NOTES for Dan 3:39

That God accepts the humble in spirit and the contrite in heart is said often both in the prophetic books and in the psalms. Today we often perceive these lines in the context of the emotions that accompany repentance and a new turning to God, which often becomes the result of repentance. But are emotions the issue here? In the Bible, the heart is not the container of emotions, but the spiritual center of the human person.

Therefore humility, as well as contrition, in relation to biblical texts should be discussed not in an emotional or intellectual aspect, but precisely in a spiritual one. In the biblical books, regardless of genre, humility means above all a special state of the will, a state in which a person is ready to make only decisions that God will approve, or to follow the decisions God makes concerning him. Of course, this is not compulsion: such submission to God's law and His will is completely voluntary, itself the consequence of a freely accepted decision to obey God.

But on the path of humility there is a serious difficulty: it is far from easy for a fallen person to understand and accept God's will, especially in a concrete case, not when the matter concerns keeping the commandments, where everything is usually clear without explanation and is fulfilled without hesitation, but when it is a choice among several quite possible and not sinful alternatives. Very often the chief obstacle is the human heart: the heart not only chooses and makes decisions; in the heart a person carries his system of values and priorities, which determines his whole life. And values and priorities are influenced by many things, from traits of character that have become habits to religious norms and rules that a person considers binding for himself.

Often these influences not only strengthen but also distort a person's value system, affecting choices and decisions in a poor way. Then it can happen that God allows the human heart to be broken. There may be many outward causes, from a deep personal spiritual crisis to a national catastrophe, when the value system and worldview of whole peoples collapse; for the Jews in antiquity such a catastrophe was the Babylonian exile. Such a crisis is always a serious, sometimes critical spiritual, and sometimes not only spiritual, trial. But precisely when everything that had previously protected the human heart from outside influences is destroyed, a person begins to perceive those influences with special sharpness.

Of course, living this way is not easy, but in such a state it is easier to hear God and accept what in another situation, in a calm and established life, would have seemed completely impossible. This happens both with an individual and with a whole people. But if a person or people does not try to turn back and return to the past, a spiritual crisis can bring that person or that people to a new spiritual level, qualitatively changing their relationship with God. Then a new spiritual stage will begin in the life of the person or the people, one they could not have imagined before the crisis.