Tuesday, April 1, 2014

Dark and Light again.

I am reading over the notes I have written down every time I come to ihop. Here is something I wrote to myself in March 2011. "Apart from Him we grow in darkness not light." We somehow get confused about these concepts. Because we are people we are absolutely convinced that there is a third choice, a neutral place. For whatever reason our brains want to convince us that there is a place of non movement. But I feel pretty sure that there is not a third option. I feel pretty sure that there is not a neutral moment in God. It seems clear that there is a battle that is rageing. It seems clear that this whole thing is an epic battle between strength and weakness. The heart of God does not see neutral space between Himself and Satan.

When we are in the light we are in Christ. He is light and when we are with Him we are in the light. His light is perfect light so there are not shades of light. There is just light. His light does not get brighter the nearer we are. This would somehow indicate that God's love has a limit or that it fades. God's love is best seen as a perfect circle. It is perfect light from beginning to end. At the edge of the light is perfect light. His light is powerful and radiant. It does not grow dim.

Where the light ends there is not a fading of the light. There is light and then it ends as abruptly as it began. There is perfect light and then there is darkness. Darkness behaves like the light. There are not degrees of dark. There is just dark. We do not move through the dark to discover darker. The dark is perfectly dark all throughout. It is everything outside the circle. Perfect light and then nothing. Just black. Just dark.

This is how God designed the whole thing. Once we are not in the light we are in the dark. For God there are no degrees of darkness. There is just everything that is Him and everything that is not. Degrees of light and dark are man made ideas. It is how we compare ourselves to others. We believe that others are darker than us and that others are lighter than us. God does not have this. God sees who is in the light and He does not see those in the dark. 1 John tells us that God does not fellowship with the dark. In fact it makes clear that He fellowships exclusively with those in the light. In the light there is fellowship. There is no fellowship outside in the dark. All things are made new in the light. Our joy is made full in the light.

He is pretty particular. So to my thoughts from 2011. I'm not sure we grow in darkness. I'm pretty sure dark is dark. But i am also sure that when we are not in fellowship with Him we are fully in the dark. Standing in the dark with no clue we are there. We somehow think there is light around us. But without Him we are absolutely in darkness. Without Him we do not have any light. Not even just a little bit. Light does not work that way. No one in the light is trying to explain degrees of light, hues of light. But isn't it interesting that those in the dark have created and entire system of false light. Those in the dark have made the dark look like light. There are entire systems dedicated to making dark look like light. Dark constantly argues that it has a light. It argues that there are those among the dark who are evil and those in the dark who are good. Having electricity does not create real light. It creates a false light. It is not the sun. It is something like the sun, but not. But the truth is that dark is dark. Even if it looks like light. John 1:5 makes it clear that even though the light(Jesus) came into the dark everything in the dark could not see. The dark is so convinced of it's own light. It can't be confused by the truth.