AS A PROFESSOR, I swim regularly in the waters of academia, where every issue is debatable. It’s ingrained in me to approach questions from multiple angles, to see the nuances and grey areas that complicate black and white arguments. But that’s not, of course, what everyone wants or needs to hear.

Years ago, I had a friend with whom I met weekly to chat about whatever was on his mind. One day, he asked me an important question; unfortunately, I don’t remember what the question was. What I do remember is that he knew me too well. When I took a breath, ready to respond, he held up his hands. Before I could answer, he said, “And don’t do the professor thing. Don’t tell me the different sides. I want to know what you think.”

I’m sure my face went blank for a moment before I said quietly, “But that is what I think.”

You might imagine, then, how the apostle John’s language sometimes reads to me. As we’ve seen repeatedly, he often writes in black-and-white terms — and honestly, that makes me a little nervous. What might people do with such texts? What happens when people are more concerned about proving a point or winning an argument than listening to one another with love and compassion? I wouldn’t want folks using John’s words to blithely label each other liars or children of the devil because they don’t believe the same thing. The sad fact is that we live in an increasingly polarized world in which words are weapons, and weaponized Bible verses can be especially devastating.

Somehow, if John could see how words — even the words of people who consider themselves to be faithful followers of Jesus — are now used to shame and reject people on a massive scale through social media, I think he would be horrified.

Some of John’s language, presumably, is for rhetorical effect. He’s writing to a community that’s been torn by dispute, division, and the angry departure of some of its members. He needs to reassure people that they’ve done nothing wrong, but also need to keep doing right. In such a situation, a little black-and-white rhetoric is understandable and useful.

But it’s not all situational. It’s not all rhetoric. It’s what and how he thinks. And his words can lend a little urgency to our thinking, especially when we’re motivated by love.

IN HIS GOSPEL, John portrays the world as a place of darkness into which Jesus came as the true light. God, in fact, is light, John declares, and believers should seek to walk in the light, to live as those who shine like lamps in a dark world (1 John 1:5, 7; Matt 5:16). But those who live in darkness hate the light (John 3:19-20). They hated and persecuted Jesus, and Jesus warned his disciples that their fate could be the same (John 15:18-20).

This is, in microcosm, what the people who remained in John’s community had already experienced: the secessionists, the people who left, hated them for not bending to their theology. Are we talking about venomous hatred, the kind that wishes harm on others? Maybe. But remember, John is a devoted disciple of the one who taught that out-of-control anger by itself is tantamount to murder. It’s easy to imagine the folks who left simply throwing up their hands in exasperation and calling everyone else empty-headed fools before storming off in disgust.

Normally, when someone comes with a sense of urgency and says, “It’s a matter of life and death,” they’re exaggerating. But when John says that we’ve passed from death to life, he means it. When he says that we live in a dark world, he means it. And when he suggests that the secessionists were hateful murderers…?

Well, think about it. Again, we can only guess at the nature of the controversy that split the community, because all we have to work with is a letter between people who already know the situation. But if it was indeed that the people who left were denying the Incarnation, denying that Jesus was God in the flesh, then this was heresy of the first degree. It’s not an argument over traditional hymns versus contemporary praise choruses, or what translation of the Bible should be used from the pulpit, or even — gasp! — what color the new carpet in the sanctuary should be. This is a difference of belief that could have eternal consequences. It is a matter of life and death, and for people to spread heresy and try to rope in others is therefore not loving. It is tantamount to hate, to murder.

TO KEEP FROM misusing John’s words, though, it’s important to remember what Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount. Having equated hate and anger morally with murder, he immediately says this:

Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to them; then come and offer your gift. (Matt 5:23-24, NIV)

Jesus is teaching his hearers about a “righteousness [that] surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law” (Matt 5:20), and anger/murder is his very first example. He paints a picture of someone piously presenting an offering to God, perhaps a sin offering, ritually going through the motions — and then having a conflict with someone else come to mind. He describes it in the most general of terms: “your brother or sister has something against you.”

Notice that he doesn’t say, “if you remember that you have something against your brother or sister.” No, they have something against us; this is about our own repentance for what we have done to harm others. And in the context of what he’s just said, I suspect that what he’s saying is, “If you’re bringing an offering to be reconciled to God, and suddenly remember how you got angry at someone else and insulted them, you need to reconcile with them first.”

How much anger had infected John’s community? How many insults might have been hurled? Again, if you’ve ever been through a painful church split, John’s language of hatred and murder might not seem that extreme to you. People may have made a pretense of their piety while angrily and self-righteously gossiping and slapping derogatory labels on each other. People continued to come to church, to sing, to pray, but no one repented of their own hatred. Perhaps some folks did desire reconciliation, but if so, the prevailing attitude was “You first.”

The starkness of John’s black-and-white language should wake us up to our own angry and resentful tendencies including, ironically, the temptation to use John’s language in divisive ways. If we have been spiritually reborn, then it needs to show in a life of love. And as Jesus taught, that even means love toward those whom we consider to be enemies.

It just might be a matter of life and death.