Darkness, Judgment, and the Abyss
Judgment is always a topic we like to throw around... Christian or not, judgment is a hot issue surrounding the existence and nature of God. As Christians, we warn of a coming judgment. Cult leaders use judgment to manipulate people into varying degrees of psychosis. Unbelievers mock God over the proliferation or lack of judgment. Judgment, therefore, is not solely a topic belonging to Christianity, but is a wholly human area of concern.
As a Christian, however, the thought of judgment rarely leaves our mind. It's ever before us. We see it when we wake up, we wrestle it through the day, and we ponder it through the night. Like the unbelievers, we often wonder how God in His goodness and mercy allows judgment in the extent by which He allows it. It seems to permeate absolutely all things everywhere.
That's because it does.
We have to remember that death, itself, is judgment. The first mention of death in the Scriptures is back in the Garden;
And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” -Genesis 2:16-17
And we know what happened next. Adam and Eve, doing what was right in their own eyes, overruled God's authority and brought upon themselves judgment. They had broken the order. Creation passed from perfection to corruption. Death and decay crept forth. The curse of death, which afflicted all things everywhere, became the judgment we see in every cataclysm, every tragedy, and every injustice.
It is this judgment that marks those very words with negative connotation. For one who observes cataclysm, tragedy, and injustice perceives by their conscience that something dear has been lost; not merely a life, but an innocence and perfection.
That is why we rail against God. We accuse Him of inequity and injustice. We say He is not good... Because we observe that goodness is arbitrarily snuffed out. So, we rebrand humanity in its current form as good, innocent, and perfect and the only injustice we perceive now is the judgment of sin by death.
But it's too intolerant. We have eradicated the idea of sin. We do not teach our children of it. We certainly don't speak of it in schools. There is no mention of it in our statehouses. Our politicians could not be bothered by its weightiness. Sin is absent in our courts, while judges and jurors see firsthand the ravages of it.
And there is the irony...
"When you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes into you..." said Nietzche. Modern man, in his inclination that God is dead, can only seem to gaze therefore into the abyss. The abyss is darkness. It is despair. It is an arbitrary existence. The abyss is sin. It is the suffering of our species and the destruction of this planet. Sin is the curse of the created order, and the longer we gaze into it, it reflects back at us the abyss within.
There's nothing we can do about it. All creation groans for redemption. From empires ravaging entire civilizations to corporations poisoning our waters and filling space with debris.
So how do we react to the abyss? Some of us embrace it. We become the darkness. We draw it from ourselves and find pride in it. We fantasize of the dead and of those who kill. We try communicating and drawing inspiration from the ghastly. We erect idols to the abyss - to the war mongers, slave masters, and pornographers. Some simply worship the abyss.
But there is hope... We may not be able to do anything about the darkness and evil that permeates our reality. But God can...
John, in his gospel, wrote;
"In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it."
You see, there is no light in us. Merely the abyss. You know it. I know it. But in Christ, there is the light of men. The darkness has not overcome it. It had not overcome it and it will not overcome it. The light of Christ shines brightly through the hearts of His people. Yet, it's hard... It's hard to make sense of the darkness, because it is the very same darkness that blinds men from the light. There is a paradox here, but merely of our own understanding.
A paradox that even John writes of John the Baptist,
"There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness, to bear witness about the light, that all might believe through him. He was not the light, but came to bear witness about the light."
Men cannot see through the darkness... For where there is darkness there is no sight. Men blindly probe, trying to feel out what they see. They try to rationalize their world and make sense of the suffering. Yet, they shall come no closer to making sense of the abyss then when they first began.
So often do we exhaust ourselves in trying to see what cannot be seen. Apathy and despair take over. The abyss gazes into us.
Suddenly, a light shines... Suddenly, we see. The darkness remains, but somehow, we see through it. We see it for what it is. This is the work of Christ. It isn't the ministry of a church. It isn't the philosophy of man. It is the divine light of Christ.
Those who have been enlightened by Him have written;
"...You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light." - 1 Peter 2:9
John adds that "The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world."
His light shines to this day. The abyss has not overcome it. The shed blood of the True Passover Lamb still opens the eyes of the blind. We therefore "live not by sight, but by faith." Why did Jesus spit in the mud and rub it on the eyes of a blind man? To wash away the darkness that blinded him.
Jesus ultimately would say that those who have been enlightened by Him are indeed "The light of the world." He encouraged us not to obscure our light. He placed us like lighthouses on a city on a hill.
Perhaps you're meandering in the darkness, groping for anything that could open the eyes of your understanding.
Might I bear witness to the Light of Men?
As a Christian, however, the thought of judgment rarely leaves our mind. It's ever before us. We see it when we wake up, we wrestle it through the day, and we ponder it through the night. Like the unbelievers, we often wonder how God in His goodness and mercy allows judgment in the extent by which He allows it. It seems to permeate absolutely all things everywhere.
That's because it does.
We have to remember that death, itself, is judgment. The first mention of death in the Scriptures is back in the Garden;
And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” -Genesis 2:16-17
And we know what happened next. Adam and Eve, doing what was right in their own eyes, overruled God's authority and brought upon themselves judgment. They had broken the order. Creation passed from perfection to corruption. Death and decay crept forth. The curse of death, which afflicted all things everywhere, became the judgment we see in every cataclysm, every tragedy, and every injustice.
It is this judgment that marks those very words with negative connotation. For one who observes cataclysm, tragedy, and injustice perceives by their conscience that something dear has been lost; not merely a life, but an innocence and perfection.
That is why we rail against God. We accuse Him of inequity and injustice. We say He is not good... Because we observe that goodness is arbitrarily snuffed out. So, we rebrand humanity in its current form as good, innocent, and perfect and the only injustice we perceive now is the judgment of sin by death.
But it's too intolerant. We have eradicated the idea of sin. We do not teach our children of it. We certainly don't speak of it in schools. There is no mention of it in our statehouses. Our politicians could not be bothered by its weightiness. Sin is absent in our courts, while judges and jurors see firsthand the ravages of it.
And there is the irony...
"When you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes into you..." said Nietzche. Modern man, in his inclination that God is dead, can only seem to gaze therefore into the abyss. The abyss is darkness. It is despair. It is an arbitrary existence. The abyss is sin. It is the suffering of our species and the destruction of this planet. Sin is the curse of the created order, and the longer we gaze into it, it reflects back at us the abyss within.
There's nothing we can do about it. All creation groans for redemption. From empires ravaging entire civilizations to corporations poisoning our waters and filling space with debris.
So how do we react to the abyss? Some of us embrace it. We become the darkness. We draw it from ourselves and find pride in it. We fantasize of the dead and of those who kill. We try communicating and drawing inspiration from the ghastly. We erect idols to the abyss - to the war mongers, slave masters, and pornographers. Some simply worship the abyss.
But there is hope... We may not be able to do anything about the darkness and evil that permeates our reality. But God can...
John, in his gospel, wrote;
"In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it."
You see, there is no light in us. Merely the abyss. You know it. I know it. But in Christ, there is the light of men. The darkness has not overcome it. It had not overcome it and it will not overcome it. The light of Christ shines brightly through the hearts of His people. Yet, it's hard... It's hard to make sense of the darkness, because it is the very same darkness that blinds men from the light. There is a paradox here, but merely of our own understanding.
A paradox that even John writes of John the Baptist,
"There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness, to bear witness about the light, that all might believe through him. He was not the light, but came to bear witness about the light."
Men cannot see through the darkness... For where there is darkness there is no sight. Men blindly probe, trying to feel out what they see. They try to rationalize their world and make sense of the suffering. Yet, they shall come no closer to making sense of the abyss then when they first began.
So often do we exhaust ourselves in trying to see what cannot be seen. Apathy and despair take over. The abyss gazes into us.
Suddenly, a light shines... Suddenly, we see. The darkness remains, but somehow, we see through it. We see it for what it is. This is the work of Christ. It isn't the ministry of a church. It isn't the philosophy of man. It is the divine light of Christ.
Those who have been enlightened by Him have written;
"...You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light." - 1 Peter 2:9
John adds that "The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world."
His light shines to this day. The abyss has not overcome it. The shed blood of the True Passover Lamb still opens the eyes of the blind. We therefore "live not by sight, but by faith." Why did Jesus spit in the mud and rub it on the eyes of a blind man? To wash away the darkness that blinded him.
Jesus ultimately would say that those who have been enlightened by Him are indeed "The light of the world." He encouraged us not to obscure our light. He placed us like lighthouses on a city on a hill.
Perhaps you're meandering in the darkness, groping for anything that could open the eyes of your understanding.
Might I bear witness to the Light of Men?
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