Gaslight Village

Gaslight Village

As a child, I was charmed by the old fashioned ambience of the brick-paved, lantern-lined streets of a shopping district in East Grand Rapids called “Gaslight Village”. The quaint, coziness of pre-electric yesteryear is still what comes to my mind when I hear it talked about. So it took me a little by surprise when a visiting pastor (for whom English is a second language) asked me why they would use such a horrible word as the name of a shopping district.  "Horrible?? Oh my goodness, yes!" The modern meaning of the word "gaslight" had never occurred to me, but reading it that way, it does sound horrible. After the 1938 play, “Gas Light”, in which a man manipulates his wife into questioning her sanity by changing the intensity of the gaslight within her home and insisting it had stayed the same, the word “gaslighting” has been used to describe acts of psychological manipulation of a person that causes them to question their perception of reality and emotional stability.  

In recent years, the term has drastically increased in popularity to the extent that Miriam Webster dictionary deemed “gaslighting” the word of the year in 2022. Apparently, searches for that word increased by 1,740% as the use of it went wild in pop culture, taking on all kinds of new meanings and misuses and fueled with examples from American politics. It is now defined more simply and broadly as “the act of practice of grossly misleading someone especially for one’s own advantage.” 

Since this conversation with the visiting pastor, the image of a “gaslight village” has stuck with me because it seems like such a good metaphor for our experience of the world we live in. Alongside the many common graces that overflow from God into our world, we also experience the reality described in 2 Corinthians 4:4. "The god of this age” (the Great Gaslighter) “has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel that displays the glory of Christ, who is the image of God”.  God, in His great mercy, has shone the light of the gospel onto our hearts to reveal His glorious truth in the image of Christ, breaking through our distorted perceptions of Him, ourselves and the world around us.  But the Gaslighter works with malicious intent to manipulate us and sabotage our understanding of God's revealed truth. Since day one he has been deceiving humankind about the nature of God, and twisting the story in ways that cause us to doubt even the most obvious realities.

Romans 1:19-20: “For what may be known about God is plain to them because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood from His workmanship…” 

God’s invisible qualities have been made “clear” and “plain” to all, and yet somehow most people don’t see them. Although “God’s workmanship” is the only logical explanation for what we see in our intricate, perfectly-ordered world, the Great Gaslighter has convinced us that theories of random circumstance are more plausible and sophisticated. So instead of looking at creation and glorifying God, our “futile and darkened” methods of thinking cause us to give the glory to images of our own creation instead (:21-22).  

The Great Gaslighter has challenged the very definition of “truth”. The concept that truth is something to be sought out because it exists independently of what any human being thinks has been replaced by the idea that truth can be whatever someone thinks it is. Our world considers it quite arrogant and exclusive to claim knowledge of “the truth” without equal recognition that other people’s “truth” is equally valid, even if the two contradict each other. The person who claims to hold only “their own truth” is seen as appropriately humble and open-minded. But how is it not far more arrogant to give more credit to your own perception than to long-held understandings of truth that are ascribed to divine revelation? The logic is faulty, but the Great Gaslighter shames us for questioning it, aiming to keep us vulnerable, confused and easily-controlled.

But Wisdom continues to cry out in the streets of our gaslight village. It does take some intentional listening to hear her. But she continually proclaims that Jesus Christ is The Truth and that if we look to Him, He will shine light on our darkened, deceived hearts. Wisdom invites us to trust His Word over the ever-changing messaging of our culture so that we can  resist the patterns of this world and be “transformed by the renewing of our minds”, knowing God’s good, perfect will (Romans 12:2). She equips us with divine power to “tear down arguments and every presumption set up against the knowledge of God (2 Cor. 10:5)”.  As we trust in the wisdom of God, revealed to us in His Word, we can shine light on the streets of our gaslight village.