Learning to Walk in the Dark: Because Sometimes God Shows Up at Night

by Barbara Brown Taylor

After Jack enlisted in the army and I went off to college, Carol and I lost touch. Sunday services at my university chapel were so different from the church where I had been baptized that it was hard to believe they were the same religion. I was so relieved to find a community of faith that did not run on the fuel of fear that I became a religion major, eager to learn whatever there was to learn by the light of this kinder Christianity. But if I had hoped for a better Bible to go with it, I did not get one. There are only about a hundred references to darkness in the Bible, but the verdict is unanimous: darkness is bad news. In the first testament, light stands for life and darkness for death. When God is angry with people, they are plunged into darkness. Locusts darken the land. People grope in the dark without light, for the day of the Lord is darkness and not light. In the second testament, light stands for knowledge and darkness for ignorance. “If thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness,” Matthew says in the King James Version.