The deep, dazzling darkness of God

“God of darkness and silence,” the prayer began. Reading those words, I looked at the cover of the book once more, was I sure this was a Christian publisher? Yes, it was.

The prayer was for use at Christmas. Isn’t that a time to celebrate the light of the world coming into the world? Yet, as I prayed about it, I knew that the person who wrote the prayer was on to something.

Both light and darkness are found in scripture. In some of the more familiar verses we find God described as light. In John’s Gospel we read, “This is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil” (John 3:19).

Paul wrote in the letter to the Romans, “The night is far gone, the day is near. Let us lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light.”

The first letter of John is big on contrasting light and darkness. John writes, “This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light and in him there is no darkness at all” (1 John 1:5).

You get the idea. God is light and that is good. Darkness is bad and God has nothing to do with darkness. This is a good solid image from the Bible.

Yet there is another strand within the Bible, a thread winding itself through scripture in which God seems connected to darkness. In order to get a fuller picture of God from scripture, it helps to be aware of these images as well:

In Exodus we are told “The people stood at a distance, while Moses drew near to the thick darkness where God was” (Exodus 20:21).

In the second book of Samuel God speaks to David who describes the event saying, “Thick darkness was under his feet” and “he made darkness around him a canopy” (2 Samuel 22:10-14).

In the first book of Kings’ story of the dedication of the Temple, Solomon said, ‘The Lord has said that he would dwell in thick darkness’” (1 Kings 8:10-12).

In Psalm 97, we hear, “The Lord is King! Let the earth rejoice; let the many coastlands be glad! Clouds and thick darkness are all around him; righteousness and justice are the foundation of his throne” (Psalm 97:1-2).

The prophet Isaiah told us a lot about light and darkness, particularly saying that the Messiah would be a light to the nations. But Isaiah also wrote, “I will give you treasures of darkness and riches hidden in secret places, so that you may know that it is I, the Lord, the God of Israel, who call you by name” (Isaiah 45:3).

I was helped with these lesser-known scriptures describing God as dwelling in darkness by a sermon collection titled Ray of Darkness by Rowan Williams. The title of Williams book comes from the writings of a fifth-century Syrian monk who wrote using the pen-name Dionysius.

For Dionysius, God sometimes cuts through our lesser light of understanding with a ray of darkness. This means that just when we think we get it, we understand who God is and how God acts, God shows us that we cannot contain God. This revelation cuts through our complacency like a ray of darkness.

William’s writes, “When God’s light breaks on my darkness, the first thing I know is that I don’t know, and never did.”

When God is described as enshrouded in a cloud or darkness, scripture is showing us God calling us to a deeper experience of God. God is calling us into his own glory, into the secret places of which we as of yet know nothing.

These two images of God being light and darkness are reconciled when we consider the brightness of the sun. If you stare into the brightness of the sun, the light blinds you. Look away from the sun and you won’t be able to see other things so clearly for a while. All is plunged into darkness compared to the bright light you have experienced.

Writers through the centuries have struggled to describe how the experience of God can plunge us into darkness. In fact struggling with the darkness of God was a popular spiritual and literary pursuit from the time of Moses through the seventeenth century. Just as this strand of scripture was falling out of favor in the 1600s, the Welsh poet Henry Vaughn wrote, “There is in God (some say), A deep but dazzling darkness.”

We learn from this darkness imagery primarily that God is God and we are not. God’s thoughts are not our thoughts, God’s ways are not our ways.

In a sermon titled The Dark Night, Rowan Williams’ puts it like this, “If you think devotional practices, theological insights, even charitable actions give you some sort of a purchase of God, you are still playing games. On the other hand, if you can accept and even rejoice in the experience of darkness, if you can accept that God is more than an idea that keeps your religion or philosophy or politics tidy—then you may find a way back to religion, philosophy, or politics, to an engagement with them that is more creative because you are more aware of the oddity, the uncontrollable quality of truth at the heart of all things.”

God cannot be controlled and avoids our every attempt at making things divine predictable, tame, safe. Sometimes darkness and silence are the only ways the God of light and word can get our attention. Don’t give up on God but pray for a deeper experience of him even as you feel most deeply God’s absence.

God may be breaking into your lesser light, your lesser experience of God with a ray of darkness. Be open to God and God will bring to light the things now hidden in darkness.

(The Rev. Frank Logue is pastor of King of Peace Episcopal Church in Kingsland.) 

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