A.W. Tozer once said, “When we become so tolerant that we lead people into mental fog and spiritual darkness, we are not acting like Christians, we are acting like cowards.”
Ouch.
Today, the problem is not the presence of darkness. It’s the absence of light.
You don’t open a closet door and watch the darkness inside the closet fill the room. No, the light from the room fills the closet.
It’s just the nature of light.
So the only way darkness prevails in life and land is when the light is turned off.
“You are the light of the world.” That would be us, Christians. Jesus said that to His disciples—not to a group of pagans.
If darkness is on the rise, there’s only one place to look—the church.
Yet today, many Christians—especially leaders—are so afraid to speak clearly on the “hot-button issues,” as many call them, that people are being led into mental fog and spiritual darkness.
Isaiah 5 speaks to a time just like this Israel’s history, and he was abundantly clear with his words. Here are just a few verses, with connection to today:
“Therefore My people go into captivity because they have no knowledge; and their honorable men are famished, and their multitude dried up with thirst” (5:13).
We’ve rejected the knowledge of God because the people of God have failed to clearly show how God’s Word applies to all of life—for human flourishing and national blessing. Because of this famine, people are hungry and thirsty for truth.
“Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; who exchange darkness for light, and light for darkness; who exchange bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!” (5:20).
This is spot on for today. The moral revolution has taken so much ground because of our silence on the issues that it’s now “hateful” and “bigoted” to say marriage is between a man and a woman, or to clearly talk about God’s moral standards at any level. It’s been flipped completely upside down.
“Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes and prudent in their own sight!” (5:21).
We’ve got pundits and talking heads who completely reject God’s ways, and yet they think they’re so wise. It’s all we hear in the media. The problem is, without God’s wisdom being spoken clearly from His people—His leaders—the “wisdom” of the world will prevail. This only increases mental fog and spiritual darkness.
“They have cast away the law of the Lord of Hosts and despised the word of the Holy One of Israel” (5:24b).
Not only do we not want to hear about God’s moral standards, we despise them and make them out to be “hateful” and “discriminatory.” Religious freedom is now being positioned as the “right to discriminate.” Nothing could be further from the truth, yet so many of God’s people have simply disengaged here.
“And if one looks to the land—only darkness and sorrow, and the light is darkened by the clouds” (5:30b).
There it is, mental fog and spiritual darkness. It’s absolutely here today. So it’s time to shine the light—to be the light.
“Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your Father who is in heaven” (Matt. 5:16).
“For everyone who does evil hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed” (John 3:20).
Shining the light exposes two things—your good works and the world’s evil deeds. We’re not in control of the exposing; God is. All we need to do is shine!
It’s time to be true, biblical Christians in this nation, not cultural cowards who bring on mental fog and spiritual darkness.
While we were writing this, David’s daughter took this picture in front of his house. She rushed it in to show him, not having a clue we were writing about being the light!
The light of God will always overcome the darkness!
