Why We Avoid the Light

For everyone who does evil hates the light, and doesn’t come to the light, lest his works would be exposed. But he who does the truth comes to the light, that his works may be revealed, that they have been done in God.” (John 3:20-21, WEB)

Jesus says something here about the human heart that stings a little because it is accurate. Everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed, but whoever does what is true comes to the light. He is describing a reflex we all know, the instinct to pull away from anything that might show what we would rather keep hidden, the way you change the subject or check your phone when a conversation drifts too close to the truth about you.

A man in the grip of pornography learns to avoid the light in a hundred small ways, deleting the history, clearing the browser, changing the subject whenever a brother gets close to the real question, giving an answer that is technically true and completely misleading. Each of these feels like self-protection, like a reasonable move to keep his life from falling apart. But the avoidance is the very thing that keeps him stuck, because what stays hidden stays sick, and a wound that never sees air does not close. Jesus does not shame the impulse so much as expose it for what it is, and then he offers the other road, the one where a man who wants what is true starts moving toward the light even though it costs him something to be seen. He calls that movement itself a work carried out in God, which means the first honest step is already grace at work in you.

If you have been dodging the light, ducking the questions and managing what people see, name that honestly to him today. Tell him you have been hiding and you are tired of it. Then ask for the courage to take one true step toward being seen, one real answer to one real question, because that step is not you cleaning yourself up before God. It is God already at work, drawing you out of the dark you have grown used to.