The Dark Side of Faith

Our pastor referred to the dark side of omniscience in his sermon yesterday. He was describing Christ's knowledge throughout His earthly life concerning the nature and time of His own death. There is another dark side of omniscience, too, and it involves us.

Without sin, darkness as a metaphor for ignorance and evil would make no sense. God created night and day, darkness and light, and both were good. Now, the darkness of sin obscures the light of righteousness and goodness. Man's nature before conversion is inherently dark. We are a dark race, hiding our deeds and the image of God in us with the filth of wickedness.

Whatever our deeds are or have been, God knows them. Surely this realization is cause for "the fear of God." Any interpretation of "fear" as simple respect or reverence fails to account for the dark side of omniscience, or the dark side of mankind. God is a righteous and wrathful judge, and we have done wrong; though the blood of Christ covers those who believe, God still knows what we've done.

If horror stories have the power to terrify, surely this knowledge should leave us stricken and gasping like fish in undiluted oxygen. It should not, however, debilitate anyone, except those who wilfully reject the Gospel. The fear of God, after all, is the beginning of wisdom.

We have distanced ourselves from this understanding of God and ourselves, less (I think) from desire to misrepresent the Gospel, and more from a shallow understanding of fear.

Fear is not simply weak knees or sweaty palms or hiding beneath the covers. True fear is astonishing, weakening, cathartic, and real. More importantly, it is catalytic. Fear causes us to act, or more usually to react, to do something about our condition or situation that will remove or mitigate the cause of our fear. Fear is the dark side of faith, but it leads out of darkness to the light of Christlikeness.

If we fear God, truly fear Him, that fear will lead to righteousness. The fear of God should scare the Hell out of us. Sin is representative of the Hell of personal autonomy and godlessness for which the damned are destined, the complete personal responsibility to which they are held. That is the dark side of eternity, but those in Christ should have no fear of the grave, only of Him able to throw us into it or pluck us out again.

Many people balk at the idea that God has a dark side, but there is a dark side to everything, and He has ordained that it be so. The dark side of salvation is damnation; the dark side of knowledge is death; and the dark side of faith is fear. We love God, but if we love and undestand Him, we are also afraid, and that holy terror makes us run hard for the light.