Jesus said, “If
your right eye causes you to commit an offence, gouge it out and throw it away;
for it is preferable for you to lose one part of your body than to have your
whole body thrown on the rubbish tip.”
—
Matthew 5:29
(USC)
Addicts find the point of surrender to the behaviours of their
illness one of dissociating from the realities of reason, such that a more
illogical agreement can be entered into. This is a negative dissociation.
Let’s explore
another use of dissociation – oppositely arranged – to empower us against the
matters of the mind that will get us into trouble because of temptation.
We can think of
gouging out an eye as an action of a pure body expelling an impure body part;
of an intentional dissociation that the body engages in to keep the body sound
of health.
Of course, we would
never do such a thing as gouge out one of our eyes.
The point is that we
are to focus on what is pure within our bodies and not focus on that which is
impure. In the case in point, ought we not to dissuade our eye from the pretty
woman by the persuasion of something equally pretty in our natural environment
– something beautiful in God’s creation? Of course, the woman is pretty; God
does not want us to deny such a fact. But we are implored not to make more of
the prettiness than we ought to.
Prettiness abounds
everywhere, but some prettiness takes us into sin, whereas other prettiness
takes us into praise for the glories of God bestowed before our eyes. Which
should we choose? It is easy to see that prettiness is for the eyes, though God
wills it that we make a wise choice in the beauties we partake of with
intention.
If our eye takes us
in the troubled territory, the rest of the body (via the mind) must dissociate
itself from the eye by making a reminder to the eye of more noble things to be
partaken of.
There is so much in
our natural and relational environments to be enjoyed, in all senses of purity.
Every person before us, and very many natural sights and sounds and tastes, has
beauty.
As we enjoy the
beauty that God has put in to each person, and in so many natural environments,
we begin to have less interest for the impure thoughts of coveting those sights
that are not ours.
Beautiful things are
displayed everywhere. We must discern what is healthy for visual consumption.
***
QUESTIONS in REVIEW:
1. How might you practice this
process of dissociation with intention in your daily life? What temptations is
God urging you to attend to? How will you make an intentional assault on these
temptations?
2. Why do you think Jesus speaks in
such hyperbole? Why does Jesus exaggerate, for instance, ‘gouging out the eye’?
What is our Lord’s purpose in speaking in such shocking ways?
© 2015 S. J. Wickham.
Note: USC version is Under the Southern Cross, The New Testament in Australian English
(2014). This translation was painstakingly developed by Dr. Richard Moore, a NT
Greek scholar, over nearly thirty years.
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