Some people think that they can pray away things that God predicts, even the very things we need as believers to help us learn dependence on God, while  even a mention of the darkness that defines all of humanity is hard to find. Fantasy has no place in the delivery of hope and support to an adult population and therefore we find ourselves walking away from the bargains of the decades-long evangelical revolution.

John 9:39-41

39. And Jesus said, “For judgment I came into this world, so that those who do not see may see, and that those who see may become blind.” 40. Those of the Pharisees who were with Him heard these things and said to Him, “We are not blind too, are we?”

Jesus said to them, “If you were blind, you would have no sin; but since you say, ‘We see,’ your sin remains.

Darkness on the face of the deep

Darkness stalks us primarily because we were in that deep – the primeval abyss –  of which the world was hatched.  Our attempts at fixing our problems seem only to plunge us deeper into the cave where light gets scarcer. 

Neither sun nor moon

The time is right for us to be shielded from the light.  When light parades as police brutality and public service is billed as corrupt, and violent self-defense is a human right, who needs light?

Psalms 121:5-6

5) The Lord is your keeper; The Lord is your shade on your right hand. 6) The sun will not smite you by day, Nor the moon by night.

I know, everyone wants a cloudless day every now and then, and some strange people think that the light humans need can be created in a lab or industrial complex and, to satisfy the buyers and sellers, never turned off.  In a way we have, in some places, no difference between night and day.  I also know people who talk a great light show who are really employees of the father of lies.

But in this period – how many days are still unknown – of dark days there is the sense that a death angel is visiting. 

If the sunlight is not breaking through the clouds it is dark.  Even with the moon nights are dark

I am pretty certain that Hades, with its big mouth gaping, is right now gobbling up another batch of victims.  The darkness into which the American and Canadian) churches have just plunged with their support exposure for a deeply flawed mouth speaking abominable things without a rebuke from the messengers of light marks the deepening of  trouble and a betrayal of the poor and marginalized.  In that same darkness we will find a refuge. 

Between the murderous and the lifesaving programs of today’s religions is a hard line of conspiracy, not the hard line of mercy and compassion.  There is no Christian morality apart from the work and person of Christ.

Guess who matters more to Jesus and any God we can name?  It is not the rich and successful, those who want to be listed as loyal to high virtue,  who refuse to sell and give to the needy.   I can just hear the hard bargain of the status quo:  “what poor, what vulnerable, what injustice?”  and “Let them enjoy their three and four jobs”. Obviously there is no positive thinking or praying that turns around the death toll.  What God did for the Syrian military commander while Israelites were being ravaged by leprosy is not happening in the United States . The bargains promised by what-he’s- done-for-others-he’ll-do-for-you profiteers are not worth a half-penny.