Continuing from Part I, with our discussion of the antipodes that stand in direct opposition to a consciousness of ultimate truth and to the maintenance of it:

1. Failure to Comprehend that the Eternal and the Temporal Are Conjoined Asymmetrically (Chapter 10)

Daniel is confronted by representatives of the unseen world and in their presence he is overwhelmed. His central nervous system collapses. He faints. He is picked up and encouraged by Gabriel, the angel that is sent to minister to him. They talk there about Michael and what Michael has been doing in other parts of the world. This kind of encounter teaches Daniel among other things that the eternal and the temporal are conjoined. But it is not a symmetrical conjoinment where these two spheres are co-equals. It is quite asymmetrical and that’s why he faints. Later in another vision, he will find himself physically overcome and for three weeks he cannot eat or drink because of the extraordinary effect that this vision, this experience has on him. He knows that the two worlds are conjoined. We have to take this into consideration today. A populace that fails to comprehend that fact will always operate in an antipodal relationship to the Lord. Obviously the repercussions will come as a result of that.

2. Vainglory (Chapter 11:32)

Daniel has another vision that is speaking about a forthcoming time and a period that will be very distressing. The verse reads, "With flattery he will corrupt those who have violated the covenant, but the people who know their God will firmly resist him." The people who resist are the ones who have decided that vainglory is not an option for them. The ones that were flattered have this deficit, this void. They have disobeyed the covenant so they are open to all sorts of influences like the vainglory of men. So they are going to be seduced. Well vainglory in the absence of the consciousness of ultimate truth can amount to a tremendous defeat for any individual whether it looks like that on the surface or not.

3. Ineptitude in Spiritual Understanding (Chapter 12:10)

Talking about a time to come, it says of those days, "Many will be purified, made spotless and refined, but the wicked will continue to be wicked. None of the wicked will understand, but those who are wise will understand." There is a great deal of ineptitude in spiritual understanding and this may be one of the most dire consequences or intellectual conditions of which man can be guilty because this ineptitude cascades through all of life. We are inept in our understanding of how the two worlds (eternal and temporal) relate. We are inept in understanding the danger of the antipodes working against ultimate truth to shape our consciousness. We are inept in calculating the will of God above life. We are inept. If we go back and take a look at the history of man, I suspect largely this will be a history of spiritual ineptitude. There are churches filled sometimes unfortunately with people that are inept in spiritual understanding. We may be operating in local church structures with this ineptitude present, even though we don’t recognize that ineptitude in the leaders. We can formulate a program built on spiritual ineptitude or the ineptitude of spiritual understanding without realizing it. This will not result in what God is most interested in, which is the creation of and the maintenance of a consciousness of ultimate truth—the final truth that is knowable in the universe. This pushed intelligence has profound and far-reaching implications on how we define the significance and meaning of material content.

Those who are suffering from ineptitude in spiritual understanding need to escape. What is the escape? We don’t become more apt in spiritual understanding because we know more biblical facts necessarily. It is how we read the text. A consciousness of ultimate truth is the antipode to ineptitude and the only thing that can change it. Now suppose we think of this consciousness of ultimate truth in this way for a few moments. We know that ultimate truth is whatever it is whether we are conscious of it or not. It exists. It is apart from us. The Lord is going to think what he wants to think whether we are conscious of it or not, whether we yield to an awareness of it or not. But once we become conscious of the ultimate truth THEN something happens to us. At least two things happen to us:

1. A non-situational becoming. Once we are conscious in the

sense that we are describing consciousness—not just an awareness of doctrinal requirements, not just an awareness of certain commands that we are supposed to fulfill, but a consciousness of how God thinks; a consciousness that is devoted to his understanding, his penetration of spiritual reality into our minds, which we can have because he is willing to share it with us—then we become wise. We become knowledgeable. We gain understanding. We become sensitive to the spiritual realities. This condition does not come about because of our being in "time," but because of our connectivity to the non-situational intelligence of God. In Chapter 10:12, Gabriel says to Daniel, "Do not be afraid, Daniel. Since the first day that you set your mind to gain understanding and to humble yourself before your God, your words were heard, and I have come in response to them." Daniel became a non-situational someone. He was growing. He was always growing. He was becoming more wise, knowledgeable, understanding and spiritually sensitive. When this kind of a mind, this kind of consciousness was tested up against the situational mindset, it was proven to be ten times better.

A lack of this becoming a consciousness of ultimate truth means something. It means that our lives have a particular profile ascribed by situational intelligence, rather than by the non-situational intelligence of God. This is a profile that is not ascribed by non-situational perspective. That is, our lives have been truncated, have been cut off—a truncated becoming—is what we are experiencing here. Something did not happen that was supposed to have happened. Now we can call that a default. If something didn’t become and it should have, then whatever is experiencing this shortfall is in default. Subsequently we end up with default personalities--personalities that weren’t shaped the way they were supposed to be shaped. We end up with default intelligence—an intelligence that never escaped its situatedness to become a non-situational intelligence. We are in default in terms of the decisions that we make. This is often a question among believers—how do you make certain decisions? A personality, a woman, a man who is one that has never become wise, knowledgeable, understanding, spiritually sensitive nor is increasingly becoming these things because of a lack of connectivity with the non-situational intelligence of God is in default.

There is a default in faith. There is a default in church structure itself. There is a default in the way decisions are made. There is a default in terms of action. There is a default in leadership. We are often more interested in doing than in becoming. We are more interested in the securing of our well being and "reaching our potential" or "achieving our dreams and our goals" and much less interested in becoming. We are not wiser because we have had more experience, but because of a greater connectivity to non-situational intelligence. The key here is the connection. There is a wrong unity that we often ascribe to, a unity that runs wisdom to experience. That is the wrong unity. It is the individual and his connectivity to the non-situational reality that is the basis for this becoming. Now if that is true, it leads to an observation, to a generalization. This is one that may be a difficult to swallow, a little bit hard to choke down because it has criticisms to offer, because it renders a kind of judgment and it explains certain things. It explains cruelty in the world. It explains the kind of materialistic realism that many people, especially physicians and people in positions of power and influence, often follow. People on the street can be heard these days in some of the surveys that are taken operating on the basis of a severe material realism. It explains violence and injustice and many of the thoughtless actions that are precipitated in our world that bring about so much hardship and so much disaster and loss. It explains why people would have confidence in political action over a consciousness of ultimate truth to resolve society’s problems. Here is the observation: We are what we are because of what we never became.

If we are talking about becoming (non-situational becoming), we are what we are because of what never developed in us—this wisdom, this knowledge, this understanding, this spiritual sensitivity and therefore, churches are what they are because of what they never became. Now often the most conventional and accepted wisdom in terms of how to change church structure is to propose new programs, new ways of direction, new leaders and one thing or another which almost always turn out to be of an empiric quality and often of a superficial quality. But these things don’t really change the underlying default. If churches are in default, you don’t get out of default by simply changing tactics, or changing some sort of aggregate or congregational design. It is not going to work.

Marriages are what they are apparently because of what they never became. We can say that even about what looks to be some of the greatest marriages in the world—the couple is happy, effusive, enjoying life, getting along well—but there is always this reality of something that didn’t take place. Wisdom, the enormous burgeoning, constantly growing wisdom that overtakes world situations has not developed. Knowledge, knowing more than we could ever dream possible because God has pushed this knowledge upon us from the word and from his ability to relate to us in ways that are beyond our capacity to understand has not developed. Understanding itself and spiritual sensitivity have not developed. We often have an empiric view of things. We look at a couple and say, "There’s a fine couple. They’re happy, they’re getting along well. That is a good marriage." That’s an appraisal built from within the human frame of reference. We settled for what looks good because the empiric makes sense to us. But how the Lord would see what was supposed to take place and never did is another matter. But that stands as part of the antipodal structure against the consciousness that informs us to a much more profound degree.

Families are what they are because of what they never became for the same reasons. Societies are what they are because of what they never became. There is a default that is operating in this society—in all societies. And the gospel has come to rectify that default. The church exists to be an entity that has been ripped out of that default and is in this posture of becoming something that they could never become otherwise because of a consciousness of ultimate truth. Children are going to be what they are because of what they will not ever become. This is a tragic thing in spite of the fact that empiric observations say I am quite content with the way my kids turned out. They are successful, they are happy, life is going well with them, they’ve married well, we’re enthralled with our grandchildren, and things couldn’t be better. That is an empiric observation.

Nebuchadnezzar, Darius, Belshazzar, the administrators, the satraps in the Babylonian empire and all these peoples and nations that are gathered there, are certainly manifestations of what never became. That is to their detriment. What never became, what never developed is the source of their cruelty, material realism, violence, injustice, all these thoughtless actions and these unfortunate ideas. Our world likes to talk about things that are "appropriate" or "inappropriate." They believe that code word defines for them the "right" course of action. This is the limit of their gradations of what we are to become and how we are to be shaped.

Several events have happened in our country in the last few years, raising many questions about why young people take guns to school and shoot their peers. These kids are young, have not been brutalized at home, but yet they do this sort of thing. We don’t have much of an answer to that except a psychologization of the society and greater surveillance. I would be persuaded that these suggestions are not particularly helpful to define the real cause of these problems. In the absence of a non-situational becoming, which is predicated on an absence of this consciousness and a total disregard of any need to maintain a consciousness of ultimate truth, we are going to fail. People without a consciousness of ultimate truth are going to do those sorts of things as well as other manifestations of a default personality.

One might believe, "I am what I am because I am a victim. I have had all of these obstacles set against me through all these many years. This explains the way I think and why I do what I do." Yet from the biblical point of view that won’t cut it. This individual is not what she is or he is because of victimization or because they didn’t have the right role models or because they didn’t have enough money or because they had some physical hardship when they were younger. They are what they are because of what never developed. This becoming is the answer to those sorts of things. Or another person responds in a way that sounds different but in essence it is actually from the same source. I am what I am by purpose, dedication, by hard work, by design, by setting goals and achieving those goals, and that is why I have arrived at this point. I often receive publications from Christian universities and in many of those publications, they are constantly telling me how these people are achievers and I agree with one critic who made the observation that apparently our Christian colleges exist to prepare people for lives of upscale consumption. We are constantly talking about vice presidents of this and that and chief executive officers and those who achieve these kind of worldly successes. So are we agree that they got where they got to be because of design and goals so the rest of us can too? Or are they still what they are because of what they never became? That is a sobering thought because it leads us away from any misconception of pride in our doing or pride in thinking.

A non-situational intelligence is always becoming, it is always growing beyond the situated intelligence and I suppose that is one reason why we could be considered prideful, arrogant, dangerous, irritating and foolish. A situational intelligence by its very nature is in default. And it’s always in default. That covers the whole of history. That covers the whens and the whos and the whys and the hows. It also covers geography. Everywhere and everywhen. We are talking here about a stifled intellect, a stifled soul, and a stifled mind. Now I would propose that it is worthy of consideration as a church that individual Christians can share a default with human culture. And that shared default can become this particular default of a lack of becoming. It seems to me to be a contradiction for us to think and to talk of progress and development while a strategic default remains. We talk about progress. We talk about improving and yet here is the paramount condition of "being" of our people in strategic default, which determines everything else. This becomes a remarkable problem. Should the church share that default? It seems unreasonable to arrive at that conclusion.

Non-situational intelligence is supposed to be connected to the human mind. In a small drawing you can depict it this way. Let’s write "non-situational intelligence" on the left-hand side of the page with a little pipeline coming out from that running over to the human mind. We often say that the mind "develops." Perhaps we should say it something like this. Instead of the mind developing perhaps connectivity develops. And that is the difference. The development of connectivity is synonymous with how the mind operates. This is a pushed intelligence. The source of this "becoming" is not on the planet. The source of this movement is not on the planet. Pushed intelligence, which originates in the mind of God, overtakes the human mind and it itself is unconditioned by anything else. This non-situational intelligence is undetermined by anything else. So the human mind that is conscious, as have described this consciousness, is itself undetermined by anything on the temporal side.

Absolute truth lies with the Lord, not in the becoming. Therefore, becoming is not a process. It is a connectivity. Consciousness is not a process, it is a connectivity. Connectivity and consciousness of the ultimate truth would have to be seen as somewhat synonymous. No connectivity, no consciousness of ultimate truth. We like to think of processes in terms of health and money and education and security and professional respect and power and other such things. We live our lives on the basis of a concept of process. This is of course something that we find is antipodal to a consciousness of ultimate truth. God will have his way with us. If he wants to put us into a position of great and professional respect, that’s his business. But it might turn out to be the reverse. In any event these things are not a result of process. They are the result of a connectivity. The will of God being manifested on the earth is a result of connectivity. Now what we want is a consciousness that’s unconditioned and undetermined by anything else that cannot be had except through the willingness of the Lord to share his mind with us, to push this intelligence our way, and to shape our consciousness. When he shapes it in us, something happens. We become. We are always becoming wise, knowledgeable understanding and spiritually sensitive.

2. A non-situational barrier goes up in the mind. I have within me

a default personality always trying to take control. About the minute I think I have beaten it into the ground it rises up again to engage me in combat. There are default influences that surround me. There is a barrier that this consciousness evidently structures in the mind that helps prohibit that. It’s the same kind of barrier that we can put between those 18 antipodes that we talked about earlier and the consciousness of ultimate truth. It’s the barrier that we put up into the mind between us and the external world, because it is a barrier between the two mindsets. Now in Chapter 5:22-23, in the case of Belshazzar, here’s how that barrier operated and what it tried to do and to be.

1. A consciousness of ultimate truth acts as a barrier to lack of humility before God and his revelation. In Chapter 5:22, Daniel says to Belshazzar, "You have not humbled yourself before God." There is no humility before God. There is no apodictic necessity to yield to his revelation. No humility. There is this default inclination in all of us in many cases. We as Christians are constantly bringing that under control or the Lord is bringing that under control, but this is a part of the human experience. We don’t naturally want to be humble before the Lord and before his revelation. We use a term in the world today that has a lot of currency. It is the word "empowerment." We’re saying we want to empower our women to get better jobs, to have greater justice. We want to empower our children to have access to wealth creation. We want to empower the marginalized sectors of society. We want to empower students to learn. We are interested in empowerment. We talk a lot about that. That is a code word for pride. We don’t need empowerment so much as we all need humility—doesn’t matter if we’ve been beat up in life or whether from the world’s point of view we look like winners. We all stand in the presence of this necessity to reflect ourselves humbly before the Lord, before his revelation. We don’t need empowerment, we need something else. We need a consciousness of ultimate truth. That consciousness will prescribe a posture of humility before the Lord, intellectually, emotionally and psychologically. He rules, we don’t. He is in the driver’s seat. We aren’t. He will command; the situation doesn’t. He speaks, we obey. He renders judgment, there are no other considerations. We don’t need empowerment, we need humility.
2. A consciousness of ultimate truth acts as a barrier to the danger of disregarding revealed meanings. In verse 22, Daniel says to Belshazzar "you knew all this." He knew about what God had done with Nebuchadnezzar, his father. He knew what had happened to him. He saw the insanity of his father running around naked in the woods beside himself with his kingdom stripped from him. He knew all of that and he knew what it meant. In the end of Chapter 5:30, it says, "That very night Belshazzar, king of the Babylonians, was slain, and Darius the Mede took over the kingdom at age sixty-two." Darius knew about the handwriting on the wall and he is the man who wrote the decree that none should pray to any God except him for 30 days. He knew all of that. These men disregarded revealed meaning. This is a sin. There is a barrier in the mind apparently that the consciousness of ultimate truth puts up against that kind of inclination.

At meetings of the Alcoholic Anonymous Association, someone might get up and say, "I’m Mike Strawn and I’m an alcoholic" although he hasn’t been drinking for 20 years. Is it true that we can’t get beyond these things? Well, no. We can get beyond these things by a new consciousness. We can disregard the meanings that God has created or we can allow God to create a new consciousness in us based on his revealed meaning about the world of material content. We can become new people. We are not alcoholics that have simply been baptized. We are not drug addicts that have been baptized. We are not just church going former trash. There is something new. We don’t need to disregard any statement that the Lord has ever made to us about what it means to become. Can we become? Yes and we are not what we once were. It doesn’t matter what we once were. We are no longer that. We know that by revelation. The Lord says that. We are made new because of a new consciousness. To not believe that is to disregard revealed meanings.

3. The consciousness of ultimate truth acts as a barrier to situational self-promotion. In Chapter 5:23, Daniel says, "You set yourself up against the Lord." Belshazzar established situational symbolism above absolute symbols. The ideas of men were elevated to "equate" the symbols of the Lord. Situational intelligence was allowed to overtake non-situational intelligence. Of course, you can’t really do that, but we try. The human agenda is set above revelation. There are a lot of people that have agendas and those agendas are much more important to them above the study of scripture to them. I’ve heard this all my life and I have said this. "Well I wish I had the luxury you have of being able to study the Word of God all day long. But I can’t do that. I have to make a living and incidentally that is how I pay your salary." In other words, he’s saying that the human agenda is really more important than revelation. Now it’s true that we don’t all have the same amount of time to study scripture. But that is not necessarily the issue either. Let’s not confuse time to read the scripture with the elevation of human agendas above the word of God. They are not the same things. Not that they are disassociated. But they are not the same. The human agenda is "I have to make a living. I have to take care of the kids. I have to get the house clean. I have to pay this bill. I have to mow the grass. I have to paint and scrub. And then every so often we have to have a garage sale to clean out all of this stuff that the Lord has given us. Our people are often gripped by their personal agenda. It doesn’t look like that because we are good church-going people. We do our part. Situational self-promotion is barred. Therefore if the human agenda swells and overtakes our consciousness, what would explain that? No barrier. No barrier, no becoming. No becoming, no consciousness of ultimate truth.
4. A consciousness of ultimate truth acts as a barrier to a tendency to assume the eternal into the temporal. In Chapter 5:23, Belshazzar brought the goblets from the temple of the Lord. He was trying to take these symbols of eternal reality and assume them into the temporal world. He can’t do that. Situational intelligence has tried to assume revelation. It can’t do that. That’s a fault sometimes in the way we study scripture. Non-situational intelligence cannot be assumed by the situated. Mind cannot be assumed by matter. John Locke tried to insert mind back into nature. We have individuals who will say that the operations of the mind are the result of epigenetic things in our makeup. They are chemical reactions and so mind is assumed into the world of matter. But the primary manifestation of this is when the revealed truth is made analogous to temporal experience. That is exactly the same thing. When we take the word of God and make its statements analogous to our experience, we are trying to assume the eternal into the temporal. We can’t do that and get away with it. This is wrong, this is an error. This is a disjuncture in our thinking. There is a barrier in the mind of a consciousness of ultimate truth that prohibits this.
5. A consciousness of ultimate truth acts as a barrier to catalytic nuclear default. In the last part of Chapter 5:23, Daniel says, "You did not honor the God who holds in his hand your life and all your ways." Let’s draw a circle to represent the "nucleus of life." The nucleus of life consists of two things. One is the presence of God, his non-situational intelligence, and his meanings. He talks about THE God. The other is the power of God. He mentions to Belshazzar that God "holds in his hands your life and all your ways." That is the nucleus of life. Life becomes a branch. "Our ways" are simply extensions of this nucleus. That is the universe in general. This construction is true for the believer and for the unbeliever alike. All else is attached to this nucleus like a vine to the branches. But he says of Belshazzar, "you did not honor God. You defaulted by making the nucleus something else." He bowed down before the gods of silver and gold that are nothing. That’s idolatry—gods, which cannot see or hear or understand. Here the default produces a catalytic result. That very night vs. 30 says, "he was slain." In vs. 27, it says, "He was weighed on the scales and found wanting." That is the catalyst.

Consciousness consists of connectivity. Therefore what we all are fundamentally is this: We are students of the word of God. Not primarily professors, lawyers, teachers, welders, executives, writers and scientists. This has two orders to it. The first order of this connectivity, this unconditioned mind and this undetermined mind, is the Lord himself. The second order is us. We are not determined by the patterns or traditions of the world.

What interests me is producing a question like this: What does this consciousness of ultimate truth say about what appears to be process, which we think of as clearly a fact. I think that might be an interesting alternative to scientific investigation—not that we would ever cease to investigate the material aspects of the world. But in the quantum world everything is process, everything is dynamic from the atoms on up the conceptual ladder. This is different.

Now in terms of this default, we will never climb out of it. You can't climb out of a default. You can climb out of habits. You can decide not to drink anymore, not to cuss anymore, or not to smoke anymore. We crawl out of habits and sometimes because we have changed habits we think that we have really changed something. But we cannot climb out of default. Nobody climbs out of it. What has to happen is that a new consciousness has to come about. An old consciousness dies, and a new consciousness is born.

Historically, the human race has never been able to climb out of its default existence. Yet certain governmental bodies insist on meeting together with the illusion still in place, very firmly in their mind, that we can get better. We don't have to kill each other and rob each other. We don't have to precipitate wars of mass destruction. We don't have to be societies consumed with addictions and other such ills. We don't have to be societies in ruin. They think, "What we'll do and what we propose to do is of such a nature that it will change all of that." Of course, governments or institutions have never changed any of these problems because we cannot climb out of this default.

This default consciousness must die. It is a bad focus for therapy to insist that we can climb out. We are not going to climb out of anything. A new consciousness has to be resurrected. But we are not going to climb out. We are not going to be able to change these things simply because we think that we can change certain habits of behavior. We can crawl out of certain very detestable and unfortunate habits and still be in default. We can only overcome these things through our relationship to the Lord, through the connectivity of our consciousness and his non-situational intelligence.

Now if we go back and make a comparison with this sumptuous consciousness of ultimate truth against all of those antipodes we see this is a picture of human thought. This is a picture of human rationality. The firm base standing behind an impenetrable hedge is the consciousness of ultimate truth-not discovered, not created, but revealed. The final truth of the universe beyond which no one gets-the other side of that substantial barrier built into our minds are all the antipodes that the world can offer.

The Lord is calling us to this unique posture in life-a constant becoming that says, "No you are not always going to be an alcoholic. No you are not always going to be an adulterer. No you are not always going to be a wife beater. No you are not always going to be a drug addict. No you are not always going to a willful, selfish individual. You can overcome these things through a connectivity." It is the wish of God to make us what we never became but what we now will be by his power, and by his commitment to the well being of the human race. We can't beat a deal like that.