The Bookends of Faith

Two verses in the Book of I John provide us with what might be called the "bookends of faith."  I John 1:5 gives one of the most succinct descriptions of God found in scripture: "This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light and in him there is no darkness at all." (NRSV)  Our faith is in the One Who Is Light.  Whenever we are in the presence of The Light, we are in God's presence, and our search for God is a search for The Light.  Violence is dark, peace is Light.  Lust is dark, love is Light.

Hold that thought.

I John ends in 5:21 with a charge, which is the other bookend of our faith: "Little children, keep yourselves from idols." (NRSV)  An idol is anything that we put in place of God, be it a stone idol, a set of doctrines, or a search for success.  The author of I John warned his readers, that is, to beware of anything within themselves that would prevent them from "abiding in God" (I John 2:28).  Beware of our deeply planted human inclination to turn anything holy into something we own and have control over—and to turn those things what we desire into our vision of holiness.  The greatest danger to our abiding in The Light, that is, is our own tendency to want to own, control it, and have it be what we want it to be.

We are called upon to fill in the blank between 1:5 and 5:21, that is to discover what it means to abide in The Light, which has a good deal to do with loving one another (4:7).  Indeed, Love along with Light is another metaphor for God.  So: God is The Light.  God is Love. Abide in The Light.  Love one another.  And don't turn any of this into a process that we think we own and control.  At the end of the day, faith in God, who is Light and Love, is not something we have so much as something that has us.  And that's tough, because we don't like to be had.  We just plain don't, which is why 5:21 may be the most important single verse in the whole Book of I John.

Another Way of Thinking About Dualism

We know that we have left death and come over into life; we know it because we love others. Those who do not love are still under the power of death. (I John 3:14 NRSV)

Ideological (and theological) dualism is the division of people into two categories, those who are good and those who are evil—or, those with whom we agree and those we don't, or those who look like us and those who don't, or...the the variations on ideological dualism are multitudinous.  Until recently, dualistic thinking in categories of black and white was fundamental to Western culture.  It is still massively influential although going out of favor esp. among younger people.

In dualistic thinking at its worst, there is no middle ground between good and evil.  One is either on God's side of the devil's.  This form of dualistic thinking promotes a host of ugly -isms beginning with racism.  It lurks behind a good deal of the oppression that one class of people visits on another.  It encourages dualistic thinkers to treat others as categories.  It is brick and mortar for the walls we build between people.

Taking our cue from the above verse from I John, however, it would seem that we can't ultimately escape at least one dualism that is central to the whole Christian enterprise—the dual poles of life and death on the continuum of love (which runs from total love to the total absence of love).  We live between life and death.  Some live closer to death and some closer to life.  We are called away from death and to live in love, which is to be truly alive.

It is true that I John 3:14 conveys the sense of a pair of absolute opposites, life and death.  The thing is we don't actually experience full spiritual life or complete spiritual death.  As humans, we live on a continuum between the two.  As Christians, we live on the path that leads away from death and toward life.  We are (or, at least, seek to be) those who are walking away from death and coming over into life.  The single measure of our journey is love.  The more we love, the closer we get to life.  And the measure of love is Christ, who sacrificed himself for others (I John 3:16).  Thus, life is giving oneself for others.  Death is living for self alone.

Ultimately, none of this is about the religious label we wear, the dogma we subscribe to, the color of our skin, or any other of the things ideological dualistic thinking often takes with such oppressive seriousness.  It is about living in Christ, as best we can, and trusting to God's grace in all else.  Amen.