

These young men did not for a moment describe the situation uniquely in terms of the temporal elements that could be analyzed, appraised, compared, measured, observed and thought about from the point of view of inductive procedures. They knew that the situational architecture went far beyond that to include the spiritual reality—that which they cannot see but which is just as real as the temporal elements that can be detectable in some kind of tangible way. These three men know what the situation is. Often when crisis strikes, we are struck by the temporal elements. We will describe it by saying, "Well my position is this or I have this problem or this is the situation. What can one do about this situation?" We forget that this is an understated situational architecture because for those who believe in God, for those who operate on truth, the situational architecture involves the spiritual realities. They are interjected into the situation. They are part of the situation.

Now we have to carefully draw a distinction here. We can think of the world situation as nothing other than the temporal elements and we try to cover it over or paint it a little bit or add on the religious considerations. But that is not what this is about. This is not an addition to the situation. Spiritual reality is a part of the situation. It is a part of the situational architecture. It is often considered that spiritual realities are foreign elements and they have no place there. Nebuchadnezzar would say, "What god can deliver you out of my hand? You stand before me and you defy my decree, my command, and my royal authority by throwing into this mix spiritual realities that you hold on to. These are foreign to this reality. This is simply a matter of you doing what I tell you to do. What god will deliver you out of my hands? Your thinking in terms of these spiritual values is superfluous?"

We are constantly facing these types of conflicts in our situations also. "What is really important is your blood pressure. What is really important is what is in your bank account. Those are the important things. The rest of it is foreign. The rest of it is superfluous." However, this is very much in concert with something that we discovered in the book of 1 Peter that we refer to as "plenary reality." Plenary reality is made of three parts. There is only one reality—the part you can see, the part you cannot see and the connective index action between the two. These three men recognized that. They come to this situation with this architecture clearly and plainly in mind. They come to the situation knowing the plenary situational architecture. They are not deceived by operating on the basis of what they see. They do not interpret the situation as merely composed of the temporal event and then try to add a little religiosity to make this thing go down a little easier.

In verse 17, these men talk to Nebuchadnezzar on the basis of this kind of interjection. And they say, 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, O king." The phrase I want us to especially notice is "the God that we serve." Service is precisely the action of interjecting the spiritual reality into the situation. It has no empiric quality to it. You can’t see this interjection. There is a manifestation of it—they will not bow down. But you can’t see the interjection. It is not part of the recognizable temporal elements. These men serve God in the way that they would encourage us to serve God. Primarily service to the Lord involves interjecting the spiritual reality into all things. We interject the Lord into all categories and into all situations in life. Service would be interjecting spiritual reality into every crisis that we face and the crises of our loved ones and of our brothers and sisters. And interjecting the spiritual reality into the ways of thinking. That is what it means to "serve."

However, we can redefine service as purely an empiric act. We can feed the poor, but not because it is the result of an interjection of spiritual reality into all things. We can clothe the naked, we can care for the homeless, we can work in church programs, but service has been denatured because it is not built on the interjection of spiritual reality into temporal situations. We often would like to define service as a bunch of actions. But actions and the interjection of spiritual reality are not synonymous things. They are very different. I would make a proposal that perhaps our definition of what it is to serve God has been given an almost complete and total empiric definition. Whereas here, service primarily is built upon interjecting spiritual reality into all things. This way of serving the Lord is demonstrated here in Chapter 3 as something that inherently overrides the flesh. The flesh does not want to go through this experience. The flesh does not want to feel the pain of the fire. The flesh does not want to be in this unenviable position where all the death threats are made. But this form of serving overrides the flesh and becomes a remarkable characteristic of spiritual interjection and the way in which it is depicted as the way to serve the Lord.

When we are involved in uniquely empiric actions, after a while we tire. It’s often talked about today that preachers go through what is called "burnout." I doubt very seriously that preachers are burned out because they’re overwhelmed with the interjection of spiritual reality into all things. They are tired out because of a reliance on empiric action to relate to situations around them. It is precisely because they didn’t interject spiritual reality into all situations that has redirected all of their psychological energies away from God. When we interject the spiritual realities, we don’t tire, but rather we grow, we prosper, and we flourish. We don’t get burned out. There is a theory of church work that grows out of this as well—that we need to get folks involved in empiric activity. But empiric activity does not inherently override the flesh and link us to the presence, will and revelation of God. Feeding the poor, clothing the naked, caring for the homeless, working in church programs does not inherently override the flesh. Serving God by interjecting the spiritual realities into all situations does that. It is inherently an index action. It links the world that we can’t see with the world that we can. It links God to the world situation.

That is the basis for our approach to the Lord in terms of service. There is no doubt that serving God is situation-specific. However, at the same time that it’s situation specific it is not situational. It shows up in the situation. In this case, the serving of God shows up as not bowing down. In Chapter 1, the serving of God involves not being defiled—not eating the food that is offered to them. In Chapter 2, it shows up in seeking knowledge from the Lord. In Chapter 4, it is telling the king that it is time for him to repent of this sin. In Chapter 5, it is confronting the immoral Belshazzar and saying, "You have been weighed and have been found wanting; your kingdom is divided; you are dead." In Chapter 6, it involves going home and praying in the face of an edict that prohibits that prayer. These were acts of serving God. These are specific things that show up within the situation, but they are hardly situational because they are directed and motivated from outside the situation.

Some consider this interjection of spiritual realities into situations as an "intrusion" on secular themes. In public schools we often hear of children who are reprimanded or otherwise punished because they bring bibles to school or because they write school papers on religious themes. That is considered an intrusion into a secular atmosphere. In the entertainment world, the way in which religious people are depicted can vary greatly. It might be all right to be overtly religious if you happen to be African American, or if you happen to be old. But if you are supposed to be young and hip and part of the post-modern generation, religion is considered to be an intrusion into the secular system. Or some might consider it to be nothing more than a contrivance placed on human understanding. A contrivance that is thrust on human freedom, calculated to limit our freedom or a contrivance that will deny the reality of the way things really are in the world. Or a contrivance of some sort of subculture which we call Christianity that is being forced upon everyone else. It might be considered an oddity, something that really smacks of a kind of avoidance of the way things really are in the real world. So it is an intrusion, or it is considered to be a contrivance on secular themes and on human understanding and certainly upon human freedom.

One of the first places that this interjection shows up will be human language. Language is to be shaped by the will of God, by the presence of God, by the knowledge of God, by the truth of God that is available to us. These are interjected into human language and human language will take shape because of that, which many people will think of as objectionable. Even some within the local church might find this kind of interjection, built on what we have discussed so far, as an objectionable thing—a kind of intrusion, perhaps even a contrivance. Now as a preacher, one is liable to criticism if that preacher’s discourse is not the result of interjection. That becomes the basis of the critique of him, the judgment of the man and of his work, the way in which he preaches and what he is about as a preacher. However, if his discourse is a result of interjection, then he is beyond reproach by biblical definition and by biblical fact. Whether we wish to allow that recognition to stand is quite another matter. It is in effect the same limitation that we see in the life of Nebuchadnezzar. He was not willing to admit the words of these men as they stand before him in Chapter 3 is the result of an interjection of the spiritual reality "that holds in his hands your life and all your ways" (as Daniel told Belshazzar in Chapter 5).

Interjection as we are describing it here is a requirement. This is not an option for us. It is a requirement. It is a demand. And it is an act of the personal will. We must do this. If that is not the case, in a congregational setting, in a church, then there are going to be some who consider themselves quite religious but who do not interject spiritual reality into all systems and into all ways of thinking. What would they possibly have to say about those who do interject spiritual reality into ways of thinking and into crisis and into situations and into categories and into all things? They are going to see that this is a problem. They are going to consider this to be quite objectionable. They are going to consider this to be an intrusion and at the very least a contrivance and they are not going to like it. Why? I would suggest the reason is because they have refused this non-situational response to world situations. They are not willing to serve God in this way. It is much easier to feed the poor, to clothe the naked, to counsel broken marriages, to service in church programs, or to care for the homeless than it is to interject spiritual reality into all of these things.

In this scenario in Chapter 3, the interjection of spiritual reality into that situation was done not withstanding the outcome. In verse 17, our three friends state to Nebuchadnezzar, "God may or may not save us, but that will not change the nature of this situation as we stand before you." Therefore, interjection of the spiritual reality is one thing, and the temporal outcome is something very different. One does not depend upon the other. We might state it in this way: that the two are not necessarily related. That interjecting perhaps should be disassociated from our concern for temporal outcomes. They were interjecting whether they were consumed in the fiery furnace or not. Daniel interjected spiritual reality into the situation in Chapter 6, whether the lions would destroy him or not. We interject the spiritual reality whether we live or whether we die. Now these men admitted they could have died in that situation. That would not have invalidated, however, their interjection because the interjection and the outcome are two entirely different things.

When we are faced with serious health issues, or when there are economic crises, we are almost always concerned about temporal outcomes. Temporal outcomes have a way of controlling the level to which we are willing to interject spiritual reality into these circumstances. Fasting and prayer are means or modes of interjection. We are praying in a particular posture of interjecting. When we are fasting it is because we are interjecting spiritual truth into the situation. When we don’t eat, it is much more than a discipline, although it has the qualities of a discipline, which is involved. Fasting reaches out and brings us into the purview of the spiritual reality of God’s sovereignty over human experience. So we are less concerned with temporal outcomes and much more deeply concerned with the requirement, to interject the spiritual reality into every situation. In the situation that these Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah faced, interjection appears to liquefy the situation. Now the reason why we say it is liquefied is because Nebuchadnezzar thinks it’s a very clear and obvious circumstance. He basically says to them, "Do this or don’t do this. Live or die. That’s the way it is." Now these men interject spiritual reality and it begins to break up that solidity in Nebuchadnezzar’s mind about his analysis of the situation—it is liquefying. Notice that they are not dealing with the details—with the heat or the power of the king. They are concerned about the Lord’s presence. They are consumed with interest about the Lord’s will. That interest in his presence and in his will—that interjection—filters out all other considerations, or at the very least it minimizes them. As we face certain circumstance in life, the interjection of the presence of God, and the will of God will liquefy all situations. It wouldn’t matter what the situation is. Our interjection of his presence and of his will has to filter out all other considerations. It has to minimize all other considerations.

When we are involved in situations, our interest often lies in how to analyze a situation. I suppose we are supposed to analyze, but we have to be careful with what we call "analysis." We can analyze on the basis of trying to get something out of the situation or we can analyze it on the basis of what we are interjecting into it. The anchor point of the analysis of a situation is that of interjection. It begins with or it fails with this deliberate act. Without the interjection, we result with an invalid situational analysis because the only thing that has really been appraised is the temporal elements. The rest of it goes unnoticed, unappreciated, undetected. It’s filtered out. It has no significant involvement. It is an intrusion or a contrivance and so its influence is considered null. But that would be a terrible mistake because from the Lord’s point of view, the presence of spiritual reality is a part of the situational architecture. With the interjection of spiritual reality, we have a valid analysis of the situation because we are aware of all the parts. We know something about the part that we cannot see (the spiritual realities) and we know something about the part that we can see (the temporal elements) and we see the connection between the two (the interjection of spiritual reality into the situation by a deliberate mental act of an individual by faith in the presence of God and his revelation).

Astrophysicists, who try to look at star systems and conduct situational analysis without the benefit of the interjection of spiritual reality, operate on a formal notation system, trying to create a mathematical system, a mathematical language that can express the totality of these systems. It simply has to be concluded that situational analysis is invalid because the principal element of the spiritual reality of the presence of God and his revelation has been eliminated. Man and situational intelligence always wishes to eliminate these, can never appreciate them, and therefore have no solid anchor point for their analysis. They have no point to stand upon that is immovable, concrete, permanent, and fixed that tells them the truth. So they have to operate on the vagaries of something else and it shows up as a vagary because they have missed a large part of what the situation is really about. It cannot be detected on the basis of experience.

Some folks have stated in one way or another, directly or indirectly that the interjection of spiritual reality really only does one thing—it spiritualizes the situation. It takes a situation and it really turns it into something unreal. We are faced with something concrete and then someone comes in and wants to smear all over it a bunch of religious jargon or happy, positive, upbeat, and optimistic thoughts, which really belies the fact that the situation is very grave and looks irretrievable. But still we like interjections like that because they tend to spiritualize the situation. It does us very little good but it may make us "feel" a little bit better; and so we can appeal to that as a sort of coping behavior, or a coping mechanism. People who clamor against what has been referred to as ignorance-based metaphysics often criticize that kind of behavior. They would say, "That’s not reality, that’s not the truth. It’s simply an appeal to the weak side of us, part of our evolutionary past where we thought we needed a god to accompany us in this lonely journey that we have here on the earth.

However, we would dissent from that interpretation and conclude that interjection, far from being a spiritualization of any situation is really the achievement of a higher level of realism. Individuals who see that the situational architecture is composed of these spiritual realities which were there and predate the situation and are part and parcel of the situation really have a greater and more exhaustive sense of realism than those who do not. This is certainly Daniel’s position. Hananiah, Azariah and Mishael did not think of themselves as spiritualizing the situation in Chapter 3. They didn’t just look at the concrete situation and say something like "Well it looks like we are going to die, but at least we might be able to fool ourselves into making this a little easier to choke down if we just consider God and all the wonderful things he said to us and try to be upbeat and happy and all that other stuff." They believed they had achieved a higher level of realism than anybody else that day when they stood in judgment. They saw the way things really are. Because this definitive, deliberate action of interjection had shown the situation to be amended by the presence of God and the will of God. It was amended in their minds and that amendment leaned toward the accuracy of the situation as perceived by the Lord. We could call that an incommensurable realism. It’s realism and it is highly incommensurable with the world of situated experience—with the situational mindset--because it is spawned in eternity, in the non-situated intelligence of God. But I think that what we learn from Daniel Chapter 3 is that this is not a spiritualizing of a concrete circumstance, coating it over with religious jargon or trying to deny the concrete elements and the significance of those. Rather than spiritualize the situation, this brings us to a higher level of realism because this interjection tells us what the real components are of the structure of the situation. It’s a higher level of realism because it brings with it much more clarity.

In terms of how they related to the situation, this interjection acted much like a wedge. The wedge was inserted into the seams of the situation and it was pried open. They could see that this situation was open to and susceptible to the power of God. So interjection, among other things, would wedge open the situation to the spiritual realities. Now that’s not really something that we do. It is something that takes place in our minds because as we suggested in the very beginning, spiritual realities are what they are regardless of our awareness of them and regardless of our relationship to them. They exist. Without that interjection, we would consider situations to be virtually closed. We would say that they are "closed" because the mind can only entertain temporal cause and effect. The quest for spontaneity with the will of God that we discussed earlier in our study of the book of Daniel simply never develops. Spontaneity and interjection are closely related. Closed situations are those that do not benefit from this interjection of spiritual reality into them. The situation is closed except to the manipulations that are open to human intelligence in terms of its control over physics and physiology and over temporal cause and effect. We think about the temporal elements and we describe that uniquely as the situation. Nebuchadnezzar, clearly at one point in his life is an example of this. Darius certainly reflects this situational perception of things when he issues the decree in Chapter 6 that no one can pray to a "god" other than him for thirty days. Belshazzar the son of Nebuchadnezzar is certainly a grand example of one who was gripped by situational perceptions at the party in his palace that night when he drank from the golden goblets that belonged to the Lord’s temple. These were closed situations in the minds of Nebuchadnezzar, Darius and Belshazzar because they analyzed them without the interjection of the spiritual reality of the presence and will and power of God.

With the interjection of spiritual reality we see situations as open. That is the fruit of the non-situational perception which Daniel possessed in abundance and which our three sterling examples—Hananiah, Azariah, and Mishael—certainly demonstrate. There is no vagary there. It is very clear and open. It is a watershed situational treatment. The treatment of the situation is shaped and guided by the spiritual reality. Let us attempt to make three rather large applications of this idea of interjection:

FIRST APPLICATION: It is true that Nebuchadnezzar interpreted their action of interjection as nothing more than defiance of his divine authority. That is why they were arrested. These men were expected to bow down--not just to the golden image that he set up, but to the will of the king. Actually you have two idols here. Nebuchadnezzar’s will is one idol. The image itself is another. Or they can be combined as part and parcel of the kind of idolatrous system that he set up. In Chapter 3, these men simply deny the king this gesture. He has no other basis except to understand it as defiance. In Chapter 6, Daniel is seen as defiant because he violates the king’s decree. That’s why he is arrested. Because of defiance. But in both of these situations and others throughout the bible instead of being defiant, God’s prophets and servants are interjecting ultimate truth into the world situation. It is a criticism of the world. It is a recognition about the vagary of human intelligence that the world sees it as defiance instead of an interjection of spiritual reality.

So in our world, we are often seen as defying the law. Well if there is a law that stands against the interjection of spiritual reality that has to be defied. We are seen as standing in defiance of social conventions because of contemporary situational mindsets that have monopolized the meaning of rationality and the standards of rationality. So they claim the monopoly on determining which social conventions are valid and which are not. They also stand in a position to enact laws and all sorts of social pressures in order to comply or to force our compliance. But we do not act in this world simply on the basis of defiance. Defiance is the way in which the worldly mind understands our actions because they have no other way of understanding non-situational responses. They certainly cannot accept this as an interjection of spiritual reality into world situations. In cases of peer pressure, we have all been open to the influence of socialization. It often happens that our peers would suggest doing things a certain way that we would oppose. They would ask "why not?" We would answer, "Because we are interjecting spiritual reality into the situation." That amends the situation from our point of view. It is no longer the same situation that others see. They see an unamended one. We see one that is quite amended. Therefore we will not do what others would bid us to do. That will be seen as defiance of social reality, defiance of human rationality, defiance of the law or defiance of accepted standards of social conventions.

It stands against the social meaning of religion. The social meaning of religion today is that it is supposed to be a part of a very therapeutic church. We are here to serve the unenfranchised members of society do that well but we are not to interject spiritual reality. If we are just willing to lean on empiric actions—feed the poor, clothe the naked, care for those afflicted with AIDS, counsel those who are psychologically bereft, and become involved in church programs that can otherwise help build a community—then we are given a commendation, and are going to be accepted within world society. But if we interject the spiritual reality, the way these men interjected, we will be seen as defiant.

SECOND APPLICATION: In world situations, that we face, and some of them are very grave (for instance, the death of children or the manifestation of gross injustice in the world which we see regularly, extreme brutality and cruelty, needless as those things may be), we often seek for what we call "answers" (the way to explain these things). When we seek answers, it is usually human logic that passes judgment on whether or not the answer is satisfying or not. We might suggest that instead of searching for answers, we instead become quite concerned with the interjection of spiritual reality into that situation. When a child dies, which has happened all too often and it will happen again, we don’t like it. It is a very wrenching experience for family, for friends and for anybody. Our hearts go out when we see these things happen and we seek specific answers. The last few years, we have seen all sorts of violence perpetrated by young people in their early teens or younger than that, against their peers at school, their parents, or others. The society goes into hyperdrive trying to find out what the "answers" are.

Perhaps we would do much better as a society to interject spiritual reality—the presence of God and the presence of his will into the situation--which explains in so many ways why so many things happen. There is a shortfall. There is sin. There is a lack of understanding. There are deformed souls. Interjection is much more effective than seeking for answers because the Lord never told us that he would give us every answer that we think we want or think we need. In the case of Job, although Job suffered heroically and alone and in faith toward his God, at the end of his ordeal, he asked for answers and the Lord said, "You will interject spiritual truth into this situation and that is all you will do." And Job admitted that he had sinned, that this would be the right thing to do. He understood that. This is the lesson for all of us. As difficult as it is, we have to take our hands off the quest for answers. Instead of looking for answers, simply interject spiritual truth into the situation. We don’t always know the answers, but we are never left without the way in which to understand how to relate to world situations. The Lord has always given us all the responses that are sufficient, if we are willing to let go of our quest for answers that we think are very self-satisfying.

THIRD APPLICATION: This has to do with a disparity that exists between the interjection of spiritual reality into situations and the practice of logic. When I was a boy growing up in a very church-going family, if I approached my father about a request about something I wanted to do, he might say "no." I would, of course, shoot back with "Well why not? Everybody else is going to do that. Why can’t I? (That seemed very logical to me)." Often my father would respond to me with an equal appeal to logic, and he would say, "Well do you want to go to hell because they are going to hell?" or "If they all wanted to jump off the Brooklyn bridge, would you jump off the Brooklyn bridge just because everybody else is going to do that?" It was an appeal to logic. It might be worth consideration that logic is not nearly as powerful in relating to situations as the interjection of spiritual reality into them.

When human beings face temptations, of one kind or another, if we appeal to logic as the basis for making our proper responses, we may or may not follow through. Anyone who has read somewhat in the scripture and who has become aware of the most obvious moral requirements knows logically that falling into temptation is not what one should do. One could logically assume that one could be trapped in the practice of a sin or one could be discovered in this practice, or one could be ruined in this practice, or it could create more problems than it is worth. All of those things are quite logical, but not always of sufficient power to delay or to postpone or to truncate or to cease our willingness to be tempted with these things. However, if we are involved in temptation which is inevitable and routine for us, the right way to handle that instead of trying to handle it on the basis of logic which won’t always work is to interject spiritual reality into it.

These Hebrew men in the book of Daniel did not operate from the point of view that would be considered logical from the world’s point of view. The reason they didn’t appeal to logic is because there is a superior appeal. Trying to respond on the basis of logic to world situations is almost always going to be disappointing. It is always going to be "iffy." Because it really depends upon whether or not, we are willing to follow through on that logical appraisal. But this deliberate action, this definitive action of interjecting spiritual reality into situation, changes the situation, and that interjection certainly has much more power than an appeal to logic in the face of temptation. If we appeal to nothing but logic, which we have often done, that would explain why daughters still become pregnant out of wedlock and why sons still bring about this result, and why drugs are still being taken, and why there is still depression and why there is still a shortfall in our spiritual determination, and a lot of other undesirable things. In local congregational life, I often appealed to members of a church on the basis of logic. I think that was a great mistake on my part. If I had that to do over today, I would change that, and I would operate on an entirely different and elevated basis--the interjection of spiritual reality into all things and situations. If people operate on logic within of the local congregation they may very well interpret those who interject as those who are intruding—those contrivers, those who deny what reality is. In all too many cases of personal crises and in temptation and in moments of great difficulty, we have appealed to logic, and we have gone to one another trying to find logical answers or to find a logical response. We don’t need logical responses. We need non-situational biblical responses to world situations, one of which, is the interjection of spiritual reality into all things temporal.