13 For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves,
I don’t often think of myself as someone who needs to be rescued. I like to think of myself as someone who is fairly strong, fairly stable, fairly responsible. The idea that I need rescuing brings up so many negative images in my mind. I must have been doing something I was not supposed to be doing. I must have been somewhere I was not supposed to be. If I play by the rules, I should not need rescuing. But then I find myself reading this verse. I do need rescuing from the greatest danger around. This is something from which I have no viable escape route available. I must accept help or I stay in the kingdom of darkness. For some, even admitting that they are in a dark kingdom is too much to handle. They would rather pretend there is no darkness than admit their need. Even some who name the name of Jesus act as though we have evolved beyond the idea of evil and darkness. They feel those are outdated ideas that us educated and sophisticated people don’t have any need to subscribe to. But then when someone has a question that the simple and correct answer is darkness, the lengths to which they will twist themselves into pretzels to come up with a new explanation. Take almost any social ill as an example. The root cause is darkness, but their answer is more education, more programs, more money. So we provide educational programs costing lots of money. And after it is all said and done, the darkness is still there and often worse than before. But do you think we would learn from this? Of course not, because darkness is working in us as well. One of the key components of darkness it the thinking that we can solve this difficulty without God and that humans are so great that we can pull this off. We can create light! We marvel that we can see the light cities emit from space, but then forget to compare that light to the light of the sun. Beyond a few thousand miles in space the earth is nothing but a small dot emitting no light of its own. So when someone comes telling you that they can solve human problems apart from the intervention of God, don’t believe them. We must start our journey by admitting we are in the dark and that darkness is real. Then we have a chance. Otherwise we are doomed to live our lives in darkness under the illusion that it is really light.
The Arnold Journey 