It's Dark Out There But Light in Here

[HKHaugan]

You’re on a dark road, walking on a dark night, peering into the darkness, picking your way dark step by dark step. It’s cloudy so there’s no stars or moon for slight comfort. The sounds of whatever are magnified and dark images float into your consciousness. Used to the day and its light you try and escape the imagination that brings hyper visuals of the dreaded unknown. No, you refuse to think about what might happen or what’s out there or what’s making those noises. Got to keep your head clear. It’s dark, really dark and being alone doesn’t help. It seems like time is slowly evaporating and being replaced with the increasing fright of the moment. There is no time, only fear. Fear becomes terror and terror brings panic and panic consumes until you are no longer yourself. You have no identity. You have shifted from self-consciousness to fear. You are only your fear.

Could all that describe Adam and Eve in those moments after their disobedience in the Garden or Eden? Before they chose to disobey, darkness was not a threat. Realizing I am only speculating in terms of my own life experience I still think that darkness, however you have known it, is not a pleasant occasion. We don’t like dark rooms, dark entryways and dark streets. Sleep is how we have as a human race dealt with the dark. We sleep at night. Any light would help in those places.

But Adam and Eve? Something happened to them that made what had not been a threat now a threat. It was a different kind of darkness that made the darkness we see as night an outward symbol of something that was dark within. That something was fear. This realization of this new kind of darkness happened during the day. They could see their surroundings as they had seen before but what they saw within had changed. They could only see themselves alone and afraid. Within what had been peace, enjoyment and sharing with God and one another was split asunder like mined rocks in a quarry. Their world had been turned upside down. The darkness was not without, it was within, a conscious separation of mind, heart and spirit from God. The Creator of light was walking in the Garden and they were afraid so they tried to hide from Him among the trees. Now they were afraid of the light.

What caused the fear, aloneness and separation was sin. Sin made even light a threat to them. Sleep was now sin-blocking avoidance of the light. Sleep was pride and shoving God aside in the panic to secure one’s life in this world. People since then use darkness to hide. The inner darkness becomes disguises, hypocrisy, idolatry, trying to be something we are not, acting a role to impress others, trying to gain acceptance not only in self but also among others. Fear is the darkness which sin aggressively spreads. Sin snatches away the integrity of the image of God in us and we are blinded in the flurry of external social and spiritual pressure. We are locked in the embrace of our aloneness, what we believe can fill its emptiness and its glaring need for being right, being acceptable and being alive. Into this darkness a light has shone. “The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of deep darkness
a light has dawned (Is.9:2 NIV).” Jesus said, “I am the light of the world (Jn.8:12).”

John Stott has another way of expressing the same thought. “We are the product on the one hand of the fall, and on the other of our creation by God and re-creation in Christ. This theological framework is indispensable to the development of a balanced self-image and self-attitude. It will lead us beyond self-acceptance to something better still, namely self-affirmation. We need to learn both to affirm all the good within us, which is due to God's creating and re-creating grace, and ruthlessly to deny (i.e. repudiate) all the evil within us, which is due to our fallenness. Then, when we deny our false self in Adam and affirm our true self in Christ, we find that we are free not to love ourselves, but rather to love him who has redeemed us, and our neighbour for his sake. At that point we reach the ultimate paradox of Christian living that when we lose ourselves in the selfless loving of God and neighbour we find ourselves (Mk. 8:35). True self-denial leads to true self-discovery.”

Amen.