I saw something today that gave me pause: an adult child of a pastor that I know had posted as her theme for her Instagram site that "light cannot exist without darkness". That's a nice meme-sounding theme that puts the cart before the horse in my opinion.
This adult child of a pastor had grown up playing guitar and singing in front of the church. She had majored in music and over the years she had done really well. She played really well and sang really well but you could just tell there was some hollowness there that was weird and didn't make sense.
I was doing sound for her in youth group and got pushed to the side because she wasn't comfortable talking to me. That was interesting because if you're up on stage and you're doing your thing you should be pretty comfortable talking to almost anybody. And if you're not comfortable talking to almost anybody at that point there's got to be something going on inside that's weird. Sure enough she's all tattooed up and saying that darkness is the source instead of light being the source.
As a Christian I see God as the creator of the darkness, the void was there and he in the void created light and physical things and living things. I don't believe that it was the other way around, that darkness was there and needed somebody to rip it asunder and destroy its presence.
And so God created light. If you want to put it in the Christian vernacular, Satan did not create God. But, a lot of times in memes and entertainment, the dark one is portrayed as this all-powerful, deep-voiced, thundering presence that overwhelms our human psyches and makes us cower.
But I have yet to see the devil open up the ground and swallow people. I have yet to see the story about Satan sending snakes to bite people he loved. All I see is Satan stealing people from God, stealing things from God, and stealing creation from God to the point that we live in this fallen world that is under the dominion of a fallen creation known as Satan (or "the satan" if you listen to the Bible Project). When you light a candle in a dark room the dark room doesn't take a breath of satisfaction feeling like it finally created something, the dark room quivers and actually withdraws because light over comes darkness
Darkness runs and flees from the brightness of any light. So I feel bad for this young lady and anybody else who feels like light was created from darkness or that light can't exist without darkness. I disagree wholeheartedly and vehemently.
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