God is light, and there is no darkness at all in him. 6 If we say that we have fellowship with him and walk in the dark, we are telling lies, and not doing what is true. 7 But if we walk in the light, just as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his son makes us pure and clean from all sin. (from 1 John 1:5-7 The New Testament for Everyone)
The greatest theology is not complicated, just profound and sometimes unbearably demanding. It throws us onto the grace of God. I cannot constantly and consistently “walk in the light” without the light shining on me and revealing the dark corners. I cannot invite that light to keep shining on the corners without the grace of God enabling me to clean up those corners by confession.
If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. 9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just, and will forgive us our sins, and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. (vss. 8,9)
I am deeply grateful that I grew up in a Christian family and a church where the Good News was preached every week. But that church was also a place where preachers sometimes seemed to have a “stage personality”, and I often heard preachers exaggerate. The stories they told “grew” with each telling.
At the age of 21, I left home and was immersed for a year in a YWAM School of Evangelism. One of the speakers was the uncompromising Joy Dawson. Among memorable, emphatic things she said was that “exaggeration is lying!” I agreed and thought about the way people who exaggerate lose credibility and how that applied to some preachers I had known.
Just a few years later I was invited to be the speaker for a week of teaching at the SOE in Lausanne. I was honoured and nervous. However, the week went well. Friday was the final day of my teaching week and I was telling a story to illustrate my last point. With only about 10 minutes left, I exaggerated the story I was telling and was immediately convicted by the Holy Spirit, or my conscience. I can’t always tell the difference between the two.
I continued to wrap up the final session, but the inner voice seemed to be shouting, “You exaggerated and that’s a lie! Correct yourself; put it right!” My ego-centric voice argued, “Yes, but the fact that the audience was only about 70 people, when I said 100 is not important. It doesn’t change the point I was making.” I had a full-scale argument going on in my head. I could hardly concentrate. The selfish voice won and I closed in prayer.
We had a few hours before Marti and I were due to board our flight back to England and we had planned to go sledding. Is was a lot fun and gradually the voice of my conscience died down. After an hour or so, we left the sledding hill and headed straight for the airport a little over an hour away. About 20 minutes into the journey, I went through my mental travel checklist. After confirming that my passport was where it should be, I checked my pocket for my wallet. Nothing!
I felt myself go red and begin to sweat. My brother-in-law and sister were leading the SOE and had driven us to the sledding mountain. After looking through my hand luggage and checking with Marti, I told them that I had lost my wallet and I thought it was probably back at the sledding site. To make matters worse, my wallet contained the money to reimburse our flights and also a kind gift the SOE had given for our week of teaching. At a time when money was scarce, the loss of that much loomed as a disaster.
My sister has an uncompromising temperament, like Joy Dawson. She said, “Okay, let’s pull over and ask the Lord what He is teaching you.” I explained that there was no need to ask, that the Lord had been almost shouting to me since I exaggerated that story at the end of the last session.
But, we did stop and asked the Lord how I should confess to the students. I had to be ready to stay and pay for a new airfare. After listening for the Lord’s instructions, we all felt that I should write out a confession for my brother-in-law to read to the students when sessions recommenced after the weekend. I wrote. It was humiliating.
Then we turned round and drove through the heavy snowfall back to the sledding site. We all knew there was little chance of finding the wallet because it had been nearly an hour since we had left and snow had fallen continually. We stopped in the parking area at the foot of the sledding hill and I walked across the area for no more than two minutes when I saw the wallet. It was not covered in snow, but fully visible to anyone who happened to be in the area. Even though there were others still sledding, it had not been taken, and the snow had not hidden it.
I knew I had just experienced a small miracle, one that was a lesson never to be forgotten.
Jordan Peterson, the Canadian psychologist, has pointed out that telling the truth will always produce the best possible outcome, even in the most difficult circumstances. At first, that seems to be a questionable statement. But when compared to living with a lie, the truth no matter how hard, will always be best.
Looking back on the difficult and humiliating act of confessing my lie , I wonder how different my life might have been had I continued to ignore the inner voice of truth.
Each time we ignore that inner voice it grows more faint. When we hear and comply with its requirements, the voice gains clarity and volume. That one occasion of lying and then ignoring the voice could have eventually led to putting my conscience on mute. Without a conscience, exaggeration and other forms of lying might have become an integral part of my being. If that had happened I would have become an untrustworthy person.
If we lose the trust of those around us, isolation from loving relationships becomes hell on earth.
This article will probably be the first in a series of a few related thoughts about 1st John 1… But I leave it for now with: vs. 7, if we walk in the light, just as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his son makes us pure and clean from all sin.
Lynn Green 