NON-SITUATIONAL RESPONSES
A Study of the Book of Daniel
RESPONSE EIGHT: Maintenance of A Consciousness of Ultimate Truth
By J. Michael Strawn
This is a discussion of the eighth (formerly eleventh) in our series of standard non-situational responses to situations. We are charged with the responsibility to maintain a consciousness of ultimate truth. Initially we have to draw a distinction between consciousness, which is the human mind, heart and soul and then there is ultimate truth. Ultimate truth is to itself and it is separate from the consciousness of man. We know that ultimate truth has to be the final truth in the universe--that beyond which man is not capable to pass.
In the revelation that comes from the Lord, we have before us the rendition of the final truth in the universe. Now since consciousness and ultimate truth are not the same from a scriptural point of view, we know several things about ultimate truth.
It exists prior to man and man finds himself in the presence of this ultimate truth whether he likes it or not as is true of the case presented in Romans 1. It is also true of the Babylonian empire. It is established in a field that is "scripted," so to speak, by ultimate truth. This impression of ultimate truth acting upon the minds of Nebuchadnezzar, Darius, Belshazzar, the kingdom administrators, satraps and even upon our four friends mentioned in the book is the purpose that the Lord has—trying to bring ultimate truth into our consciousness. Therefore we would be certainly accountable to desire to develop that consciousness and to maintain this consciousness of ultimate truth. The passages highlighted in this study are Daniel 5:22-23 and Daniel 10:12.
However, I would like to start this exposition with what we can mark as the antipodes—those things that stand diametrically opposed to the maintenance of a consciousness of ultimate truth. I do not want to take the position that the 18 antipodes that we will discuss are the only ones to be found in the book, but they are the only ones that are clear to me so far. We certainly won’t limit this list simply to the book of Daniel. There are other places that we could study, other things that we could investigate that would certainly yield perhaps more antipodes. But this gives us certainly an overview of some of the most dazzling antipodes that stand in direct opposition to a consciousness of ultimate truth and to the maintenance of it.
In Chapter 1, we discover that these four young men have been part of the destruction of Jerusalem. They have been captured. They have been brought back to Babylon. Verse 4 will describe these men and all their aptitudes. We discover that they are young, intelligent, of the nobility, without physical defect, handsome, quick-witted, and able to learn so they are picked out of the "lineup" and put into this training program which will last three years. This is situational acceptability. A lot of people would be so inclined toward situational acceptability that it would act as an antipode to a consciousness of ultimate truth. These men, of course, stand directly in opposition to that concept. Situational acceptability is a fact as far as they are concerned. The Babylonians have looked at them and determined "this is what we are looking for—this is the ideal." These young men proximate their ideal closely enough that they are willing to accept them into their program.
Situational acceptability can show up in many different ways. We want situational acceptability in terms of any situation within which we find ourselves. That may be something that affects an employee relative to his boss. He wants situational acceptability. Or young people growing up in a world and a culture that demands certain conformities from them and the idea that this is "what we are shooting for." There are certain concepts that are situationally acceptable, like wealth and money and discretionary spending and the ability to control your destiny and the ability to develop some canopy of security. These things are all situationally acceptable. People, ideas and circumstances are often marked or judged according to this kind of acceptability. Now if that acceptability is able to act as an antipode, then the formulation and maintenance of ultimate truth is just not going to take place because this has created the obstacle to it.
Daniel approaches Ashpenaz, who has been given the responsibility for the education of these young men that have been captured. He doesn’t want to defile himself with the king’s food nor do his three friends so they ask for permission to be exempted from eating it. Ashpenaz is very sympathetic but he worries that if the king detects that they are not doing well he will have his head. Now Ashpenaz is not interested in a consciousness of ultimate truth. He has been approached by a representative of that consciousness. Even the mere brush with this kind of consciousness in the face of the threat of hardship is too much for Ashpenaz to deal with. The threat of hardship can often drive us away from a maintenance of the consciousness of ultimate truth—the things that we are possibly going to suffer the repercussions that can come falling in upon our heads because of a consciousness of ultimate truth. The threat of hardship is certainly something that is going to show up in Chapter 3 with these three young men as they are arrested and stand before Nebuchadnezzar facing the reality of the super-heated furnace. The threat of hardship, which involves sacrifice, sometimes even the sacrifice of life, can act sufficiently as an antipode the block the formulation and the maintenance of a consciousness of ultimate truth.
This text talks about the aptitude of these young men in verse 4, and then in verse 17, it says of them, "To these four young men God gave knowledge and understanding of all kinds of literature and learning." When you take those two verses and stick them together we recognize that they were put into a socialization program. That is why they were picked out in the first place. They were there to be socialized. They were there to be transformed into the Babylonian ideal, and that is why they were to study the language so they could understand the culture and the mindset and how they view certain things—what is important, what works, what doesn’t work—and other such appraisals. But it can act as a subversion. We could simply point out that American educational programs (we are talking about those systems that are formal) can and do have this effect). They can subvert. Now it is not just the educational process because that simply is just an extension of the larger socialization ideal in which we are immersed.
All societies expect the members of that society to conform to the large ranging concepts that are acceptable to the multitudes. But in so doing, we can become subverted by socialization. These young men will stand outside of the socialization process, they will watch it go by. But because they have a consciousness of ultimate truth, they were not going to be subverted by it. We can be in it, we can be around it, but we don’t necessarily have to be subverted by it. So it is not just the presence of the influence. The thing that creates the subversion is an absence of the consciousness of ultimate truth. If we expect our young people to do well in the face of a subverting socialization and all that goes along with it, then there simply must not be a detectable lack or shortfall in this particular kind of mindset or consciousness of ultimate truth.
A decree has gone out because the wise men cannot interpret Nebuchadnezzar’s dream and so they are sentenced to death. Arioch knocks on Daniel’s door and tells him that he has been commanded to put to death the wise men of Babylon. Daniel asks for time. He talks respectfully to Arioch, with tact and wisdom. A little bit of time is conceded by Nebuchadnezzar. Daniel and his three friends receive the answer to the dream that night after their prayers to God for mercy. The onset of crisis, the fear of crises, can freeze people out. There will always be in our presence, the need for situational acceptability, the threat of hardship, the subversion by socialization, and the onset of crisis. We will never be anywhere or in any situation or circumstance of life where those things are not going to be realities. The problem is there is a limitation and we need a kind of consciousness in facing those kinds of things—a consciousness of ultimate truth.
These young men have manifested this kind of mindset that goes beyond the routine, the onset of crisis, while it is certainly startling to them and while it has a great deal of meaning for them, does not overwhelm them because of this maintained consciousness of ultimate truth. So they did not allow the onset of crisis to act as an antipode and to scare them or overwhelm them. The dependence of their consciousness on God was not truncated. Quite the opposite, this became an opportunity to exercise and to exert even more firmly this consciousness of ultimate truth. People face the onset of crisis regularly. There are going to be biological crises, economic crises, sociological crises, and psychological crises to name a few. If we face these things with a deficit in terms of this consciousness of ultimate truth, then these things are going to effect us mentally as an antipode to this development of this consciousness in our mind. They will prohibit; they will try to block the formulation of confidence in this kind of consciousness. That ought not to be the case. When we face personal illness or even worse when the illness affects our children or other loved ones, the onset of crisis can force us away from consciousness of the truth of God about physical realities if it is allowed to act sufficiently as an antipode. This happens when there is a limitation in our consciousness and our willingness to MAINTAIN (we are putting a great deal of emphasis on the maintenance of) this consciousness of ultimate truth.
After Nebuchadnezzar hears Daniel’s interpretation of the dream, he falls down before Daniel on his face and he pays him honor and wants an offering made to Daniel and incense to be presented to him. Then Nebuchadnezzar says a lot of nice things about the Lord. Now carnal glory was in Daniel’s grasp on more than one occasion. He is not swept away by carnal glory. A lot of times, in our society, we hear people talk about those individuals referred to as "losers." I detest the word because it often looks like a loser is one who has just missed the carnal-glory boat ride and because of that they are categorized in a certain way. Certainly Christians can often be seen by the world as losers because they are going to forfeit carnal glory. Carnal glory can show up in a lot of ways. Wanting the appraisal of men, wanting the praise of men more than wanting to cling to and maintain the consciousness of ultimate truth can be a serious threat to our growth as this consciousness of the presence of God.
When Nebuchadnezzar set up the golden image on the plain of Dura he commanded everyone to fall down. Apparently that is exactly what happened. There were semiotic sounds. There was the sound of the horn, flute, zither, lyre, harp, etc. These were semiotic tones to inform them that at that moment they were to bow down and face this image out on the plain of Dura. Now when you bow down to an image, you are bowing down to the will of the person who set up the image in the first place. It says in this text that all these peoples and nations and men of every language fell down and worshiped the image of gold that Nebuchadnezzar had set up. Here is majoritarian influence. Everybody else is doing it. But here are the individuals who stand in this consciousness of ultimate truth. These men will not bow down to the image. They are arrested, and they stand against majoritarian influence. They stand against it in a lot of ways.
Majoritarian influence can show up in the kind of power that it can purport to exert over individuals. The State—whether it is the state of Texas or the United States--has majoritarian power. I can’t personally stand up against the aggregate powers of the State. Alone, I would think I would certainly be outgunned and outnumbered. Here you have these three young men facing majoritarian influence plus all of these other captive populations and all of those wise men and all those leaders represented in that group of humanity. They themselves are not part of the majoritarian influence. Everyone else has voted himself or herself into the majoritarian influence so as not to get in trouble with the king. We always stand against majoritarian influence. This is not new. Any Christian, inherently in any social collective, will always be facing a majoritarian influence. If it acts too strongly, and if there is a sufficient weakness in our consciousness of ultimate truth, then we may decide to vote with the majority because we don’t want to suffer the appraisal that the majority might make of us, "You’re nuts. You’re not wise. You’re not a part of us. You are to be expulsed. You are not conforming. You are not rational" and other things that the majority claims as a monopoly over these kinds of meanings.
Nebuchadnezzar threatens to throw the three young men into the fiery furnace and he gives them one more chance, if they are willing to bow to the idol, then he will spare them. If not, they will be cast into the fire. Then he makes this statement, "Then what god will be able to rescue you from my hand?" He is operating on the basis of what he can see with the naked eye. He is looking at the materialistic aspects. He sees the matter in motion that he commands. He has the furnace ready. He has strong men that can bind these fellows and throw them into the fire. He is certainly disregarding their consciousness of ultimate truth, which is the reason they are operating as they are. Later he will recognize this and make statements that are very glowing about this kind of consciousness that sustains them. But at this point, he operates on this exclusionary materialism.
We see this antipode operating also in Chapter 6 when the administrators will drum up the false charge against Daniel in order to have him destroyed. They’re looking at the forces at their command. Exclusionary materialism can sweep over us when we are desperately ill, or when we are in a great deal of pain, or when our bodies are suffering. When there is a lot at stake, exclusionary materialism pulls us away from the consciousness of ultimate truth and the maintenance of that doesn’t seem to be so important in the face of materialistic realities. Exclusionary materialism can control us in very subtle ways. Reliance upon money and what money can buy, or operating on what we see and what we consider to be the essential material elements of any situation in which we are involved will discount the presence of God, the promises of God, and the truthful propositions of God.
(Chapter 4:27-30)
In this context, Nebuchadnezzar has been given a dream about a big tree and the birds of the air nest in the tree and they draw nourishment from it. The beasts of the field shelter under the tree and there are provisions there for them. Yet this tree is about to be cut down. This tree is symbolizing Nebuchadnezzar. He is the great tree and the angels have announced he is about to be cut down. Daniel says to him in Chapter 4:27, "…O king, be pleased to accept my advice: Renounce your sins by doing what is right, and your wickedness by being kind to the oppressed. It may be then your prosperity will continue." A year passes, but he doesn’t believe any of this because he has credulity only in the things he has experienced and he has never experienced this loss of mind. He hasn’t yet experienced a kingdom being stripped from his grasp. But that is exactly what’s going to happen. In vs. 28-30, he is walking out one day and he speaks pridefully and says, "Is not this the great Babylon I have built as the royal residence, by my mighty power and for the glory of my majesty?" Now those statements are directly antipodal to the statements that were given to him directly in the dream and were interpreted for him by Daniel (a man that he purported to have confidence in). The statements made to him through the dream are basically from the Lord, "You are nothing. I am everything. I have given you this kingdom and I can take it away from you. You must acknowledge this or you are really going to be sorry." This man can’t make that acknowledgement because he puts credulity only in the things that he has experienced. This is a massive sin, which almost all of humanity has shared at one point or another with King Nebuchadnezzar and others like him. This is what men do. He was warned but it meant nothing to him. Why? Because it was a faith exercise. He did not have faith in these propositions that had been given to him by God.
In a drunken orgy one night, where they are drinking toasts to false gods out of the golden goblets from the temple of the Lord in Jerusalem a hand appears writing on the wall. This is a startling occurrence and eventually Daniel is called in to explain to Belshazzar the problem. He begins to explain to the king that the Most High God gave Nebuchadnezzar, his father, sovereignty, greatness, glory and splendor. He didn’t accrue all of that simply by his own energetic life and actions. Because of the high position that the Lord gave him all the peoples and nations were at his disposal. But when his heart became arrogant and hardened with pride, God took everything from him including his sanity until he acknowledged that God is sovereign over the kingdoms of men. Although he knew of these things, Belshazzar did not represent these facts correctly. Daniel tells him in vs. 22, "But you his son, O Belshazzar, have not humbled yourself, though you knew all this." He misrepresented the facts. How are the splendor of the kingdom (facts) and the enormity of the power (facts) to be understood? If our ability to represent facts on a experiential basis is such a sufficient antipode to obstruct a consciousness of ultimate truth, then we have done everything we need to be so separated from the Lord as to fall increasingly into the morass of ignorance and miscalculation, or at the very least, make serious mistakes of judgment.
Daniel tells Belshazzar, "You have set yourself up against the Lord of heaven." He did not humble himself before the Lord. Pride is a persistent weakness of humanity. We believe that we are right and others are not. We especially think that true in terms of how we see things and the way that the Lord makes pronouncements about the same kinds of things. We set ourselves up against God in that way as the human race is often want to do. We believe arguments and propositions that are antipodes of (set themselves up against) the knowledge of God.
Darius has come on to the throne and he wants to set up three administrators who will be sector heads and all of the other people under them will report to these three men. The purpose of this we are told in verse 2 is "so that the king might not suffer loss." He knows there is going to be pilfering. There has always been the privilege of men in high positions to siphon off what doesn’t belong to them. There is nothing new here. It pleases Darius to set Daniel as the chief administrator. Of course this creates a problem with the other men—the rivals. When they seek a pretext for an accusation against this good man, they can find none. His conduct of government affairs is beyond reproach. They can find no corruption. He is trustworthy. He was not negligent. So here’s a man that is not driven by personal ambition, but a lot of people are. Personal ambition to get promoted in the company. Personal ambition to obtain certain status symbols. Personal ambition to arrive at the achievement of one’s goals, whatever those might be. Personal ambition can be a very driving, pulsating force. This is not to be found in Daniel. He is interested in operating based on a consciousness of ultimate truth.
They have arrested Daniel and they are about to throw him into the lions’ den. Is it true that direct exposure to violence is so warping and so distorting that it can be something from which we can never recover? Apparently that is not the case. We are often told about police officers that often become as corrupt as the criminals with whom they deal and we are told it is because of their dealings with the criminal element and there is this constant persistent exposure to danger and to violence. Well, I would submit that it is not the exposure to violence that is the problem. It is the shortfall in the consciousness of ultimate truth. Daniel was exposed repeatedly to violence. These cases that are mentioned in the book show the deadly nature of the violence: At the whim of a king, guards being sent to their home to seize and kill Daniel and his friends (Chapter 2), his friends being cast into a fiery furnace (Chapter 3), and Daniel being thrown to lions for the purpose of being ripped to pieces (Chapter 6). Yet these incredible cases of violence are not enough to overwhelm this consciousness that is in him. While he would not like this kind of exposure to violence, it is not going to override this massive consciousness of ultimate truth. Which might tell us something about what needs to take place in the lives of women of whom we hear so much about these days, who have been directly exposed to repeated violence. Is that the thing—is that what formulates their personalities. Will they be irreversibly damaged psychologically as a result of this violence? No, they can only be harmed mentally if there is a deficit in this consciousness of ultimate truth. If this consciousness is maintained and growing it overreaches direct exposure to violence as it would all of these other things.
Suppose an individual decided that they wanted to walk away from carnal glory. They want to abandon their dependence upon exclusionary material. They want to let go of their pride and personal ambition. They don’t want to be afraid any more of the onset of crisis or any of these other things. How can they change? They can’t change on their own. There has to be a consciousness pushed into them and that is the way out. It is not a change in tactic; it’s not a change in habit. It is something entirely different. It is the formulation of a consciousness that did not exist before and could not have existed apart from a connectivity between the unseen world of the eternal presence of God and his truth and the world of situations in which we find ourselves today.
This is in the middle of a vision that Daniel is given and there are figures in these visions (we aren’t sure exactly who they are by name here in this text) but we know they are subject to God. In Daniel’s inquiry in his dream about what this figure or figures meant, an answer is given, "But the court will sit (that’s the Lord, because this vision is of a courtroom and the Ancient of Days takes his position behind the judgment bar), and his power will be taken away and completely destroyed forever." The reason that this is going to happen is because this individual is going to be proven negligent regarding spiritual authorities. All men are accountable to the unseen world, whether we are conscious of that or not. A negligence regarding spiritual authority is always costly. It is always costly to oneself and to one’s position as is proven in the case of Nebuchadnezzar and it certainly was fatal to Belshazzar. It is dangerous to be negligent in this aspect, certainly not an intelligent action whatsoever. Negligence regarding spiritual authority certainly poses an antipode to a consciousness of ultimate truth. Consciousness of this ultimate truth becomes the key to salvation and the key to our well being in more than one case.
There is another vision given to Daniel. Verse 12 will speak about times to come. "Because of rebellion, the host of the saints and the daily sacrifice were given over to it. It prospered in everything it did and truth was thrown to the ground." People often feel that they are caught up in events over which they have no control. They cannot understand what’s happened. They are simply swept away by world currents. That can happen because of a shortfall in the consciousness of ultimate truth. But to go to what is taught to us by the Lord himself in the sermon on the Mount, our house is to be built upon the rock, and when the currents swirl, the foundation is not going to be destroyed. This is a consciousness of ultimate truth. There is a relationship of the mind that prospers because of its connectivity to the unseen eternal world.
There is a prayer that mentions the nation of Israel and talks of how they as a people disregarded textual propositions. They disregarded the propositions that had been given to them in the covenant stated very clearly in the book of Deuteronomy and Leviticus. Moses warned the people if you regard correctly these textual propositions then all will be well with you and with your children’s children forever. However, disregard them and you will die. Now in these passages in Daniel, he will say "Although you sent your prophets to us with your textual propositions, calling us back to the covenant, our kings didn’t listen, our princes didn’t listen and the people of the land didn’t listen. That explains why we’re in this mess of Babylonian captivity. It was the disregard of textual propositions. That is not apprehendable empirically, but is understood on the basis of revelation. He knows why they are in Babylon through the word of God given to the prophet, Jeremiah. If the main basis of his calculation about their situation was derived empirically, Daniel might say that "Nebuchadnezzar and his Babylonian power were rising and they accumulated the kind of wealth for a war economy was established. They shaped a war machine and then they began to roll over everybody in their general region and eventually came to subjugate our land. But this goes beyond what could be known empirically. They are in Babylonian captivity because of this antipode; because the consciousness of ultimate truth was lacking because they disregarded textual propositions. Now it might be easy to say that we in the established church are not guilty of this. We observe certain doctrinal structures, but there are many textual propositions of which we are in ignorance and consequently we are in disregard and it has all sorts of penetrating results in our lives. So it behooves us to understand we are not free in this world to disregard textual propositions and expect to survive. It cannot work that way.
Our discussion of the antipodes that stand in direct opposition to a consciousness of ultimate truth and the maintenance of it is continued in Part II.