“And if your hand or your foot causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life crippled or lame than with two hands or two feet to be thrown into the eternal fire. And if your eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into the hell of fire.” Matthew 18:8-9
Seems to me it’s pretty straight forward hyperbole.
If something is causing you to be a worse person, distance yourself or get rid of it. It shouldn’t really take getting rid of body parts to get there.
It’s like if someone said “I can’t stop playing WoW and neglecting my family” and you tell them “You can’t stop eh? Maybe you should cut off your hands, maybe then you could stop?” It makes them consider what “can’t” really means. In the spectrum of simply walking away from the vice that is making you worse person to making it physically impossible to engage in said vice, maybe it really isn’t impossible to give it up without resorting to such drastic methods.
That I would say is the least controversial of the things Jesus has said.
This Jesus?
Seems to me it’s pretty straight forward hyperbole.
If something is causing you to be a worse person, distance yourself or get rid of it. It shouldn’t really take getting rid of body parts to get there.
It’s like if someone said “I can’t stop playing WoW and neglecting my family” and you tell them “You can’t stop eh? Maybe you should cut off your hands, maybe then you could stop?” It makes them consider what “can’t” really means. In the spectrum of simply walking away from the vice that is making you worse person to making it physically impossible to engage in said vice, maybe it really isn’t impossible to give it up without resorting to such drastic methods.
That I would say is the least controversial of the things Jesus has said.
… but is it really your hand or foot that causes you to sin?
It’s usually my penis
Ah, Catch 22, being trans is a sin.
Ah, the best kind of sin.