Receiving and Reflecting Light

This is the fourth post in my 4-Ls series introduced on March 9 and continued with articles about Life (March 30) and Love (April 20). I plan to conclude this series with a post about Liberty on May 30. But now, let’s focus on Light,  the third of the 4-Ls. 

Light is a pervasive symbol in world religions and has played a central role not only in Christianity but also in the histories of Judaism, Islam, and some Hindu and Buddhist traditions, including some new Japanese religions.*¹

Light and darkness are prevalent symbols in the Bible. The opening verses of the Gospel of John state, “What came into being through the Word was life, and the life was the light for all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness doesn’t extinguish the light” (vv. 3b~5, CEB, bolding added).

“Word” is the translation of the Greek logos, which has a broad and deep meaning, expressed as Tao in China and as dharma in India. Thus, the light of the logos has enabled the Chinese to speak of Heaven, the Asian Indians to speak of Brahman, and the Native Americans to speak of the Great Spirit.

According to John’s Gospel, “The Word became flesh and made his home among us” (1:14). Further, John reports Jesus saying, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me won’t walk in darkness but will have the light of life” (8:12).

These words are best interpreted not in a narrow, exclusivistic sense but inclusively, seeing Jesus as the “cosmic Christ.”*²

In his epic poem Paradise Lost, John Milton in the 17^th century referred to Satan as “the Prince of Darkness,” the embodiment of evil. The Gospel of John says that the devil (=Satan) is “a liar and the father of lies” (John 8:44). By contrast, light dispels the darkness of ignorance and illuminates truth.

The English word enlightenment is often used to refer to a core emphasis in Hinduism and especially Buddhism, but the core idea of the Sanskrit words moksha and bodhi is more about being liberated and/or awakening rather than being enlightened.

A major intellectual and philosophical movement that occurred in Europe in the 17^th and 18^th centuries has long been called “the Enlightenment.” This new emphasis on using human reason and empirical science was an important development in human history.

But there was a basic problem: it was right in what it affirmed but wrong in what it denied. Yes, the light of reason is important for understanding the truth about the physical world. But the physical sciences can’t explain the truth about everything, especially the non-physical realm of reality.

Thus, my emphasis on the light of truth has long been, and still is, on faith and science rather than science without faith (or faith without science). It has also been on revelation and reason, rather than science without revelation (or revelation without science).*³ And I am convinced that “all truth is God’s truth.”

We are all called to receive and to reflect the light of truth. According to John, Jesus invited people to “believe in the light so that you might become people whose lives are determined by the light” (12:36). If our lives are determined by the light of truth, we will be an influence for good in the world.

This influence is not spread just by “religious” activity. Consider, for example, these notable people who reflected/reflect the light of truth in the world around them:

◈ Abraham Lincoln was a man whose remarkable life was determined by the light. Historian Jon Meacham’s nearly 700-page biography of Lincoln is titled And There Was Light: Abraham Lincoln and the American Struggle (2022), and as he wrote in the Prologue, Lincoln “shed that light in the darkest of hours.”

◈ Ida B. Wells (1862~1931) was a noted civil rights activist and investigative journalist. In 2021, The Light of Truth: Ida B. Wells National Monument was unveiled in Chicago. The sculpture takes its name from Ms. Wells’s oft-quoted words, "The way to right wrongs is to turn the light of truth upon them."*⁴

◈ Ahmad Abu Monshar, a Palestinian man, and the Community Peacemaker Teams (CPT) Palestine have produced Light, a documentary film that premieres online on May 18. A CPT spokesperson invites us to join them in finding the light to carry us all through the long struggle toward justice. 

How can each of us become better receivers and reflectors of light?

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*¹ Mahikari (“true light”) is the name of a new Japanese religion, founded in 1959. and now with over one million members worldwide, including a Facebook friend Susan Nakao and her Japanese husband Koji who live in Pomona, Kansas (about 75 miles from my home in Liberty, Missouri), and head one of the Mahikari centers in the U.S.

*² This is an important claim about Jesus, and I invite you to read what I have written about this in past blogs (on 10/15/15 and 1/30/18) as well as briefly in my book The Limits of Liberalism (2010, 2020, pp. 232-3)

*³ I remain indebted to Swiss theologian Emil Brunner for his book titled (in English translation) Revelation and Reason: The Christian Doctrine of Faith and Knowledge (1946), one of the most important books I read as a seminary student. Offenbarung und Vernunft, the German edition, was originally published in 1941.

*⁴ My blog post on March 25, 2021, is partly about Ida B. Wells and mentions that a 2014 anthology of her writings is titled The Light of Truth: Writings of an Anti-Lynching Crusader.

TTT #3 God is Fully Revealed in Jesus, but the Christ is not Limited to Jesus

This third article in the series “Thirty True Things Everyone Needs to Know Now” (TTT) presupposes the content of the first two articles, but reading those previous pieces about God are not prerequisite for reading this one.

How Can We Know God?

One of the basic assertions of Christianity, especially in its traditional Protestant understanding, is that knowledge of God is not due primarily to human effort. Rather, our knowledge of God results from God taking the initiative to reveal Godself to us humans.

God’s self-revelation took place primarily through Jesus of Nazareth, Christians claim. This means that the universal (God) is known primarily through the particular (Jesus) – an assertion that is sometimes called "the scandal of particularity."

This in stark contrast to the ancient spirituality of India—or to late 20^th century New Age spirituality—which emphasizes that God, or some alternative designation such as the Absolute or the Eternal, is universally available to all persons and which, it is often avowed, exists in all persons.

Is there any way that the emphasis on the particularity of traditional Christianity and the universality of Indian religiosity can be brought together?

Perhaps that is possible by realizing that God is fully revealed in Jesus but that the Christ is not limited to Jesus.

Knowing God through the Logos

The first chapter of the Gospel according to John begins with the affirmation of Jesus as the eternal Word. That term is the English translation of logos, a term pregnant with meaning.  

Greek word logos.

In the Greek world before and during the time of Jesus, logos was considered in somewhat the same way as tao (dao) was in China and dharma in India.

So the first chapter of John begins with this statement of great significance: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

What is most significant, and problematic for many people, is the assertion that follows in verse fourteen: “And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.”

From this passage we are told that the universal is known in the particular, the eternal is known in the temporal, and God is made known through a single human being.

Further, John 1:18 states, “No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known.” God is fully revealed in Jesus.

Knowing God apart from Jesus

Is the logos, which can be legitimately called the cosmic Christ, limited to Jesus, though? Probably not. Even in the first chapter of John, there are the enigmatic words about the logos being both life and light, the “true light, which enlightens everyone” (v. 9).

Yes, the Word (Christ) became flesh in Jesus of Nazareth, but that Word is the eternal logos, understood, for example, as the tao in China and as the dharma in India.

The light of the logos/Word has enabled the Chinese to speak of Heaven, the Asian Indians to speak of Brahman, the Native Americans to speak of the Great Spirit.

If the Word is the true light that enlightens everyone in the world, there must be some (or considerable) knowledge of God which is not directly related to Jesus of Nazareth—although indispensably related to the eternal logos/Christ.

Not only is God greater than we think, or even can think, by means of the logos knowledge of God is also broader than most traditional Christians have thought through the years.

Becoming Inclusive

Edwin Markham was from Oregon and for eight years was the Poet Laureate of that state. Although he published several books of poems, Markham (1852~1940) is now best known for “Outwitted,” a poem with only four lines:

I don’t know when I first heard, and liked, that epigram by Markham, but I’m sure it was more than 50 years ago. It is a good one, and I have seen it posted on Facebook and elsewhere two or three times just this month.

We all grow up with a sense of exclusion: there is us (people in my family, my neighborhood, my school, my church, my nation, etc.) and them (people who we consider different from us, competitors, and others we often consider threatening).

It is important, though, for us to go beyond the usual us/them divisions—such as white/black, rich/poor, man/woman, old/young, straights/LGBTs, Americans/foreigners (or Nihonjin/gaijin), citizens/illegals, and so on.

Recently I happened to see these striking words: “There are no others, there is only us.” (There’s a remarkable video by that name at https://vimeo.com/7792828.) This is the kind of inclusion I am writing about.

(I am not dealing here with the theological/missiological position called inclusivism; I wrote a little about that idea and its rivals in a blog article back in 2010—and may want to address that subject again sometime.)

The inclusive attitude I am writing about is one of loving acceptance of people, of having arms open to welcome and to embrace anyone or everyone, of drawing a circle (as Markham would say) that takes “others” in.

One of my favorite Bible verses is Matthew 11:18, where Jesus says, “Come to me, all you who are struggling hard and carrying heavy loads, and I will give you rest” (CEB).

And one of my favorite mental images of Jesus as the Christ is him standing with outstretched arms, welcoming everyone. That idea is portrayed in the following painting (which I still like despite Jesus' Nordic face and stylized white robe):

Several years ago, one of the members of Fukuoka International Church, of which I was co-pastor, had many struggles with his faith. He feared that being a follower of Jesus Christ was limiting, necessitating a view of the world he thought was too narrow.

More than once I tried to assure my young friend that a proper understanding of Christ is actually a broadening experience. Following Christ means accepting all people and affirming all truth.

In my book The Limits of Liberalism I wrote briefly about the “Cosmic Christ.” While there are some problems in the way that idea has been used, the assertion that Christ, the Savior, was uniquely present in Jesus of Nazareth but not limited to a first-century Galilean man is quite significant.

Without question, Christianity has often held to an exclusivism that has been divisive and restrictive. But a deeper understanding moves one from exclusion to inclusion and from restriction to expansion.

Maturing in faith impels a person to move from the us/them mentality of childhood to including “others” as a part of an inclusive circle of “we.”