Ryan Cody, Assistant Pastor

Light

Have you heard the old adage, “you never appreciate something until you lose it?”  How true that really is!  During our recent power outages, I could not help but think how valuable light is.  Fumbling in the dark for a lighter, the image came home in a personal way.

Many times certain Bible teachings are lost on us, to a certain degree, because of our cultural distance to inhabitants in the Ancient Near East.  We can reconstruct a cultural setting of a sheep pen or a particular type of agriculture or political situation, but most of us do not have personal experience with these things. 

In the dark of my house, alone and struggling to see, Jesus being the light of the world meant something different to me than when all lights are on and humming….or when I can simply mosey over to a switch. 

I thought about the necessity of light in terms of my personal need as opposed to usual daily observation.  I thought about how lost one can become in the night and how truly scary that can be.  I thought about the importance of spiritual light beyond the realms of physicality. 

As I found candles and lit them, while still craving more light, I could not get the thought out of my head: Jesus is the light of the world.

What did I learn?  The power of biblical images, for one, but maybe more importantly: God can use even a power outage to speak.

Homo Religiousus

How do we account for this?  What does the Bible have to say?  Many would point to Romans 1: 19-20:

 since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them.  For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his  eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse. (NIV)

These are some powerful verses—but what exactly is Paul trying to communicate?  How many missionaries have we heard of that reach a culture and find a knowledge of Jesus?  How many indigenous cultures can cite stories from either Testament or explain the nature of the Trinity?  How many are even monotheistic?

What becomes clearer (I believe) as one reads through Romans is how God exactly intended for this whole thing to work.  It seems to me that God has ordained our natural selves to have a built-in malfunction of sorts.  A different example of this would be the purpose of the law: to make us conscious of sin.  What if what God revealed to everyone (about his nature and power) was that we need something greater than ourselves to achieve our full purpose?  Is that why there are so many religions in the world?  Is that why every major culture of all time has always had some form of religion?  (I am not saying all religions are the same — rather, the One we have found, the ‘hole’ he has placed in all our hearts, has surfaced is many different ways, but only furthers to prove His existence — how else could we explain the religious phenomenon?)  If we interpret Romans 1 to say that all cultures should know everything about Jesus from looking at nature we should scold indigenous cultures for not being able to recite the Nicene Creed and Sinner’s Prayer and cancel all world missions! 

This truth is even being played out in atheist circles.  Recently a prominent atheist proposed creating secular holidays and deities (oxymoronic, right?) to give a deeper meaning to life, realizing all humans long for this.  The truth to me is simple: one omnipotent God has created us all this way that we might search for Him.  If God didn’t create this desire/need in our hearts would we search for Him at all?  I think not.  Paul is dealing with a similar situation in Athens, as recorded in the Acts of the Apostles.  Acts 17: 27 reads: “God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us.” (NIV)

While I believe this “God-shaped hole” is one of ideas Paul is referring to in Romans 1 it is certainly not the only one — all of these arguments could be applied as well to the moral law God has placed in our hearts, which is very difficult to explain without a God in the picture!  Paul also devotes a large amount of time to this idea in Romans.

All religions (and the common moral law) must point to a source.  Why do humans long for a deeper meaning?  The answer was simple to Paul: that’s how you were created!  Do you want true meaning?  Do you want true love?  Then come, as Paul says elsewhere, to the God who “gives all men life and breath and everything else.”  Amen.