Light and Dark and the In-Between
“But nothing worth having comes without some kind of fight — Got to kick at the darkness ‘til it bleeds daylight”
I’ve been reflecting on Advent’s Light vs. Dark motif over the past several weeks and have been thinking back over the year at Clapham and how this framing shapes our work. It’s more complicated than you would think.
I take my inspiration at Christmas time from the poetic account of the incarnation in John 1:1-14, notably this declaration:
In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
There is no doubt in all of our experiences, we sense darkness in the world, an external evil that seems to sweep into societies causing chaos and suffering, or that sneaks into the backdoor of homes to break families apart. I’ve been reading Fleming Rutledge, the Episcopal priest and author, who wrote:
Evil is more than the sum of individual misdeeds. Evil has a life of its own. It is not enough to stand aside from it. If it is not actively resisted, it sweeps all before it. Part of a Christian’s calling is to resist evil, and in doing so, to endure to the end.
Good versus Evil. A clear, binary choice.
But this is where it gets complicated. We each have a sense of its internal presence, even for those who doubt the existence of an external evil, for as Russian writer and Soviet dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote in The Gulag Archipelago:
The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either — but right through every human heart.
Reinhold Niebuhr further reminded us that:
The doctrine of original sin is the only empirically verifiable doctrine of the Christian faith.
We live with shades of gray. The Christian believes that a follower of Christ is a “new creation,” and in that sense, is set apart from others, but even this belief only lightens the gray. The Apostle Paul wrote about himself in Romans 7:15-18:
I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good. So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out.
This is where my reflection on Clapham’s work comes in. While not denying the reality of evil in the world (and who can deny it when the famines in Africa now and those coming are the result not just of nature but of man’s greed and our ignorance), we avoid the binary choice that has divided and defined America’s cultural polarization of “us vs. them.” Recognizing that none of us are perfect (theologically, we’d say “all of us are sinners”), we recognize, as the murdered British MP Jo Cox said, that “we have more in common than that which divides us.”
This is not to dismiss the reality of irreconcilable differences between people and their belief systems, but as the singer/songwriter Bruce Cockburn sang: "But nothing worth having comes without some kind of fight — Got to kick at the darkness 'til it bleeds daylight"
As we look back at the year, we at Clapham have “kicked at the darkness” by uncovering and pursuing projects and policies that we have in common with people that we also have disagreements with. For example we:
Launched Ownership Is the New Black with rapper Derek Minor at a policy event and concert at the Wharf in July
Released three papers to rebuild Social Capital through strengthening families and work, including one with the National Hispanic Pastors Alliance
Convened artists with Pope Francis at the Vatican to explore the role of beauty in shaping the moral and spiritual imagination
Promoted policies, including paid leave, the child tax credit, and the Pregnant Worker Fairness Act to support families and pregnant women, with a diverse group of stakeholders
One more thing we are reminded of at Christmas is that we are not alone. At Clapham, we reflect on this with the deepest theological meanings expressed through the incarnation. However, we also think of this as uniquely expressed in America through our motto “E Pluribus Unum” and our Declaration’s shared pursuit of “Happiness.”
We're thankful for those of you who have joined us on these journeys while living in the gray and, despite our differences, have found ways to “kick at the darkness till it bleeds daylight” together.