When I was an undergraduate at the University of Washington a student living in the dorms decided to take the words of Jesus literally. Responding to Matthew 5:29-30 (“if your right eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away......and if your right hand causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it away.” ), the student gouged and cut his offending eye and hand and then walked into the cafeteria during lunch. Suffice it to say it caused a disturbance.
My attention was drawn to this chilling incident recently when one of my patients referred to these controversial words of Christ in a different context. I am a psychotherapist at Eviva, a medical weight loss practice which specializes in the Lap-Sleeve surgical procedure where 80% of a patient’s stomach is removed. “You know that verse in the Bible about the cutting out the eye deal” she started, “I’m just doing the same thing with my stomach. Cut it out because it’s not doing me any good.”
This was the second time a patient had drawn a reference between the surgery and the words in Matthew, and both times I was taken aback hearing the analogy. It is obvious Christ was speaking metaphorically when he talks about gouging and cutting body parts, and any literal reference to it in any way seems a bit spooky.
Should it be? Most of the people who have the Lap-Sleeve surgery are morbidly obese (over 100 pounds overweight), and most would say they are addicted to food. Why not then take out most of the offending appendage, that which has caused you to stumble? Some may and do disagree, but considering the benefits of significant weight loss (the rise in self-esteem, the overcoming of diabetes, hypertension and other weight related comorbidities), wouldn’t most any means justify this important end?
Which seems like the question Christ was addressing with his attention getting metaphors. Take them literally? No. Seriously? Yes. The discussion is about what causes us to stumble. Eyes? Hands? Attitudes? Fears? What? There is such a thing as sin, and although we are forgiven, we also know sin has its consequences. As former U.N. Secretary General Dag Hammarskiold wrote in his famous book Markings: “You cannot play with the animal in you without becoming wholly animal, play with falsehood without forfeiting your right to truth, play with cruelty without losing your sensitivity of mind. He who wants to keep his garden tidy does not reserve a plot for weeds.”
Most importantly: what gets in the way of us dedicating our life to God and loving Him, others and ourselves? The end isn’t not doing something, the end is experiencing and participating in the life God would have us lead. We instinctively know with Augustine that “Thou hast made us for thyself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it finds its rest in thee.” And often the path needs to be cleared before our heart finds what it’s looking for.
We in the 21st Century don’t like to hear about sin and its ramifications. But we are familiar with addiction, and the hold it can have on our lives. In his powerful book “Addiction and Grace,” psychiatrist Dr. Gerald May talks about the attachment we have to addictions that enslave us, from alcohol and narcotics to such things as relationships, work, and even ideas. We want to live loving lives, but our “energy is usurped by forces that are not at all loving. Our desires are captured, and we give ourselves over to things that, in our deepest honesty, we really do not want.”
And what is the solution to the challenge of addiction, a multi-faceted and complex issue which is also a disease? The answer for May and many other addiction experts is surprisingly simple: stop the behavior. “The mind tricks of addiction make it excruciatingly difficult to come to any clarity about how to act.” But “the simplicity of addiction is not to do the next addictive behavior.” Just don’t do it. Just say no.
In other words, cut it out.
Was this what the young man in the dorm was thinking? Nobody knows for sure, but it could be conjectured it was some combination of mental illness, a desire for attention, and a misinterpretation of the Biblical passage. Those having the Lap-Sleeve surgery would have their own drives and desires. And all of us need to take seriously those things in our lives which need subtraction in order to become additions.
My attention was drawn to this chilling incident recently when one of my patients referred to these controversial words of Christ in a different context. I am a psychotherapist at Eviva, a medical weight loss practice which specializes in the Lap-Sleeve surgical procedure where 80% of a patient’s stomach is removed. “You know that verse in the Bible about the cutting out the eye deal” she started, “I’m just doing the same thing with my stomach. Cut it out because it’s not doing me any good.”
This was the second time a patient had drawn a reference between the surgery and the words in Matthew, and both times I was taken aback hearing the analogy. It is obvious Christ was speaking metaphorically when he talks about gouging and cutting body parts, and any literal reference to it in any way seems a bit spooky.
Should it be? Most of the people who have the Lap-Sleeve surgery are morbidly obese (over 100 pounds overweight), and most would say they are addicted to food. Why not then take out most of the offending appendage, that which has caused you to stumble? Some may and do disagree, but considering the benefits of significant weight loss (the rise in self-esteem, the overcoming of diabetes, hypertension and other weight related comorbidities), wouldn’t most any means justify this important end?
Which seems like the question Christ was addressing with his attention getting metaphors. Take them literally? No. Seriously? Yes. The discussion is about what causes us to stumble. Eyes? Hands? Attitudes? Fears? What? There is such a thing as sin, and although we are forgiven, we also know sin has its consequences. As former U.N. Secretary General Dag Hammarskiold wrote in his famous book Markings: “You cannot play with the animal in you without becoming wholly animal, play with falsehood without forfeiting your right to truth, play with cruelty without losing your sensitivity of mind. He who wants to keep his garden tidy does not reserve a plot for weeds.”
Most importantly: what gets in the way of us dedicating our life to God and loving Him, others and ourselves? The end isn’t not doing something, the end is experiencing and participating in the life God would have us lead. We instinctively know with Augustine that “Thou hast made us for thyself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it finds its rest in thee.” And often the path needs to be cleared before our heart finds what it’s looking for.
We in the 21st Century don’t like to hear about sin and its ramifications. But we are familiar with addiction, and the hold it can have on our lives. In his powerful book “Addiction and Grace,” psychiatrist Dr. Gerald May talks about the attachment we have to addictions that enslave us, from alcohol and narcotics to such things as relationships, work, and even ideas. We want to live loving lives, but our “energy is usurped by forces that are not at all loving. Our desires are captured, and we give ourselves over to things that, in our deepest honesty, we really do not want.”
And what is the solution to the challenge of addiction, a multi-faceted and complex issue which is also a disease? The answer for May and many other addiction experts is surprisingly simple: stop the behavior. “The mind tricks of addiction make it excruciatingly difficult to come to any clarity about how to act.” But “the simplicity of addiction is not to do the next addictive behavior.” Just don’t do it. Just say no.
In other words, cut it out.
Was this what the young man in the dorm was thinking? Nobody knows for sure, but it could be conjectured it was some combination of mental illness, a desire for attention, and a misinterpretation of the Biblical passage. Those having the Lap-Sleeve surgery would have their own drives and desires. And all of us need to take seriously those things in our lives which need subtraction in order to become additions.
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