Somewhere along the way, we took to leaving the front porch light on all night. It was my wife’s idea, and I figured she had her reasons, probably explained at some moment when I was paying insufficient attention. But the other day I got to thinking about it, and asked what the idea was.
She said she didn’t know. Her original thought involved putting up an American flag on our front column, with the porch light illuminating it. Trouble was, the flag wouldn’t stay up. So it went into storage … but the light stayed on.
It’s a welcoming enough beacon, coming home late from trotting the dog ‘round the block, or returning from some cross-town activity. The other night, strolling up the walk, I was reminded of something I heard in a devotional presentation several years ago.
It’s late at night, the speaker suggested, and you think of something you left out in the car, or maybe step out to see what's making that noise, or how big the moon is tonight.
A funny thing, when you open the door: darkness doesn’t flood your house. Shadows don’t invade and blacken the room while the door is open. Instead, light from inside pours out into the dark. For as long as the door is open and the house lights are on, the brightness pierces the black.
A few nights later, I happened on a Star Wars film festival – tuning in, it turned out, on one of the films I hadn’t seen, in time to catch a line I hadn’t heard before. A line that pierced a little darkness of my own.
One of the lesser characters in the great galactic melee’ had just made a desperate move to save her friend from certain death – a move that, unfortunately, left leeway for the bad guys to proceed with their evil plans. The young woman was unapologetic – and hope still glowed in her eyes.
“That’s how we’re going to win,” she told her friend, even as he simmered in frustration. “Not by fighting what we hate. By saving what we love.”
It’s so much easier to hate. And a lot of Americans, right now, to judge by the evening news, are fully up for the easy way. Turn on the radio, or the cable broadcast – or just eavesdrop on the next table over in the restaurant. Revel in the rage. Feed on the fury.
Some days, truth be told, it takes all ‘ve got not to wade out into the deepening enmity. Trouble is, as Yoda warned us, “Hate leads to the dark side.” And it’s getting so very dark out there.
All of us know it. But two recent quotes I heard capture the zeitgeist especially well:
- Sarah Smith, North American editor for BBC News, in the wake of last month’s Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade: “America today feels like one country that contains two very separate nations, inhabited by two tribes that have completely different values, beliefs and goals. Now, they have just moved farther apart.”
- Carl Trueman, Christian theologian: “The era when Christians could disagree with the broader convictions of the secular world and yet still find themselves respected as decent members of society at large is coming to an end, if indeed it has not ended already. Many of us are … now living as strangers in a strange new world.”
Indeed, we are. Unless we’re willing to forfeit our faith to fit in. As Cleveland pastor Alistair Begg points out, serious Christians are increasingly in a no-win situation. The Bible won’t let us attack our enemies with their own weapons, and it won’t let us accommodate them with the words of submission they long to hear. What does that leave?
“Saving what we love.”
The best argument for traditional marriage is not a placard or a bumper sticker. It’s the way we love our spouses. The best contradiction to abortion is the genuine pleasure we take in our children. The best defense of our nation is our enthusiastic exercise of its freedoms and responsibilities. The best case for Christ is the extraordinarily abundant life He gives us to live before those all around us: the joy and peace, the purity and priorities, the love and the laughter.
“This is the will of God,” the Apostle Peter writes, “that by doing good you should put to silence the ignorance of foolish people. Live as people who are free, not using your freedom as a cover-up for evil, but living as servants of God. Honor everyone. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honor the emperor.”
Wish I knew how to keep our flag flying, as high and proud as it ought to fly. Working on that. So many good, decent, and mostly anonymous people are working very hard on that. God bless their brave efforts, and the country they love.
Meanwhile, we leave a light on. It pierces more darkness than you’d think.
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