I think it is quite understood that light represents goodness while darkness represents evil or badness. Before God's creation, darkness pervaded the depths of matter. Out of this primordial ooze, God created light, and established goodness into His created world. The fall, represented by Adam and Eve's disobedience of God fueled by pride in wanting to be on the same level as God, brought darkness or sin or evil back into God's created world. The cosmos and the earth at one time were spotless without any defect. In the creation story, after each day it is noted that God, "Saw that it was good. If it was all good in the beginning and Adam and Eve stained the goodness forever through their one act, then we are currently living in a dark world. Yet, Jesus came (the 2nd Adam) and gave us light. He became the light of the world and showed us the way into a life here on earth that is filled with goodness and righteousness.
However, many of us today are just like the people of Jesus' day. They expected him to overturn the oppressive local Jewish government that coordinated with the more oppressive imperial Rome. They expected him to relieve them of all their suffering and bring about a Utopian existence. Basically, they were sitting in their "Lazy Boys" reclining and waiting for the miracle that would change their lives for the better. However, Jesus did not operate like that then and still doesn't to this very day. Jesus came and comes today to show us the way. He does not do the work for us, he points to the way. He redirects our journey from a path of destruction to a path of eternal life by nudging us backward toward a creation that was once all good. Don't misunderstand me here. Jesus is not passive and I'm not advocating that point. Yet, we know that Jesus will never force us to follow him. He never did with any of his original disciples and he will not today. He asks us to follow and quickly moves on. He lays out the requirements and continues to move on. But he will never, ever beg or plead or argue. He may weep at your decision not to follow, but he will not hound you incessantly. Why? Because Jesus knows, just as we all should, that we are "cut from the same cloth" as God. We were created in God's image and we know the difference in good and bad. If we had not been created in God's image, if we had not come from an original unblemished state, maybe Jesus would take more time to plead with us. He would plead and argue because we would be completely ignorant, knowing only darkness. Yet, we know better. Jesus is the great illuminator, making the way so bright and obvious that we cannot find any excuse for not following. Mostly, we do not follow out of pure laziness or a desire to hang on to some of the dark items in stock. But it is never nor will it ever be, out of plain ignorance. He, Jesus, makes that possible.
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