Some things are as obvious as the difference between black and white, but that doesn’t mean folks (and the devil!) don’t try to blur the difference! Or at least make a whole lot out of a little bit of gray!

Sometimes this is desirable. While you’re watching the preacher today, if he uses the overhead projector, take a good look at the image it makes. There are a lot of colors that thing can pit on the wall: red, blue, yellow, green, and a whole “rainbow” more. There is one color it can’t do, though, a color you “think” you see a lot up there. Black!

No, you don’t see black. No, you don’t. Your eye is tricked into thinking you are seeing it. If you look carefully at whatever is being passed off as black, and gauge the “blackness” of it, then look at the song board heading, or the back of the computer monitor sticking up over the podium, or the parts of the audio system that are visible, they are NOT the same thing, not even close. Those physical things are black, truly black. The “black” image you see on the wall from the projector is no more black than the wall itself. That is because the projector can’t display black, it can only display a lack of any other color. In other words, the “black” you see is a “hole” where nothing is projected. That is why the image overall looks washed out if the sun is shining bright outside and the shutters are open too far.

A light bulb cannot create black. Yes I know there are things we call “black lights”, more about that in a minute, but there is really no such thing. A light bulb creates luminance, not anti-luminance. You cannot create darkness with a light bulb. And this is just like God! God is accused of many things. In Job, some people say God does “dark” things to Job, but he does not. Satan is the one who puts the hurt on Job. I have had college professors claim God is not “good” because he allows evil to occur. But it is not God who is evil, but God who exposes the evil. God has no darkness in him, and no amount of word-wrangling can lay blame on him. Like the light bulb, God is light and his presence destroys darkness; the two cannot abide together. Around a light bulb, darkness never wins. It is the same with God.

So why do we “see” black on the projector screen? Because a sharp contrast is made and we start to see things relative to each other. You see the black because of the abundance of light, and we “fill in the holes” just as the projector maker expects us to. When you read the bible, things are brought into focus, clearly, because the more light we have the sharper the contrast we have between darkness and light. Recall that passage about seeing darkly, through as it were a cloudy glass? But then when you come face to face with things, the image is sharp. God’s word does that for us, if we allow it! No wonder so many struggle with morality in their lives, unable to see right from wrong, because they don’t use the word to light their way and see clearly!

Now consider a “black light.” It doesn’t create darkness. What it does is limit the spectrum or type of light it allows out, in particular it blocks “white” light. What it doesn’t block is UV, or Ultra Violet light. We don’t notice UV because white light overwhelms our senses, but many insects see primarily in UV. What does this mean? Well, Deniese once wore a white shirt to the Butterfly Place over in Westford. Ever notice how white things seem to glow in the presence of a white light? They do all the time, but we don’t see them. To the Butterflies, which can only see in the UV, Deniese was like a blazing beacon. So of course a bunch came and “lighted” on her. Apparently, God has created even insects to desire the light!

Randy