A Cure For The Darkness

You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven. Matthew 5:14-16

You walk into a darkened room. Your vision is compromised to the point that you feel disoriented. Undeterred, you continue forward. Your foot bumps into something. Pain shoots up your leg. You let out a yelp. But you keep going. Bit by bit you are making progress without knowing exactly where you are going. You fear tripping and falling at any point.

After several minutes of this, you’ve had enough. You make your way out of the darkened room muttering under your breath about the audacity of the room for being dark. You take to social media ranting about dark rooms. Surely some politician is responsible for rooms like that. If only it could be like it used to be. Rooms didn’t use to be dark or at least that’s how you prefer to remember it. Your words are filled with biting sarcasm and open hostility. What’s wrong with this world that dark rooms like that are allowed to exist? Somebody ought to do something about it.

Of course, nothing like this really happened. You understand that it’s not the fault of darkness that makes the room be dark. Darkness is just being what it is, darkness. So you can rant and rave until you exhaust yourself, and the room will still be dark. No amount of social policy will change it either. Because the problem with a darkened room isn’t the darkness; it’s the lack of light. Therefore, when you enter a darkened room, you turn on the light.

We know this, yet for some reason we don’t transfer this understanding to the presence of spiritual darkness in our culture. When we see darkness, we expend all sorts of energy on Facebook and other social media outlets blasting away at how awful it is. We blame a certain political party for not doing something about it. If only we could elect the right people or make the right laws, the darkness would go away. Furthermore, if preachers would just get in the pulpit and call darkness what is it, then maybe things would get better.

In contrast it’s interesting how little time Jesus spent pointing out the many expressions of darkness in the Roman world. He was much more interested in how God’s people acted and especially those who portended to follow Him. In the presence of real spiritual darkness, Jesus reminds us that we are the light of the world. So if there is too much darkness, it must means that we are hiding the light that should be glowing within us.

The remedy for darkness is not to talk about how our understanding of the light is more correct that some other group’s understanding of the light. As one whose life’s work involved many words both spoken and written, I can testify that words, even good words, only go so far. What is really needed is the remedy Jesus offered – that the light is seen in our good deeds not just our words.

So what are these good deeds? Several things come to mind.
• Treat wait staff, store clerks, and others who serve us with respect even if they didn’t quite meet our standards.
• Be kind to others even if we don’t necessarily agree with their politics or their take on moral issues.
• Serve people who can’t do anything to pay us back,
• Look for the good in others instead of constantly complaining about what’s wrong with them.
• Extend grace toward others whether they offer an apology or not.
• Help others for the sake of helping them and not as a pretense to spring a gospel presentation on them.
• Confront our inner prejudices that we tend to ignore.
• Be just as interested in the least of these as we are the greatest of these.
• Hold our tongues even when others aren’t holding theirs.
• Stand up for the powerless.
• Love those who are hard to love.

These are not easy things. They require a work of the Spirit within to empower us to live this way. But when we do, the darkness is abated. And people will see our good deeds and glorify our Father in heaven.