It All Comes Into the Light
Watching what has been going on of recent in Washington has been both enlightening and instructive. In many respects the revelation of where taxpayer money ends up going is maddening, hilarious, and scandalous at the same time. For example, it is utterly unclear why the people of Iraq need to have the United States fund an Iraqi version of Sesame Street. How well do Big Bird, Snuffleupagus, Oscar, the Count, the Cookie Monster, and Kermit the Frog translate at all into a Middle Eastern culture? Does Oscar become Omar the Grouch? Does the Count become the Sheik? Does the Cookie Monster become the Baklava Monster? Surely Miss Piggy has no place in such a production. Even better, do the kids in Iraq really need something like Sesame Street at all? If so, why not let them develop their own children’s programming?
In any case, there has always been massive waste, fraud, and abuse at the federal level. For example, in 1975 federal money was granted to study how alcohol affects the behavior of sunfish, asking whether or not booze made them more aggressive and whether or not the fish responded differently to gin or tequila. One wonders if they had already tested the sunfish with vodka, brandy, rum, and bourbon, or were these liquors to be tested in future government funded studies. Either way, what is different now as opposed to 50 years ago is that politicians have become more clever in hiding such egregious spending.
What is also different now is the unapologetic reticence of some for such waste, fraud, and abuse to come to light. Yes, studying the sober versus drunk behavior of fish is embarrassing, but one gets the impression that having millions, probably billions, of dollars spent stupidly and frivolously is now somehow normal and justifiable. In 1975 one gets the impression that such stupidity resulted in ‘Why in the world would we spend money on this’ from members of congress while today the response from all too many congressmen is more along the lines of ‘How dare you expose what we are doing!’ The transgressors are morally outraged at those who expose their dark behavior.
Indeed, we must remember that what is done in darkness will come to light. Jesus insists that “there is nothing hidden that will not become visible, and nothing secret that will not be known and come to light” (Lk 8:17) and “there is nothing concealed that will not be revealed, nor secret that will not be known. Therefore whatever you have said in the darkness will be heard in the light, and what you have whispered behind closed doors will be proclaimed on the housetops” (Lk 12:2-3). In other words, what is done and said in the dark will eventually come to light, whether now or when God judges what we have done. Nevertheless, despite the fact that all darkness will come to light one way or another, this hardly stops people from clinging to the darkness even though “this is the verdict, that the light came into the world, but people preferred darkness to light, because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come toward the light, so that his works might not be exposed” (Jn 3:19-20).
The love of darkness is not isolated to Washington or any state capital. It is not peculiar to politicians and other people who have power and influence. We are all prone to prefer the darkness to the light to one degree or another. Yes, we might walk in the light today, but it is likely that we have walked in the darkness at some point in our lives. Or we might walk more in the light than in the dark, but there are dark areas of our lives that we would hate to come to light. In fact we might be more blind, or even indifferent, to the darkness of our lives than we suspect. We might even justify the darkness that we embrace, we might rationalize the darkness away. We might think that so long as our lives are 51% light and 49% dark that we are moral people. Indeed, how could we think that observing five or six of the Ten Commandments translates into moral righteousness? Some seem willing to overlook their own bad behavior thinking that at least they are not transgressing the 5th and the 6th Commandments. The truth is that the Light makes no such distinctions or accepts no such rationalizations. All we think, say, and do ought to be done in the Light of Christ.
—Fr Booth