God in the Darkness

Photo by Ryan Parker on Unsplash

Darkness has a bad rap. Particularly here in the West, several centuries of Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment thinking have hard-wired us to lean toward stark polarities and radical dichotomies and away from nuance and mystery. Thus, we have adopted as inflexibly normative the idea that “light” is a metaphor for goodness, while “darkness” symbolizes evil. In most cases, this is not a well-reasoned conclusion, something that we “think”; it derives much more from our social imagination, woven tightly into the way we see and embrace the world. By “imagination,” I mean here what James K.A. Smith calls “a kind of midlevel organizing or synthesizing faculty that constitutes the world for us in a primarily affective mode. . . a kind of faculty by which we navigate and make sense of our world, but in ways and on a register that flies below the radar of conscious reflection” (Imagining the Kingdom, Baker Academic, 2013, pp. 18–19).

The pervasive absorption of this concept of darkness can be seen in relatively innocuous matters like the difficulty of finding homes for all-black cats and dogs. For example, when we adopted a black cat from a shelter several years ago, the staff had a loud celebration. “Hope” (the name we gave her) had been there for over two years, because “no one wants a black cat.” A blind friend, who has had both pale blonde guide dogs and pure black animals, has many stories about the notably different reactions to her canine companions, from both strangers and friends.

But this light-dark dichotomy is also deeply embedded within our cultural imagination in much more corrosive and destructive ways. The image of light-as-good and darkness-as-bad becomes an insidiously evil concept when it colors (pun intended) our value judgments of other human beings. Despite the pervasive misuse of Genesis 9:18–27, with its so-called “curse of Ham,” as a rationale for assigning dark-skinned human beings to an inferior kind of humanity and turning blind eyes to their full inclusion as image-bearers of the divine, Scripture “contains no narratives in which the original intent was to negate the full humanity of black people or view blacks in an unfavorable way” (Cain Hope Felder, “Race, Racism, and the Biblical Narratives,” in Stony the Road We Trod, Augsburg Fortress, 1991, p. 127).

To be sure, Scripture is certainly not without many examples of the metaphorical use of the light-darkness contrast used to communicate opposing poles of goodness and evil. Metaphorical polarities were part of the ancient imagination just as they are a part of ours, and the visual and visceral power of the “light versus darkness” imagery was as readily perceptible to ancient Hebrews and first-century Mediterranean people as it is to us. So we find plenty of examples of light as a symbol of good (or even of God himself), with the corollary that darkness represents opposition to God and to goodness. Consider Psalm 104:2, which declares that God appeared “wrapped in light as with a garment,” or 1 John 1:5, “God is light and in him there is no darkness at all” (NRSV). The prevalence of light-dark contrasts in Scripture has even led the Dictionary of Biblical Imagery to make this sweeping claim: 

[Darkness] is a strongly negative experience in human experience. It is physically oppressive; it is the natural environment for a host of evil happenings; and it is associated with death, imprisonment and ultimate evil. Darkness is in principle associated with evil, opposed to God’s purposes of order and goodness in the universe and in human society (IVP, 1998, p. 192).

But what might happen if we were to take another look at darkness in Scripture? What if we were to tune in more closely to what Isaiah calls “the treasures of darkness” (45:3)? 

At the very start of the biblical narrative, Genesis 1:1–5, we find the first mentions of light and darkness. Three things immediately leap off the page in this foundational text. First, there is the striking parallelism of the two phrases that describe the deep, watery primordial chaos (v. 2): Darkness was over the face of the deep // The Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. The brooding presence of the Spirit was in the darkness. Second, God separated the darkness and the light. This verb is used five times in the Genesis 1 creation account, each time to indicate God making a distinction between two contrasting but interrelated elements (1:4, 6, 7, 14, 18)—and all of the distinguished elements are encompassed in his repeated pronouncement: “It is good.” Third, God named both the light and the darkness, infusing both with meaning and purpose. There is no banishing of darkness from creation; rather, there is a setting of darkness into its proper place and role as part of the divine goodness that replaces chaos with order.

It is in poetry that metaphor shines with its greatest force, and Old Testament poetry is no exception. If we turn to Psalm 18, a great poem of rescue, we find in verses 7–15 (which parallel 2 Sam. 22:8–16) a vibrant theophany that throbs with—wait for it!—darkness. David’s desperate plea for help is met with decisive divine action: “He opened the heavens and came down” (v. 9, NLT). The description of that earth-shaking, mountain-quaking divine descent is saturated with images of darkness: “total darkness” (CSB) or “dark storm clouds” (NLT) are beneath God’s feet (v. 9), darkness is his hiding place or cloak (v. 11), his approach is wrapped in dark storm clouds (v. 11), and brightness and darkness are interwoven as part of his visible presence (v. 12). This mixture of light and darkness in theophany is not limited to Psalm 18; we see it also in Psalm 97:2 (“clouds and thick darkness are all around him,” NRSV) and repeatedly in the fire and dark cloud of the Sinai theophany (e.g., Deut. 4:11; 5:23). Gerard Manley Hopkins captures this powerful mystery of revelatory darkness in the fifth stanza of his poem “Nondum” (Latin for “not yet”), which is built upon another image from Isaiah 45 (“Truly, you are a God who hides himself,” v. 15): “And still th’abysses infinite / Surround the peak from which we gaze. / Deep calls to deep, and blackest night / Giddies the soul with blinding daze / That dares to cast its searching gaze / On being’s dread and vacant maze.”

Together Genesis 1, Psalm 18, and the other theophanic passages nudge us away from too quickly relegating darkness (both the image and the experience) to the category of “negative things to be avoided.” In these Scriptures we see an intimate connection between God’s presence and purpose and the image of darkness. Looking at the larger trajectory of Scripture, we find places and experiences of darkness at key junctures in the biblical narrative. In Holy Dark Places (Energion, 2017), Daniel McGregor highlights the formative role of wilderness, exile, and Holy Saturday as moments and experiences of liminality, of spaces between departure and arrival—experienced by the people of God and by God himself (Holy Saturday).

And so we return to our question: What might happen if we were to tune in more closely to the full range of biblical imagery related to darkness? As we consider darkness as an inseparable element of God’s presence and self-revelation and spaces of darkness (wilderness, exile, Holy Saturday) as essential elements of our great redemptive Story, what might change in both our thinking (and imagination) and our experience? Certainly, the inspiring Spirit who is also the sanctifying Spirit calls us to submit our thoughts and imaginations to the Spirit's scrutiny. We must be willing to ask where and how the enemy of our souls has distorted the "light vs. darkness" metaphor so that it has become a lens of denigration or disdain as we contemplate our fellow image-bearers. With David, let us cry for the Spirit's illumination and cleansing of mind and imagination: "Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting" (Psalm 139:23–24, NIV).

And what about our own experiences of darkness? Perhaps some long dwelling with Isaiah’s image of “treasures of darkness” (45:3) can help us here, as we will each traverse at some point (if we aren’t already there) our own “dark night of the soul” (St. John of the Cross). Isaiah’s phrase “treasures of darkness” indicates a divine gift to Cyrus, “the Lord’s anointed,” something being given to him with revelatory purpose: “so that you may know that it is I, the Lord, the God of Israel, who call you by your name” (NRSV). The Maker of both light and darkness (Isa. 45:7), who reveals himself in both fiery brilliance and thick cloud, offers Cyrus the treasure of knowing and being known by God himself. Perhaps mining for that kind of treasure in our own experiences of wilderness, exile, and the darkness of divine silence can be richly transformative.

Rachel Coleman is affiliate professor of Biblical Studies at Asbury Theological Seminary, profesora adjunta de Nuevo Testamento for United Theological Seminary, and the regional theological education coordinator (Latin America) for One Mission Society. She serves on Firebrand’s Editorial Board.