The death of darkness

                                                   

 

I saw my friend James at a church supper after being out of touch for several years. It was like we’d never been apart.

We talked, laughed, hugged, sang and prayed together. I met his wife for the first time and celebrated with them over the way God had healed wounds in their marriage and family. It was a great evening; we didn’t want it to end. We said goodnight, promising each other we’d meet again soon.

A few weeks later, James was dead. Chronic illness caught up with him. He hung on for days in the hospital, but his body was worn out.

This life seems so strong and sure for a season — and then it’s over. We try to escape death, delay it, appease it, fight it, deny it. “Do not go gentle into that good night,” the poet Dylan Thomas advised. “Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”

Rage all you want; death will come for you one day. But darkness, its close companion, is a choice.

“There was the true Light, which, coming into the world, enlightens every man. He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, and the world did not know Him. … But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name,” the Apostle John declared of Jesus Christ, the Word become flesh who dwelt among us (John 1:9-12, NASB).

Later in John’s Gospel, Jesus Himself said, “This is the judgment, that the Light is come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil” (John 3:19, NASB).

Men love the darkness, but God sent His Son, the Light of the world, to rescue us from eternal darkness. By His resurrection, Christ put darkness to death. Two millennia later, however, not everyone knows it. That’s why missionaries and other servants of God go to places of darkness, no matter the potential cost. They bring the Light of the Gospel not only through their words and actions, but by their presence.

“There have been several attacks recently,” wrote a worker who lives in one such place. “Often the gunfire and explosions would cease, and I would think it must be over, but it would start again. I was sharply reminded that we are here to pray.” To pray, to be, to love, to speak, to lift up the flaming torch of Christ amid great darkness.

On a recent plane trip, IMB President Tom Elliff struck up a conversation with a fellow passenger who asked him, “What do you do [for a living]?”

 “I chase darkness,” Elliff replied.

 Bewildered, the passenger inquired, “Are you in lighting?”

“In a way,” Elliff told the man.

Reflecting on the encounter, the IMB leader said: “We are indeed ‘chasers after darkness,’ looking for the black holes of sin in our world and thrusting into that darkness the Light of the glorious Gospel of Christ.”

My friend James experienced darkness in his life, but when Christ filled his soul with light and salvation, he became one of the most joyful witnesses I’ve ever known. This Easter, I know James is celebrating the resurrection in the presence of the Risen One.

The force behind the bullet

Few outsiders venture into Mosby Court unless they’re visiting relatives — or looking for trouble. Almost no one lives there by choice. Six-year-old Ernesha Baites has no choice. Her mother can’t afford to live anywhere else. So the little girl and her teenage sister do the best they can in the tough housing project in Richmond, Va., while Mom works to make ends meet. Ernesha has big brown eyes set off by the white beads in her braids. Her gap-tooth smile could melt steel. She loves cartoons and Rapunzel. The week before she started first grade in September, somebody shot her. He probably wasn’t aiming at her, you understand. He just didn’t care that she was playing near the line of fire. It could have been a drug deal gone bad or a gang beef. This time, witnesses said it was an argument on a basketball court that turned into a shootout. Neighbors said they heard at least 20 shots fired. A bullet hit Ernesha’s leg, but she’s going to be OK. Once she got home from the hospital, she even talked to a local TV news crew. Sitting on the couch in her living room, she showed a reporter the cast on her healing leg. Her relieved mother sat beside her, talking about moving someplace safer as soon as she can get more work hours. A happy ending, you might say — as happy as endings usually play out in Mosby Court, at least. But before the news crew turned off their camera, Ernesha had a question. “Why did they shoot me, if they already saw me?” she asked. The look of confusion and hurt on her face reminded me of the expressions of Syrian refugee children I have met in areas bordering the horrific civil war in Syria. They don’t understand why someone would shoot at them and try to kill their parents or their brothers and sisters. They don’t understand why they can’t go home. Ernesha doesn’t yet understand how cold this world can be, either. But she’s learning. You wonder if she looked into the eyes of the shooter and, if so, what she saw there. I know all the sociological answers: The gunman might have been shot or brutalized when he was Ernesha’s age. He might be trapped in Mosby Court, or someplace like it, by poverty and hopelessness. He might have felt the pressure to “represent,” to kill or be killed, to uphold the street code. But the real force behind the bullet was sin. It never ceases to amaze me how many otherwise sensible folks believe that people, deep down, are basically good and want to do the right thing. We’re just confused or traumatized by bad experiences, they say. We’re misguided or manipulated by others into doing wrong. We have no choice. All these rationalizations sound reasonable at different times or places. But the root cause of wrongdoing is sin. People are basically good? Nonsense. I’m bad to the bone, every bit as bad as the guy who shot Ernesha — and I have fewer excuses. You’re no better, if you’re honest with yourself and God. We are sinners. We have rejected God and sought our own selfish and evil ways, just as the Bible says we would. Technology and science may have produced staggering human progress, but they have improved human nature not at all. We hate one another just as passionately, fear one another just as keenly, disobey God just as willfully as our bloody-minded ancestors. We are sinners — collectively and individually. If we weren’t, we wouldn’t need a Savior. And the world wouldn’t need to know about Him. Recently, IMB President Tom Elliff spoke about having a hard time sleeping after watching the evening news, not just because of wars and disasters, but because “every one of us has learned how to look at the most horrific things you can imagine and be unmoved by them. We know where the great tragedies are, we see people running for their lives and starving physically,” he said. Often they are also starving spiritually. “We’ve learned how to be aware of lostness but not be moved by lostness.” We have an even deeper problem, however, if we cease to believe that sin causes darkness and can be defeated only one way. “We can talk about the problems, the poverty and corruption and politicians. But it all goes back to the darkness they live in,” said a missionary in one of the most corrupt cities in Asia. “The only answer is Jesus Christ.”