What is the light the elect live in?
In my previous post, Reflections: What is Life? Choosing to Live in the Light, I developed an analogy for life. The analogy is that of a common landscape with a shadow cast upon it. We all live on the same landscape, though some is in God’s light, and some is not.Â
The features of the landscape are generally the same everywhere you go. Figuratively speaking, there are mountains, lakes, oceans, even cities, but once you know the rules of one feature, the rules will apply to them all. Again by analogy, rules might include the physical, like gravity; or the logical, like math. These rules work the same everywhere, thought applying them in different contexts may appear to produce answers, and that is where the light and the shadows come in.
A man of God lives in the light. He may choose to look up at the light and see God, or at the ground. If he looks up at God, he will miss the features of the landscape upon which he lives… perhaps to the point of denying the undeniable: like mountains, fossils, gravity, and math.
On the other extreme is the man of the world, who lives in the darkness. Even looking up, he would not see God’s light… but no matter, for suppose he walked into the light by accident. He wouldn’t look up anyway, for to him there is only the landscape… and he studies it meticulously, even to the point of denying the undeniable: like the light he now stands in and his new clarity of the landscape’s features. After all, as long as he continues to make sense of what he can see looking down, why should he ever look up?
So, this got me thinking about creation. I wasn’t trying to draw a connection, but I think the connection is obvious… light divided from darkness. Creation of the “landscape’s” features. High ways and low ways. Letting ones light shine in the darkness. Looking up versus down… Creation is a story of separations, and truly the elect are separate from the non-elect; the chosen are separate from the unchosen; those who choose God and repent of their sins are separate from those who do not.
What I am starting to consider is the additional meaning of Genesis 1 beyond what I have written of here so far: 1)A prophecy of the Trinity, 2)A recollection of pagan myth, 3)A theological lesson about God’s place in the world, 4) This entry was posted on Monday, August 11th, 2008 at 7:28 am and is filed under Creation Week, Bible Commentary, Creation Theories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.