Tuesday, December 12, 2006
Who’s Really in the Dark?
The following was written by Dwight Whitsett, Lubbock, TX:
Look at a nighttime satellite view of the Korean Peninsula and you are immediately struck by the fact that North Korea lies in darkness while South Korea is twinkling with millions of lights. But, I wonder. Who’s really in the dark?
That was what kept creeping into my cranium as I watched Diane Sawyer’s report on Korea. A place she calls a “sealed universe” and a “Hermit Kingdom.” As her team entered the country, their cell phones and Blackberries were confiscated. Use of cell phones and the world-wide web is illegal as is listening to radio broadcasts from outside the country. “…just one of the ways they keep their closed society ‘closed’," said Sawyer. They know absolutely nothing about our world. I wonder what they would think if they did?
What would they think of a society with a “youth culture” that ridicules the elderly and idolizes the likes of bare Brittany Spears? What would they think about all of us overweight, undisciplined people and the way we constantly pursue pleasure and comfort (there are no obese Koreans in Pyongyang)? What would they think about our drug and sex saturated way of life? What would they think of our obscenity-spouting comedians? What would they think about the way we are pulling away from any kind of moral anchor? What would they think about the fact that light has come into our world but it is a world where people love the darkness rather than light because their deeds are evil”? (John 3:19).
I absorbed Sawyer’s report with tangled feelings of sorrow for the darkness of North Korea and shame for the darkness of Western culture. When and if the doors of North Korea crack open, I hope light overwhelms the darkness. I don’t know when that will happen but, while we wait, why don’t we do something about the darkness that surrounds us?
The darkness of North Korea and Western culture is the kind that no electric current can illuminate. It is a darkness only the light of Christ can dispel. “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 6:12).Then, the people who are sitting in darkness can see a great light and those who sit in the land and shadow of death can have the light of Christ dawn on them (Matthew 4:16).
An opaque gloom hovers over our world. It is a gloom only those who claim to follow Him who is the light-bringer can dispel. God has given this job into the hands of those who were formerly darkness but now conduct themselves as children of light (Matthew 5:14-16; Ephesians 5:8; Philippians 2:15; 1 Thessalonians 5:5). What will the North Koreans see when God throws open their doors and windows? Will they detect any glimmers of true, pure light? Well, brothers and sisters, God has left that up to us.
It is time to cast off anything that hinders and let our light shine through the salt of our loving proclamation of the gospel and the light of our good deeds. Dwellers of the night are looking for the glow of dawn.
The hero is the one who kindles a great light in the world, who sets up blazing torches in the dark streets of life for men to see by. The saint is the man who walks through the dark paths of the world, himself a light. ~Felix Adler
Look at a nighttime satellite view of the Korean Peninsula and you are immediately struck by the fact that North Korea lies in darkness while South Korea is twinkling with millions of lights. But, I wonder. Who’s really in the dark?
That was what kept creeping into my cranium as I watched Diane Sawyer’s report on Korea. A place she calls a “sealed universe” and a “Hermit Kingdom.” As her team entered the country, their cell phones and Blackberries were confiscated. Use of cell phones and the world-wide web is illegal as is listening to radio broadcasts from outside the country. “…just one of the ways they keep their closed society ‘closed’," said Sawyer. They know absolutely nothing about our world. I wonder what they would think if they did?
What would they think of a society with a “youth culture” that ridicules the elderly and idolizes the likes of bare Brittany Spears? What would they think about all of us overweight, undisciplined people and the way we constantly pursue pleasure and comfort (there are no obese Koreans in Pyongyang)? What would they think about our drug and sex saturated way of life? What would they think of our obscenity-spouting comedians? What would they think about the way we are pulling away from any kind of moral anchor? What would they think about the fact that light has come into our world but it is a world where people love the darkness rather than light because their deeds are evil”? (John 3:19).
I absorbed Sawyer’s report with tangled feelings of sorrow for the darkness of North Korea and shame for the darkness of Western culture. When and if the doors of North Korea crack open, I hope light overwhelms the darkness. I don’t know when that will happen but, while we wait, why don’t we do something about the darkness that surrounds us?
The darkness of North Korea and Western culture is the kind that no electric current can illuminate. It is a darkness only the light of Christ can dispel. “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 6:12).Then, the people who are sitting in darkness can see a great light and those who sit in the land and shadow of death can have the light of Christ dawn on them (Matthew 4:16).
An opaque gloom hovers over our world. It is a gloom only those who claim to follow Him who is the light-bringer can dispel. God has given this job into the hands of those who were formerly darkness but now conduct themselves as children of light (Matthew 5:14-16; Ephesians 5:8; Philippians 2:15; 1 Thessalonians 5:5). What will the North Koreans see when God throws open their doors and windows? Will they detect any glimmers of true, pure light? Well, brothers and sisters, God has left that up to us.
It is time to cast off anything that hinders and let our light shine through the salt of our loving proclamation of the gospel and the light of our good deeds. Dwellers of the night are looking for the glow of dawn.
The hero is the one who kindles a great light in the world, who sets up blazing torches in the dark streets of life for men to see by. The saint is the man who walks through the dark paths of the world, himself a light. ~Felix Adler
