LINK to share: https://hanglberger-manfred.de/en-mt-5-29-30.htm

Marriage morality by "chopping off hands"? (Mt 5:29-30)

"If your right eye tempts you to evil, pluck it out ... !"
"And if your right hand tempts you to do evil, cut it off...!"
(Mt 5,29-30)

Drastic demands of Jesus are not always to be understood literally, but aim at the urgency of a value-oriented commitment.
The aim of this biblical text is not self-mutilation, as a literal understanding would demand, but rather an extremely committed effort expected from men not to make women the object of their own lust.

With today's knowledge of the human psyche, however, it cannot be about suppressing every burgeoning erotic feeling at the sight of an attractive woman, since suppressed feelings - as we know today - can develop a dangerous dynamic of their own within the psyche. It is useful to perceive and accept a feeling that arises and, if necessary, to take it seriously as a message for one's own self-knowledge; but this in no way means giving this feeling wide space in thoughts and fantasies, or using them as an impulse for actions that can be problematic and destructive.

In this way, these demands from Jesus' Sermon on the Mount can be an impetus in our time, both scientifically and in personal self-reflection, to consider the meaning of feelings and how we deal with them in a very differentiated way, in order to deal with them responsibly.

What is said in this section of the text about erotic feelings applies in a similar way in Mt 5:22 about the feeling of anger, in which a very careful distinction should also be made between "holy anger" and destructive anger!

It is precisely in these drastic statements of the gospel that it becomes clear that such moral demands are strong impulses to take life very seriously and to consider what a loving and responsible way of life should look like, but whoever simply tries to realize it literally without further reflection, his actions become destructive.

Those church leaders who still wa

nt to punish a transgression of Jesus' prohibition of divorce in any case with exclusion from the reception of the sacraments, i.e. who understand it literally, should be asked how they intend to enforce, within the Church, the demands of Jesus in Mt 5,29-30, where the cutting off of hands and the plucking out of eyes is demanded in order to avoid certain sins.

Manfred Hanglberger (www.hanglberger-manfred.de)

Translation: Ingeborg Schmutte

>>> A Contemporary Understanding of the Bible

>>> Spirituality

>>> Understanding-of the feelings

LINK to share: https://hanglberger-manfred.de/en-mt-5-29-30.htm