Our admission of our darkness is the addition of God’s Light

Photo by Ebin Thonakara Saji on Unsplash

Most days I reflect
on my faults and failures,
those things I’m blessed to know,
for in coming to terms
with my darkness inside
I know I can only grow.

Additionally to this,
which is God’s divine plan,
in acknowledging my covenant greed,
I have the tools to see others
betray, even as I deny
them their need.

I’m easily hurt and so are you,
I understand that
right here and now,
so I know I must forgive
so we both can live
and learn how to renew our vow.

The answer to this darkness,
yours, mine and theirs
is not to run, hide or fight,
for God above
will show His love
if in Him we surely delight.

What is the above poem about?

Its message pivots on the truth that if we
don’t plumb our darkness
we cannot rise on the beams of His light.

In the simplest terms, if we don’t have the courage of humility to consider truthfully the darkness that resides within each of us, we have no hope of truly knowing God. If there is no darkness within, there is no need of repentance. Only those who need God, get God.

But there are still too many people who believe they are Christian without having mastered the practice of looking deeply within. It’s either fear or pride or a mix of both that prevents them from journeying in, seeing the sin that God will not refuse to show them, and resolve to do something about it.

It is hard work.
It is heart work.
There are no prisoners taken.
We are either all in or not in at all.

It really is a giveaway whether we’ve done this work or not. I think I could sense within one hour whether a person is living a truly regenerate life or not. There must be signs that they can live with their own fault, that they are not crushed by their failures, and that they are gracious regarding other people’s failures and faults. Jesus says, ‘Judge not!’ And yet still so many people still do it. It’s the unregenerate person who claims Christ as their Saviour but hears and does not do. Much of this could be addressed with a stiff daily Matthew chapter 7 tonic.

The point of salvation does not
release us from the grip of our sin.

It is hence an ongoing journey with God, who purifies us, unto the day of salvation. If we are honest we will be decades into the faith and still be making elementary mistakes and errors. For me, I am still too agreeable for my own good and for God’s glory. I don’t tell the truth enough, and I err too much on the side of grace. Which makes me relational. I worry about hurting people and being hurt, and, praise God, I have the ability to overcome these weaknesses when I’m aware and mindful of them. I am someone who can be taken advantage of, but God has added His wisdom, and He continues to school me on the finer details of dealing with manipulators.

Ah, manipulation. We all have the capacity to manipulate and to abuse, it’s just that some people make it a sport. From the kingdom of God’s perspective, I would much prefer to be on the receiving end than be a perpetrator.

To finish, I need to make this one point:

Even those who have suffered greatly
must take the journey into their private darkness.

Nobody is saved from needing to do this.

One of the things we may learn about Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008) is his ability to observe and to write about the virtuous prisoner of the forced-labour camps in Russia in the 1940s and 1950s. However odd it seems, the virtuous prisoner, who was the kind of man who was able to find goodness in every situation, including every abominable camp circumstance, was paradoxically connected to the brokenness that defined him.

That connection to his brokenness,
to his private darkness,
connected him to God.

In other words, even an abuse victim, the survivor of abuse, can heal, but central to their healing is their ability to patch into the darkness that hides inside them. Perhaps the abuse done to them clouds their vision, and they’re only able to see the darkness in their perpetrator. To heal they must see their own darkness, albeit disconnected most times from the abuse they’ve suffered.

If only we are blessed enough to be able to see that our unacknowledged faults stand in the way of a connection with God.

It doesn’t matter who we are, or how much we have suffered, we can have direct access to God, and He alone can heal us, but only if we are to acknowledge the darkness in our hearts that needs to be healed. Once the darkness is healed traumas are much less triggered.

We cannot get out of this inner heart work
that God has predestined for each of us to do.

It’s the point at which psychologists and theologians agree: there is darkness in us all, and the paradox is, it’s only those who are honest that heal. Those who refuse to face their shadow have the worst blind spots.