And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.

Genesis 1:3

There has been some uncritical discourse in recent years about the alleged harm to using light and dark to represent good and evil and the Bible has fallen into the pile of things being criticized for use of this imagery. What is revealed by this criticism is a lack of understanding of why and how the Bible uses light and darkness. It’s not to attribute virtue to the light and evil to the dark, or to make light colored things pure and dark colored things evil.

In Biblical imagery, light is visibility, clarity and knowledge and dark is blindness, hidden things and ignorance. It does not layer on a moral element to nature but rather uses an observation about the world to point out something about our conscience. After all, if we want something to be secret, we can do it in the dark where no eye can detect it. But if we want something to be seen, we do it in the daylight, in the open.

What parts of our hearts do we hide from the Light? Do we harbor any shadows? May we let Jesus shine!

Ethan Kirl