Lights "R" Us

When we see something, we become that thing. Seeing an object means achieving a similarity between that object and our inner faculty that allows us to see it. The two become one.

This was how folks in ancient times understood seeing.

And so Paul refers to Christians in this way: “you were once darkness, but now you are light in Christ.”

He does not say we can elect to turn on (or off) this light. He just says we ARE light in Christ.

The logic here is that, if we’ve been enlightened by Christ – if we see the point of His gospel – then we become that light. It is not a mental thing we store in our brains. It is a whole-person thing that characterizes the essential nature of who we are.

Jesus worked under the same rationale. He said this: “But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!”

When I was a kid I always struggled with this saying. How can the eye be evil (number one); how can light be in us (number two); and how can that light be darkness (number three)?

Well, number one: The eye is the point of entry of what we see, and what we see, we become. Therefore if we see (entertain) evil things, we become those things morally.

Number two: What we see by the sight of light is the quality of light that is in us.

Number three: If what has entered us (by the light of sight) is dark, our whole being is (it equals) moral darkness. So, indeed, how great is that darkness!

We are too taken by today’s scientific view of light as simply particles and waves with no moral value to them. Light is just stuff that comes from the sun. Or: Light is just something we can turn on or off artificially, independent of any moral essence within us.

But if the Bible is true, we are further away from understanding the true nature of light than ever before.

Logos2Go

Ephesians 5.8 (ESV) For at one time you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light.

Matthew 6.23 (KJV) But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!

Aristotle’s theory of perception involves big words like hylomorphism and a distinction between potential and actual form in relation to matter. But here is a statement from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy that can help; it can be found in an article entitled “Aristotle’s Psychology” and it is in section 6: “Aristotle is happy to speak of an affected thing as receiving the form of the agent which affects it and of the change consisting in the affected thing's “becoming like” the agent (De Anima ii 5, 418a3–6; ii 12, 424a17–21). So there is in both cases a hylomorphic model of alteration involving enforming, that is, a model according to which change is explained by the acquisition of a form by something capable of receiving it.” http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle-psychology/#6