“God is purple.”
“No, think about it, God is green.”
“You really do not see that God is blue?”
God is often compared to light. But did it ever occur to you that no colour is mentioned? Just light. Or as John told us in one of his letters: “This then is the message which we have heard of him, and declare unto you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.” (1 John 1:5. KJV). Seems clear enough to me.
Light, I take sunlight as an easy example, has all the colours. The objects, plants and animals that stand in the light have colours. This is because objects and living creatures can't reflect all the colours of the light.
God is light, and therefore has all the colours within Himself. The devil and his followers are being called 'the darkness'. This means that not one single colour is being reflected from them. All colours disappear. This is a major difference. But apparently, there is a clear distinction between what God is, and what the devil is. I would like to explain the difference using the physical phenomenon of light. I try to keep it as simple as possible.
I assume that you know what atoms and molecules are (if not, please look this information up, the structure of an atom is important). It happens that an electron in the outer orbit of an atom gets 'excited', causing the electron to have too much energy. Just like a person who is excited, an electron also wants to go back to his ground state. This can only happen when the electron 'relaxes'. When the electron relaxes, the surplus of energy leaves as a photon, a small particle without mass, but consisting only of energy. The quantity of energy determines the wavelength, which determines the colour. Us humans can see only a small part of the total spectrum of wavelengths (see picture 1), but it is enough to see nearly everything around us.
Picture 1: The colours seen by humans, compared to the whole spectrum.
I limit myself to the colours a human can see, as this is a story about light and colours. Those small particles enter our eyes. The retina translates the signals it gets in colours, and sends the information to the brain. For people who are into digital photography: our eyes have a resolution of approximately 126 mega-pixel (!), and they work with a refresh-rate of 26 Hz.
But, I was talking about light. Light is apparently made of small particles. An insanely huge amount of particles. Where is darkness made of? Darkness does not exist out of small particles. Darkness is an absence of light. When there is light, darkness is gone.
The devil tries to keep people away from God, away from the Light, that is why there is darkness present around him. Darkness can not bear light, in the presence of light, darkness is not present any more on that location. Therefore, the darkness has no right to exist next to light. If a human being has contact with God, the Light, darkness has no right to be with him. Now, we are dealing with a spiritual war, there is an 'active darkness' who tries to pull people away from the Light. We have to stay focussed, we have to prevent that we become lazy, but keep on fighting to stay in the Light, and to help others to come into the Light and stay there. But remember that in the light, darkness has no right to exist. “The light keeps shining in the dark, and darkness has never put it out.” (John 1,5. CEV).
Prisms
So, light is build up out of a lot of different colours. Sunlight exists out of practically all visible colours. This looks like white. God and His angels are often described as white light. This means that white is not really a colour, but a combination of all colours. Black is the absence of any kind of colours.
White light can be dispersed. When this happens, you can see the separate colours that where in the white light. The most common example is the rainbow. You can imitate this rainbow effect yourself by hanging a piece of cut glass (or if you're very rich, a diamond) in front of the window. When the sun shines on it, you will see rainbows on the wall.
Such a piece of cut glass is called a prism. A prism receives white light and transmits all different colours. This happens because every colour has a slightly different property (the refractive index). Every colour leaves the prism in a different angle. I would like to compare the church(community) with a prism.
I think that everybody can agree on the fact that there is nobody who understands everything. Everybody thinks in a different way. This can be a result of very diverse causes, but everybody is different. If something is told, everybody can extract his own message out of it.
God is white light. His thoughts reach a church. Everybody experiences this in his own way. But, everybody is experiencing God. God is so great, but especially so diverse, that He can reach everybody in a way that fits completely with what that person needs. His variegation can be expressed in a church that is sensitive to that. Those experiences are (hopefully) shared with each other. The different experiences can also be shared with people who do not come to church. This way a church can work like a prism. The white light of God enters a church, the people of that church can spread the separate colours that people can understand.
This means that it is important to try to talk in the 'favourite colour' of the person with whom you talk. If you only talk 'red' to someone who prefers 'green', the message will not reach that person. There are two solutions, you can seek people that also like red, or learn to speak green. I think both solutions are good, although for the first one it might be good to send someone who can speak green.
Glasses
You can also, instead of dispersing light, refract light. This can also be done by cut glass, in this case called a lens. What is the function of a pair of glasses?
If your eyes work perfect, you see everything clearly. Sometimes this is not the case and you see things blurry. Due to different causes, for example, age, damages, the quality of the eyes can deteriorate. Then you need glasses. But what does a pair of glasses do? The lenses bend the light in such a way that the eye sees clear again. This means that there is nothing wrong with the light. The Light does not change, it stays the same, perfect light. There is something wrong with the one who watches, the one who receives the signal. What I want to illustrate with this is that God does not change, but we people sometimes need help to see God, who He really is. In that case you can use a pair of glasses. But what are 'glasses', spiritually speaking? That is something you may think about.
Yours sincerely,
C.C.
