8/24/2025:
“And this is the judgment: that light has come into the world, but people loved the darkness rather than the light. Their deeds were selfish, and they continued to be so. They chose to stay in the dark, where their selfishness would not be exposed by the light.
However, those who love and yearn for truth come to the light, so that if there be any selfish or evil things hidden, the light will shine and make such things visible, so that God can then give them a new birth, and bring about truly good works in them.”
John 3:19-21 (personal paraphrase)
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The verses above struck me recently. The world we live in can often seem like an extremely confusing mix of both light and darkness. If any of you think about chicken (other than when you are really hungry!), there is light meat (the breast), dark meat (drumsticks and wings), and then there are thighs, which are an interesting mix of both light and dark meat. These days, it often feels like we’re living in “thigh times”!!!
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We humans often have a way of making light seem dim, and darkness seem rather bright. We also have a way of making, mostly to ourselves, I’m afraid (and I raise my right hand and plead guilty here), darkness seem as bright as noon on a cloudless day, and bright sunlight as if it were midnight on a moonless night. We are human, and thus born into self-centered patterns of thinking and choice-making, but such is not the way we were created to view things. In the verses above, Y’Shua (Jesus) makes it clear that we hide from light when we have something going on in us, or something we have done, that we believe we NEED to hide. However, if you will note the book, chapter, and verses above, you will see that these statements came just a couple of moments after Jesus had said to Nicodemus that “God so loved the world that He gave up His only begotten Son, that whosoever would believe in Him would not perish, but would have everlasting life!!” If we accept that statement as true, why would we ever try to hide our stains, foibles, and choices from the light?!!? A very good question, yet often we have no clear answer.
Why do we seem to so often hide from the great Light, and keep things in the dark?!? Let’s talk about it.
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Above you see a belfry with sunlight shining through. Beautiful, in my opinion, even with greenery growing “out the top”!!
I started this blog years ago with the intention of clearing “bats out of belfries”, and I think the best way to do that safely … is to let light shine into the belfry!
Obviously, bats are not bad or awful creatures. They are actually very helpful to the ecology, though they often do carry potentially harmful viral pathogens. But generally they are quite fascinating.
The very old phrase “bats in the belfry” referred to persons who were plagued with some kind of serious mental illness, or who seemed very odd to others, i.e., “not right in the head.” But bats have to roost somewhere, and if there are no suitable caves around, a belfry, or bell tower, makes for a very nice alternative. The problems would arise, of course, when the person whose job it was to, multiple times a day, ascend to the belfry to ring the bells, in order to, in the words of David Gilmour and Roger Waters of Pink Floyd, “call the faithful to their knees” for prayer, or else to come to worship services. The bell ringer would often have to dodge numerous bats frantically escaping the belfry as he or she got ready to pull the rope and ring the bells! I’m sure I would not have liked to be in the bell ringer’s shoes during those moments! The young boy version of “Batman” would likely agree!!
However, all of us have some kind of personality or mental or spiritual issues that we struggle with. These issues often come “screeching out” when they are most inopportune, problematic, at times embarrassing. I think most, or at least many, of us can relate to this sense.
The fact that at times our flaws are embarrassing gets back to the question asked earlier in this post: If we believe that we do have an eternal Creator, who has sent someone very close to Him (that is, His own Son) to Earth to live and die on our behalf (John 3:16), why are we afraid to bring those imperfections and patterns of selfish choices into the “light”? If such a Creator, who also later personally assumed the role of Redeemer, exists, and asks us to come out of the dark and into the Light, where does the fear and reluctance come from?
Dane Ortlund, author of the book, “Gentle and Lowly”, spent nearly this entire, wonderful book looking at Jesus’ call to all who “labor and are heavy laden”. Here are the verses in full: “Come to me, all who are weary from labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you shall find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy, and My load is light.” (Matthew 11:28-30)
Such a wonderful invitation to come to The Light! If any of us would accept such words at face value, and believe the Person who said them, why would we ever be fearful of the Light?
Yet, we often are.
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If you were raised anywhere near where I was raised, which is to say, anywhere on Earth, you know that we were raised in very competitive cultures. From a very early age we learn (sometimes we are taught this, sometimes we just “get it”) that we are in various “competitions”. ALL the time. We learn quickly to always be comparing ourselves and our behavior to someone else (or a bunch of other “someone elses”!) or to certain “standards”. In only very rare cases can we learn to say, “yeah, I’m better than him/her/that.”
And if by chance you learned to think, “Yeah, I’m better than (fill in the blank)”, then you almost certainly learned wrongly. In most cases, there was always someone, something, some measuring tape somewhere to which we did not measure up. When you began to think or believe that you were “less than” / “worse than” someone else or some high standard that someone had set up for you, how did this change you? If you are anything like me, which is to say, like all of the rest of us, it probably did not do “wonders for your soul”!!
Very likely, it set you up for constant self-analysis, constant self-berating, frequent need to “self-medicate” in any of a thousand ways, and, just as likely, for learning ways to “fake it” in front of others. We almost certainly came to believe the lies that others around us are our “judges”, that our cultural standards for “niceness”, “beauty”, “intelligence”, “desirability”, “likeability”, etc., etc. are worthy standards that all of us need to live up to. And when we (inevitably) can’t live up to those standards, just fake it! Such an incredible and monstrously universal hoax!!
This inevitably leads, if we have any sense that there is a Creator out there, or a God who is watching us, to the belief that such a God is almost certainly like all of the “judges” around whom we live, breathe, and have our being. And possibly even a harsher judge than they are!! Do you have a sense that, perhaps, this might be true for you, as it has been for me and for so many others?
On the other hand, would it seem reasonable to you to think that, perhaps, we’ve all swallowed huge lies for many years, and that such a Creator might be the exact opposite of what our society teaches? I call those beliefs “huge lies” because I don’t see where such beliefs have ever benefitted any of us or our society. Not a bit.
Do you agree? If not, it’s okay. Not here, not writing this, to argue or question anyone.
On the other hand, if you do agree, I would invite you to come into the Light, where there is NO competition, NO need to achieve, NO need to exhibit perfection in every way, every day. Only a need to be honest before One who already knows, and yet still yearns to welcome you into the “Everlasting Arms”. Bring your bats, if you have them! The light won’t hurt them, but maybe over time they will peacefully leave your belfry!
It’ll be okay, I promise.
Craig Meek, M.D., retired.
Keywords: Light; Darkness; It’ll be okay; competition; bats in the belfry; Matthew 11: 28-30; church bells; ringing;
A Shrink in the Belfry 
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