Am I Gonna Let it Shine?

“This little light of mine. I’m gonna let it shine. Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine. Hide it under a bushel? No! I’m gonna let it shine. Let it shine. Let it shine. Let it shine.” 

Quite the song, isn’t it? I bet many of us can either recite the lyrics by heart or, at the very least, hum the verses and get the chorus close enough. But I wanna think about the idea of a light in the song. Why? The song says it’s tiny, but it’s supposed to shine, and we let it do its job and accomplish its purpose.

 

When I was little, I sang “This Little Light of Mine” in class, children’s choir, and in Sunday School. It was one of the few beautiful hymns of my youth. But as I got older, the song tumbled away. It would continue to be taught to the younger kids, but as a burgeoning adolescent, I thought myself “too cool” for such a song. It was beneath me. 

 

Where did my light go? Did I overlook the song’s purpose, or was it the dawn of my light’s demise?

 

No, the problem was actually more destructive because it was reflective of my walk with Christ. I believed that the "light" stayed on at all times. I wasn’t going to let it shine because I didn’t have to shine. "Shining" or sharing the light of Christ was supposed to be the pastor’s job.

 

I assumed the light was present at every place in my life. In church sanctuaries, school halls, Walmart aisles, practice fields, cafeterias, or bus lines, everyone believed in Jesus. You couldn’t turn the light off, but an outsider surveying the cultural pulse would doubt if the light even mattered.

 

Was I hiding my light underneath a bushel? No, because the Christian faith was everywhere because I didn’t have to engage with non-believers. I couldn’t find any. In turn, there was no need to share. All I had to do was be me because every person around me was supposedly saved. 

There was no lost lamb or coin. Every prodigal stood behind the pulpit for Testimony Sunday. All the evangelism tactics went unused. The Bible tracts we received from our youth pastor stayed in our backpacks, never to be handed out. Our lights only "shone" when we fled the homeland and went to distant countries or big cities on mission trips. 

Still, we were scared to speak out because the idea of sharing our personal faith walk with lost people was as foreign as the food across the table. Could I recite the Roman Road? Sure, but my testimony? Lost cause.

 

As the good little private Christian school kids, we had our lights. But they never shone. It’d be easy to blame a rapidly increasing secular culture on the sin-infested world we find ourselves in. But I often go back to the lights that don’t shine, the faiths untested and unchallenged. 

 

There wasn’t persecution for many of us, regardless of what school context we grew up in. The Bible Belt wrapped our upbringing in the safety blanket of its monoculture. We weren’t made fun of for believing in Jesus. In fact, the opposite might have happened. It was appalling to hear about a non-believer, or at the very least, someone who was honest, much less proud.

 

But now, the secular world is hard to escape from. The best we can do is isolate ourselves into a “faith-based bubble.” The bubble can be filled with sermon excerpts, clips from "The Chosen," and those T-Shirt companies that print the exact phrase on as many Walmart sweatshirts as possible under a $65 price tag. 

Bold of you to assume we would converse with opponents or those who don’t believe our gospel. As injustice flashed across our screens and we locked ourselves inside our homes, every problem in the world could be drawn back in our minds to rapid secularization. If only we had an opportunity to "take our world back for God."

 

Only we did. We turned our lights over to an Outsider for the sake of partisan power in the Nation’s Capital. Our lights no longer lit a path, bringing lost people home. Everything went our way. Who needs a light when everyone can see you? Our lights now shined in the faces of our adversaries, quick to broadcast the problems of those who disagree. 

We don't want the church to be political, but the voter expectation ran in one direction. The monoculture spread and millions of churchgoers were radicalized by endlessly watching and scrolling to the voices they wished to hear. 

Four years later, all power vanished. The "light" appeared to have lost meaning.

 

So, now it is 2023. Sure, we can blame it on sin's infection in popular culture, but it might take a closer look to see that it’s a world we made, an uprising that started underneath our noses. We refused to take a whiff. Our eyes have been hidden, scared to see a world where our country is not the center, rather than our God at the center of our hearts. 

 

Our lights aren’t little, and they certainly don’t shine. They are pointed back in shame right back in our faces. Our wins are weaponized against us. Now, we are lost without direction, striving for power and influence against the evils. Only then will our lights matter. Only then will they shine again.