“Honest men fear neither the light nor the dark.”
-Thomas Fuller
That quote has been sitting bumping around in my head for a couple of days. On the one hand my mind wants to think literally, and why wouldn’t or couldn’t an honest man be fearful of the dark? I could be wrong, but wasn’t Christ fearful in Gethsemane? Obedient, but fearful. After all, He was fully man and about to take on quite a bit, quite an ordeal.
Matthew 26:39 – “Going a little farther, he fell with his face to the ground and prayed, “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will.”
I guess that’s what I need. I need to edit Fuller’s words to be “Honest, but obedient men fear neither the light nor the dark.” Nope. Not working for me.
So, my efforts led me, where else, but to Google. While I found lots of sites that had his quote above, I found few opportunities to locate it in context. My thinking was that if I had it in context it might me better understand what Fuller was saying than pulling one sentence out all by itself. About that only thing that search revealed was that Fuller used “honest” quite a bit. Well, then, what does “honest” mean? Does it appear in the NIV? That question led me to www.biblegateway.com.
Luke 12:5
But I will show you whom you should fear: Fear him who, after the killing of the body, has power to throw you into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him.
Also found something interesting in the King James—Romans 13:12-14.
12The night is far spent, the day is at hand: let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armour of light.
13Let us walk honestly, as in the day; not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying.
14But put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof.
What jumped out at me was the implied meaning of what it is to walk honestly in the night. Again, my mind knows, wants to take Fuller literally in that honest men have nothing to fear about the skeletons that may be in their closet (John 3:20). That’s how I read it. And, I can bring my understanding of His Word that I need fear nothing with Christ by side and in my heart. But does that mean I am not fearful of the dark?
Wait. Wait. Wait! Here I am focusing on “the dark”. Back to BibleGateway. Did you know that “fear” occurs 68 times in the NIV New Testament? 18 times in Acts alone. One of the references that stuck out at me the most was this image of Moses:
Acts 7:31-32
When he saw this, he was amazed at the sight. As he went over to look more closely, he heard the Lord’s voice: ‘I am the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.’ Moses trembled with fear and did not dare to look.
These words and others I read reminded me that I want to be fearful of the Light. Need to be fearful of the Light. And at the same time I need to be fearful of the dark, for His Word tells me the dark forces are not of this world and I must arm myself against them (Ephesians 6).
Wow, that was over an hour I spent trying to get my arms around 9 words. Yes, you can only imagine all my thoughts that didn’t even make it here. All that to say I can’t agree with Fuller’s words as they arrived this morning, in isolation. But I had to chew on it. Explore it. I’d be interested in hearing other’s thoughts.