Out of the Dark ...

Gloria Estefan had a very inspiring song she used to sing entitled “Coming Out of the Dark”.  I believe she wrote it after a fairly serious car accident / personal tragedy in her life.  From time to time I still hear the powerful chorus repeating in my head and I wonder to myself, are we Christians ready to finally come out of the dark?  Are we ready to depart from spiritual Babylon and leave her to her own condemnation?

In order to answer this question the first thing you need to do is separate criticism from counsel.  Maligning motives, negative language associated with inner thoughts and feelings, tearing something down, - these are all forms of criticism and tend to inspire a defensive response in the listener.  It should not be confused with statements of fact, or even opinion, that run counter to traditional thinking. 

Telling someone they are “doing it wrong” is not the same as telling someone “they are bad”.  You could be trying to tie a necktie for example, and be doing it wrong.  This can be fixed with a little advice.  Being “bad” is more of a subjective criticism and much harder to recover from.  And to carry the example a bit farther, often there is more than one way to tie a neck tie, or even recover from “being bad” so no-one who offers advices or counsel should believe they have an absolute lock on truth.

But in order to come out of the dark, I think it is important to realize how we got here, and where the dark is.  Most people associate darkness with evil, and simply believe the acts of the church members are like those of the world, therefore this is a call away from performing evil acts.  But I do not read in this text (in Revelation for those who are looking) as a call to perfection, but a call away from confusion that surrounds us.  I believe this is a call to clarity that will lead to perfection, but not the one without the other.

When you look at “the world” and “the church” the similarities are astounding.  In point of fact it is quite difficult to tell the difference between the two.  Christians that are bold enough to declare their faith seem to get caught in acts of betraying it left and right.  Christians who try to be quiet about their faith (the greater majority by far) find themselves engaged in all the “bad” behavior of their worldly counterparts, albeit seeking forgiveness for the trespasses.  Divorce rates in the church are just as high as in the world.  Drug addiction plagues both.  Alcoholism is found everywhere.  Sexual misconduct.  Judgmentalism.  In and out of the church, it looks no better.

This is the very definition of darkness.  But why is the church lingering here?  At its core, Christian churches have abandoned the idea of the “gift of Salvation”.  We have replaced the “gift of being saved from sin” with “sanctification is the work of a lifetime”.  We have replaced the simple joy of accepting the gift, with getting “ready to meet God”.  In short, we have substituted the work of surrender to God for victory over sin, with a partnership with God where we both work on our own problems.  But partnerships do NOT work.  And so Christians get up from their knees trying harder and harder, and failing more and more, until they just stop trying altogether.

We are in this darkness not because we fail in our actions, but because we fail in our thinking.  We would not be here if we finally learned what it means to surrender our will.  To give up to win, not to try harder.  To trust that God will not let us slide back into bad behavior, but longs to free us from it altogether and forever.  The relief and the peace that comes from this knowledge is the very siren call that will lead us all away from the darkness.  This is in fact the call away from confusion.  The call away from the focus on self.  It is time to relearn submission.

These days the name or term “fundamentalist” is applied to Christians with the same accuracy as the “Patriot Act” is applied to preserving our personal freedoms.  Christians have all but lost sight of their own fundamentals.  For instance, Christians the earliest variety and therefore most pure (closest to Christ) were the first group of people on earth to adopt communism.  They pooled all their wealth, sold everything they had, lived in one accord, and gave to each according their need.  Mind you, their form of communism, was built on the foundations of belief in Jesus Christ as their Savior, so it was far from Godless, but it worked, and they followed it for many years.

The first group of Christians were so disinterested in which government was in power, that they willing accepted their lot in life, even if that life was one of a slave.  They went about their duties performing them to the best of their ability, and honoring God all the day long.  They did not rebel.  They did not seek freedom of body.  They sought and found freedom of the soul.  Today’s Christians seem bent on not only being involved with Government, but literally controlling government so that they can enact an agenda that will prevent others from performing moral misdeeds, while losing complete sight of freedom of the soul.

The first group of Christians did not have extensive wardrobes.  They worked and labored for their food and lodging.  They taught those they worked with, ate with, worshipped with, and were in prison together with.  Believers were regularly put in prison for their radical beliefs, either by the established religions who did not want the competition, or by the governments who did not understand their radical beliefs.  In either case, believers did not rebel, they merely continued the work inside of the prisons they were sent.  In these conditions, can you imagine Christians trying to preserve a collection of jewelry to wear.  More than likely that would have either been sold for money to give to the poor, or been stripped away from them by their persecutors.  In either case, humility was far easier to achieve.

The first group of Christians taught with power and miracles and wonders followed their message and ministry.  Today we don’t even trust God enough to let Him conquer the sin within us, preferring to do the work ourselves.  With a record of abject failure in this regard, we have lost all belief that miracles could be worked through us.  And with our focus so bent inward, were we to have a miracle worked through us, the attention would go to us.  The glory, the credit, the honor, and the power – would be considered embodied in us, for this is our inherent nature we have yet to learn to sacrifice on God’s altar.  Until we surrender and become devoid of self, we remain ill suited for the working of miracle through us.

Yet the call remains, … “come away from her my people”.  Christ calls us from the confusion we have so surrounded ourselves with both inside and outside of our temple walls.  He calls us to the clarity that will embrace surrender.  The realization that you cannot, but God can.  The trust in God, that He will.  And the praise to God, when He does.  The abject death of self is on our horizon.  And once we experience it, we will no longer be “doing it wrong”.  We will stand apart from the masses.  We will be a light on the hill, though it will never be our light, but His light that shines within us.

I long to be a fundamentalist, who understands the fundamentals properly.  I wish to know what Salvation means.  I wish to know how to love.  I wish to know what freedom from sin is like.  I wish to know what it is like to serve with no expectations.  I wish to be immersed in the depths of Christ and completely dead to self.  I wish no more to embrace evil, but only to understand it properly so as to avoid it forever trusting in my God to save me from its bondage.  These are just a few of the fundamentals I wish to know.  For now I see only through a glass darkly, but the call remains to … “come out of the dark”.