I Give In

I was trying to avoid writing a post about the guy in the Philippines who cut his own penis off in a fit of religious fervor the other day. Aside from being a perfect husband for Ms. Lorena Bobbitt and spawning other such jokes, this short gentleman has done what everyone in Christian history has wondered about one time or the other. C'mon, you seriously didn't grow up reading the passage "If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off... etc" without thinking that removing something else might do more for you than being hands-free.
But our little hero does bring up, albeit in an unorthodox way, the question of how literally we should take that passage. Here are a few common viewpoints:
-- It's figurative. The action to be taken is removing parts of your life or activities or associations that lead you to sin.
-- It's rhetorical. The desired effect is to make people think about the relative importance of physical and spiritual life.
And one I thought up myself:
-- It's literal. The believer, in examining his life, is expected to realize that his hand is NOT the thing causing him to sin, it's his intangible humanness. Sin is original, and can't be cut off like gangrene. Remember that Jesus laid out an extremely strict path of life. The point was not just to show what real love, justice, etc were, but to show what real sin is. Just as love and justice are not following a list of prescribed rules, but rather living sacrificially and with a different attitude, sin is also not just breaking rules. At its root, sin is an attitude, a condition, a way of life. When people saw the right way, those with "eyes to see" saw that it is humanly impossible to be righteous on our own. Which is why Jesus had to die, to account for our shortcomings.
So before you go castrating yourself, think about how far you'd have to go with that knife to really cleanse yourself. Self-flagelation is not the answer to your spiritual needs. Our shortened Filipino friend was noted to have been depressed as well as obsessed with the Bible before commiting penicide. While sorrow for sin may last for a night, the joy of the Lord and His forgiveness will replace it soon if the believer is really focusing on God. My guess is that machete-boy was focused not on God but on his own sin. Instead of taking his burden to the Lord and departing joyfully and in freedom, as the Bible advises, he chose to wallow in his own mistakes. Genuine repentance, I'm sure, but an attitude that does not allow for redemption.

One more point -- THAT'S GOTTA HURT!!!