Jennifer Jill Schwirzer - A deep but dazzling darkness: exploring Gods dark side in the light of His love

Exploring Gods Dark Side
in the Light of His Love

BY
JENNIFER JILL SCHWIRZER
& LESLIE KAY

Roseville, CA

Copyright 2010 by Jennifer Jill Schwirzer and Leslie Kay

Printed in United States of America

All Rights Reserved
Published by Amazing Facts, Inc.
P. O. Box 1058
Roseville, CA 95678-8058
800-538-7275

Unless otherwise noted, Bible texts in the Introduction, Chapters One, Two, Three, Six, Eight, Nine, Twelve, Fourteen and Seventeen are from the New King James Version.

Unless otherwise noted, Bible texts in Chapters Four, Five, Seven, Ten, Eleven, Thirteen, Fifteen and Sixteen are from the New American Standard Bible.

Other books by Jennifer Jill Schwirzer:
Testimony of a Seeker
A Most Precious Message
I Want It All

Other books by Leslie Kay:
Scraps of Wisdom From Grasshopper Junction
Simple Gifts

Copy Editing by Arlene Clark
Cover Design by Haley Trimmer
Text Design and Layout by Greg Solie AltamontGraphics.com

Typeset: 12/14 Minion

ISBN 10: 1-58019-177-0
ISBN 13: 978-1-58019-177-7

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Schwirzer, Jennifer Jill, 1957

A deep but dazzling darkness : exploring Gods dark side in the

light of His love / Jennifer Jill Schwirzer, Leslie Kay.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 1-58019-177-0 (alk. paper)

1. Judgment of God--History of doctrines. 2. God--Love--History of

doctrines. I. Kay, Leslie (Leslie Eileen), 1957- II. Title.

BT180.J8S39 2004

231.8--dc22

2004014876

10 11 5 4 3

Contents

: Blinded by the Light

Adjusting the Lens: Justice in the Light of His Love

: In Him Is No Darkness

: Rebel Without a Cause

: Paradise Lost

: The Day Love Died

: Enter: The Lamb Slain

Looking Back: The Full Spectrum of Judgments Past

: The Judge of All the Earth

: Satan, the Instigator God, the Accomplice?

: Thou Hast Destroyed Thyself

: How Can I Give You Up?

: When God Stops Winking

: With God on Our Side

: The Hammer of the Whole Earth

Looking Forward: When the Hidden Things
of Darkness Are Brought to Light

: What More Could Love Do?

: Forgive and Forget

: Holy Hero

: Power to the People

: Gods Last Goodbye

: Into His Marvelous Light

Acknowledgments

W ith much appreciation for A. Leroy Moore, a gentleman and a scholar, who has challenged us to wrestle with truth in all its paradoxical beauty and to value what it means to be a vital part of the priesthood of believers.

Thanks to Anthony Lester for reading with a writers heart and for his enthusiastic recommendation to the publishing team at Amazing Facts.

And with many grateful thanks to Nancy J. Vyhmeister and Herbert E. Douglass for their scholarly and editorial advice.

There is in God, some say,

A deep, but dazzling darkness; as men here

Say it is late and dusky, because they

See not all clear.

Henry Vaughan,

Silex Scintillans, Part II [1655], The Night

Introduction

Blinded
by the Light

I t is high noon. A child prances into her front yard. The lawn vibrates green, the sun dazzles, forcing a squinting smile upon her face. It promises to be a happy day. But a mischievous comrade joins her, breathing a secret that exposes the only danger for miles around: I dare you to stare at the sun. The one enticed sways for a moment, contemplating the ramifications of both options before her. If she says no, her peer status might take an immediate nose-dive, possibly even resulting in being labeled a chicken. If she says yes, the consequence would be twofold: a smarting conscience because of disobedience to mothers taboo, and the possible discovery that Mama was right after all.

Staring at the sun hurts your eyes, she mumbles, embarrassed.

The ensuing barrage of taunts leads the child to reprioritize: She will risk disobedience and injury rather than suffer peer rejection. Fear of shame overrides fear of all other dangers. Her head slowly tips back, eyes clamped shut. As the darer adds pressure, the eyes part, squinting at first through a tangle of lashes. Taunts continue until finally the will to score socially triumphs over pain. Lids and lashes reach back like the opening petals of a flower. Finally, painfully, the raw energy of an orb that, although 93 million miles away, still contains 386 billion billion megawatts of energy strikes the eyes, bringing an instant chain reaction.

The unfiltered light enters the cornea-window, which begins to bend it toward the center of the eye. The iris isnt so compliantit frantically contracts to let in as little of the devastating blaze as possible. Yet even at its most vigilant, the pupil is still open, a pinpoint entrance for the fire. Methodically, the sight of the sun is thrown to the back of the eye toward the retina, in which are the rods and conesthe ink of the eye. Responsible for color sensation, the cones ignore the white-hot sun, while the black-and-white sensing rods declare a red alert.

Now the phenomenon of light-induced blindness begins. Visual purple, the pigment in the eyes paintbrush, is bleached out by the luminous overload, rendering the rods incapable of image discernment. Fortunately, pain overcomes all other motives and the child looks away from what would have eventually brought her permanent damage. Because her visual purple cannot discern light or trace images, the world that only moments ago bloomed with brilliant color is now dark. She stumbles, groping for her friends hand. She is left with a souvenir of her affair with folly: Where the bright orb of the sun burned into her retina, she sees nothing but a black ball projected on the backs of her lids.

Light brings sight, but light brings blindness. Is the light to blame? Has the sun become dark because our eyes have gone dark? No. Its still light. The hindrance to our ability to perceive the sun is not due to the sun itself, but to the inadequacies of the perceiving organ. When we try to see brilliant light, our eyes go dark, not with the darkness of the light itself, but with a darkness imposed by our frail
sight mechanism.

God is light (1 John 1:5). His very being is uninterrupted luminescence. Yet we shrink from what we perceive to be His frighteningly dark side of justice and judgment, of wrath and condemnation. Could it also be that the fault is not in God, but in our fragile organs of spiritual perception? Could it be that as we strive to comprehend Gods sterner, hard-to-understand attributes, we find ourselves groping in the darkness because our fallen perceptions have been overwhelmed and blinded by the light of His love?

Chapter One

In Him Is
No Darkness

LESLIES STORY

A rchbishop Timothy Manning sat in state as he surveyed the current crop of confirmation recipients. Fresh-faced and white-robed, the class of 30 or so preteens nearly radiated impending sainthood. Behind them sat the doting parents and godparents, friends and extended family that had come to celebrate the occasion. Cameras ready, each focused on a single, all-important objectivegetting a good shot of their respective little angels moment of glory. And as the little angels nervously awaited that moment of glory, their thoughts were anxiously riveted on a single, dreaded eventthe slap.