CS Lewis wrote in his book of theological essays “The God in the Dock” the following.
I was standing today in the dark toolshed. The sun was shining outside and through the crack at the top of the door there came a sunbeam. From where I stood that beam of light, with the specks of dust floating in it, was the most striking thing in the place.Everything else was almost pitch-black. I was seeing the beam, not seeing things with it. Then I moved, so that the beam fell on my eyes. Instantly the whole previous picture vanished. I saw no toolshed, and (above all) no beam. Instead I saw, framed in the irregular cranny at the top of the door, green leaves moving on the branches of a tree outside and beyond that, 90 odd million miles away, the sun. Looking along the beam, and looking at the beam are very different experiences.
The place where we stand in relationship to light changes things! Our interaction with light can change the environment, or at least our perception of the place where we’re at… The influence of light is both negative and positive force; it has a negative effect on darkness as in effect it destroys it, but it allows the viewer to see clearly which is always a positive. In the same way, the influence of Christians on society is intended by Jesus to be both negative (checking the spread of evil) and positive (promoting the spread of truth and goodness, and especially of the gospel). As we continue on our Along the Way series we’ll take a look at what Jesus told his disciples they should be filled with in Luke 11.
