If your eye causes you to sin, PLUCK IT OUT
Matthew 5:29, 18:9 and Mark 9:47 "If your eye causes
you to sin, pluck it out!!"
The "pluck it out" is an incorrect translation. The Greek word [for
"pluck it out"] is ἔξελε (exele) - and means "to put into exile", or
"stop doing
it".
Go right to the meat of it below, but here is the Bible reference:
-- Matthew 18:9 - "If your hand or foot causes you to stumble,
cut it off and throw it from you - it is better for you to enter life
crippled or lame, than to have your limbs yet be cast into eternal
fire."
Correct translation, literally: "the eye to put
a snare in the
way to deliver / to
exile to throw." Also,
the greek word "puros" - meaning "fire" - does show that there really
IS "a lake of fire" for those
who aren't
saved.
-- Mark 9:45 - "If your foot causes you to stumble, cut it
off. It
is better for you to enter the kingdom of heaven lame than to have
2 feet and be cast into Gehenna."
Correct translation, literally: "a foot to put a
snare in the
way to cut."
Gehenna:
Also, "Gehenna" is a
valley West and South of Jarusalem - where garbage was burned, and
feces was taken. In
Greek, it is "geennan", but it SYMBOLIZED the final place of judgement
of the unGodly. Matthew used "fire", and Mark used "Gehenna".
Do you really think God wants Christians to be all blind,
have no body organs? All organs cause us to sin, so we
would all
"pluck out" our organs. No stomach for the gluttons or alcohol
abusers, no brain for the enviers, or lustful or prideful or wrathful. No genitalia for
anybody. I don't know what the
_slothful_ would "pluck out". Plus, the pain of plucking
out ...
And God doesn't send anyone to she'ol ("hell")
-
people MAKE THAT CHOICE
when they reject God. We send ourselves there!!
The word (Gehenna) derives from the Hebrew: גי(א)-הינום
(Gêhinnôm, also Guy
ben-Hinnom (גיא בן הינום - meaning "Valley of Hinnom's
son". The
valley forms the southwest border of ancient Jerusalem that stretches
from the foot of Mt. Zion to the
Kidron
Valley. It
is first mentioned
in Joshua 15:8. Originally it referred to a garbage dump in a deep
narrow valley right outside the walls of Jerusalem where fires were
kept burning to consume the refuse and keep down the stench. It is also
the location where bodies of executed criminals, or individuals denied
a proper burial, would be dumped. In addition, this valley was
frequently not controlled by the Jewish authority within the city
walls; it is traditionally held that this valley was used as a place of
religious child-sacrifice to
Moloch
by the
Canaanites outside the city
(comp. Jer. 2: 23).
Gehenna is a deep, narrow glen to the south of Jerusalem, where the
idolatrous Jews offered their children in sacrifice to Molech ( 2
Chronicles 28:3; 33:6; Jeremiah 7:31; 19:2-6). This valley afterwards
became the common receptacle for all the refuse of the city. It is a
fiery place where the wicked are punished after they die or on Judgment
Day, a figurative equivalent for "Hell."
Gehenna
also appears in the
New Testament and early Christian writings, and is known in Islam as Jahannam.
The powerful imagery of Gehenna originates from
a ancient
real place; thus Gehenna serves an example of the interplay between
literal and symbolic meanings in scripture.
Like Sheol, "Gehenna" is sometimes translated as "Hell". Gehenna
is
mentioned in the Tanak in several places, notably Josh. 15: 8, 18: 16;
Neh. 11:. 30, 2 Chronicles 28:3; 33:6; 2 Kings; and Jeremiah 7:31,
19:2-6, 32:35.
And just to give you a sample of translation fallacy, here is Joshua 1:5
- - - -
Here's some more:
If Preachers only knew: ALL have watched television, or seen
something they shouldn't .... so EVERYONE should blind. No more
car sales - everyone has to take the bus! And that doesn't
include obesity (have your stomach removed), ....
EVERY PERSON ON THE PLANET has THOUGHT or ?imagined_ killing
someone. So, we ALL should be in jail - for life - for murder.
This kind of thinking is "Phariseeical". We are back to The
Pharisees! Some have argued that "it's GOOD for us all - to have
no pleasure!"
REALLY?? Not only is that "monk" thinking, it denounces "I have
come to give you life, and more abundantly". Also, do we throw
away Psalm 150?? I know what the real answer is: People are
often seautouphobic - they may not be masochistic, but they certainly
"loath" themselves. This is NOT "having more abundant"
life. Let's see how "abundant" life is - with no eyes, no stomach
....
To add: Many say ""it's too easy", and "oh, how convenient" (that
we found out that this isn't to be taken literally) - but then, so is
SALVATION. Would you WANT to go back to makingt burned
sacrifices? Killing THE BEST of your livestock? *I*
say: how convenient for YOU!
There is a LONG list of reasons, and "Soul-side" (NT) versus "Low side"
(OT) of supporting text, but it's really amazing. Nobody WANTS to
read it - they LIKE their old way (Pharisees!!)
*I* like the rabbit hole. In it, I've found about "The
Power of Air" - which nobody wants to know - they LIKE their Hollywood
movies, The Apocrypha (which HAD TO be included until 1511 ... .or you
would be JAILED for 1 year (loose your everything), AND fines
... and so many other things.
This stuff isn't always FUN, but it IS educational.
Soul-Side vs. Law-Side
By the terms “Soul-side” and “Law-side,” I am calling what Jesus
preached as the Soul-side and what the Pharisees commanded as the
Law-side. God sent Jesus as the promised Messiah because during the
past thirty generations the Jews had done pretty well in their on-going
interpretation of what God meant when He gave the tablets to Moses on
Sinai. They had done pretty well, but they had not quite gotten the
whole of it completely. Their thought-leaders had become good at
focusing their sanctimonious attention on the Law-side, but they had
done nowhere near as good a job of understanding the Soul-side.
The precision of the Law-side is easier to establish and to understand
than anything on the Soul-side. Regarding the Law, you argue about it,
and then you decide about it, and then you make a rule about it, and
then you instruct everyone to follow the rule. Many people do follow
the rule but also many people don’t. The ones who don’t follow the rule
argue back at you, and their new argument starts the whole cycle over
again. Meanwhile, the focus of the entire enterprise is on preciseness
and on the rules. Today, two thousand years later, our society has
changed little in this regard.
Jesus came to bring the Soul-side. He preached about this. Early in
Jesus’ public ministry, He saw crowds following Him, so He went up on a
mountain and delivered what is the longest sermon we have from Him, the
Sermon on the Mount. Here He laid out the Soul-side. His sermon
encompassed the Beatitudes, salt and light, righteousness under the
Law, anger, lust, divorce, oaths, retaliation, and loving one’s
enemies—it’s all there.
“Tear it out.” “Cut it off.”
Jesus’ “tear it out” and “cut it off” advice is most prominently
offered in Matthew 5:27-30—during The Sermon on the Mount, when Jesus’
subject was lust—and it is repeated (and somewhat expanded) in Mark
9:43-48.
You have heard that it is said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I
say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has
already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye
causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that
you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into
hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it
away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your
whole body go into hell. (ESV)
The first sentence above expresses the Law-side. It quotes the Seventh
Commandment. That’s the Law. But the second sentence expresses the
Soul-side. Though it is subtler, it is, in fact, more direct. Under the
Law, sexual intercourse with a person other than your wife or husband
is adultery—in biblical conception, the adulterer has stolen what he or
she does not own and has caused the other person to break a vow of
marital purity taken before God. The act is worthy of hellfire.
On the Soul-side, though, there is a difference between desire and
intention. The soul was created as a free entity within humankind. It
has its own authority and is, therefore, free. John Chrysostom (A.D.
349-407), in his commentary on the Gospel of Matthew, points out that
the soul can sit alone in the mountains and experience sexual desire.
Sexual desire is part of human experience. However, sexual purity is
not measured by whether one engaged in the act of adultery itself, it
is measured by whether the person in question allowed erotic
imagination about adultery to overcome requisite purity, whether the
would-be adulterer experiences the lust by seeing the object of desire,
or even by just sitting alone in the mountains and thinking about it.
The would-be adulterer is propelled into lustfulness. Once the
imagination is fired by lust, purity of heart is no more, and God, who
knows each person’s heart, is offended.
Jesus enjoins the man who gazes at a woman with lust in his heart to
tear his eye out and throw it away. This is a horrifying requirement
but, as Jesus states, less horrifying than eternity in hell. However,
my article today is about whether Jesus means self-mutilation literally.
Did Jesus Intend His Words to Provoke Self-Mutilation as a Response
against Sin?
Of course, the idea shocks us. Perhaps Jesus’ purpose is to shock us
out of our erotic complacency and our taste for self-justification. So
maybe Jesus does mean it—if you stare lustfully at the spouse of
someone else, reach up and tear out your eye and toss it away. This is
one of the most difficult of Jesus’ dicta for the ordinary person to
justify, for most ordinary persons experience lust now and then and not
only for their own spouses.
Some early church interpreters seem to shy away from Jesus’ possible
literalism here and soften it by making a distinction. They make a
distinction between the body member (eye, hand, foot) and the effect of
the body member on the person’s soul. It isn’t the eye itself that
enflames the lust. The eye merely allows the image of the object of
lust to enter the would-be adulterer and his or her soul. The fault is
the inflammation of the soul; the eye is a mere accessory.
So for these early Christian thinkers, Jesus’ “tear-it-out” dictum can
be categorized as metaphoric. For example, Augustine (A.D. 354-430), in
his commentary on the Sermon on the Mount, likens the tearing out
action of an eye to the same action in human relationships between
friends and counselors, this way—
Augustine states that such a human relationship must be severed . . .
torn out and thrown away.
Yet, Literal Interpretations Did Occur
Literalism in understanding Jesus and self-mutilation did occur.
Probably the most famous early Christian self-mutilation, as a
preventative of lust, was the self-castration of Origen of Alexandria
(A.D. c 185-233). Origen did this in order to free himself of any
possible scandalous rumors when he undertook privately to tutor young
women regarding theology. He followed Jesus’ implication in Matthew
19:12. Later in life, though, he argued that his action had been
extreme and should not be viewed as righteous for possible emulation by
those who admired him. Later still, the Council of Nicaea (A.D. 325) is
said to have made a strong stand against any Christian self-mutilation,
particularly of the sex organs. (Though in my research for this article
I have found references to the existence of that stand at Nicaea, I
have not found the text of the Council’s statement itself).
So, HOW can we be AGAINST self-mutilation - like Trans ... yet be
FOR self-mutilation like THIS?? This is HYPOCRISY!! AND -
it is "Pharisee"!!
https://www.biblestudytools.com/bible-study/topical-studies/what-did-jesus-mean-when-he-said-tear-it-out-and-throw-it-away.html