Evil in The Dark

I was 13 years old and walking home after wresting practice from the junior high.  It was a typical Oregon winter night in the valley.  The sun had gone down, leaving a brisk chill in the darkness.  I said goodbye to my friends and walked out into the night.  There was one streetlight in those days which cast a dim glow over the parking lot.  As I trudged around the few cars remaining, I turned right onto the road and began the trek home.  There was not, nor is there to this day, sidewalks along that particular stretch of road.  I walked  along the narrow shoulder , my feet shuffling in the gravel and I could hear the wind moving through the branches high above me in the evergreen trees.  The breeze tugged at my sweatshirt and I pulled the hood tight around my head.  The road led down a hill to a four way stop. Turning left led away from town into the country.  Turning right led to a long dark stretch of unlit road down past the bus garage and high school baseball field into town.  The road straight ahead was also unlit in those days but it was a much shorter journey to the lamp lit, sidewalk lined avenue I could see a few hundred feet in the distance. I made the decision and walked straight ahead, my chin lowered into my sweatshirt. As I moved through the darkness, my feet no longer shuffling in the gravel, but rather picking up their pace a bit, I could hear the sound of Ames Creek approaching before me. Fields stretched out to my right and left, the unmown grass making strange shapes and sounds as the wind blew though it.  The evergreens above me continued to sway to and fro in the dim moonlight, casting temporary shadows all around me.  As I approached the short bridge over the creek, my heart was pounding, my eyes wide as they searched the darkness which surrounded me.  And then I heard it, some small shuffling from beneath the bridge as I crossed to the other side. My ears strained  through the wind that blew across my hoodie, to identify what I was hearing.  I began to walk faster, towards the streetlights getting nearer.  All of my body wanted to look back, but I was terrified as to what I might see...Struggling to control the impulse to run, I began to reason with myself , "Its just the wind, its just the water or the branches, noting to be afraid of...".  And then I heard a noise in the ditch to my right...And  I ran!  My heart pounding, my eyes watering, I ran as only a 13 year old scared out of his mind can run.  I ran faster than I had ever ran in my life.  I hit the corner of Elm street and took the turn at full speed, my legs churning and my hood flapping behind me.  I ran a full block beneath the street lights now illuminating the pleasant tree lined avenue.  The warm lights spilling out of homes  caught the glow of my deathly white face as I flew past their living room windows.  Finally, I slowed down beneath a streetlight and gathered myself.  The wind still blowing, I mustered the courage to look back.  With my hands on my knees, my chest heaving, I looked back down the street towards the corner, and I could see, just beyond the light, hugging the darkness...nothing. 


Even to this day, I am always a bit concerned about what the darkness holds.  As a father, I have spent years putting to rest that same concern within my children.  " Daddy, leave the door open", " Daddy, could you leave the hall light on?"....Evenings too numerous to count spent teaching my children that Daddy will always strive to drive away the darkness...Whatever form that darkness may take.  And as the years have passed and my children have grown, that darkness has taken many differing forms.  And the light that must be shed is sometimes more difficult to cast than an open door, a brightly lit hallway.  Scripture tells us that people love to hide their evil in the darkness, away from the light ( John 3:19 ).  And nowhere is that more evident in the lives of people today than in the realm of social media.

Freed from the accountability of face to face interaction, people take to their phones and computers and say things that would have made our parents blush.  Angry at your parents?  Take to Facebook or twitter and tell the world how much you hate them.  Having a rough day at work? Using a limited number of characters, assassinate your bosses character.  Disappointed over a breakup? Spill the most innermost  hurts of your heart to 900 of your closest friends...In real time, tell everyone how you really feel!!...

But the latest social media phenomenon to spread amongst teenagers is the the actual definition of darkness.  On the website Ask.fm, you can log on and say whatever you want to others who belong to the site.  Here's how it works. You log onto the site and tell people they are free to ask you anything.  Some recent questions which I pulled from the site?.." Why are you such a slut?", " Why don't you kill yourself ?",  "How many people have you slept with?".  This is just a small sampling of the worst.  The great thing is you can say whatever you want because it's totally anonymous

To be true, many of the questions asked are perfectly harmless, but eventually, it seems that everyone is receives a hurtful question, a missile fired from the dark.  Safely hidden in anonymity, kids feel free to say words that wound, that hurt, that scar.  But even so, kids return en mass to the computer, their need to connect overwhelming their common sense as they invite everybody to  "Ask me anything "...

But more surprisingly than teenage kids lacking wisdom and opening themselves up to pain are the parents who turn a blind eye to the social media habits of their children. I have spoken to many parents who choose not to check on their childs social media. As their children return again and again to a place where deviants roam, where bullying is pervasive, far too many parents choose to remain, well, in the dark.  But the truth is, that as our children grow and change, so does the role we as parents must play.  Teaching our teenage children that words, whether stated or written, have power, and that we are all ultimately responsible for those words is not always met with the same gratitude as the hallway light.  But the evil that darkness hides in the perceived anonymity found on a computer or a phone has the power to cut us off from genuine relationships, destroy friendships and distort self worth...

As it turns out, evil exists, but not within our closets, beneath our beds or even on a darkened stretch of road, but within the darkness, where we refuse to shine the light.....


His eyes are on the ways of mortals;
    he sees their every step.
There is no deep shadow, no utter darkness,
    where evildoers can hide.-

Job 34:21-23

Woe to those who go to great depths
    to hide their plans from the Lord,
who do their work in darkness and think,
    “Who sees us? Who will know?” 

Isaiah 29:15