Plucking out Eyes and Cutting Off Hands as Religion

Mat 5:29 And if your right eye offend you, pluck it out, and cast [it] away: for it is better for you that one of your parts should perish, and not [that] your whole body should be cast into hell. Mat 5:30 And if your right hand offend you, cut it off, and cast [it] away for it is better for thee that one of your members should perish, and not [that] your whole body should be cast into hell.

Building on the last post regarding the inevitable consequences of our actions (where thoughts lead to actions), Christ makes another provocative, extreme statement. Since the topic is adultery, the plucking out an eye and cutting off a the hand leads directly to removing another body part following this train of thought. Did Christ really think that we should start lopping off our body parts if they give us an occasion to sin?

Again, the idea is that one thing leads to another. A thought leads to action. A look (the eye) leads to an action (the hand). But the process doesn't stop there. Wrong thought put us on a road that eventually destroys our entire lives. We don't even have to believe in an afterlife to realize that decisions that put immediate gratification first are highly destructive.

It is easier to stop thoughts than it is to stop physical practices. What Christ is saying, however, is that this is serious businesses, a matter of life and death, and a matter that transcends physical death. In that perspective, giving up a part of our life, something we enjoy. However, as Christ says, it is better to lose a part of our life than all of our life. The whole is greater than the parts.

Again, since the topic is adultery, look how important Christ views the relationship between spouses to the whole of our life. In Christ's view, our spouse's happiness is more important or should be than an eye or a hand. We have two hands and two eyes. If we lose one, we still have something of that power left. However, if we break faith with our spouse, we lose our connection to the opposite sex entirely. We are left without a connection to half the world.

I mentioned earlier that the first reference to genna, translated as "hell," clearly referred to the afterlife, but with this second mention, I am not longer certain that Jesus wasn't referring both to our physical body as well as our spiritual body. Everything foul was taken to the valley of Genna to be burned. That includes bodies of the diseased. I feel drawn to the idea that Christ included both ideas here. Our physical corruption is a shadow of our spiritual state. The physical burning of diseased bodies in Genna is a shadow of suffering in life beyond death of diseased souls.