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Short days, long nights. How dark it can get in a Minnesota winter when the sun’s light seems to hide itself and ice and snow encompass everything. Even in cities and regions most often immune from the ravages of cold and sleet, this winter has been unrelenting. In the midst of what some locally are calling the worst winter ever, it can be easy to dwell in darkness. But a deeper darkness, spiritual darkness, can thrive in winter, summer or any other time. Lent is a time to recall that Christ came as the light of the world to dispel spiritual darkness and bring us into the endless light of eternity.

In the Gospel of John, Jesus encounters a blind man, but physical blindness represents only one element of darkness, and not the most significant darkness. The blindness of his eyes was real and limiting, especially in that ancient context, when illness was often attributed to the sinfulness of the victim. Jesus rejects the explanation that this blindness was due to someone’s personal sin, but the blind man had to answer also for the source of his healing. Some of the Pharisees took umbrage with Jesus, since “Jesus had made clay and opened his eyes on a Sabbath.”

The Gospel tells us that Jesus’ actions divided the Pharisees, causing some to challenge Jesus’ healing on the ground that he transgressed the Law of Moses: “This man is not from God, because he does not keep the Sabbath.” But other Pharisees wondered, “How can a sinful man do such signs?” This dialogue seems reasonable, an attempt to gather the facts behind Jesus’ act in a process of discernment. Was the healed man really blind before? Was it Jesus who healed him? Does healing constitute work on the Sabbath? How does healing the blind man square with God’s will and law?

The larger issue being broached here, ultimately, is the distinction between literal and figurative blindness. At the spiritual level, who can truly see, and who is truly blind? Is Jesus’ work from God or opposed to the ways of God? What the Pharisees are doing is an essential component of spiritual discernment, the effort to distinguish between what is true light and what is darkness. We all know that religious people can present themselves as holy people, walking in the light, while living double lives and sowing darkness and discord. There are fraudulent peddlers of God.

When someone new comes proclaiming the light, it is right to ask how this aligns with our previous knowledge of how God operates, with Scripture and tradition. It is fair to wonder, is this person motivated by something other than God? The Pharisees make no mistake in questioning Jesus, except in their unwillingness to see the light and embrace it in the experience of the blind man made physically whole. In the end, actions that make manifest the true light of God cannot be faked, and darkness cannot be hidden.

This is why the author of the Letter to the Ephesians, traditionally attributed to Paul, writes that “once you were darkness, but now in the Lord you are light.” Note that Paul does not say Christians are “in light” or “immersed in darkness,” but that Christians “were darkness” and “are light.” It is not rhetorical smoothness or sleight of hand that wins people to light or draws them away from darkness, but how Christians live their lives. No philosophical arguments, no public relations campaigns can hide darkness. In the same way, the true light can only shine, dissipating the darkness. If Christians are light they must “live as children of light.”

Darkness is exposed by deeds that bring light. The blind man cured by Jesus bore witness by the transformation of his blindness to sight. His healing was visible at a physical level. The only way for Christians to make their spiritual healing visible is to be light. Baptism is the beginning point of that transformation, of rising to new life, but it can only be seen through doing “all that is good and right and true.” As followers of Jesus, our daily discernment must always be to choose light over darkness, so that when those who question us ask, “Is this from God?” our answer can be that now in the Lord we are light.

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This article appears in March 24 2014.

John W. Martens is an associate professor of theology at the University of St. Thomas, St. Paul, Minn,where he teaches early Christianity and Judaism. He also directs the Master of Arts in Theology program at the St. Paul Seminary School of Divinity. He was born in Vancouver, B.C. into a Mennonite family that had decided to confront modernity in an urban setting. His post-secondary education began at Tabor College, Hillsboro, Kansas, came to an abrupt stop, then started again at Vancouver Community College, where his interest in Judaism and Christianity in the earliest centuries emerged. He then studied at St. Michael's College, University of Toronto, and McMaster University, with stops at University of Haifa and University of Tubingen. His writing often explores the intersection of Jewish, Christian and Greco-Roman culture and belief, such as in "let the little children come to me: Children and Childhood in Early Christianity" (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2009), but he is not beyond jumping into the intersection of modernity and ancient religion, as in "The End of the World: The Apocalyptic Imagination in Film and Television" (Winnipeg: J. Gordon Shillingford Press, 2003). He blogs at  www.biblejunkies.com and at www.americamagazine.org for "The Good Word." You can follow him on Twitter @biblejunkies, where he would be excited to welcome you to his random and obscure interests, which range from the Vancouver Canucks and Minnesota Timberwolves, to his dog, and 70s punk, pop and rock. When he can, he brings students to Greece, Turkey and Rome to explore the artifacts and landscape of the ancient world. He lives in St. Paul with his wife and has two sons. He is certain that the world will not end until the Vancouver Canucks have won the Stanley Cup, as evidence has emerged from the Revelation of John, 1 Enoch, 2 Baruch, and 4 Ezra which all point in this direction.