I grew up in a charismatic church where God was portrayed as mysterious and moody - you never knew if God would bless you or curse you. God was powerful but potentially hostile. I was afraid of God for thirty years.
This opening of 1 John reframes everything: 'God is light; in him there is no darkness at all.' Not 'God is sometimes light and sometimes dark depending on God's mood.' God's essential nature is light. That means God's not hidden or hostile. God's not playing games with you. God's not waiting to catch you in sin so God can punish you.
Light reveals things. Light is warm. Light enables growth. That's what God is fundamentally like.
I had to grieve the false version of God I'd been worshipping - the vindictive deity, the cosmic scorekeeper, the one waiting for you to mess up. Replacing that with a God who is essentially light, who wants to reveal reality to me, who's not hiding - that changed everything about my prayer life, my self-image, my ability to trust.
I'm teaching my children a totally different God than the one I was taught. I'm showing them that God's not in the shadows. God's the light that helps you see what's actually true about yourself, about others, about the world.
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