Jesus & Light Part 3

Previous Posts:

http://ljtsg.blogspot.com/2012/12/jesus-light-prologue.html

http://ljtsg.blogspot.com/2012/12/jesus-light-part-1.html

http://ljtsg.blogspot.com/2012/12/jesus-light-part-2.html

http://ljtsg.blogspot.com/2012/12/more-on-light.html

Light & Darkness

When we talk about light, we also think about darkness. Zajonc in CATCHING THE LIGHT spends about a fourth of the book discussing darkness and the interplay of light and dark. There is a lot to reflect on here. For one thing, there seems to be two experiences of darkness. There is a kind of darkness that seems paradoxically full of light. Mystics talk about this a lot and I've experienced it myself. It is a darkness that exists as a 'space between' things, giving other things the room they need to exist. In that sense, it mimics the light and has many of the same self-emptying qualities.

But there is another kind of darkness that is destructive and turbid. This is a spiritual darkness for which physical darkness is one important symbol. It is a kind of nothingness that insists upon itself, and it runs throughout much of the world, and much of my soul. It is all that threatens the 'giving up' of creative darkness and light. It insists on itself. The self-emptying actions of service, prayer and meditation, have to work against and around a kind of egoism that condemns or judges our love as insignificant, false, or without value. There is a reason why evil has so long been associated with darkness.

Darkness conceals, it hides, and so it is a good symbol or 'physicalization' of all in us that seeks to avoid vulnerability and seeks only to control. For a consequence of this internal darkness is dishonesty, with ourselves and with other people. We pretend: to be 'good', to be without need for others, to know when we cannot know, to worship God when we are really worshipping ourselves. Such actions cannot take place in the light of day, but only when we hide in darkness.

Zajonc's book is as much psychology as theology and physics. One of the things he talks about extensively is our experience of color. He makes a bold suggestion that our experience of color is the result of our experience of the interplay of the forces of light and dark within our acts of perception. It is an interesting theory, and he defends it well. 

I agree with Zajonc that the universe is a place of conflict, of struggle. One of the problems of modern mainline Christianity, as I have argued elsewhere, is it has abandoned conflict motifs in it's religious vocabulary and art. Our experience of evil is as palpable as our experience of good, and no religion can speak to the full human encounter with the world without talking about the struggle between the two openly. To psychologize it as so much religion does is to submit to the secular spirit of the day. I think that spirit fails just because it lacks the language to discuss these things. To adopt it's approach to these subjects is to adopt all that makes it inadequate. 

Talk in Zoarastrian and other religions of a struggle between light and dark is appropriate. It captures something of the struggle we are involved in. In the Gospel of John this kind of talk takes center stage. The struggle between God and satan, between good and evil, is pictured as a struggle between forces of light and darkness. Paul uses this imagery as well. In 1 Thessalonians 5:5 Christians are called 'children of the light' and are contrasted with those who 'belong to the darkness'. Something about the struggle between God and the enemy is captured in the struggle between light and dark in the physical world.

For Zajonc, one of the consequences of that struggle is color, is beauty and variety. Zajonc's theodicy, his answer to the problem of evil, is that these eternal forces both good and evil, light and dark, are somehow necessary to make freedom, creativity and beauty possible. As I will talk about more in the next section, where I argue against Zajonc's Manecheism, I cannot follow him here. Some preliminary reflections on this: I do not think that evil is necessary for beauty. I do think that the potential for evil, the freedom that makes it possible, is necessary for the creativity and beauty of existence. I want to say, ultimately, that the interplay that brings beauty is not between light and the darkness that Paul or Zoaraster spoke of, but between light and the darkness of the mystics, that emptying that makes room for all else. Perhaps, evil is that holy emptiness pushed too far, or corrupted. Lots to discuss for next time.

I apologizer for the disjointed nature of my thoughts in some of my blogs. Much of this is about just putting ideas out there for me and others to discuss. I've been thinking a lot, a LOT about light and darkness, Christ and self-emptying recently. It dovetails with other thoughts regarding the Book of Revelation, and imagery from other non-religious sources. It is all percolating in my heart, mind and soul. Can't wait to see what bubbles to the surface next.