The Night.

                            

"Yours is the day, yours also is the night."  Psalm 74:16 (NRSV)

"even the darkness is not dark to you, the night is as bright as the day, for darkness is as light to you."  Psalm 139:12 (NRSV)

Rather than the day being God's realm and the night ruled by the powers of darkness, the day and the night are both ruled by God.

Archaic ideas of dualism do not apply.

God is One.
His nature is holistic.

There is no devil, no powers of darkness.

"when I think of you on my bed, and meditate on you in the watches of the night; for you have been my help, and in the shadow of your wings I sing for joy."  Psalm 63:6.7 (NRSV)

The moon and the stars watch over the night.
As the sun watches over the day.

"You who live in the shelter of the Most High, who abide in the shadow of the Almighty.  You will not fear the terror of the night, or the arrow that flies by day."  Psalm 91:1,5 (NRSV)

This is not to say that there are not evil people in the world, people who believe in the devil and the powers of darkness.

St. Paul believed in the devil and the power of death.

But this was left-over dualism from Persian religion which influenced Judaism in the ancient world.

The sect of Pharisees in which Paul was trained believed in these things.

But this does not appear in the teachings of Jesus.

The Gospel of John, written 100 years after Jesus' birth, contains some dualistic ideas but this is Christology which developed much later.

It does not appear in the Synoptic Gospels.

But new revelations show that dualism is a false doctrine, God is holistic, transcendent, and sublime.

If we can conceive of a reality without dualism.

This is the Great Leap Forward which leaves behind all negative ideas about Divinity.

God is good.

He does not punish us.

And His mercy is forever.


[Scripture quotations (marked NRSV) are taken from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A., and are used by permission.  All rights reserved.]     

Photo Credit: Israel Nature Photography by Ary Flickr via Compfight cc