The darkening of the world, the light of the Christian

By Elizabeth Prata

Many verses are about the darkness:

to open their eyes so that they may turn from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God (Acts 26:18).

Did you see the parralellism there? Dark v. Light, Satan v. God. Also the darkness is representative of satan, and the light is representative of God.

Then Jesus again spoke to them, saying, “I am the Light of the world; the one who follows Me will not walk in the darkness, but will have the Light of life.” (John 8:12).

Light vs. dark again, and implied is that SINCE the light is life, THEN darkness is death.

For He rescued us from the domain of darkness, and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son, (Colossians 1:13).

The word transfer here is important. We dwell in a world of darkness. It’s the unredeemed, sinful world. It’s dark. It’s represented by darkness. We cannot transfer ourselves to the world of Light, which is the world of God in heaven of which we are citizens of but not yet residents. It’s not like we can stop off at the airline agent’s desk at the airport and ask for a transfer from our intended destination to a new one. The airline agent will help us do that. But our transfer from the domain of darkness to the one of Light is handled by Jesus only. There is a great gulf fixed, between which no man or women may travel.

In the end, hell will be thrown into outer darkness in the end of the end. (Matthew 8:12, Matthew 22:13

Sinners love the dark. Because they love the dark and because their worldview is only dark (though they don’t know it), and because sin only worsens as succeeding generations emerge, everything IN the world darkens too.

Romans 1:18-32 shows the progression of darkening due to sin. We can apply that section either to individuals, or to whole societies, but either way, each generation gets worse. The spiritual darkness increases.

The things we see in this darkening world are also darkening. Art, architecture, language, conversation, movies, television, print media, literary plots- darkening. Thigs are way darker now in 2024 than they were in 1970.

People frequently ask ‘Why is architecture so ugly now? Why aren’t we building beautiful buildings anymore?’

I hear people wondering ‘Why is art so ugly now?’ A particular street art installation in Athens GA raised a ruckus because it was nearly uniformly deemed ugly. The Martin Luther King statue recently erected in Boston Massachusetts was likened to a large fecal log. We used to have this:

Now we have this:

I wrote a piece 12 years ago about the Vatican sculpture “The Resurrection”. It is supposed to depict Christ rising from the tomb alive, while the earth is shaken by a great storm. Its sculptor was Pericle Fazzini and it was installed in 1977. The piece looks more demonic to me, of a devil rising among crows. Ugly.

Another piece of art is making news these days, and it’s the first official portrait of King Charles III. The description is:

The portrait, which stands over 6 feet tall, features a striking red background and shows Charles wearing the uniform of the Welsh Guards, of which he was made Regimental Colonel in 1975, according to the palace. According to a new description of the portrait shared on [artist Jonathan] Yeo’s website, the artist chose the “vivid” red background, in part, to bring a “contemporary jolt” to the painting.

The ‘jolt’ that people got was thinking that the King looks like he’s in hell. A professor at the Rhode Island School of Design said all he could think of was blood. “The instant I saw it, having no idea what to expect, I literally heard the word ‘blood’ in my head. It was a bit of a shock — all that red, dripped here and there and scrubbed on and scrubbed off,” Brinkerhoff says.“

Ugly…brutal… art and architecture. Now let’s talk movie posters and TV covers. Same thing. They are literally dark. The colors depicted in the digital and print advertising for film and television are dark colors, scary scenes, and blood. It’s dicey for me to view an array of movies or TV shows because of the scenes depicted. They are not pictures I want to stay in my head. The plots are darker nowadays. Crime shows show everything, medical shows show everything, so much gore.

So when the Bible says that the world is dark, it means it metaphorically, spiritually, AND literally. As sin increases, so does the darkness. Foul language, brutal behavior, media constantly presenting to us with dark colors and scary depictions of brutal acts… and it will only get worse.

We are the LIGHT. Though the darkness may affect us spiritually as we wrestle against the ‘the cosmic powers over this present darkness’, we need to maintain a light shining from us. We are the beacons, we are the lighthouses, shining in the darkness (which has not been overcome) showing the darkened sinner where true glory is. Keep praying. Keep reading the Bible. Keep going to church. Keep listening to podcasts. Keep good hymns on rotation in your streaming service. Keep allowing His light to pour into you so that it can shine out of you. The people dwelling in darkness need it. Other Christians need it too!