EXTREME MEASURES FOR SMALL THINGS


If your right eye makes you stumble, tear it out and throw it from you; for it is better for you to lose one of the parts of your body, than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. If your right hand makes you stumble, cut it off and throw it from you; for it is better for you to lose one of the parts of your body, than for your whole body to go into hell.
(Matthew 5: 29-30)

In the middle of discussing older Laws and the expectation of righteousness that Jesus calls His followers to, He pops in this cautionary warning. And it seems rather extreme.

Just what is this?

“If your right eye makes you stumble.” Okay, that’s odd. When do we see with just one eye? When do we see something that makes us stumble? Doesn’t stumbling usually come about because we did not see an obstacle? What does He mean by this?

What is it that we mean when we say “Out of the corner of my eye I saw ...”? Doesn’t that fit the image of seeing with one eye?

What sorts of things do we look at that way? Usually they are objects that are not, and possibly should not be, our primary focus. They are things we are passing by, not things we are intent upon. Sometimes we look at things through the corner of our eye because we are trying to hide our interest in the object. But hide that interest from whom? And why do we need to hide the interest?

When we start considering these questions we realize that it is very easy for such behavior to cause us to stumble.

And what about the cutting off of the hand?

From ancient times, one of the punishments for theft has been the loss of a hand. Perhaps it was considered preventive medicine: if you used your hands to take things that did not belong to you, perhaps if you lost a hand you would be less able to carry off stolen goods and you might think twice about stealing again.

But Jesus is not saying this to keep us from the act of stealing. He is trying to get at the heart of things, at the heart of each of us, to touch upon why we do these things.

What is it in our natures that makes us look surreptitiously at things. Or, more specifically (since he had just spoken of adultery), what makes us look with hidden lustful and covetous glances at other people, at the spouses of other people or someone other than our own spouse? Jesus says it is better for us if we just lose the eye that is “looking wrongly.” He says it is better if we lose parts of the body than for the whole body to go to hell.

What’s that again? The other option is “going to hell”?

The point He is making here is that little things can lead to complete corruption. That is why He makes this shocking declaration about the “better solution” to the small acts of unrighteousness.

The married man walks down the street and passes a pretty woman going the other direction. He tracks her with his eyes as he goes by, enjoying the view. He stops thinking about his wife and his marriage and wonders what the pretty woman is like, but he goes on.

The next day, he sees the same woman coming toward him, and he watches her more openly. He was wondering if he’d see her again. She glances at him and smiles. He hadn’t thought of his wife ever since he walked out of the door of his home, and now he continues thinking about the pretty woman as he goes on to work.

The third day he leaves home quickly without saying good-bye to his wife, because he’s hoping to see the pretty woman again. Sure enough, here she comes toward him and she smiles at seeing him, so he gives her a “Hello!” as they pass and she returns it. Her voice is beautiful. The married man has not thought of his wife all morning.

And so it goes, all the way down the path of adultery. The whole of the married man’s being has been corrupted by the desire to commit adultery. It would have been better if he had not looked askance at the pretty woman at all.

Human beings are not particularly honest with themselves about their motives. Self-examination and self-reflection take work and we just don’t like to do that work. We don’t like looking into our hearts and realizing that we’ve been letting our fidelity wander away. We don’t like admitting that we’ve let a “little anger” fester and stew.

But consider the options Jesus gives us for that lack of self-attention: cut out the part of our body that is leading us astray, so that we have a drastic physical reminder of how close we came to losing the rest of our entire being.

“But it was just a glance! Where’s the harm in that?”

“That office stapler wasn’t worth more than two dollars! Where’s the harm in my taking it?”

When our thoughts during that glance move from “She is beautiful to see” (something I do not think God objects to our acknowledging) to “I want her to look at me,” we move from an appreciation of the beauty of God’s creation to a desire to be an object of the appreciation of others. When we covet or lust after someone, it isn’t just that we want to possess that person, it is also that we want to be the center of their attention.

All these little things that we let slide because they are “little” are in reality the first steps down a path that takes us away from the Lord.

And Jesus says it is better to hobble our way on the path to the Most High, broken and incomplete with a lost hand or eye, than it is to have our full body but be lost out in the wilderness on no track that leads anywhere near the Lord.

If we are not going to pay attention to our “little sins” than extreme measures will be necessary.