The Danger of Hiding from the Dark

I have a confession to make. I'm not proud of it, and I certainly don't like having to say it, but here it goes. I'm afraid of the dark. There. I feel better. Even when I was like 13-14 years old, I was still sleeping with a night light on. Why? Because I was afraid that something would come out of the darkness and hurt me. A burglar would break in and steal my stuff. Someone would come in and hurt my family or even me. The pops and creaks that the house made while lying awake at night would terrify me, and I would lay as still as possible, trying to calm my heavy breathing. I would lie still and hope that the threat would not harm me. The darkness was always "out there," and the darkness intended to do me harm or send harmful things my way.

I think a lot of people in church can act this way. They meet for their "holy huddles" week in and week out, and they'll often point to the "evils" of those outside: Hollywood, media, educators, liberal politicians...you name it, we blame it. And so we try and shelter ourselves from all these influences. In a sense, we try to be night lights for each other. We try to ride out the dark night until the day is at hand. But in so doing, we fail.

You see, we are often looking for the darkness outside, but in so doing we neglect the darkness within. When we see evil as an external influence, we will try to shelter ourselves from it, giving it room to grow on the inside. Paul took the opposite approach. In Romans 7:18 he declares: "For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is in my flesh." Later he laments, "Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?" (Romans 7:23).

It's easy to stand on the inside and condemn the darkness outside. But it's tough when we see our own inner darkness and come face-to-face with our own spiritual ugliness. We need Christ to shine in our hearts. We need for him to expose the hypocrisy, doubt, fear, self-righteousness, judgmentalism, etc., that hold us back from being a light - not to each other, but to the world.

How can we move forward to be the "light of the world" Jesus called us to be (Matthew 5:14)? What ways have we hidden that light, and how can we "shine as lights in the world" (Philippians 2:15) rather than shut the world out for the sake of our "holy huddles"?