I Am and the Light II

Jay: Three themes have emerged so far from our discussion of the theology of light:

1. Light is essential for life.
2. Light is essential for sight or discernment.
3. There is a true light and a false light.

They leave us with three questions.

Light began at the Creation:

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters. Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light day, and the darkness He called night. And there was evening and there was morning, one day. (Genesis 1:1-5)

God created life and light intentionally, but he did not allow the light to overwhelm the darkness completely. He separated the two, and that separation remains today. Why is the darkness allowed to exist? Is it still needed for some purpose?

Why is light essential for discernment? Jesus, the Light, did not come into this world to judge, to discern; but Light is nevertheless discerning:

“For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him. He who believes in Him is not judged; he who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. This is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil. For everyone who does evil hates the Light, and does not come to the Light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. But he who practices the truth comes to the Light, so that his deeds may be manifested as having been wrought in God.” (John 3:16-21)

Is this a contradiction?

What’s the difference between true light and false light? We see the true light in the transfiguration:

…and His garments became radiant and exceedingly white, as no launderer on earth can whiten them. (Mark 9:3)

This is a supernatural light. But we see natural light, which is not enough to show us God:

For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I will know fully just as I also have been fully known. (1 Corinthians 13:12)

Are we capable of seeing the true light, or does it take a supernatural event, such as the transfiguration?

Don: The new earth described in Revelation has no night, no darkness. This is puzzling, since clearly the Garden had both day and night.

Lloyd: Are we discussing physical or spiritual light?

Jay: Physical light did not appear right away. Vegetation—life—came before it. What was present at the very beginning was the spiritual power—or light, if you will. Yet the two types of light still seem very much interconnected.

Lloyd: We have to take it on faith that God created the light; we cannot describe or explain it in words. But the light that will be with us eternally in the new earth seems to be more of a spiritual than a physical light.

Robin: Revelation says that God and the Lamb shall be the eternal light. Wherever God is, there is his light. He created the physical light of this solar system, but his light is a spiritual light. In many passages in the Bible where people are in the presence of holy light they are afraid. It is probably fear of something they have never seen or experienced before. God usually gives them some comforting words. Even Mary was afraid when Gabriel appeared before her in his glory. Adam and Eve were unafraid of the light until after the Fall.

Lloyd: Maybe God is reminding us that everything comes from him; that we don’t need to depend on the sun, moon and stars for light.

Jay: To paraphrase: There was a void—a place of darkness, where God was not present. God decided to bring his presence there, and with it his light. But at some point, God’s presence gets separated from the darkness. In the new earth, there is no darkness, but there was in the original creation. So was there ever a time and/or a place where God was not present? It seems so.

Don: It is indeed puzzling that the Garden—a place without sin, without evil—was not a place of permanent light. Yet clearly it was not:

The One forming light and creating darkness,
Causing well-being and creating calamity;
I am the Lord who does all these. (Isaiah 45:7)

It is even more puzzling that the new earth is a place of permanent light.

Lloyd: Jesus brought light but not condemnation. His light showed up the Pharisees for what they were. It revealed the darkness within them. But he did not condemn them. Light is necessary for the perception of darkness.

Jay: Many scriptural quotes support this.

Alice: As Jesus told the Pharisees: If you don’t know the light, you cannot be held accountable for sin. But once you do, you can.

Lloyd: The argument ultimately boils down to good and evil—how you can have one without the other.

David: A substantial portion of humanity sees no puzzle in the presence of opposites. The Chinese have acknowledged the Yin and the Yang since long before Christianity arrived. It is just the Way—it is just the way God is. The Way—God, if you like—encompasses everything, simultaneously, and always. Light and dark, good and evil, male and female, everything and nothing are all just facts of life, aspects of the universe. What’s to puzzle over?

There is a physical parallel with the delayed creation of light in Genesis: Science has shown decisively that light was created no sooner than three seconds after the Big Bang. Many other things happened during that three seconds, but photons came later. But here’s the real puzzle, and it is the one Lloyd has alluded to: Genesis can take us all the way back to the moment of Creation, but not before. Science can take us all the way back to the singularity, the Big Bang, but not before. Not even in principle can we understand the entirety of the formation of the universe. In exactly the same way, scripture tells us we cannot even in principle understand the entirety of God.

Lloyd: There is a point where we must simply admit to not knowing—and not needing to know. We can only exercise faith that God exists and is bringing everything to pass and that it is for ultimate good.

Jay: Are true light and false light opposite?

Don: True light is the inner light, or what Paul called the light in our hearts:

For God, who said, “Light shall shine out of darkness,” is the One who has shone in our hearts to give the Light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ. (2 Corinthians 4:6)

This seems intimately linked with the light created in Genesis.

Jay: Paul also acknowledged our puzzlement or “perplexity”:

But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, so that the surpassing greatness of the power will be of God and not from ourselves; we are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not despairing; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed;… (2 Corinthians 4:7-9)

Our divine inner light is not contained within a divine vessel—it is in an earthly vessel; hence can only be dimly, imperfectly, perceived. That is just the way (or as Daoists would say, “The Way”) things are. They key thing is to accept that it exists.

Alice: Even so, seeing the light through a glass darkly is not a permanent state: It progresses, one can perceive God’s light better and better—but never perfectly until such time as we meet with Jesus.

God was present before the light of Creation, but he chose the time of his own revealing. He gave us the light so that we could see him, but darkness will persist as long as there are people who choose to hide from God’s sight. Light or dark is our choice. It is not a matter of judgment. It is a matter of self-appraisal, which is more reliably conducted in the light than in the dark. This is why God gave us light.

Lloyd: Perhaps God hid himself in the darkness. At the Transfiguration, Jesus stepped out of the darkness and into the true light, revealing himself to the three disciples. Therefore, darkness is not the absence of God—it is a cover, a cloak; it protects us from a light that would literally put the fear of God in us, as it did the disciples.

Alice: When we are far from God, when we live in sin, we are in the dark. When god turns on the light, it helps us to see our true selves. That creates mortification, humility in us.

Don: It seems not accidental that light and dark are cyclical. If God wanted perpetual light, he would have ordained it so. And apparently he has ordained perpetual light for the new earth. The days and nights of… days and nights will be over! But why are they cyclical until then?

Lloyd: We ourselves will be changed, therefore we will be able to live in perpetual light.

David: There is the assumption (often plainly stated) that God chose to create light, and all the rest of Creation. This Daoist would hold as absurd the idea that the Way, the great I Am, was sitting for an eternity in the dark mulling over a choice: “Shall I create light, life, the universe, and everything? Or not? Shall I first create a dice, and roll it?” The light, the dark, and God are all inevitable. They are the Way. They are One.

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