Jesus talks in His sermon on the mount about how we should sever body parts if they cause us to sin. “If your hand causes you to sin, cut it out and cast it from you” and “If your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out and cast it from you” citing that “it is better to enter into heaven lame, maimed or blind than to enter into hell with a whole body.
This seems a little extreme if we were to take it literally.
It would be painful to cut off our hand, and inconvenient to cut out our eye just because it is causing us to stumble here and there. What does Jesus mean? Surely He does not mean that we are literally supposed to cut off pieces of ourselves. That would be damaging the body He designed and the body that is supposed to be the temple of the Spirit.
Christ is using hyperbole to illustrate how we must lay our ax to the root of sin and cut it off at its most basic source.
You look at pornography and lust after the images, does that mean you should cut out your eyes? No. Does that mean you should get rid of your computer and replace your smart phone with a flip phone? Yes. This is extreme, but it is necessary for you, since you are a “hopeless” addict. Lax your ax to the root of the problem.
Anxiety is causing you to sin, what do you do? Find the root. Are you watching the news, becoming entangled with world politics that mean nothing on the eternal scale? If this is the source of your anxiety, cut it off.
Cut cable TV.
Block news sites on your computer. News sites are almost as toxic as porn sites. Cut the unnecessary events that are causing you anxiety. Lay your ax to the root.
Do you impose jealousy and envy on yourself? Cut your social media.
Not only is media a waste of time that does not improve you one bit, but it is the source of the majority of envy we see today.
Same with People Magazine or any other moronic media outlet. Cut these off, your envy will subside. Lay your ax to the root.
All of our evil must be attacked at the core, at the very root. If we do not cut off our behavior at the very root, it will spring back up given enough time. Many trees can regrow after being cut down to a stump. New branches and leaves grow out of the stump and the tree starts over because the root system is still intact. However, No tree can survive being cut off from its source of nourishment. For this reason we lay an ax to the root of our evil.
Fully remove evil from yourself. Remove every possible entrance of sin. This is inconvenient and uncomfortable, but it is necessary. Better to enter into heaven having lived your whole life without social media or television than to enter into hell because your worldly interests and negative habits eventually led you away form the faith.
We must kill sin at the root everywhere we can.
It may be hard to throw a computer out a window because we “need” it for work. So we must Install software that isolates the function of your computer to a few select applications. This guarantees that you use your computer for work only.
Set up programs that do not allow News media, social media and porn. This is a simple equation, but few have the guts to make it happen. We are too attached to our comforts. Men must learn how to exist outside the comfort zone. We must cut every unnecessary outlet from our lives. You must be productive and focused. You do not want to look back on your life and realize you spent all of it on social media, politics and lust of the flesh. We have to focus on our true work, living a meaningful life of righteousness.
