Thursday, February 5, 2009

A "Dark Theology": Introduction

Okay, here's the thing: I'm a little nervous about posting this for a couple of reasons. One, I don't have all my ideas fully thought through, and there's nothing like putting something in print that you're not totally sure about! The second thing, is I'm a little afraid that folks will misunderstand where I'm coming from on this and will misinterpret what I'm actually talking about. That being said, here goes. . .

One of the things that can happen when you don't sleep is that you end up spending a lot of time in the dark. Over the course of the past few months, I've reflected on and thought about darkness. Darkness is used over and over again in Scripture as a symbol for sin, often times hidden sin (In John 12, Jesus talks about how he's come into the world so that we no longer have to walk in darkness. In 2 Corinthians Paul uses darkness to represent unbelievers and contrasts that to believers who are in the light. I John 1 admonishes believers not to hide their sins in the dark but to bring them into the light where God is). Figurative darkness is used in Scripture with mostly negative connotations.

But what about actual darkness? Is there a difference? Does physical darkness have about it the same secret, closed off, sinful ethos that figurative darkness does? As I've thought about it, I've come to realize that actually, a lot of really amazing and really important things concerning my Christian life and relationship with God happened in literal darkness, and so I've begun to try and reflect on some of these to make the dark that I find myself in more and more these days (and nights), and over the course of a few blogs, I'm going to be sharing and talking some about what I've discovered.

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