As you likely know, the Gospel of John is built around dualisms. These dualisms include:
Light versus Darkness
Death versus Life
Flesh versus Spirit
Above versus Below
Earthly versus Heavenly
Truth versus Falsehood
Freedom versus Slavery
The big category in John that gathers up the negative pole of these dualisms is "the world." "The world" is the domain where God is opposed, the territory of darkness, death, sin, slavery, falsehood, and demonic influence. The devil is the ruler of "the world." Because of all this, "the world" stands under God's judgment.
Scholars here often contrast the eschatological vision of John with the Synoptics. The eschatology of the Synoptics is described as "horizontal," like a timeline. The current evil age is contrasted with a future Messianic "age to come." John's eschatology, by contrast, is "vertical," a cosmological contrast between heaven "above" and the world "below." One implication of this, as I described yesterday, is that John brings the eschaton, typically situated in the future, into the present moment. This creates the Choice: how you stand today in relation to Jesus determines your eschatological future. Judgment day is upon you. The future is now.
It strikes me, reflecting on this, just how out of step the Gospel of John is with current fashions in progressive Christianity, where non-dualism and non-dualistic thinking is all the rage. Jesus as the Choice is very dualistic. The very prominent theme of Light versus Darkness in John--"the light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it"--is very dualistic.
More, current fashions also present a very optimistic and positive view of "the world." John's view of "the world," by contrast, couldn't be more pessimistic and grim. According to John, we are not to be "a part of this world," because Jesus is "not of this world." The world hated Jesus, and the world will hate the children of light. So says the Gospel of John.
