Living the Dark

There's nothing more scary than darkness.  I ditched my night light ages ago, but even now there are few things that give me the heebie-jeebies more than a pitch-black room, a vast unnavigable unknown that just begs for someone to throw the switch.  You can never have confidence in the darkness.  I am reminded of that harrowing scene in "Silence of the Lambs" where Clarice Starling is caught in a perfectly dark basement with a serial killer hunting her.  The camera shoots from the perspective of the killer's green-hued night vision goggles and stalks the heroine as, frightened to her wit's end, she gropes the walls searching for light, guidance, direction, anything to get her out of the hell of the unknown while death lurks only inches away.

Any religious system outside of Jesus Christ is darkness, plain and simple.  This is an offensive statement.  Any system, be it Buddhist, atheist, animist, Taoist, Islamist, or anything-ist that is outside of Christ is summed up in this word "DO."  There is some list of things you must "do"  to be happy, healthy, wise, enlightened, or whatever gets you to the end-goal.  Here's another offensive statement: we all live in a religious system.  Even the irreligious have their own religion!

We are also all born into spiritual darkness, inheriting a disease called Sin from our forebears which touches every part of our lives.  I remember the dark.  I lived there for 16 years.  Christians use the term "lost" to describe those living in darkness, and it was an apt description for me.  I often felt like I was living in a fog, not knowing why I was doing anything I was doing.  Why work hard at school?  The promise of college, money, and a better life were far-off abstractions.  Why go to church?  My parents dragged me there every week, and I hated it.  What's the point of living at all?  I didn't feel like there was more to life than the daily drudgery of school, home, church, family, blah blah blah.

All of us lived in the darkness and have tried with futility to find a way out.  Do you remember it?  If you don't, know that it is a horrible place to be.  The Land of "Do" is harsh, unforgiving, lonely, and quite hopeless.  Who do you know who lives in the dark?  How can we everyday be a little light to them, while not succumbing to the darkness ourselves?