Getting Used To The Dark

And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them.  (Ephesians 5:11)

One of the amazing things in this country is that our excellent restaurants love darkness rather than light.  I have on many occasions stumbled into the dimly lit rooms, fumbled for a chair, and complained that I needed a flashlight to read the menu.  When the food came, I ate it by faith and not by sight.  I have also observed that the longer I’m there I began to make out the objects around me more clearly.  Funny, isn’t it, how we get used to the dark?

We are living in the dark.  The prince and power of darkness dominates the final chapter of this age.  Men love darkness rather than light because their deeds are evil.  The night is far spent; the blackness is more extensive and more excessive as it deepens just before the dawn.  The darkness of Mammoth Cave is not limited to Kentucky it is universal.

Strangely enough, man never has had more artificial illumination and less true light.  Man walks in unprecedented brilliance, while his soul dwells in an unmitigated night.  He can put satellites in the sky and left to himself, and he is a wandering star to whom is reserved the blackness of darkness forever.

The depths of present-day human depravity are too vile for any word in our language to describe.  We saw not ordinary moral corruption, but evil double-distilled and compounded in weird uncanny, and demonic combinations and concoctions of iniquity never heard of a generation ago.  This putrefaction of the carcass of civilization awaiting the vultures of judgment is not confined to the ghettos of our cities, but it shows up in the top brackets of society.  Plenty of prodigals live morally among the swine while garbed in purple and fine linen.  There is no difference between the idle poor and idle rich, between the crowds who loaf in gorgeous hotels and the masses who tramp the sidewalks in rags, the only difference is in the cost of their wardrobes and the price of their meals.

Man lives in the dark, and even his nuclear flashlight cannot pierce it.  We not only live in darkness we have gotten used to it.  There is a slow, subtle sinister brainwashing process going on and if we are gradually being desensitized to evil.  Little by little sin is made to appear less sinful until the light within us becomes darkness—and how great is that darkness.  The danger we will find ourselves in is we no longer have fellowship with Jesus Christ.

Every day we are bombarded by the news media with accounts of sordid crimes, corruption, and evil.  We are engulfed in a tidal wave of immorality.  We have gotten used to the darkness of Sodom and Gomorrah—right in the living room.  We have acclimated to it.  We accept it as a matter of course, its art, its literature, its music, its language.  We learn to live with it without an inner protest.

Lot was a righteous man, but he moved to Sodom, lived in it, and probably became the mayor.  His soul was vexed by the day-to-day actions of the Sodomites’ unlawful deeds, but he lost his influence with his family and had to flee for his life.  He died in disgrace.  I have in my life met many Lots. “ . . . As it was in the days of Lot, .  .  . Even thus shall it be in the day when the Son of man is revealed.  Modern Lots tell us that we should get to know those from Sodom and Gomorrah to convert them.  But the ends do not justify the means.  Such people do not turn the light on in Sodom--- they merely get used to the dark.

The worst of all is that such people get so used to the dark they think it is growing brighter.  Sit long enough in a dark room, and you will imagine that more light is breaking in.  Men who dwell too long in darkness fancy the day is dawning.  You can call it broadminded tolerance, but it is no more than a peaceful existence with evil.  It is an effort to establish communion between light and darkness.

This condition extends into the religious world even into the evangelical Christians.  It is possible to fraternize with unbelievers until false doctrine becomes less and less objectionable.  We come to terms with it and would incorporate it into the fellowship of truth.   We begin opening our doors to sects which “believe almost as we do.”  We try to bring together the “best of all faiths.”

Synergy is only a big word for hash.  The theological chefs who are busing mixing Mulligan stews think the darkness is lifting, and the truth is that they are merely getting used to it.

The same danger exists with regards to worldliness.  One may live in the twilight zone, in conditions of low visibility, until he finds the practice of this world less repulsive.  He mistakes the stretching of his conscience for the broadening of his mind. 

Here is how it works first we began to tolerate sin.  We don’t approve, but we won’t fight against it.  Next, we condone the sin.  Everyone has the right to live their own life without someone telling them how to live it.  We find ways to justify why it is acceptable to do wrong.  We buy into the lie I’m not hurting anyone but myself.  Finally, we begin to practice the very things we once called sin, and in practice, we move into the darkness.

One of the signs of getting used to the darkness is the way we excuse sin.  We give sin new names that are not so repulsive.   The world lives in darkness because it rejects Jesus Christ, the Light of the world.  And this is the condemnation, that light has come into the world, and men love darkness better rather than light because their deeds were evil.  The word condemnation translates in the original to a crisis.   The Light that lighteth every man that comes into the world brings with it a crisis.  Men will be compelled to walk in the Light or retreat farther into the darkness.

Our duty as Christians is to let our light shine. . . have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness but rather reprove them.  13:11 And that, knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep: for now is our salvation nearer than when we believed.

13:12 The night is far spent, the day is at hand: let us, therefore, cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armor of light.  Expose them to the Light.  We expose them not so much by denunciation, although that has its place, but by the contrast of our godly living.  We have become so afraid of being offensive that we are not effective.  Jesus said not to hide our candlelight but hold it high to give light to everyone.  Today, we are so fearful that we have shielded our lights, so others are unable to see.

The early Christians did not shade their lights to match the times.  They set the world aglow because the perfect light will overcome absolute darkness.

We need to get our lights out from under the bushels and beds, take off the shades of compromise and let them shine in our heart, our homes, our places of work, and our communities with that Light the shine in the darkness and changes the lives of men and women.  The power of the Light has changed us.
 
We have to let the light shine into the darkness, to uphold the name of Jesus, to expose the lost to the brilliance of the Light.