“His students said to him:
Take us to the place where you are,
since we are required to seek after it.
He answered them:
‘Whoever has an ear for this should listen carefully!
Light shines out from a center of a being of light
and illuminates the whole cosmos.
Whoever fails to become light
is a source of darkness.’”
Logion 24, Gospel of Thomas
Clearly, Jesus’s students, His disciples, are asking Him to show them how to attain His level of spirituality. They want to enter the Kingdom of God, which Jesus has said is here, now, within you.
Jesus’s answer to them starts with a typical “listen up! I’m going to say something important!”
Then He says that “light shines out from a center of a being.” Not from heaven, or from Jesus alone, or even some place in the cosmos. No, light emanates from you. Further, your light illuminates the whole of creation. That’s how critically important it is… you are.
In the final sentence He uses the word “fail”. Why is that important? I believe it’s because Jesus is informing us once again that this is a choice… our choice. If we fail at something it’s because either we didn’t get there, or we didn’t even try. In this case the result of that failure, which we must avoid at all costs, is darkness.
So this is about light vs darkness. Life vs the absence of life. It’s about faith, really. Do we truly believe?
Peter J Nagle