I Am and the Light III

Don: Why did God not completely dispel the darkness when he created the heavens and the earth?

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)

The creation of light is essentially  statement of God’s existence. When he said “Let there be light” he was in effect saying “I am the light.” It is a foundational statement concerning the nature of God. But before God created light, he was moving in the darkness over the deep. When he did decide to create light, why did he not go all the way and eliminate darkness? In the Garden restored, there is no darkness (and also no deep—no sea):

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth passed away, and there is no longer any sea. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, made ready as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne, saying, “Behold, the tabernacle of God is among men, and He will dwell among them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself will be among them, and He will wipe away every tear from their eyes; and there will no longer be any death; there will no longer be any mourning, or crying, or pain; the first things have passed away.”

And He who sits on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.” And He said, “Write, for these words are faithful and true.” Then He said to me, “It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. I will give to the one who thirsts from the spring of the water of life without cost. (Revelation 21:1-6)

…

Then he showed me a river of the water of life, clear as crystal, coming from the throne of God and of the Lamb, in the middle of its street. On either side of the river was the tree of life, bearing twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit every month; and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. There will no longer be any curse; and the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and His bond-servants will serve Him; they will see His face, and His name will be on their foreheads. And there will no longer be any night; and they will not have need of the light of a lamp nor the light of the sun, because the Lord God will illumine them; and they will reign forever and ever. (Revelation 22:1-5)

The light that was created at Creation eventually dispels all darkness in the new earth. There is also no Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, though the Tree of Life is there (albeit in different shape.) We have referred to the Tree as the Tree of Disobedience, and the Tree of the Law, and the Tree of Free Will. It perhaps may also be known as the Tree of Darkness since its removal is concurrent with the removal of darkness.

God had much to say about darkness. For example:

This is the message we have heard from Him and announce to you, that God is Light, and in Him there is no darkness at all. (1 John 1:5)

…

Where can I go from Your Spirit?
Or where can I flee from Your presence?

If I ascend to heaven, You are there;
If I make my bed in Sheol, behold, You are there.

If I take the wings of the dawn,
If I dwell in the remotest part of the sea,

Even there Your hand will lead me,
And Your right hand will lay hold of me.

If I say, “Surely the darkness will overwhelm me,
And the light around me will be night,”

Even the darkness is not dark to You,
And the night is as bright as the day.
Darkness and light are alike to You. (Psalms 139:7-12)

…

“It is He who reveals the profound and hidden things;
He knows what is in the darkness,
And the light dwells with Him. (Daniel 2:22)

…

I am the Lord, and there is no other,
The One forming light and creating darkness,
Causing well-being and creating calamity;
I am the Lord who does all these. (Isaiah 45:6-7)

God created darkness by evacuating light, by distancing himself. Is it possible that darkness, the void, is the realm of man and man’s will? Does the Revelation that darkness will no longer exist in the new earth mean the end of man’s will? Does it mean the end of free will?

“For behold, I create new heavens and a new earth;
And the former things will not be remembered or come to mind.

“But be glad and rejoice forever in what I create;
For behold, I create Jerusalem for rejoicing
And her people for gladness.

“I will also rejoice in Jerusalem and be glad in My people;
And there will no longer be heard in her
The voice of weeping and the sound of crying.

“No longer will there be in it an infant who lives but a few days,
Or an old man who does not live out his days;
For the youth will die at the age of one hundred
And the one who does not reach the age of one hundred
Will be thought accursed.

“They will build houses and inhabit them;
They will also plant vineyards and eat their fruit.

“They will not build and another inhabit,
They will not plant and another eat;
For as the lifetime of a tree, so will be the days of My people,
And My chosen ones will wear out the work of their hands. (Isaiah 65:17-22)

Darkness is closely linked to judgment:

“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)

There is a contrast between man’s will and God’s will. One operates in the dark, the other in the light. At the Creation, God made a puzzling decision to allow man to exercise free will. He could have eliminated darkness, but instead he created it. He could have made his own will paramount, but he allowed man’s will to override it. But he also gave man sight, making it easier to walk in the light than in the darkness. It’s as though he set us up to succeed in the light, yet we often choose to pursue the darkness.

The cycle of light and dark—the day and night—created at the Creation means that even if we do follow the darkness, the light will inevitably dispel it. It means that grace cannot be stopped whether we like it or not. It also means that we can slink back into darkness when night falls. God is present in both:

Even the darkness is not dark to You,
And the night is as bright as the day.
Darkness and light are alike to You. (Psalms 139:12)

There are many examples of God operating temporarily in the darkness of man’s will: He led the exodus from Egypt to the Promised Land as a pillar of fire by night and a cloud by day; God told a high priest in no uncertain terms to do what the Urim and Thummim dictated, not what the priest wanted; Saul was so overwhelmed by light on the road to Damascus that he was forced to step into it.

David: Drawing from my two favorite theories: The Omega Point and the Alpha Point are a quantum singularity. They are both light and dark. They are One. They are a Being—in fact, they are the Being, since nothing else can exist outside that singularity. The Omega Point is the new heaven and earth—a place of perpetual light. The Alpha Point (which is also the Omega Point) is a place of perpetual dark. It is the void over which God must pass, since he is both Alpha and Omega. There is no will but God’s in that singularity. But the space between Alpha and Omega is the space of physical creation and spiritual creation: The Becoming of God. This is the space where free will exists.

Charles: The entirety of scripture is a process of spiritual revelation. The physical aspects of existence are used to help us along on our spiritual journey. All of Creation, all of the universe, were things of purpose and pleasure to God. When God created Wo/Man in his image, it was not a physical image but a spiritual image, and that is why we have free will—free moral agency. God may have hoped to create wo/men who would choose to follow his will, but in order to do so he had to give them the free will to make that choice.

It seems to me that darkness was allowed rather than created. God hovered over it, and left it (or some of it) alone. It was the Word of God that shed the light. Darkness is sin. It is allowed, but was not created by God. God made two great lights: The sun to govern the day, and the lesser light of the moon to govern by night. The sun creates light; the moon merely reflects it. The light of the sun and the stars is real, created light; the light of the night—the moon—is merely reflected light, a sort of false light.

We could not reflect the true image of god if we did not have free will, as he himself does.

Robin: Perhaps there is a contrast between the physical darkness that god creates and the spiritual darkness that our disobedient will creates:

…for you were formerly darkness, but now you are Light in the Lord; walk as children of Light (for the fruit of the Light consists in all goodness and righteousness and truth), trying to learn what is pleasing to the Lord. Do not participate in the unfruitful deeds of darkness, but instead even expose them; for it is disgraceful even to speak of the things which are done by them in secret. But all things become visible when they are exposed by the light, for everything that becomes visible is light. For this reason it says,

“Awake, sleeper,
And arise from the dead,
And Christ will shine on you.” (Ephesians 5:8-14)

Kiran: It’s interesting that we sleep most of the night. We miss most of the darkness. So even if we go through periods of spiritual darkness, we spend much of that time asleep—not so much time sinning. A person who struggles to live righteously all the time will surely welcome a new earth of perpetual light, where there is no room for darkness and sin. That is the new life promised by Jesus:

“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.” (John 3:16)

But it is our choice. We are not judged—we must judge ourselves and we can only do that honestly in the light. God really made it easy.

Robin: Are people who choose to remain in darkness egotistical?

Don: We are not equally drawn to light and dark. We fear the dark. We gravitate towards light. In order to choose dark, we have to almost force ourselves “against our will” in a way. Left to itself, free will favors the light. All Creation seems set up to move everything toward the Light. Life itself seeks out light.

Robin: Lucifer the “Light Bearer” consistently chose his own will over God’s. One third of the angels followed him into the dark, but that means that two-thirds chose the light.

Kiran: God doesn’t abandon those who choose darkness. He pursues them there.

Chris: Saul thought he was doing God’s will until he met the true light on the road to Damascus:

And he said, ‘The God of our fathers has appointed you to know His will and to see the Righteous One and to hear an utterance from His mouth. (Acts 22:14)

Charles: Lucifer was a creature of the light, whereas Jesus was light itself. Christ was One with the father, but Lucifer was one with God only as long as he chose to accept God’s will. He chose not to. There is an obvious parallel with the story of Adam and Eve—with the story of man.

David: Robin mentioned that the ratio of good angels among all the angels in heaven was 2:3. There is a reasonably close ratio observed in nature, described in mathematics, and used in philosophy (Aristotle) called the Golden Ratio or the Golden Mean. The mean—the average—of this (close-to-golden) ratio is not ½ x 3: It is 2/3 x 3. Perhaps this is why there seems to be more good in the world than evil. Perhaps this explains why Goodness will always prevail.

 

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