Even on a pitch-dark evening, we can still perceive with our eyes glimmering light particles. Look up in the sky, oh there is the North Star (Polaris)! From there, we can outline the Little Dipper (Ursa Minor) and the Big Dipper (Ursa Major) constellations. Under the right night conditions, we can perceive the oodles of stars comprising the Milky Way. A bit of light can be found even the furthest darkest reaches of outer space. Moreover, human eyes still need visible light to perceive and make sense of the external world. Luke 11:33-36 is a passage that encapsulates a profound message about the significance of light, both in a literal and metaphorical sense.
All things remain hidden underneath the shroud of darkness. In the dark, we can grope around in trying to make sense of our surroundings, but without any light, we are hindered from accessing an accurate picture of the external world. If we try to move about, we can easily trip over unseen obstacles and possibly suffer injury. But once the light begins to shine, the shroud of darkness is lifted, and all the shapes and colors of the external world become visible. Creation begins in the darkness of the evening but God says, “Let there be light,” and the first morning happens.
Lamps are wonderful devices that allow us to illuminate and remove the shroud of darkness from places. “No one after lighting a lamp puts it in a cellar or under a basket, but on a stand, so that those who enter may see the light,” says Jesus (Lk. 11:33). [1] This is easily understood. We never cover the light source so that the living space remains dark, like putting a lamp underneath a basket or down below in the cellar; rather, we put the light source in the optimal location so that the entire space gets illuminated.
A lamp is good to use so long as the flame or the bulb continues to emanate the light. Once the flame extinguishes or the bulb burns out, the lamp is no good. One can relight the flame or change the bulb but until then the lamp is bad and the room remains dark.
Jesus then draws an analogy between the eye and the lamp to convey a spiritual lesson:
Your eye is the lamp of your body. When your eye is healthy, your whole body is full of light, but when it is bad, your body is full of darkness. Therefore be careful lest the light in you be darkness. If then your whole body is full of light, having no part dark, it will be wholly bright, as when a lamp with its rays gives you light (Lk. 11:34-36).
Healthy eyes covert light to perceive and illuminate the mind and body to the external world. Optimal vision allows a person to discern location, move about, avoid hazards, and discover the external world.
When eyesight fails, moving about becomes more difficult, and things in the outside world go unseen. A watchman with failing sight will be unable to easily determine whether the riders approaching the city gates are friends or foes. Failing eyes can cost a huntsman or fisherman needed sustenance. Same goes for the gatherer who can perceive the differences between the edible plants and the poisonous varieties.
But there is another dimension to the eye being the lamp of the body beyond physical sight. William Hendriksen puts it this way:
[W]hen a person’s inner disposition is right, having been sanctified by the Holy Spirit, his entire personality will be illumined. He will possess the true knowledge of God, will experience peace of mind that passes all understanding, and will be able to thank the Lord for joy unspeakable and full of glory. On the contrary, when his heart is not right with God, this lamentable condition will also affect his entire personality. Instead of spiritual progress there will be spiritual retardation and deterioration.[2]
God is our light. He illuminates our way. He shows us our purpose. He directs our way. He lights our way on the road of life. Like the pillar of fire that led the Israelites through the wilderness on darkness, and the star that directed the Magi to the Christ, united with God we move along our earthly sojourn to glory.
The predicament of humanity severed from God is perilous. Moving east of Eden, the light emanating from the Garden grows dimmer and within a matter of time darkness enshrouds everything. Once blinded in darkness, we can only grope about desperately seeking to find the way. Alone in darkness, they lose sight of the one who gave them purpose, direction, and vitality. They are unable to see themselves as bearers of the imago Dei (image of God). They are apart from the Lawgiver, so everyone does what is right in their own eyes. They are constantly haunted by the ensuring existential threat of their mortality.[3]
Groping around in the darkness, we can tragically miss the truth standing right in front of our faces. If only we peer through eyes illuminated by faith, then we possess optimal visibility to navigate life’s terrain. Eyes illuminated by faith moved the Ninevites to humbled themselves in response to the word of the Lord spoken by Jonah, whom God brought to Nineveh in the belly of a fish, and inspired the queen of the Sheba to travel great distances to listen to the wisdom of Solomon (Lk. 11:29-32; cf., Jonah 1-4; 1 Kings 10:1-10; 2 Chron. 12:1-9).
Christ is the ultimate source of light, but once severance from the light source, we end up with darkness and disenchantment. A pertinent example of this is atheism. Those who deny the existence of God disconnect themselves from their source of life and purpose. Darkness enshrouds them, and they fall into the ditch of disillusionment, despair, and death.
“God is dead! God remains dead! And we have killed him!” said the madman, who goes on to say, “How shall we comfort ourselves, the most murderers of all murderers?”[4] and “What are these churches now, if they are not the tombs and sepulchers of God?”[5] It is simply wrongheaded to suppose this foreboding parable of Fredrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) as a triumphant announcement to end of faith in God and the Christian religion. Nietzsche wants to tell of the dismal consequence of killing off the idea of God in our mind. Carl Truman explains,
The underlying idea is that Enlightenment philosophy has quite purposefully rendered God implausible or unnecessary. It has done away with him. But here is the rub: Enlightenment philosophers have failed to draw the necessary, broader metaphysical and moral conclusions from this notion…But the nonexistence of God is not like the nonexistence of unicorns or centaurs. Nothing significant has been built on the supposition that those mythological creatures are real. To dispense with God, however, is to destroy the very foundations on which a whole world of metaphysics and morality has been constructed and depends.[6]
The madman, of course, is Nietzsche. “Nietzsche was brutally honest about what atheism really meant, and that honesty ultimately cost him his sanity. No up or down; no good or evil; just sheer human will swimming in an indifferent, if not hostile, cosmos,” writes Benjamin Wiker.[7] One can talk about Übermesch exercising the will to power to define one’s own values, but this is simply having feet firmly planted in mid-air. No ideal society has ever been constructed by the so-called Übermesch. But Adolph Hitler incorporated the Übermesch concept into the ideology of the Third Reich (whether Nietzsche would have approved is unknown).
What Nietzsche ultimately experienced was nihilistic despair. Wiker points out, “The last decade of his life was spent in the darkest corners of madness, deteriorating in every way, at one stretch keeping everyone in the house awake repeating like a hideous drum, ‘I am dead because I am stupid…I am stupid because I am dead.’”[8]
The consequence of atheism is immense. Skeptics who dismiss belief in God must then concede that nothing produced everything through unguided random processes without any intelligent cause. They can suppose all life evolving from simple to complex via natural selection involving the survival of the fittest species and extinction of the lesser fit. Yet, their material world that formed out nothing never truly accounts for the immaterial things they trust and use, such as reason, morals, numbers, mathematics, and consciousness. We are but modified dirt, though we can try to a euphemism like “stardust” to swallow the bitter pill of the world according to philosophical naturalism.[9]
Once severed from the vine the branch withers and dies. Humanity severed from God likewise experiences decay and death socially, spiritually, and physically. Humanity severed from the divine is left without a metanarrative or overarching story of a meaningful life. Concerning the Russian Revolution that swallowed up the lives of 60 million people, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn echoed the sentiments of his elders: “Men have forgotten God; that’s why all this happened.”[10]
We can even end up becoming expressive individuals, sovereign selves, or plastic people who define their purpose according to their impulses, determine ethics to what works best for the self, redefine self, gender, and body according for the sake of one’s own inner psychological contentment, even the allowing self-mutilation like the removal of one’s own healthy body parts is never out-of-bounds, treating the body as if some sort of plastic erector set with interchangeable parts, but militantly opposed anyone who even attempts voice with genuine concern a contrary point-of-view.[11] The consequences of this postmodern perspective of self are devastating. But this is how far one can drift off the course of sanity when the lamp of the eye is bad and the room is full of darkness.
The eye as the lamp of the body analogy is a powerful reminder about the significance of divine light in our spiritual journey. Christ’s teachings illuminate our path, guides us away from darkness and towards a life of purpose and fulfillment. As we navigate the complexities of life, it is vital to recognize that severance from Christ ends with spiritual vacuum. When the lamp breaks, the room goes dark. Likewise, sever the connect with Christ, the life corrupts. When we embrace Christ, our life is filled with light, darkness is banished, and a deeply meaningful existence is experienced.
— WGN
Notes:
[1] All Scripture cited from The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), unless noted.
[2] William Hendriksen and Simon J. Kistemaker, Exposition of the Gospel According to Luke, vol. 11, New Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1953–2001), 631.
[3] Coming to grips with death is the motivation for man’s pursuits in philosophy, science, psychology, theology, and the arts. We try convince ourselves death is nothing but ordinary (psychology). We try to extend our physical longevity (science). We search for spiritual power to love (theology). We try to immortalize our name through various life accomplishments (science, arts, business, education, politics, family, etc.). For more on this topic, see Clay Jones, Immortal: How the Fear of Death Drives Us and What We Can Do About It (Eugene, OR: Harvest House, 2020).
[4] Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, trans. Walter Kaufman (New York: Vintage Books, 1974), 181.
[5] Ibid., 182
[6] Carl R. Truman, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to Sexual Revolution (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2020), 168
[7] Benjamin Wiker, 10 Books that Screwed Up the World: And 5 Others That Didn’t Help (Washington, D.C.: Regnery Publishing, Inc., 2008), 100. If God is dead, then everything is permissible. Philosopher Mitch Stokes explains, “Without God there are no universally binding moral rules. Sure, there are all manner of ‘moral’ rules that we impose on ourselves and others. But none of these are actually binding in the way we imagine moral laws to be. If naturalism is true, there’s no morality apart from what humans value, want, or prefer. Morality is purely a matter of taste. In short, naturalism implies moral nihilism, the view that there are no human-independent moral rules” (Mitch Stokes, How to Be an (A)theist: Why Many Skeptics Aren’t Skeptical Enough [Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2016], 327). Atheism is Naturalism. Naturalism is “the view that the natural world is all there is — ‘or ever was, or ever will be,’ according to Carl Sagan’s secular Gloria Patri” (Ibid., 14-15).
[8] Wiker, 113.
[9] Ironically, the very existence of immaterial things like reason, morals, numbers, mathematics, and consciousness presuppose an Intelligent Designer. For further reading, see James N. Anderson, “The Inescapability of God,” Christian Research Journal, 40, 5 [2017]: https://www.equip.org/articles/the-inescapability-of-god/ and Melissa Cain Travis, “A Grand Cosmic Resonance: How the Structure and Comprehensibility of the Universe Reveal a Mindful Maker,” Christian Research Journal, 41, 1 [2018]: https://www.equip.org/articles/a-grand-cosmic-resonance/.
[10] “Acceptance Address by Mr. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, May 10, 1983,” https://www.templetonprize.org/laureate-sub/solzhenitsyn-acceptance-speech/
[11] Truman, 163ff
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