Chasing cars is bad for your health

 This week's verses are on Matthew 5:27-30:

“You have heard that it was said, ‘Do not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that whoever looks at a woman to desire her has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away! It is better to lose one of your members than to have your whole body thrown into hell. If your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away! It is better to lose one of your members than to have your whole body go into hell.

 These verses continue the theme from last week, about being careful not to continue down the road to hell, once we realize we're on it. In this case, the commandment Jesus is discussing is the one that says "Do not commit adultery." In other words, don't steal another person's spouse, or don't be unfaithful to your own spouse.

Much like the focus on murder rather than the failures leading up to it, people tend to focus on the sin of adultery itself, and not the things that eventually lead them there. To them, adultery is just a thing that happens, like murder, when someone is evil. What Jesus is saying here, essentially, is that evil is a place we can all reach if we are not careful. Sin isn't something that just happens to other people who are damaged goods anyway. Sin is lurking to entice us all.

If you don't believe it, you just have to look at the string of moral scandals of famous Christians throughout modern history. If anyone should have known better, these people should have. And yet they still made a series of decisions and compromises that led them to the point(s) of failure. Are we better than them? Not at all. We just have the advantage of being able to see where to turn off the path before it is too late.

Nobody wakes up one morning and decides to commit adultery. Nobody marries someone they love with the plans of ruining that person's life. And nobody raises their kids with the intention (I hope) of permanently damaging them through the effects divorce has on child development. And yet we act as though that's what happens. "Oh I would never commit adultery. I'm not like those people." But we are like those people, because those people are like everyone.

We can look at King David as an example. Based on what we read in the Bible, he had a genuine desire to be righteous. But Bathsheba, perhaps unwittingly, put on a good show and he was hooked. If he had turned away, maybe he wouldn't have been led down the path to adultery and murder. I don't think anyone believes that the moment he set eyes on her, he called his guards over and asked them to deliver the keys to his hotel suite. His eyes lingered, then his heart, and finally the rest of him.

If King David, "the man after God's own heart" got caught, and all of these powerful Christian pastors and evangelists got caught, what does that mean for ordinary you and ordinary me? Are we hopeless cases? Not necessarily. It depends on how much we can learn from their mistakes and how much we want the bitter antidote that Jesus offers us.

What does it mean if looking at someone with desire causes us to commit adultery in our heart? Does that mean we can't love our spouse? Do we have to look at sex with all of the detached passion of a chicken farmer calculating his yield? Not at all. The context here is looking at someone who cannot be our spouse, with the goal of stoking our desire. In other words, there is no positive outcome on the horizon. David would have known that from the beginning. Both he and Bathsheba were married.

So what does it mean to look at someone in order to desire them? Is it a passing thing, like an "oh hey nice dress" or "that guy is built" sort of thing? Or is it more of a self-abandonment to desire, where the consequences are ignored but the desire is not? I would guess it is the latter. Feeding desire is the goal of the look, not the accidental side-effect.

Based on how affairs happen nowadays, Jesus might have told us, "If you spend hours having intimate conversations with an ex-boyfriend on Facebook while your husband is asleep, you guys might as well already be sleeping together." Or "If you and the marketing director keep going out for drinks after work, because your wife always works late, you guys are basically already committing adultery."

The principle is the same as what we talked about last week. Instead of focusing on the act of sin itself, like standing on the edge of a cliff and then being surprised when you fall, focus on not getting too close to the cliff. That way if you stumble, there's still room to catch yourself.

In last week's example, and in this week's, Jesus is asking us to look at the trajectory of our thoughts and actions, not just what is happening in the moment. It's a question of asking which direction gravity is going to take you. If it's down, grab onto something and stop yourself before it's too late.

Jesus says to pluck out our eyes if they cause us to sin. In other words, if what you are focusing on (eg Bathsheba's bronze age dating profile) is going to lead you to sin, change your focus, even if it's expensive. Maybe you unfriend the ex--boyfriend on Facebook. Maybe you stop networking with your flirty colleague.

He also says to cut off our hand if it causes us to sin. In other words, if what you are doing (eg paying for Netflix, knowing it will steal your prayer time and change your moral values) is going to lead you to sin, stop doing it, even if it means you have to try harder to figure out what to do on "date night." Being inflexible in our habits and lifestyle choices is a great way to miss the exit on the highway to hell.

Looking at someone for the purpose of desiring them is a bit like a dog chasing a car. The dog doesn't know what he's going to do if he catches the car, he just likes the sensation of being in pursuit. Oftentimes it will result in the dog getting run over by another car, but the dog doesn't know that either. That is why dog owners discourage their dogs from chasing cars. No good outcome comes from chasing a car. If Jesus tells us not to chase what we shouldn't try to catch, we should listen and obey.