Dr. A. J. Swoboda is a professor, author, and pastor of Theophilus (theophiluschurch.com) in urban Portland, Oregon. We spoke with him today about his latest book, A Glorious Dark and how God breaks into the darkness.
1) So most people picking up this book would find the two words of the title: Glorious and Dark to be incongruent. And yet you seem to make that case that there can be glory in the darkness of life. How so?
In the Bible “darkness” is an important image a serious reader can’t overlook. We find that the Hebrew term for darkness, arafel, is mentioned 15 times throughout the Hebrew Scriptures. Oddly enough, over half of such references are directly connected to God’s presence. For example, we find this interplay in Exodus 20:21 when Moses enters into the arafel, the darkness, and within, meets with God. Oftentimes darkness is indicative of God’s presence—God is in the arafel.
The image appears even more in the New Testament. Jesus laid in a tomb of darkness on Holy Saturday. Yet within that penetrating darkness, a glorious resurrection would take place. It is true: “in God there is no darkness at all.” (1 Jn. 1:5) But the opposite isn’t true; God can enter the darkness and break through its hollow trappings. In anyone’s life, there are many things that seem hard, challenging, and “dark.” But the good news is that there, in the darkness, resurrection can happen.
2) Lament is hard to find in evangelicalism. Most of our worship services are upbeat, all the time. Why are we so afraid of meditating on suffering and darkness?
We will use Christianity either to: 1) put on make-up so that we look like nothing is wrong, or, 2) take off our make-up to enter the presence of the Almighty as we are. Christianity is not a way to photo-shop the pain out of our life.
Rather, it is by the cross that our pain becomes baptized into the love of God. In A Glorious Dark, the main theme I explore is that we need all three days—Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and Resurrection Sunday to fully experience Christianity as it was intended to be experienced. We can’t pick our favorite day. We need all of them.
We need all three days to fully experience Christianity as it was intended to be experienced.
3) For many Christians, the darkness is where they are tempted to abandon God, to give up the entire enterprise of faith altogether. But you argue that it is where they might actually develop a greater intimacy with the Almighty.
Yes. I was with a young man recently whose wife died in a freak accident after falling off of a long-board. He is devastated. The pain is virtually unbearable. I’ve never experienced that kind of loss. I will; but I haven’t yet. And he tells me that while the pain is beyond description, God is simultaneously so close to him. There is a mystery in that, one that we all should reflect upon.
In my experience, it is those with the least who are most desperate for God. In fact, having everything one needs can greatly reduce one’s constant dependence on God. I’m rarely tempted to abandon God in loss; I’m most often tempted to abandon God when I’ve everything I want in life.
4) It's likely that on Sunday, many people will walk into church auditoriums under a heavy cloud of darkness, with little hope. How can pastors press the truth of God's Word into the dark places in a way that is faithful to Scripture?
Hope is in short supply these days. Because of hope's elusiveness, it will continue to be sought out in just about any place imaginable—consumerism, 401Ks, politics, the ‘success’ of the church, or even our favorite political or religious ideologies. In our hunger for hope, we’ve duped ourselves into believing that any one human could actually bring about “real hope.” After so many times of being let down, we stop trying, we lose hope, and become cynical.
Cynicism is resurrected idealism. It is what happens when our expectations are not me. We must re-think the way we talk about the good news. We don’t believe it in order to get everything we want from God. Belief is not our way to get our wish list. Rather, belief in Jesus means entering into a relationship where he sets the terms, not me. When I come to God and expect this or that, I am, in essence, giving God a pre-nuptial agreement.
That always leaves me hopeless. He loves us way more than we could ever imagine. But that loves doesn’t always fulfill our shallow hopes in things temporal.
We don’t believe it in order to get everything we want from God. Belief is not our way to get our wish list.
5) Was there a catalytic moment in your life where you found God in the darkness?
When I faced my own demons—particularly, my struggle with alcohol. I share the story in the book. Over the course of a few years, alcohol became a real—almost violent—struggle. It was in realizing my own powerlessness that the gospel made sense. We can’t, I can’t, you can’t, pull yourself up by your own bootstrap. That isn’t gospel. The good news is only Jesus can resurrect—and that we don’t even have to pretend that we even have bootstraps to pull up.
Daniel Darling is vice-president of communications for the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission. He is the author of several books, including his latest, Activist Faith.
