Deja Vu
I stumbled across a portion of scripture for about the umpteen millionth time this morning. It’s one that indeed struck a chord within me that has been perhaps longing to be strummed for some time to in order to awaken my own calcified heart to its melodic revelation. And as I polished off that last slug of morning Joe before entering into morning prayers, it occurred to me that in Christendom, this illumining disclosure I stumbled upon, that was once so blatantly obvious to the whole damn lot of us, has become shall we say somewhat “passé” and rather obsolete to us now. A fact at which should cause even the most confident extraverts to blush as one caught with their pants down just before the lights go down.
The scripture I am referring to is found in the gospel of Luke in chapter 11, where in verses 34 & 35, from the mouth of Jesus himself, He states the following:
“Your eye is the lamp of your body. When your eye is healthy, your whole body is full of light, but when it is bad, your body is full of darkness”.
And as I mentioned earlier, though I have read this scripture time and time again, it occurred to me that its incontrovertibleness somehow now seems to have escaped both the church’s and our individual brotherhood and sisterhood in the community of Christ’s own mortification of it all. And, if it were not yet clear what Jesus was trying to say to us, the Apostle Paul, like many other of the authors of the New Testament, no doubt explains this verse rather unmistakably when he writes in Ephesians 5:8-12:
“for at one time you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light (for the fruit of light is found in all that is good and right and true) and try to discern what is pleasing to the Lord. Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them. For it is shameful even to speak of the things that they do in secret”.
So here we have it. Both Jesus, and now reiterated and explained in Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, we find that whatever light or “worldview” if you will that we have, that guides our day to day goings on, is in fact either light or darkness. And it seems crystal clear again as Paul reminds us, since we as brothers and sisters are now “light in the Lord”, that we are in fact to walk (yes that’s correct) as “children of light”, and that this is descriptive and representative of all that is “good and right and true”. He of course adds to that narrative that discerning whether we have light or darkness requires a judgement of sorts on our part, that then sifts through the numerous or oppositional false lights that come at us each day through the flickering pixels of our lives, in order to now find “what is pleasing to the Lord”. Paul takes it even a step further for us and says that we are not to take part in those “unfruitful works of darkness” and instead should expose them, which causes most of us “non-offense” postured Christianity-light Christian hearts’ to skip a beat, or perhaps even the whole bloody drum solo!
Standard Bearers?
Nevertheless, I say all of these things, not because I too am not at fault at coming short at observing the standard put before us. However, more importantly, I am also increasingly aware that it is the standard itself that is now in question and has now fallen on the hardest of times.
And of course, we all know acutely well I’m afraid that the light in the world that represents itself as luminary to us is off kilter and off its rocker so to speak. And that likewise, it is also the ever-prevalent light of the god of this world, and to those who “buy in” to its modus operandi; forever drawn like moths to a flame to its attractive gaze. Or at least, we should know this.
And perhaps that is my ever so observable point. And it is that when those of us who are called “the light of the world”, or those who are to be “light in the Lord” are no longer even able to discern what the “unfruitful works of darkness” are that we are participators of, you can bet “dollars to doughnuts” that we will come up a country-mile short in having the ability to light anything for people to truly see with. And that as a result, the light we now are purported to have, like the world around us, will now also be in fact truly darkness!
Don’t Fear the Reaper?
And of course it then occurred to me, as I hope is also at least obvious to those of us with a smidgeon left of spiritual acumen in our hearts and minds as to the current balderdash being pumped into us both with and without our invitation on any given second, that this is indeed a watershed issue! And it is so both in the visible church, who by their own self-promotional appointment to the role of knowing better have incessantly and yet now hypocritically remind us, and to the rest of the church invisible who are unreluctantly following suit. Those of us who have almost flagrantly conceded to the god of this worlds’ false light bearers, and have now like Pavlov’s fricking dog, salivated their way into convincing us to mix both lights together like the candy man can, hoping somehow to make it all taste good for us to drink with our Kool-Aid cups, as if the Grim Reaper is not now at our own front door!
And so now, the thought occurred to me in that epiphanic moment of which I spoke, that if the light that is now in the church and in us has also become darkness, and if the road to the “fruits of darkness” as opposed to being “light in the Lord” has become mere indiscernible shades of inevitable gray, then perhaps a day of reckoning is indeed upon us. And maybe, just maybe; it won’t be far too long in the prophetic, yet not much paid attention to distance, that we’ll look up, and as all is now verifiably trampled on the floor before us, we will actually then finally wish that we’d all been ready!
Selah