The Cure for Theophobia

And 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

God is light. That’s the message that Jesus gave His disciples. We are assured that darkness -- a more comprehensive term than evil -- does not exist in Him. In fact, it is the darkness in us that is repulsed by the overwhelming light of God. We don’t really want a search light in our guts. It is too illuminating. Religion can have built in shadows for comfort. As I mentioned yesterday, we can walk through the rituals of religion without letting the light hit us in full, though nearly every ceremony is saturated with glory. When the language of religion becomes jargon, it, too, provides a little shade. We can talk about sanctification, practical or positional, all day long, but that is less illuminating to the soul than one moment of living as a holy dwelling place inhabited by Christ.

I often talk about “experiencing” Jesus but in a way that is misleading for He is too big and too glorious for me to contain. It might be better to say that I experience the anchoring of my faith upon His absoluteness. My faith touches the immovable, solid Rock of His Being and finds its rest. This is the hardest thing for most of us, and there is no sense in trying to deny it by analogies. We are constantly put in a position where we must trust without fully comprehending. But the message is that God is “of a piece” – what He is to us in a small thing, He is through and through. He doesn’t just give light; He is light. A lamp or the sun is a source of light but not light itself. A lamp may be turned off or burn out. Millions of years in the future perhaps the sun will be extinguished, but light will not cease to be.

We can know that God is not slippery or deceitful. He does not give with one hand and take with another. He does not advertise eternal life and then disappoint us with an existence as shades or a ghostly quasi-reality. When I rise in Christ, I do not know what I will be but I know I will be like Him, and I know that my life will be more not less than it is now, more, perhaps, because the stains and shadows have been taken away, but more.

There is nothing to fear in walking with God. First, there is nothing to fear from man or any other entity for God is greater and well able to see us through any difficulty or circumstance. We can rest assured that the Lord is in control of all that comes to us (I think I’ll write that on my hand). He does not allow what is not ultimately for our good. Second, there is nothing to fear from God Himself for He is good and incapable of evil. Some will dispute this. The doubters want to force the Lord into a chess match on their standard two-dimensional board. If you think you’ve checkmated God, all you’ve really done is to discover that you not only can’t see the board, you don’t even know the name of the game.

All our fears are wicked, and we fear because we will not nourish ourselves in our faith (Oswald Chambers). Reverence good. Fear bad.

The message of light is not just about God. If we are His children, we partake of His nature. The darkness we find in ourselves – well, it may be in us but it is not of us. We, too, are children of light.

But you, brethren, are not in darkness that the day should overtake you like a thief; for you are all sons of light and sons of day. We are not of night nor of darkness; so then let us not sleep as others do, but let us be alert and sober. For those who sleep do their sleeping at night, and those who get drunk get drunk at night. But since we are of the day, let us be sober, having put on the breastplate of faith and love, and as a helmet, the hope of salvation. For God has not destined us to wrath, but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ (1 Thessalonians 5:4-9)