Matthew 5:29

I’ve come across this image fairly frequently over the last few weeks and it’s made me laugh several times. I was reminded of it as I reread Matthew today. The citation is possibly inaccurate as I found this verse in Matthew 5:29, but it is in fact clear as day,

²⁷ “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’^[e]28 But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. ²⁹ If your right eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell.³⁰ And if your right hand causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go into hell.

It would be nice if Christian authority figures emphasized that verse as they shame and blame women for every action they take.

Matthew 5:1-20

As I have been out of this project for so long, I decided to reread Matthew before I moved on. As the world is in a different place from when I first read this for this project, so am I and I found myself with some more thoughts as I read, and so I apologize, but I’m going to continue to post about Matthew, today, about the Beatitudes.

I sometimes suspect that evangelical Christians in America take Matthew 5:11 as their mantra. It comes at the end of the Beatitudes and it reads,

“Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me.

I speak here very specifically of the brand of “public Christian” that sees a red coffee cup and yells about a “war on Christmas” that hears about school shootings and answers back that “I can’t help but believe that’s it’s connected to the fact that the Supreme Court has prohibited us from any kind of formal way asking for God’s protection” or that believes that even in their chosen role as a government employee it is oppression to require them to follow the law.

So often in the last few years it has felt to me as if these public Christians want to be persecuted. Not that they want to suffer for their Lord. But that they want to be thought to suffer. That by claiming persecution they will be blessed.

But the Bible never promises blessings in this world or in this time, it promises blessings in the next world. In fact, Matthew 5:10 explicitly says those blessings shall come in the kingdom of Heaven.

More importantly, at least to me, the previous nine verses are filled with other blessings that public Christians seem to ignore or be unaware of.

Perhaps they need to read on, to Matthew 5:20

For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven