Waking up at 2 in the morning, I felt like I had just spent a week in the desert without a drop of water. I rolled (fell) out of bed and clumsily felt my way to the bathroom to get a drink. Instinctively, I turned on the light, and almost fell over at the brightness. I sat there for a good couple of minutes crouched down with my face in my hands until my eyes slowly adjusted and the spots I was seeing dissolved into nothing.
My friends and I used to do something we called “star tipping” when were in college. We would go out into a dark field at night and would take turns looking up at the stars and spinning around as fast as we could. After about 10 seconds somebody would jump in front and shine a flashlight at them. In most cases they would get instantly disoriented and fall over. It was always a good laugh to take our minds off our classes.
Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about light and darkness and where they intersect. For the most part I’ve always viewed light and darkness as opposites. One denotes the presence of something, while the other denotes the absence of that same thing. John uses light and darkness has a metaphor heavily throughout the gospel he wrote. John 1:5 famously explains that the light shines in the darkness but the darkness couldn’t overcome it. The Amplified Bible adds that darkness has not put it out or absorbed it or appropriated it, and is unreceptive to it. This verse (and chapter) has shaped the way we view light and darkness. There is no middle ground, only shock and awe when the light gets turned on.
I recently read a verse that has begun to change my perception of the subject. It’s not that I’ve taken back what I professed to believe before, but I think my understanding of light and darkness has begun to be filled out, like a balloon being filled with air so that it takes on its intended form.
In Isaiah 45:3 God tells Cyrus, His anointed one, that he is giving him hidden treasures (literally treasures in darkness). Not only that, but a few verses later God says that He created both light and darkness (verse 7).
Wait, God created darkness? I thought darkness was the absence of God’s light/presence?
But God says very plainly and clearly that He is the one that created the darkness, and on top of that, that He hid treasures in the darkness. Let that sink in. God has hidden treasures in the darkest places of the world, the places we would be least likely to look for them.
Proverbs 25:2 – “It is the glory of God to conceal things, but the glory of kings is to search things out.”
Could it be that God has hidden things in darkness so that we could find them? As followers of Jesus we consider everything outside of Christianity as darkness and for a long time I thought it was our duty to overcome that darkness, to conquer it and replace it with the Kingdom of God. I’m slowly learning that this is only true in part.
John didn’t say that God sent Jesus into the world to conquer it or to assert his dominance over it. He said that Jesus came “to save the world” (John 3:17). He came to redeem the world. Despite all of our sins and failures we have still been made in God’s image, and Jesus came to redeem His image within us.
Over the last year I’ve become more and more interested in reaching Muslims with the Good News of Jesus. This interest has led me to read book after book on Islamic traditions and culture, and to talk to whoever will listen about it. I’ve found that Islam contains a lot more of Christianity than I ever imagined possible. The first of half of the Quran reads like Genesis and parts of the Old Testament. Muslims are actually commanded to read the Gospels of the Christian Bible and to follow the teachings of Jesus. I could go on and on about the similarities found between Christianity and Islam; and while I believe that Islam is incomplete and that following Islamic traditions will not get you to Heaven, it is also not the “anti-Christianity” that I once thought it was. A year ago I was under the impression that a Muslim would have to reject almost everything they believed in order to be saved. If I had the opportunity to share the Gospel with a Muslim I probably would have gone in with a spiritual wrecking ball and tried to disprove everything that he thought was true, and I probably would’ve done more harm than good.
Islam is incomplete as it stands now, without the knowledge of Jesus as the Son of God and the world’s Savior. That does not mean that it does not contain truth. What if God has hidden His truth, His light, His treasure in the darkness of Islam? What if God has not called us to defeat other systems of belief, such as Islam, but to redeem the truth He has hidden in them?
Think about the way that Jesus came into the world to redeem it; how He has called us to follow in His footsteps. Let this truth propel you into the darkness, not to destroy it, but to redeem it for the glory and honor of Jesus.
Please let me know your thoughts, if you have any constructive criticism or anything to add. I would love to hear from you and learn from what God is teaching you!
jeremy stone 