You can’t drive across the U.S. without seeing billboards advertising local caves and caverns. Even my home state of Florida has a tourist attraction at the Florida Caverns State Park in Marianna. Most of these caverns have spectacular, spacious chambers adorned with stalactites hanging from the ceiling and stalagmites rising from the floor. These caves also have a variety of animal life. The most well-known cave dweller is the bat. Other cave creatures include salamanders and spiders. Caves that have underground pools and rivers may have shrimp, crayfish, and small fish.
Some of these subterranean creatures are temporary cave residents called “trogloxenes”. Bats are trogloxenes. Bats sleep in caves during the day, then go outside at night to search for food. Other cave dwellers are troglobites. A troglobite is an animal that spends its entire existence living in a cave. They never come out of the darkness and never experience the light. They live in a permanent “dark zone”. Then there are the troglophiles. A troglophile is able to live outside the darkness of a cave, but, and this is the important distinction, a troglophile prefers living in darkness. They love the darkness.
As fascinating as caves can be, I don’t think any of us would want to live in a cave. We may be fascinated by dark, subterranean places, but most people prefer to live in the daylight and breathe the fresh air of open spaces. God created us that way.
God created us. He created you and me to live in the light.
The Bible uses the metaphor of light to describe a life of goodness and truth. The Bible says, “You are Light in the Lord; walk as children of Light for the fruit of the Light consists in all goodness and righteousness and truth (Ephesians 5:8-9).”
Similarly, darkness is a metaphor for evil. The Bible says, “People loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil (John 3:19).”
God does not want you to be a troglophile. He doesn’t want you to love darkness. God wants you to be photophile—a person who loves the light.
We live in a world of darkness and evil, but God wants us to escape the darkness and come into the light. Jesus says that he is “the light of the world. Whoever follows [him] will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life (John 8:12).”
Our world is a battleground where war rages between the forces of good and the forces of evil.
The Bible says, “God is light, and in him is no darkness at all (1 John 1:5).”
In the very beginning of time, God created light. “God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. And God saw that the light was good. And God separated the light from the darkness.” (Genesis 1:3-4).”
God saw that in distinction to the chaos of darkness, light was good, so he separated the light from the darkness, and ever since that initial separation of light from darkness, there has been a struggle, a battle between those who live in the light of God and those who choose to dwell in darkness.
You don’t have to be a Christian or even be a religious person to believe that our world is a battleground. Watch just about any movie, and the theme of good against evil is in almost all of them.
Friedrich Nietzsche said, “He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster… for when you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.”
God wants us to look to Jesus for help because Jesus is the light. Jesus says that he is “the light of the world. Whoever follows [him] will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life (John 8:12).”
The Bible says that those who have believed in Jesus have been rescued from the power of darkness, Colossians 1:13.
Our mission as children of light is to help people “turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins (Acts 26:18).”
Apparently, the Bible does not allow for any gray areas. There is a kingdom of darkness ruled by Satan, and there is a kingdom of light ruled by God.
The question is, where do you live? Do you live in darkness, or do you live in the light of Jesus?
Bob Dylan had a dramatic, life-changing religious experience in 1978. After that experience, he began attending Bible studies at an evangelical Christian church and told people that he had been born again. Dylan wrote many songs about faith, and in one of those songs, Gotta Serve Somebody, he says, “It may be the devil, or it may be the Lord, but you’re gonna have to serve somebody.”
You may be saying, “Hey, I’m not a servant of the devil. I mean, really. I don’t burn candles to Satan or attend satanic rituals. I try my best to be a good person. Yeah, I’m not perfect, but I go to church occasionally.
If this describes you, then you are a trogloxene, someone who lives in the darkness but occasionally comes into the light.
Maybe it’s time to make a real change. Maybe it’s time to turn away from the darkness completely. Maybe it’s time to embrace the light of Jesus. The first step out of the darkness is to ask Jesus to deliver you from your sins. Renounce the darkness and believe in Jesus as your Lord and Savior. Stop being a trogloxene and become a photophile, someone who loves the light.
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