But as the listener (or the reader now), that is not the message I get, that "the sin-spawning problem is not truly in ones hand or foot or eye, but in ones nature." That is your own interpretation of what you see as the entirety of the Christian message being laid on top of the text here. You are clearly injecting meaning.
A simple reading of the text results in a confusion as to why Jesus would say things that are clearly lunatic if taken literally. One then assumes that he must be using some form of hyperbole, although it's not clear what his point was. What exactly are we to cut off? Anything? Why use such brutal text if his intent was to sell a spritual message? Two problems with his approach comes to mind:
1. It is VERY irrespobsible to recommend cutting body parts off (or killing others or other stupid violent acts) even if one is using metaphor. You never know what people will do with that kind of thing.
2. It makes him look like a barbarian that he can't come up with better forms of communication than recommending self-mutilation. If his intent was to communicate some message about the "spirtual" nature of the human condition, there is no reason to talk about the hands and eyes. He could simply make his point clearly in terms of the spirit as you did in your interpretation of his words.
What's really happening here, though, is that the authors of the text simply gathered lots of nifty-sounding religious ideas and sayings and put them together with little rhyme, reason, or organization. Thus you end up with spiritual messages mixed with ridiculous ideas like a person being better off entering heaven with his evil hand cut off than to bring it with him.
You keep trying to make this set of primitive ancient writings seem reasonable, but it is clear that you continue to stretch.
"If I were God, and I made myself into a regular ol' person, I would have written down the stuff I said myself. I would have had people there with me taking notes. I wouldn't rely on people from the generation after my death to get the story right." - i would be an astronaut on the SAB Message Board
A simple reading of the text results in a confusion as to why Jesus would say things that are clearly lunatic if taken literally. One then assumes that he must be using some form of hyperbole, although it's not clear what his point was. What exactly are we to cut off? Anything? Why use such brutal text if his intent was to sell a spritual message? Two problems with his approach comes to mind:
1. It is VERY irrespobsible to recommend cutting body parts off (or killing others or other stupid violent acts) even if one is using metaphor. You never know what people will do with that kind of thing.
2. It makes him look like a barbarian that he can't come up with better forms of communication than recommending self-mutilation. If his intent was to communicate some message about the "spirtual" nature of the human condition, there is no reason to talk about the hands and eyes. He could simply make his point clearly in terms of the spirit as you did in your interpretation of his words.
What's really happening here, though, is that the authors of the text simply gathered lots of nifty-sounding religious ideas and sayings and put them together with little rhyme, reason, or organization. Thus you end up with spiritual messages mixed with ridiculous ideas like a person being better off entering heaven with his evil hand cut off than to bring it with him.
You keep trying to make this set of primitive ancient writings seem reasonable, but it is clear that you continue to stretch.
"If I were God, and I made myself into a regular ol' person, I would have written down the stuff I said myself. I would have had people there with me taking notes. I wouldn't rely on people from the generation after my death to get the story right." - i would be an astronaut on the SAB Message Board
