Without Light, We Wouldn't Know Darkness
There was a time I just assumed everyone was paying attention. But not anymore. It’s quite obvious the American attention span has been hijacked by American media, politicians, and the corporations that vie for our eyes and ears in their full-time efforts to affect our hearts and minds in ways they alone now seem to direct. It’s a sad statement on our culture that we would have allowed this to happen and more so that we stand back and watch it sink further and further into a mindless darkness that someday will be too dimly lit by moral soundness and common sense to even find our way back out to a place of decency toward even our closest of neighbor or friend. Selfishness, as it turns out, is still the building block of temptation that lures even the strongest into webs of irrational behaviour, with the result always in favor of the spider who builds the web. The only way to keep from getting tangled up in the web is to shine a light on the spider to remind you what lies in wait, and shows you the consequence you will surely face should you blindly crawl onto his turf. Just as no bail policies are wreaking havoc in the cities, as criminals have less and less consequence for their actions, the lure of selfish gain in our society is wreaking havoc on common sense, and spinning us further and further into chaos in our economy and our personal lives, as we discover too late too often that there is more to life than Starbucks and Viagra.
The story has never changed since the beginning of recorded history. People are presented the opportunity to build a society that would benefit everyone. But as process turns into progress, the real nature of all human beings is hijacked by those whose scrupals are less than honest, and they begin to quietly use our frailties against us in their own pursuits of wealth and power. Our jealousies and arrogances are used against us as we begin to feel the need to ‘keep up with the Jones’, and little by little the entire society becomes a whirlwind of greed, lust, envy and battle, as each individual tries to find a way to share in the success, as well as navigate the insanity to the point of ignoring even basic survival needs, and perhaps more importantly the family as a unit and each persons role in it. Break up the family unit and you will certainly break up a society. Look up the word society sometime. Before they change the definition to something it’s not.
It is no accident the most solid groups of people in America are found in the churches across Our Land, small and large, rural and urban, in neckties or in flip flops. Anyone remotely involved in a Christian church knows there is safety in family. And that the core of a family, when combined with other families in a church, creates a solid bond of shared value that cannot be easily broken, and the resulting strength can be utilized as a safe haven by anyone connected to it in times of despair. And perhaps one of the most striking things about a church is how it can protect individuals by shining a light on the darkness that resides inside each of us, allowing us to better understand the evil we are all capable of toward one another if we allow ourselves to justify selfishness for even a fleeting moment. In churches, people gain an understanding about human nature that can and should affect the society in which they live, and in reality, it does. But that doesn’t stop the culture from attempting to change people. As long as there is evil on the planet, that evil will be looking for good to destroy, not just for sport, for power and greed they have no intention of ever sharing.
One thing is certain. There has always been darkness. Until God said “Let there be light,” and there was light. That’s at the very beginning of the Bible, and is immediately followed up by the fact that darkness and light were separated. You can go any number of ways in your mind as to how to interpret that in relation to this discussion, but we aren’t debating theology right now, we are observing life, and our observation is that light and darkness can easily be seen as good and evil in the case of our society, and if you allow yourself a few minutes to compare what happens in the dark in America and what happens in the light, you can follow along just fine.
We bring all this up to make a point. Some really bad things happen in places where no one else can see. Namely, inside the human heart. Evil does not reside in a public building on a main street in town. Evil lives in the heart of man. And lies in wait as a spider building a web with the intent of overtaking good for it’s own pleasure and gain. Unseen, evil can and will overtake a society by preying on the selfish nature of good people who ignore the dangers of following their own desires too far too fast. History is littered by societies that pursued selfishness and then crumbled as they ignored the foundations that originally held them up. What a shame it would be to watch
America do the same. But make no mistake, if we allow ourselves to continue down the path of too much too fast, we will wind up in the same history book next chapter.
Just as God said that He found the light to be good and separated it from the dark, Americans should consider doing the same. In our current culture, obvious darkness has made it’s way into the mainstream of our society, and is wreaking havoc on our families and on individuals within our families, and even in our churches. It has never been and will never be appropriate to accept evil into the company of good, as the two cannot reside together without total chaos. With the understanding of where evil resides and how it preys on our own desires to give it strength, perhaps it is time to become even more vigilant in recognizing evil for what it is, shine even more light on it, and drive it back into the darkness from which it comes. Tolerance is not the same as acceptance. Evil can be tolerated to an extent, and is. But evil can never be accepted. And in Our Land, we must reject it, and shine a light on it to expose it to all who would become it’s victim. Evil more often than not is disguised as something good when it first appears. It is our job to know what evil is and where it comes from so that we can recognize it before it overtakes us.
Evil, much like the bully it is, will retreat when exposed to light and the strength of the Creator of all things. His is the ultimate authority even over evil in the world. If man could have controlled evil on the planet, perhaps it would already have disappeared, and the utopia some seem to be looking for would already be here. But man can’t control it, and we are far from utopia.
Evil operates through mankind, and therefore, must be exposed in mankind for all to see. It’s not wrong for Christians to expose evil in our society. It is just the opposite. It is our duty to expose it and to help protect others from it. The ultimate selfish act would be to know evil is present and to say nothing and do nothing.
Without light, we wouldn’t recognize evil. But there is light. And if God himself thought it a good idea to seperate it from darkness, I’m on board to do the same.