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Saturday, July 18, 2009
This is one of my current faves. I love the counter-culture vibe Cash always had, and I really relate to the theme of the song. (They play this song on the local alternative station, too.) Enjoy!
Yeah, I Could Have Probably Written This One, If I'd Thought Of It First
Practicology (excerpt)
Friday, July 17, 2009
Here's an excerpt from my latest post over at Communitas Collective...
Is it just me, or are there just too many “–ologies” out there? Theology, ecclesiology, eschatology—oh, and there are other multi-syllabic terminologies, too, like orthodoxy, orthopraxy, hermeneutics, rhamazeutics, and salmonellics. (If you can’t tell where I stopped using actual words and started poking fun—I just proved my point.)
It’s all a bit much for me. I never went to seminary—mainly because I never actually intended to be a pastor. I learned to study the Scriptures by paying attention in church, and my degree is in music—which means I can sing you the four spiritual laws, the nine gifts of the Spirit, the seven motive gifts, Psalm 23, and “Jesus wept.” (I could also probably list all 66 books of the Bible in order, if only I could remember how the song goes.)
That said, and taking my tongue out of my cheek—I guess I have always been geared toward a practical understanding of Scripture, and the practical application of it, both in myself and in others. I am academic by nature, so I think I’d do well enough in seminary; but at the same time, I have always believed that God intended the Scriptures for all of us, and I am very skeptical of scholarly types who make others feel like they are unable to “get” the Bible without their special assistance. (I guess that’s why I tend to dislike too many “-ology” words, because they tend to place knowledge out of reach.)
Read the rest here....
And This Time, He Brought the Fam Along
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
Remember this guy?
Remember how he built a nest in my chimney and shacked up with some girl red-winged blackbird and had kids a couple of months ago?
And remember how he wouldn't let me mow my lawn without chewing me out and flying around my head?
Well...apparently, he and his wife really love each other...because they're at it again.
Only this time it's worse.
Actually, he's never really left me alone when I mow the backyard. He just lightened up. He'd jaw at me for awhile and then go find something else to do...then come back and jaw at me some more. At least I had a break.
But a few days ago, when I mowed the lawn...for some reason he was determined to make me go away. I don't know if they've had some scares up there in chimney-land, but this time I appear to be more of a threat. He never took a break. He flew closer than ever (without actually making contact). He was more bold.
You try mowing your lawn with that going on. Distracting and infuriating. I couldn't reach his kids even if I wanted to. I decided to try to get him to back off.
So one time when he was hovering overhead...I threw a tennis ball into the air.
I knew I wouldn't be able to hit him, nor did I intend to. I just hoped to at least create a larger perimeter so I could have a little peace.
At first, it worked. He flew away, suddenly, startled that I'd actually reacted. He continued to jaw, but at a distance.
But apparently, (duh) he interpreted that as more of a threat. The perimeter didn't last long.
He came back. And this time he brought the relatives.
The next time he came swarming around...his mate came along. So now I had two of them jawing and swirling overhead.
But that's not all....you'll think I'm lying...
Within seconds, there were four other birds, of some entirely different species, circling overhead right along with the red-winged blackbirds. Six in all.
I dunno...maybe these other birds were just curious to see what all the noise was about. Or maybe this was a gang from another neighborhood, come to join the rumble. They weren't really acting aggressively like the others...just flying around overhead, like, "Yeah, you better listen to our cousins the red-wings, or else."
It was freaky. Images of Hitchcock movies come to mind.
Maybe I need a raincoat when I mow the lawn.
So...I guess I've started a feud. Now when I come out back, I can't even get two steps away from the covered patio before two very loud, obnoxious birds start demanding what the crap I am doing in my own backyard.
I'm going to barbecue later today on the patio. I wonder how that's going to go. Maybe I should bring some extra spatulas to throw.
No, never mind...I already tried that tactic, didn't I?
Stupid red-winged blackbirds.
God Is In the Darkness (part 5: If I Descend into Sheol)
Where can I go from Your spirit? And where can I flee from Your presence? If I ascend to heaven, You are there; if I make my bed in Sheol, behold, You are there. --Psalm 139:7-8, NASB
A lot of my ponderings about God in the darkness have come from this verse. And as I finish up my ramblings about this before moving on to something else...it might be wise of me to remind you of the disclaimer I made in Part 1, i.e., that these are reflections, questions and ponderings, not a statement of doctrine or belief. Take it for what it is... :)
There are two things that come to mind with this passage. First--the obvious message from these verses is that God is everywhere, that it is impossible to escape His presence. Not that we should ever want to. But it's important to recognize, I think, that while God is light, He is not just in the light. He is in the darkness, as well. He created both day and night, and made their cycle a permanent fixture "while the earth remains." (Gen. 8:22) And as Psalm 139 says a few verses later..."darkness and light are alike to You."
In the previous posts, I've thought in particular about the ways we Christians avoid certain things for fear of the darkness, whether it be certain movies, certain kinds of music, certain places, certain themes. We'll turn off the news because it's all "bad news". Some of us have thrown away our televisions to escape bad influences. Maybe we fear the demonic, or maybe we fear defilement...or maybe we're just trying not to feel "bad" or "down." Call it what you will...it is the darkness (whatever we consider to be "darkness") that we are trying to avoid.
But here's something to consider: God does not avert His gaze when bad things are happening. He sees every sin committed, hears every negative word uttered, sees every atrocity, every tragedy, every form of evil. He sees it all, and does not avoid it. One might ask, "Then why does He not do something about it?" That's a lifetime question for another post: suffice it for now to say that He does things we know not of...but at the very least, God is present. He does not shrink away from those things we consider defiling or dark, and I personally believe it is His intense love for us that keeps Him among us when we are at our worst.
Does this mean that we should follow suit and fill our eyes and ears and minds with every evil that God sees? Of course not--because we could never bear the burdens God bears. However, I believe there is a difference in motive between legitimately guarding our hearts and simply disengaging from the dark and grotesque because it makes us uncomfortable. One is wisdom, and the other is selfish--and I think we do confuse one for the other. Just as God is present in the darkness...sometimes people need to know we are present, too.
Another thing to consider...one commenter sent me an email referring to the "dark night of the soul", that place of testing where we feel overwhelmed and alone, and God does not seem to be present, although He is. Space can't permit me to elaborate here, but I've gone through a season like this, and I can usually tell when someone else has, too. It's something that can only be appreciated when you have gone through it, and it also seems that it is a necessary part of the journey for anyone who genuinely wants more than a surface relationship with Christ. I say this because, if I can be totally honest--I don't find too many Christians who bear the fruit of this experience. Those who do, will speak of it freely. Those who have not experienced it tend either to talk about some "rough patch" in their lives as though they completely understand--or to avoid the conversation entirely because, again, it makes them uncomfortable. They don't want to go there. And there are also those who will intellectualize and say that there is no such thing as a "dark night of the soul", that this is the invention of mystics.
I say all this because it occurs to me that perhaps the dark night of the soul is more voluntary than we realize. If we spend so much time avoiding the darkness, we will do all we can to avoid this season as well. What we might not realize is that God is in that darkness, and as long as we avoid it...we are potentially cheating ourselves of a level of growth and a depth of intimacy with God that we would not know otherwise. We might think we are protecting ourselves by this avoidance of "darkness", but we might be surprised to discover Whom we are "protecting" ourselves from.
The second thing that comes to mind from these verses is more speculation than anything...
This idea that God is in "Sheol", if we're honest, might be a bit of a stumbling block to us. "Sheol" in Hebrew means the underworld, a place of punishment--essentially the Hebrews' primitive concept of hell. (It doesn't just mean the place of the dead--there is a definite negative vibe to this word.)
Now, I realize that there are some Christians who either downplay the existence of hell or question its existence entirely. So while I don't judge those who struggle with this (and consider some of them to be my friends)...I believe that hell does exist, that eternal punishment is a doctrine of Scripture, although I do recognize that Scripture doesn't give many specifics about what hell is or what it is like. (I wrote a post about this awhile back, if you're interested.) Just so you understand that what I'm about to speculate on assumes the existence of hell. :)
What is a more significant point of discussion for me is not whether hell exists...but the very idea that God is there--that we couldn't escape God by going there!
This challenges my own pre-conceived ideas about what hell is, because I've always pictured hell as a place devoid of the presence of God--a place of eternal separation from Him. To me, that was the whole reason it was such a place of torment. After all...while we live and breathe here on earth, God is here with us, whether we recognize Him or not, whether or not we even believe in Him. "In Him we live, and move, and have our being." The very breath in our lungs is evidence of His presence and grace. Even being aware of God, I can't imagine what it would be like if He weren't around--how absolutely awful that would be. That is how I've pictured hell and torment--an eternity without Him. (I can't remember if I was ever specifically taught this, but it seems to fit the typical evangelical idea.)
But what if the premise is wrong here? What if the reason for the torment of hell is not because God isn't there--but because He is there?
In Jesus' story of the rich man and Lazarus, He gives us a brief glimpse into the underworld. He describes the rich man finding himself in Hades and in torment, and seeing Lazarus safe in "Abraham's bosom" across an impassable chasm--able to see him, but not able to get to him.
What if that's what hell is like--being able to see God, but not able to get to Him? Or what if it's sort of the opposite--that people in hell actually want to escape the knowledge of God, but cannot do so? Either way--what if this is the source of the eternal torment, the "wailing and gnashing of teeth" Jesus described, is not because of God's absence, but because of His presence...serving as a constant reminder, either of what you wish you had, or what you wish you could forget?
Again, no conclusions here--just stuff to think about. :)
This is (probably) the concluding post for this series; we'll get on to something else next time. However, it being my blog and all, I reserve the right to change my mind if I come up with something else profound to say about this. :) Meanwhile...links to the previous posts are below. And feel free to discuss and comment about any of this...just be nice. :)
(Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4.)
God Is In the Darkness (Part 4: Questions of Defilement)
Monday, July 13, 2009
Defile. Defiling. Defilement.
These are not words we normally hear in the everyday world around us...unless our world is almost exclusively filled with Christians, and even then the younger generation doesn't use them much. They sound kind of archaic, like "thee", "thou", and "verily." Yet, for being so old-fashioned, I think they pretty much describe the root of most Christians' fear of the darkness.
In the first post in this series, I talked about this from the standpoint of the demonic, about how I got over my own fears that anything I did, thought, or watched on TV might make me or my family vulnerable to demonic activity. But this needs revisiting because a lot of Christians wouldn't describe their fears in that way, exactly. For them, it's a more general aversion. Some would describe it "garbage in, garbage out", talking about needing to guard what we receive as input into our brains (which is true enough). But I think it goes deeper than that for some, a little more intangible.
I think in this case, the word "defilement" really applies. We avoid the darkness because we are afraid of being defiled. (Past my own fears of the the demonic, I think I was largely afraid of defilement, too.)
So what, exactly, is defilement? Simply put, it describes when something unholy or unclean comes into contact with something otherwise pure, and corrupts it. In the Law of Moses, certain things (and people) were considered clean, and some were unclean, and the unclean could not touch the clean. Some things (or people) were made ceremonially clean, by performing a ritual, and from that point those ceremonially clean things (or people) needed to be guarded against unclean things that could defile them. Sometimes, when defilement happened, you could just perform another ritual to "clean" the defiled item (or person). At other times, the Law called for the destruction of what was defiled. (I'm being very general here, but you get the point.)
It really is from this mentality that we draw our modern view of defilement. We're supposed to be clean and holy people, and the sin (and even negativity) around us can potentially defile us. So we avoid it because we don't want to be seduced into uncleanness. We don't want that stuff making us "dirty" on the inside.
For now, I want to bypass the more obvious New Testament based responses. I know Jesus said what comes out of a man defiles him more than what goes into him, and I recognize that the New Testament has freed us from these clean/unclean regulations of the Law. But the Old Testament is full of types and shadows that help us understand why this is true, and what the heart of God is for us in the midst of all of it. So permit me to ponder a bit more about the Law of Moses.
As I understand it, there are actually three levels of holiness described by the Law. I've already talked about the lowest level, ceremonial cleanness. This is the lowest (and weakest) form of holiness because the holiness is all externally based. In other words, the only thing that makes us clean or unclean at this level is what happens to us. We can't get clean on our own; we must be cleansed ceremonially, and then we can't touch anything unclean, or we will be defiled by the unclean thing.
The level above that is most holy. These are items that carry the holiness with them, so that when an unclean thing touches it, the unclean thing becomes clean. For lack of a better description, this is "reverse defilement." Instead of becoming defiled by the unclean thing, the most holy thing actually sanctifies the unclean. The sacrificial altar, for example, had this quality. A dead animal was generally unclean; but place it on the altar for a sacrifice, and it becomes holy.
The top level is the level of God--Holiest of All. This is the pure holiness that annihilates any unclean stuff that comes near it. It is this intense holiness that requires unclean things (and people) to become clean before entering, to avoid destruction. This, of course, is the principle behind why ultimately the sacrifice of Christ and His blood is so important for us....'nuff said. :)
Having said all this...can you maybe see where I'm going with it?
We Christians today live so much of our lives as though all Jesus did by His amazing sacrifice was to make us ceremonially clean, like the lowest level of holiness in the Law. His blood "will never lose its power", so we can come again and again to be cleansed. But for some reason, in our minds, this cleanness doesn't stick. So we ultimately end up living as sterile a life as possible, for fear that anything we touch could corrupt and defile us.
But is this as far as it goes? Is this the plan of God for us? I honestly don't believe so. From what I read of the Scriptures, it seems to me that God's plan is not just to cleanse us, but to transform us and remake us. I think "most holy" is a more apt picture of where He is taking us. I think He is making us into a people who can sanctify an environment by walking into it, who can bring virtue and holiness into unclean situations without being defiled.
To be a people who bring light into the darkness, not have their light snuffed out by the darkness.
Now, are we all there? Well, perhaps it's one of those things that is a paradox; Christ's work was a completed work on the cross, and yet He is still working that "completed work" out within our hearts. Perhaps when we are young in the faith, we are only able to aim for ceremonial cleanness, and that's appropriate. It is certainly wisdom to guard our hearts (see Proverbs 4), and certainly there are situations where a new believer would be vulnerable, and where it would be wise to guard him/her. (The same obviously goes for our children who shouldn't see certain things before they are emotionally ready for them--a lot of genuine defilement occurs that way.)
I've been a Christian for most of my life, and yet there are definitely some places I personally cannot go, because I am honest about my own weaknesses and frailties. So in some areas, I'm "not there yet." Probably none of us are, since this is a journey, not a destination.
But in general, the more I trust the work God is doing in my heart, the less affected I am by the defilement around me--the less tempted, the less influenced. And so I think in these areas, "most holy" begins to apply. I am more capable of bringing light to dark places than the darkness is capable of overwhelming me. And the less afraid I am of the dark. I think this is what we are meant for. So taken this way...the whole question changes. No longer is it a question of defilement, whether touching the unclean thing will corrupt us. Instead, it's a question of what good influence the virtue God has worked in us can have upon the unclean thing.
And so ultimately, this reaffirms to me that God is, indeed, in the darkness. He doesn't always reveal Himself in all His glory (so as not to burn everything to a crisp), but He is light just the same. And it naturally follows that if we are following Him...we're going to follow Him into that darkness. We have to see it, understand it, know the pain that occurs within it--but ultimately, we don't have to fear it. We need to go there, because He is there.
Does this mean we won't ever be defiled? Not necessarily; we are not yet perfect, and this journey isn't without risk. But if things do get a bit messy, Christ's blood and His grace are sufficient; we still have a way to be made clean again. At any rate, as we allow God to work in us, and trust Him, we have a better shot of making the unclean holy, rather than the other way around.
After all...how will the unclean thing become clean, if that which is most holy never makes contact with it?
Aaand there's still more to say...stay tuned.... :)
God Is In the Darkness (part 3: "Untitled")
Friday, July 10, 2009
I couldn't think of anything clever to name Part 3, so we'll just go for it and see what happens. :)
In this series, I've been processing some thoughts about Christians and light and darkness, and perhaps some misconceptions. In the last post, I mentioned how a friend had observed a bit of a dark theme in one of The Wild One's photographs, and how since I've let go of some of my own fears of the dark, I've noticed that I have gravitated toward darker themes in my own creative stream. I'd like to dwell on this a few minutes--especially from a creative/artistic view.
I particularly notice the change in myself when when I hear some believer talking the way I used to talk about these things--a bit of apprehension toward what they consider "dark". I think there's this latent fear (and sometimes not so latent) that by exploring the darkness in the creative arts--or by watching it--we somehow invite it.
I also think this goes back to a simplistic assumption that light equals good and darkness equals evil, and we demand that the media reflect that. And I'm not just talking about stuff that's overtly demonic, or perverse for its own sake. Many Christians are critical of movies and books that have sad or tragic endings rather than happy ones, or violence in media--and all they can really say about it is that it seems "dark." By contrast--too much of what Christians create is so bubble-gum happy and sterile (read: mediocre) that very few people can relate to it. I can't stand the Christian music station anymore, and I don't go see the movies made by the "Christian" companies. For me, I don't think my recent attraction to darker themes has anything to do with the seduction of darkness upon my soul; I just think it is more honest--more real, more believable.
Here's one example of what I'm saying. A few years ago, a Christian-owned movie company released a movie in theaters about the story of Esther, called One Night with the King. Many of my Christian friends thought it was amazing; I thought it was a travesty, because Esther acted more like a 20th-century conservative charismatic Christian than a Jewish woman in an ancient pagan harem. It highlighted to me the disconnect the Christian subculture has--not just with the world, but even with the Bible itself! We forget that if they really made a movie out of the Bible, it would be rated R or worse. Sex, betrayal, deceit, suicide, demonic manifestations, murder, blood and gore--it's all in there. If the modern church really stopped to think about the Bible, they'd come to the startling conclusion that the Bible itself would have to be banned, by their own criteria of what is "too dark." This suggests to me that we have either overdone the metaphor of light and darkness as it relates to God...or that we have missed the point entirely.
Yes, the Bible does say that "God is light, and in Him there is no darkness at all." It also admonishes us repeatedly to "walk in the light". But as I mentioned in the last post, there is at least one other Scripture that counterbalances that idea--one that honestly has both encouraged and troubled me in times past.
Psalm 139 says this: "Where can I go from Your Spirit, or where can I flee from Your presence? If I ascend to heaven, You are there; if I make my bed in Sheol [i.e., the nether world, the Hebrew primitive understanding of hell]...behold, You are there!" (I beg your pardon? God in the underworld?? I'll have some speculations about this in a future segment of this series.) It goes on to say, "Even the darkness is not dark to You, and the night is as bright as the day. Darkness and light are alike to You."
Apparently, this black-and-white picture we've had of light and darkness isn't quite as black-and-white. Do I dispute that God is light? Not at all. But God also created light...and also created day and night, and is Lord over all the universe--not just the bright parts. I think we need to consider from the Scriptures that even though "in Him there is no darkness at all"--God is still present in the darkness, the same as He is present in the light.
The point I'm pondering in all this rambling is that many of those things that we consider to be "dark"--the darker emotions of anger, sadness and fear, the stark realities of injustice, abuse, and tragedy, and so on...these things do not happen in a vacuum apart from God's presence. And contrary to how the contemporary Christian music industry might portray it, the perfect Christian life is not a life void of negatives. That just isn't reality. At any given moment in this world, there is a cacophony of good and evil, the divine and the demonic--sometimes occurring in the same room! Just because someone is having a difficult moment does not mean God has left, and just because something seems dark doesn't automatically make it evil. (And lest we forget--one of Satan's favorite tricks is to appear as an angel of light. Try tossing that wrench into our clean-cut presumptions about all this.)
So I'm considering the very real possiblity that darkness and evil are not necessarily synonyms. Certainly, evil prefers the darkness because it can lurk and hide within it. But if I'm reading my Bible correctly, there is Someone Else present in the darkness. God is there, too.
So why bother with all this? I guess it's that I get a little grieved and perturbed that we are so quick to write off certain things because we assume they are "too dark," or that the darkness is necessarily something to be avoided. In all honesty, it has been in the darkest moments of my life that God has become the most real to me. In fact, I find it quite interesting that one of the most powerful exercises counselors do in inner healing is to urge people to focus on the dark places in their soul, the dark moments of their history--to go there on purpose. Why? To look for God in the darkness--to go back to that place and realize that He was there. Some of the most powerful healing moments come within that realization.
Creatively, I know all about how to write a song that is filled with light and happiness in Jesus. I've written a lot of them--and quite frankly, I'm bored. I want more. And I think that's why the darker themes are inspiring me now. For so long I ran from the darkness, thinking I was running from evil itself. But what I wasn't realizing was that there's a side to God that isn't found when everything is all happy. In fact, people need to see God the most, not when everything is good, but when darkness surrounds them. I think that's why God is in the darkness. I think He's there because that is where people hurt and bleed and grieve and despair.
God is in the darkness. There was a day when that would have sounded almost blasphemous to me. But nowadays...it's possibly one of the most comforting things I could think of.
And it's a thought that's very inspiring to this creative soul.
We're not done, yet. More to come on this... :)
God Is In the Darkness (part 2: The Broken Metaphor)
Thursday, July 9, 2009
(If you're just tuning in, you might want to start with part 1--please especially note the disclaimer at the beginning.)
My son The Director entered his teen years during the season I described in the last post, when I felt the need to be especially careful about what came into my home that might invite demonic attack.
I could probably just end the post there and let you connect the dots. :) But I still feel like writing...
Early in his life we were able to shelter him more, to filter the music he listened to, the television shows he watched--and to his credit, he has also filtered his own life because of his strong moral compass. But eventually he began gravitating to music and bands I knew not of--and of course that made me uneasy. For the most part, he didn't sneak stuff past us; when he related to something musically, he tried to share it with us and let us know why he was drawn to it. So I found myself cramming to read up on bands and lyrics for awhile--because I knew not only would it be unfair to say "no" as a default, I wanted to be able to explain why, if we did have to put our foot down on something. ("Because I said so" carries less and less weight as children grow into adults.)
I had mixed emotions about one band in particular that The Director really liked, not because the content was filthy, or demonic, or anything like that--it was just that it focused on a lot of negative emotions. The word I used to describe the bands songs was dark. (Ironically, and even frustratingly--I actually liked the music myself!) Yet, because I couldn't find anything tangibly, morally wrong with the songs he liked, I remember reluctantly telling him it was okay, but sharing my concerns about how "dark" the music was, and advising caution. He had been such a happy kid, and I didn't understand why he was drawn to the darkness. (Later, I understood that he had been grappling with a lot of angst, and those songs actually gave his feelings a voice, and helped to bring healing to him.)
Nowadays, those songs are on my own iPod, along with a lot of other stuff of his. :)
Looking at the difference in our lives between then and now, I've recently realized something about myself that unnerved me a little at first--but now I find almost amusing. I find that I am actually more drawn to the dark than I first realized. And really, so is my family. And this seems to be reflected in our various creative directions. The moment of truth really happened when a Christian friend, while admiring one of The Wild One's fine art photos, also commented that it seemed a bit..."dark."
I pondered that. And I saw the darkness in it. And I took a quick inventory of the two short films The Director is finishing up, and the songs I've been writing lately, and I found that they, too, were following darker themes.
But wait a minute. We're Christians! Aren't we supposed to be children of light, and all that? Why are we doing this dark stuff? Are we okay? Are we falling away?
I admit to brief moments of paranoia :) But at the same time, I think it's healthy to hear feedback like that and take an honest assessment. So when our friend mentioned the darkness in the theme, I asked myself the honest questions. Everyone has blind spots, and everyone is capable of getting off track.
But I looked at it...and I don't think we are getting off track.
I think we Christians too often take our metaphors to the extreme, forgetting that every metaphor breaks down at some point. I think the idea of light and darkness is one of those themes that gets over-interpreted and ultra-processed and homogenized until it becomes almost a doctrine in itself...
Light is good; darkness is evil. Light is holy; darkness is sinful. Light and darkness battle in the heavenlies. Light always overcomes the darkness. People of God must not walk in the darkness, but be children of light. We are the light of the world. God is light, and in Him there is no darkness at all.
Most Christians would agree with these statements, especially with the ones that reference the Scriptures themselves. But do you see how non-specific these statements are, and how we can potentially interpret the heck out of them? We can take the light/darkness thing so literally that anything negative is something to be avoided. And Christians do, all the time. It's what causes some Christians to assume that people who struggle with depression should "just get over it", and if they can't, demonic oppression must be involved--because depression is "dark." It's what causes our songs and our so-called creativity to be so mamby-pamby that nobody but religious Christians will relate. It's what causes Christians to sometimes become paranoid over any negative thing they might say, so that any negative confession must be combated. And frankly, it's what causes Christians to become uncomfortable with darker themes--that somehow those things are defiling. (I cringe at how I myself have over-interpreted this idea.)
I've come to realize that this sort of thing isn't really walking in the light. It's walking in denial.
Like I've said here, and numerous times before--every metaphor breaks down at some point. A metaphor can't be an exact comparison; it only paints a picture to help us understand something intangible. And I think we forget that light and darkness in Scripture is a metaphor...that the Bible says "God is light" (1 John 1:5), but it also lets us know that God created light (Gen. 1:3). How are we going to reconcile these statements literally--did God create Himself?
I said in the last post I was going to try and explain the title of this series: "God Is In the Darkness." But due to length, I'm going to have to save the specifics for the next post. (Sorry--I said I would try.) For now, though...let me offer another couple of Bible verses to chew on until the next post...some verses from Psalm 139 that have always messed with me when it came to my understanding of light and darkness...some verses that aid in the breaking down of this metaphor. Remember, this is in the same Bible that says "God is light":
Where can I go from Your Spirit? Or where can I flee from Your presence? If I ascend to heaven, You are there; if I make my bed in Sheol, behold, you are there....If I say, "Surely the darkness will overwhelm me, and the light around me will be night," even the darkness is not dark to You, and the night is as bright as the day. Darkness and light are alike to You. (Ps. 139:7-8, 11-12, NASB)
Until next time....mwahahahaha... :)
