Red is the New Green - Damon J. Gray

I was reading Psalm 43 this morning. It is a brief, five-verse psalm, and in the middle, verse three says this:

“Send out your light and your truth; let them lead me; let them bring me to your holy hill and to your dwelling!” (Psalm 43:3 – ESV)

As I pondered that, I began thinking about how dark our world is. Darkness is all around us, and the world “sits in the dark” according to Matthew’s gospel. They just sit there … because what else are they going to do? And worse than that, many of those sitting in the darkness have begun to pretend that it is not darkness at all, but rather that darkness is light and light is darkness; good is evil and evil is good.

“Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter!” (Isaiah 5:20 – ESV)

“And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil.” (John 3:19 – ESV)

The world is desperate for light and most of those in the world do not even know that. There is a pervasive dissatisfaction with what is, but there is an equally pervasive resistance to turning what is into what should be. Societal thought leaders fabricate one faddish solution after another in their frantic attempts to assuage this generation’s thirst for inner peace, but the peace never comes because the Prince of Peace is also the Light of the World, and men love the darkness rather than the light because their deeds are evil.

Proposed solutions to our chronic dissatisfaction with life are paraded by us, and we are sold down a river of sewage as we are persuasively told “Red is the new Green,” and we pathetically swallow whatever pill the world feeds us. We are led astray by our various passions, always learning and never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth. (2nd Timothy 3:6b-7) We “turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths.” (2nd Timothy 4:4 – ESV)

What I find disconcerting is the extent to which many in the body of Christ look to these same thought leaders for confirmation of what is truth, when our Lord and Savior boldly proclaimed, “I am the Truth!” (John 14:6) That same Lord and Savior pleaded in his John 17 prayer to the Father, “Sanctify them [us] in the truth; your word is truth.” (John 17:17 – ESV)

The Christ-follower is one who understands that the Word of God is both light and truth!

“Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.” (Psalm 119:105 – ESV)

God is light, and God is truth. Despite the world’s insistence that evil is good and good is evil, those of us in Christ know better. We know truth. It is in us and it shines more brightly than the Sun.

“For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” (2 Corinthians 4:6 – KJV)

Victoriously in Christ!

– damon

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Over to you: Where do you see darkness being professed to be light, and light professed to be darkness?