Jeff Sanders treates us to a further Six Controversial Bible Verses the Skeptics Love to Hate (thanks to brother Ed Driscoll). Here is one of the six:
Should you cut your hands off or pluck your eyes out if you sin? (Matthew 5:29-30)And again, we get interesting information from the Instapundit comments section, just like last week.
Jesus uses pretty strong language here, commanding His disciples to pluck out their eyes or to cut off their hands if those parts of the body cause them to sin. But no, Jesus is not commanding self-mutilation. Nowhere do any of His disciples ever do this, and the cause of sin is not the eye or the hand. We sin because of what is going on inside us, in our minds (which Jesus is careful to point out in all four Gospels).
Jesus is just using normal everyday hyperbole to get his point across. We exaggerate often ("I've told you a million times to stop!"). Here He is merely telling His people in rather charged language to do whatever it takes to stay away from sin. Sin has extreme consequences, so go to extremes to stay away from it.
Related: Bible Verses That May Not Be as Extreme or as Immoral or as Ridiculous as Initially Thought
