EVIL IN THE DARKNESS

We share David’s lament and his anger at those who plot his overthrow, living as if there were no God. Verse 1, notoriously difficult to translate, is literally “oracle of the sinfulness of the wicked in the midst of the heart of me.” David is concerned, as we are, with those who disregard God and whose evil thoughts are deep-seated—a concern regularly voiced in the psalms (e.g., Psa. 10) and vividly depicted in today’s image of the godless man lying awake at night plotting evil. For that reason, the NRSV’s compelling first verse starts “Transgression speaks to the wicked deep in their hearts.” We all know there are people who focus their talents on doing what is wrong—people, as Jesus said, much cleverer than the “children of the light” (Luke 16:8). The digital world has opened up immense opportunities for ill-intentioned people to harm others. The perpetrators of cyber fraud and internet porn are seemingly always several steps ahead of those trying to catch them. Like David’s description of the sleepless man plotting evil, I have a similar image of cybercriminals at their computers late at night, accessing the dark web. They could just as easily be at a desk in a bank, but the image is compelling: the almost visceral feeling into which the Bible taps by using the universal duality of light and darkness as figures of good and evil.

Like David, we long for their downfall (12), but realistically we know what David does not: justice must await its resolution not in this life but the next. In the meantime, David’s answer must be our answer. Our focus must be on the light rather than the darkness. We must “set [our] minds on things above” (Col. 3:2), upon the righteousness of our God, who, as the Teacher tells us at the tail end of Ecclesiastes, will bring every work into judgment, good or evil.

O God of love and light, in You there is no darkness at all. In Your light, may we see light.