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Light

           When Jesus spoke again to the people, he said, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” (John 8:12)

"I believe in Christianity as I believe that the Sun has risen not only because I see it but because by it I see everything else.” C. S. Lewis (Is Theology Poetry? Reflections: Christianity Makes Sense Of The World - C.S. Lewis Institute)

It seems that my Bible platform is going to go through Jesus’s “I Am” statements, and that’s fine with me. And again, maybe I’m the only one who hasn’t understood them in the past, but I don’t think so. The statement, “I’ve seen the light” or “I saw the light” tends to be understood either as my having come to Christ for salvation, or having otherwise repented because we’ve finally come to realize our error. It’s the candle in the window that leads us to safety. And I won’t say that aspect of it doesn’t exist. I’m sure it does.

Underlying that idea is the deeper (bigger?) truth that I think we do, at least a little, but it’s a sort of natural thing, so we may not realize it. While we’re saying, “Oh wow! The Light of the world!” we’re also potentially starting to see what that light reveals. As Prof. Lewis said, by it we see everything else. Fortunately, that “everything” isn’t all at once. It is only in the light that we can effectively see and address what is revealed.

And, to give an example from science, we can see about 0.03% of the electromagnetic spectrum. So even with 20-20 vision, we can see almost nothing of what is out there. If we could see in the 10-nanometer to 10-picometer wavelength range, we could see each other’s bones (like Superman with his X-ray vision should). As it is, we’re blind to such things. And it’s probably a good thing. Without light, we are blind to what’s true, false, right, wrong, good, bad, beautiful, ugly, real, and imaginary. What wisdom we might gain is the wisdom of the hand, the ear, the stubbed toe, and the bruised forehead. Too much light would cause information overload, likely allowing us to see little more than we could without it.

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