Hey everybody, it's Matt. This is the 10-minute Bible hour podcast, and we're going to do it weird today. Because I was looking at this passage about light and life and all of this business here at the beginning of John. And it made me think of a poster I saw the other day at my friend's house. So I have called my friend and asked him if he would explain the poster, which has to do with light to me. Did it work? Are you there, Destin?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I'm here. Yeah, what's up, man? How's it going? Things are good. How are you? Doing well. This is like 10 minutes, so we're in sprint mode here, right?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's weird because normally normally we have more time. For those of you who don't know, let me introduce you real quick. This is my buddy Destin Sandlin. He makes things on the internet. He does a YouTube program called Smarter Every Day that I have liked for a very long time. And he does a podcast that I've really liked for a very long time called No Dumb Questions. It's I mean, top five for you, right? Yeah, exactly.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Okay, thank you. It would have been weird if you didn't like it. Okay. The poster in your editing room, it's I think if I remember rightly, uh, it has like a bunch of different spectrums or wavelengths of light. Am I even saying that right?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's the uh electromagnetic spectrum, which I've always been fascinated by. So it shows all the different wavelengths of light and more than light, meaning more than visible light. It goes beyond that. It goes all the way up into like X-rays and gamma rays, and it goes all the way down into things like microwaves and radio waves, and you know, past infrared and stuff like that. So light is a really big thing, and uh it just explains all of that, and it's really fun.
SPEAKER_01If I'm understanding what you're saying, right, there is there are types of light that I can't see with my eyes, but it still counts as light. Is that correct?
SPEAKER_00Oh, yeah, dude. This is a this is a very fun rabbit hole. There's a lot of different versions of light. We'll leave it like that. Some people can see more than other people can see, but yeah, that there's a there's a visible spectrum of light, and you you can talk about light in terms of frequencies or in terms of wavelengths. Often when we're talking about visible light, you're you're thinking in terms of wavelength. So 650 nanometers, for example, I think that's red. I'm not 100%. I'm I'm pretty sure that's red. And then um you you can go red, orange, green, blue, and to go violet all the way up. And then above violet, you have ultraviolet, and below red, you had infrared, and your eyes can't see those. All right. So what is light? Okay. Um, sorry. It's a great, it's a great question, man. Um, this is obviously not my area of expertise. Um, this is more like physics, but light has been discussed for a really long time. I know back in the day the philosophers were trying to figure out well, is light this comes is something that comes out of your eye, hits an object, and then comes back to your eye? I know the Greeks, the Greeks used to think it was that, right?
SPEAKER_01Yes, yeah. And there's a little nod to that in the Bible, even. Oh, really? Yeah. Remember the business where Jesus is talking about uh if the eye is good and the lamp of the body, then the whole thing will be good. He they obviously Jesus understands how light works, and the larger Bible demonstrates that, but in that little moment, it's like he was talking about light and its relationship with the eye in terms that his original audience would understand, which I have always thought was kind of fun. That is fun.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I I think light is amazing. There's a discussion about whether light is a particle or a wave, it's uncertain. Um, it seems to have a duality to it. There's this thing called the double slit experiment, which is really cool. I encourage you and your audience to read up on that. That seems to say, like, oh, well, this makes it seem that like light is a particle, but there's other things that make it seem like a wave. So it's it's really cool. And once you get into weird things like the polarization of light, that opens up a whole other can of worms. And that is some of the stuff that I find most fascinating. So I don't know. I I don't know what light is. It seems to be energy, and it seems to be something that is emitted and it flies through something. The ancients used to say that it would fly through the ephemera. I think that's what they said. Or no, ether, ether. I got it wrong in there. The ether, thank you. So I I think that's a that's another great question is what is the nothing that light flies through? And I I think that's fascinating. I don't know.
SPEAKER_01And okay, so two reasons that I wanted to call you, and thank you for being willing to jump on with me for a minute. Reason number one, because you're my friend and I like to think about things like this with you. Oh, yeah. Reason number two is because here and this daily Bible podcast I do, we're at the beginning of the Gospel of John. You've read the Gospel of John before, and probably remember how it opens, right? With all of that stuff about in the beginning was the word and the word was with God. And the word was God. Yeah. Maybe you had to memorize it at Bible camp or something. I did. So there's light language in here, and the light language is all relative to darkness. So just what you nodded to there a second ago is the second reason I wanted to get you on the phone, which is to pick your brain a little bit about the relationship between light and darkness in light of, you know, a part of the Bible I know you care about and have read before as well. Would it be okay if I just read you the passage?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's 10-minute Bible hours, what you do, right? I suppose so. All right.
SPEAKER_01Or you're supposed to. Sometimes there's freestyle rap and fart jokes, too.
SPEAKER_00When you can, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Go for it. In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God. He was with God in the beginning. And we've spent the last week unpacking all of the Greek language behind that, the idea of the Lagos and ordering forces and philosophy and all of this kind of stuff. But it goes on here. Through him, all things were made. Without him, nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it. His name was John, that's John the Baptist. He came as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through him all men might believe. He himself was not the light, he came only as a witness to the light, the true light that gives light to every man was coming into the world. So obviously light is a pretty important thing here for the reader to understand, and its relationship with darkness. Now, my little primitive working theory here is that if light and darkness get in a fight, light always wins. Because darkness, in my primitive understanding, isn't really a thing, it's just not light or the absence of light. But that's just from observation and me making crap up. What is the actual relationship between light and dark?
SPEAKER_00Well, wasn't it Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. that said light casts out the darkness? Well, how did he say it? I'm looking it up. Hold on. I gotta I gotta look this up. Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that. I think it seems like light can penetrate this darkness, and and the darkness is the absence of light. I don't know what that means, but I do know that it's amazing. And one of my favorite names for God is the Father of Lights. It's in James. Yeah, it's in the first chapter of James. Every what is it, every good and perfect gift that comes down from your father above the father of lights. I don't, I I think I butchered that. But I love this idea of God being the father of lights because it it means so many things on so many levels. And even in Genesis 1, right? Let there be light. And so I don't know, man. It's it's amazing. Let there be light. That implies that before light was let to be, it implies that there was not light. Right. So there was darkness, and somehow God existed in that. And so what I'm coming around to as I get older and I study more and more about engineering and science and the material physical world, I'm recognizing that God exists above thermodynamics. Obviously, he has to if he's the prime mover, if he's the creator of things. Right. But I'm just now starting to understand it on I don't understand it, but I'm I'm just now starting to realize it on a much deeper level. And so we we look at this poster um in my editing room, the the electromagnetic spectrum, and we see all of these things and all of this light, and it's it's a rainbow that goes beyond both directions that we can see. And he made all that. It's a fascinating thing. However, you believe the world came to be, it's hard to deny that light exists. Yeah, just it's real hard. Yeah. If you've looked at the world that came to be, light exists. And that begs the next question. Why? Yeah, well, okay, because light is better than darkness, right?
SPEAKER_01I like it better than darkness. But it's not even a contest. I mean, okay. It seems like, from what I saw in the poster and what you're explaining to me, that one of these two things is a thing and the other isn't a thing. Light is active, it exists, you know, in and of itself. It's doing something, it is the actor in the relationship. Dark isn't actually a thing, it's just kind of nothing. I mean, definitionally, the word is unlight, unlit. So one is this proactive, beautiful element of creation with all of these different wavelengths that you were talking about, reflective of the complexity of a maker, and the other is just nothing. It's just not that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. That's a huge contrast. To be out of the light is to be what? Lost. You're you're lost. You don't know where you are, you don't have a frame of reference. Light gives a direction, it gives you a datum, it gives you you are here and and there are things there. I mean, there's just so much that light brings to the table. It reveals the truth around us, is what it does. And it's beautiful.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, which takes us right back to John 1. You know, it's revealing. Before I read you, John 1, though, I want to read you the verse you nodded to. That was really good. I mean, nice poll on that, by the way, buddy. James 1, 16 and 17. And listen, it's going to introduce a third concept here: light, dark, and then kind of in between. Check it out. Don't be deceived, my dear brothers. Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the father of the heavenly light, who does not change, like shifting shadows. That's pretty interesting. It is. I mean, it seems like what James is saying is that light is expressive of the character, the unchanging nature and character of God. Whereas things that are partially lit on the fringes of the light, lightly touched by the light, they cast shadows, and shadows in that passage are being equated with not truth, not understanding, shiftiness, things like that. Okay. Uh, that verse in John. All right, this is where we're gonna land the plane.
SPEAKER_00Okay.
SPEAKER_01Through him all things were made, without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it, which makes sense because the light is active, it's a thing. The darkness is just not light. It's not actually a thing, it's the absence of a thing. And then there's the stuff about uh John the Baptist who came as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through him all men might believe. He himself was not the light, he came only as a witness to the light, the true light that gives light to every man was coming into the world, who is of course Jesus.
SPEAKER_00You gotta love how figurative John is compared to the other other gospels, right? Yeah, it's just it's just like okay, we're gonna zoom all the way out to outside of thermodynamics. Is it your favorite gospel because of that? I don't know. I I don't know. I mean, Luke's cool, right? Luke's a doctor. Yeah, I I don't know. I I'm I'm not prepared to make a statement on that. Okay. Yeah, I'm not gonna put you on the spot any further.
SPEAKER_01Thanks for gaming it out with me, buddy.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, man.
SPEAKER_01I know you're working on a huge project today and have a billion things to do. So it means a lot that you would apply your brain to this with me.
SPEAKER_00Always down to talk about light. And that is my favorite name for God, the father of lights. It's it's just it's so good. Agreed. Thanks, buddy. I appreciate you. Thanks, everybody, that listens to the 10 minute Bible hour. That's awesome that you do that. That's great. Uh Matt, Matt does great things. Matt, I've been a fan for a long time. Thanks for having me on. You're nice.