Jesus used an extreme metaphor to show how important living a holy life is:

“If your right eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go into hell.” – Matthew 5:29-30

 

Recently, a Chinese teenager known as “Little Wang” took this advice literally and cut off his hand when he thought he couldn’t control his internet addiction. Is that the approach Jesus really meant for fighting pervasive sin?

 

In the context of his message, Jesus was speaking about the physical act of adultery. But he ups the ante by saying that “anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” (Vs 27-28)
The Pharisees would have considered the lust of the eyes as a minor sin and the physical act of adultery as a major sin. But Jesus says sin is sin and its source is the heart.

 

James tells us that we are “tempted and dragged away by (our) own evil desires…that battle within us.” Our friendship with the world makes us enemies of God, an “adulterous people.” The lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, and the pride of life that come from the world establish themselves in the heart and flow through the eye and the hand. We could pluck out both eyes and cut off both hands, but it would not stop our heart from sinning.

 

What are we to do? Martin Luther said, “You cannot keep birds from flying over your head, but you can keep them from building a nest in your hair.” Temptation is not a sin, but providing a place for it to rest in our heart is.

 

I wonder how much sin starts with a simple curiosity. A tempting internet link begging our click doesn’t have to be particularly ‘naughty’ to be sin. The temptation to waste our lives viewing every cute video, reading every tidbit of news, catching up with the latest sports scores or the latest diet and exercise tips (the list goes on) all create temptations that can lead our hearts away from God. ‘Cutting off’ our eyes and hands from curious temptations keeps our hearts from being compromised.

 

In Hannah Hurnard’s classic allegory, Hinds Feet in High Places, the heart of the main character Much Afraid had become entangled with all sorts of irrational fears and corrupted thinking. The master had to surgically rip away what was strangling the lifeline of her heart. What we need today is not to pluck out our eyes and cut off our hands. What we need is heart surgery.

 

Give me a pure heart, O Lord, a heart that looks only to you.