| Note – Because Paul has been so unwell, we are writing these articles from the hundreds of thousands of pages of transcripts of our Lighthouse research, in order to share with you—the reader—what Paul has learned and taught over the last twenty one years. In 2021-2022, the BBC unlawfully obtained highly sensitive and personal data through criminally stolen transcripts of personal and group counselling sessions and misrepresented them to the public in their docu-myth. An act of diabolical pride in and of itself! They will never live it down. They tried to decimate the public’s perception of Paul and all of us at Lighthouse Global, and have only succeeded in making us stronger, Glory to God! They know they wilfully deceived the British and global citizens. Repent! |
Here is the audio that accompanies this article:
Let me tell you a story about disappointment—not the kind that comes from unmet expectations, but the kind that reveals a fundamental flaw in how we raise our children. It’s a story about what I call the Kingdom of Darkness (KOD): a system of belief we inadvertently instill in young hearts that teaches them to look everywhere for greatness except where true greatness actually resides. This is the kingdom that glorifies man rather than God, even to the point of denying Him completely.
A Journey Through Disillusionment
When I was in creche, I’d look at my elder cousins and the kids going to school in their uniforms, with their caps and their hats, and I’d think, “Wow, they’re cool, man, they’re in big school.” And then I got to big school and realised they weren’t. But then I looked at the kids in high school and said, “Yeah, but that all changes when you go to high school.” And then I got there and they weren’t cool either.
I thought the teachers were amazing when I first met them. And then after two or three years, I realised that they weren’t. I thought my parents could never get it wrong—that they were 100% trustworthy to me. And they were not 100% trustworthy at all. At all.
Then I thought, “Okay, well, university students, they’re cool.” And then I got there and they weren’t. And then I thought, “Well, professors are better than teachers, they’ll be cool.” And then I realised they weren’t. I became an adult helping children grow, and then I realised that parents aren’t what they appear to be. I went to work thinking, “Now I’m qualified, now I can go in to get a job, and I can do this, I can do that, and they’re cool.” Then I realised that they weren’t.
This pattern continued throughout my life—looking up to people, looking up to institutions, looking up to sportsmen, always looking up. And the wisdom of the world would say, “Never meet your heroes.” Yes, that’s right. Because of disillusionment. Too much blood and poo there, man. Don’t meet them.
The One Exception
But here’s where the story takes a turn that exposes the Kingdom of Darkness for what it truly is.
I went through from young to old, thinking that the next level would be cool, that they’d be amazing, and they just weren’t. I went through all of that until eventually, I’d been disappointed by the whole world, and I went, “I don’t care what they think of me. Why would I care what they think of me? That’s ridiculous. Look at their lives. I’m just not interested.”
And then eventually I got to God, and I went, “Well, God can’t be cool. God can’t be. I’ve had nothing but disappointment at every single level. Why would this one be different?”
And it was the only one that was different.
When I looked at God and Christ and the universe—space, time, and matter, the three persons of the Godhead—that’s when I discovered I was wrong again. But this time, I was wrong in the right direction. I didn’t think that God would be cool. I thought everyone else would be cool, but by the time I got to God, I’d learned so much about how wrong I was that I discounted God by judging God by man.
And that’s the only one I was wrong on. Well, I was wrong on all of them, but that’s the only one I’m glad I was wrong on, from the point of view that He is cool, and He is great, and He is amazing, and He is glorious.
The Kingdom of Darkness: A System That Denies God
Now let me tell you what this reveals about the Kingdom of Darkness we’ve built—a kingdom that glorifies man rather than God, even to the point of denying Him completely.
The Kingdom of Darkness is not merely disappointing—it is diabolical. It is the system by which Satan has organised this fallen world to keep humanity focused on anything and everything except God. And tragically, we’ve been teaching our children to be citizens of this dark kingdom from their earliest days.
We Train Children to Worship the Hierarchy of Man
From the earliest age, we teach children to look horizontally and upward at human achievement, human authority, human greatness.
At each stage, we’re essentially saying: “That is what you should aspire to be. That is what greatness looks like. That is where you’ll find satisfaction and meaning.”
But we never—or rarely—point them to God first. We don’t say, “Before you admire anyone or anything, understand that true greatness, true wisdom, true trustworthiness exists in only one place: the eternal God who created all things.”
This is exactly what Satan wants. The Kingdom of Darkness operates by directing worship away from God and toward created things. Paul warned about this in Romans 1:25: “They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshipped and served created things rather than the Creator.”
The Inevitable Collapse
What happens when you build a kingdom on the foundation of human achievement? It collapses. Every single time.
Because humans are fallen. We are broken. We are sinners. We are, every last one of us, infected with pride, selfishness, weakness, and mortality. No matter how impressive someone appears from a distance, up close you discover the blood and poo—the ugly reality of human limitation and sin.
The Kingdom of Darkness is built on a lie: that human beings can be the ultimate source of meaning, purpose, and trust. And when that lie is exposed—as it inevitably is—we’re left with cynicism, disillusionment, and despair.
But here’s the sinister strategy of the Kingdom of Darkness: it doesn’t stop when one idol fails. It simply points you to the next idol, the next level, the next achievement. It keeps you on the treadmill of human glory, always promising that the next thing will finally satisfy, but never delivering.
The Ultimate Denial of God
Here’s the most atrocious part: by training children to seek everything in man, we’re implicitly teaching them that they don’t need God. Oh, we might give God a ceremonial nod—a prayer here, a church service there—but the functional message is clear: “Look to man for your heroes, your guidance, your validation, your purpose.”
This is not just neglecting God. This is denying Him. This is building a kingdom that has no room for the King of Kings. This is teaching children that the glory belongs to man, not to the God who made man.
And when children raised in this system finally encounter God—if they ever do—they approach Him with the same expectations they’ve learned to have of everyone else. They expect disappointment. They expect Him to be just another false hope, just another hero who fails when you get too close.
This is the Kingdom of Darkness in action: a systematic, generational indoctrination into idolatry.
We Ought to Be Ashamed
This is an atrocious upbringing, and we ought to be ashamed of what we are teaching our children.
We’re teaching them to put their trust in princes, in mortal men who cannot save (Psalm 146:3). We’re teaching them to glory in their own wisdom, their own strength, their own riches—the very things God condemns (Jeremiah 9:23-24). We’re teaching them to be “lovers of themselves” rather than “lovers of God” (2 Timothy 3:2-4).
John MacArthur has rightly observed that we live in a culture consumed with self-love, and that Paul classified “love of self” as a sin at the very top of his list of iniquities in 2 Timothy 3. MacArthur warns: “Many modern-day evangelists have reduced the gospel to little more than a formula by which people can live a happy and more fulfilling life. The focus has shifted from God’s glory to man’s benefit.”
And then we wonder why children grow up to be cynical, anxious, depressed, and lost. We wonder why they reject the church. We wonder why they have no anchor when the storms of life hit.
It’s because we’ve trained them to build their lives on sand—on the shifting, unstable foundation of human achievement and human approval. And we’ve failed to point them to the Rock.
We’ve been raising our children in the Kingdom of Darkness, and calling it education, success, and progress.
The Way Forward: Escaping the Kingdom of Darkness
The answer is not to teach children that all humans are worthless and untrustworthy—that would be another form of cynicism that keeps them in darkness. The answer is to transfer them from the Kingdom of Darkness into the Kingdom of God’s beloved Son (Colossians 1:13).
We must teach children from the earliest age:
First and foremost, God is glorious. Before you admire anyone or anything else, understand that the Creator of the universe, the Sustainer of all life, the Author of all truth, beauty, and goodness is infinitely more magnificent than anything you will ever encounter in this world.
Second, humans can reflect God’s glory, but they are not the source of it. When you see something admirable in a person—wisdom, kindness, courage, skill—recognise that it’s a reflection of God’s character, a gift from God, a faint echo of divine glory. Don’t worship the mirror; worship the One it reflects.
Third, expect humans to fail, but never expect God to fail. People will disappoint you because they are finite, fallen, and fallible. But God is infinite, holy, and faithful. “If we are faithless, He remains faithful, for He cannot deny Himself” (2 Timothy 2:13).
Fourth, your identity, purpose, and worth come from God alone. Not from human approval, not from human achievement, not from your place in the human hierarchy. You are made in the image of God (Genesis 1:27), you are loved by God (John 3:16), and you exist to glorify God (1 Corinthians 10:31).
Fifth, recognise the Kingdom of Darkness for what it is. Jesus said, “My kingdom is not of this world” (John 18:36). The world system—with its worship of human achievement, its obsession with status and success, its endless pursuit of human glory—is the Kingdom of Darkness. We must teach our children to recognise it, reject it, and live as citizens of another kingdom.
My Testimony: God Alone Did Not Disappoint
There’s my legacy. There is my story. There’s my autobiography: I was wrong at every stage. I didn’t think that God would be cool. I thought everyone else would be cool, but by the time I got to God, I’d learned so much about how wrong I was that I discounted God by judging God by man.
And that’s the only one I was wrong about.
God is cool. God is great. God is amazing. God is glorious—the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
Every single human hierarchy disappointed me. Every level I reached, every hero I met, every institution I joined—disappointment. But God? God exceeded every expectation I had learned not to have.
That’s profound. And it’s a testimony to the bankruptcy of the Kingdom of Darkness and the surpassing glory of the Kingdom of God.
The Kingdom of Darkness promises everything but delivers nothing. The Kingdom of God promises God Himself, and delivers in full.
A Call to Repentance
If we’ve been raising our children in the Kingdom of Darkness—teaching them to glorify man, to seek meaning in human achievement, to build their lives on the approval of others—then we need to repent.
We need to tear down the idols we’ve erected. We need to stop pointing our children to themselves, ourselves, to celebrities, to “successful” people as the ultimate example of what to aspire to.
Instead, we need to point them to God. Always God first. Not as an afterthought, not as a religious obligation, but as the source of all truth, all meaning, all purpose, all glory.
Because when we teach children to seek God first, when we teach them that God alone is worthy of ultimate trust and ultimate glory, something wonderful happens: they’re no longer devastated when humans fail them. They’re no longer lost when the hierarchy collapses. They have an anchor that holds.
They’ve been transferred from the Kingdom of Darkness into the Kingdom of Light. And unlike every other source of hope I’ve ever encountered, God doesn’t disappoint.
“He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.” (Colossians 1:13-14)
“Taste and see that the Lord is good; blessed is the one who takes refuge in him.” (Psalm 34:8)
By Paul S. Waugh
Related articles:
Humanity’s Problem with Problems by Paul S. Waugh
Problem 2: The Disease of Sin: When Missing the Mark Becomes a Medicine
The Strategic Wind-Up: Understanding Value, Control, and the Kingdom of God, 22nd Nov 2025
Problem 3: Low Connection With The Self – The Foundation of God Awareness by Paul S. Waugh
Such an incredible article again, with so much for us to learn and so much we can teach our children. God bless you, Paulie, for opening up about your childhood and what you went through as a young boy—so many will be able to relate, I’m sure.
God bless you and everyone involved in putting this together. Lots of love. God bless. Amen x x
Another winner! I love the bit where you describe being underwhelmed at every stage of trying to figure out where the cool kids were at and being constantly disappointed except when you got to God! It’s so relatable and so… God! So Him that we can try and find something as good as Him everywhere else and we just don’t find it! Only only only in Him! Praise God!
Thank you, so much. Leading on from the problem of separation from God, this is just, boy does it hit the spot big time. Especially this year, there’s so much you’ve conveyed here that’s been my private and public experience this year. Thank you. Colossians 1:13 really nails it bang on. Thank you Father God, Jesus Christ, Holy Spirit, and your servant Paul. God bless and protect you.
Phenomenal article, thank you so much. I could feel tears in my eyes reading this. You are opening up my eyes so much more, as is God, for it is through His divine intervention that this article is possible.
What I value is you bringing our awareness to the KOD, for we live there, and we need to get into the KOL (Kingdom of Light), which is God’s Kingdom.
My emotions are all over the place at the moment. This article has hit a nerve, but in a good and positive way. God bless you and all of us, Amen x x
Bless you, Dee — I can certainly relate 🙏. Thank God for His healing, His sanctification, and His rejuvenation that leads us into full restoration in Him. 🙏 Amen x x
Amen Jess x x
I really value the reminder as to where we ought to be placing our attention. It’s incredible how in this world we’re raised to look to man, to worship the creation rather than the creator.
Years ago Paul Waugh asked the question… with all the significant problems we see in the world today and in the future, do you think that politicians and popstars are going to be able to solve them?
I saw from years of work in the charity sector, that man’s efforts to solve problems is pathetic. The most basic global problem we have is to enable all children to receive clean water, and no one has come close to solving this problem. Ensuring that our children get the best possible upbringing and are prepared for life is infinitely more complex and complicated.
Ultimately the more that we look at our own sin and the sin of the humanity, the more it’s obvious that God is the only solution….
Totally agree and I’ve seen this too. For all the charity sector’s “good” there’s millions of others who aren’t getting help. You barely scratch the surface, ever.
I resonate with this audio and the situation Paul found himself in with each stage of education and life appearing to be better, but then ultimately being a disappointment. I remember having similar thoughts of respecting my elders when I looked up to the next level of higher education or to the next institution to join. But ultimately, there is never a ‘step up’ in maturity to be made. What I was looking for was actually a belief and guidance that can only come from God who is outside of the man made systems we are in.
As I begin to unlock that connection with God, the achievements and structures we have on earth, are beginning to take their rightful place.
Thank you for sharing and explaining this process so clearly.
This is so spot on! I wish I’d had this awareness much earlier in life. It’s not easy to deal with the different struggles we face, and so often it feels like a mix of disappointment, survival, and a sense of being lost or without meaning. We create idols to give ourselves some kind of purpose, without realising that these idols are only short-term gratifications that never truly last.
We need to return to the beginning, to God, the creator of everything. By building a real relationship with Him, we can finally understand our true meaning and purpose. That clarity just isn’t possible in the kingdom of darkness.
Thank you for sharing this wisdom. The world would be a very different place if our children were taught who God is and that they can fully trust in Him. God bless.
Bless Paul for his humility and openness in sharing his journey to God in the context of what he looked up to and his projections on God from his experiences with Man. I can and I’m sure so many can relate to this strongly because we have all done it, but few express it, share it and use it to preach the Gospel so powerfully and profoundly as this. Thank you Paul! It reminds me of something I heard the Christian apologist Frank Turek say, that Christ isn’t Christians and we ought not ever to judge God by even those who profess to follow Him and emulate Him.. we all fall so far short of that, and where we do succeed, it’s because we are vessels for God’s glory and character to shine through us, not that we are the cause or the source of those things. I loved the line in this article: “don’t worship the mirror; worship the One it reflects,” that being God’s image in us. I pray God opens eyes and hearts through this message and helps them see what all who come to Christ have realised, that, as Paul writes here, the Kingdom of Darkness promises everything but delivers nothing. The Kingdom of God promises God Himself, and delivers in full”… Amen!
Being able to actually care deeply what God says, what His Laws say, what He wants for me, and to have perspective on human beings’ ordinary, imperfect opinions is one of the biggest life-lessons I never learned but am craving to learn this, or rather, un-learn how human-centred I am. Thank you Paul for sharing your journey as I go through mine years later.