The Divine Conspiracy, page 20
Jesus’ comment here (Matt. 5:22) is that anyone who says, “Raca,” to an associate is rightly to be singled out by the highest authorities in the land—“the council,” or Sanhedrin—for appropriate and obviously serious penalties. Contemptuous actions and attitudes are a knife in the heart that permanently harms and mutilates people’s souls. That they are so common does not ease their destructiveness. In most professional circles and “high” society, where one might hope for the highest moral sensitivity, contempt is a fine art. Practicing it is even a part of being “in good standing.” Not to know whom and how to despise is one of the surest of signs that you are not quite with it and are yourself mildly contemptible.
In his marvelous little talk “The Inner Ring,” C. S. Lewis comments that “in all men’s lives at certain periods, and in many men’s lives at all periods between infancy and extreme old age, one of the most dominant elements is the desire to be inside the local Ring and the terror of being left outside.”13
To belong is a vital need based in the spiritual nature of the human being. Contempt spits on this pathetically deep need. And, like anger, contempt does not have to be acted out in special ways to be evil. It is inherently poisonous. Just by being what it is, it is withering to the human soul. But when expressed in the contemptuous phrase—in its thousands of forms—or in the equally powerful gesture or look, it stabs the soul to its core and deflates its powers of life. It can hurt so badly and destroy so deeply that murder would almost be a mercy. Its power is also seen in the intensity of the resentment and rage it always evokes.
“You Fool!”
But Jesus notes one stage further in the progression of internal evil that may be there without murder occurring: “And whoever says ‘You fool!’ shall merit condemnation to the fires of gehenna” (v. 22).
“You fool!” said with that characteristic combination of freezing contempt and withering anger that Jesus had in mind, is a deeper harm than either anger or contempt alone. Twerp or twit usually is not said in anger but even with a certain amusement. Fool, on the other hand, in the biblical sense, is an expression of malice as well as contempt.
Actually, that word will no longer do to capture the sense of Jesus’ teaching here and, in fact, is now closer to twerp than it is to what he had in mind. Thus one who would follow Jesus’ “law” by not calling people fools today gets off easy. We have plenty of other terminology that would allow us to go ahead and do exactly what he was in fact condemning, without using the word fool.
The dominant sense of fool in our culture is that of a benign folly, as in “Feast of Fools,” an ancient idea that became the title of a popular book some years back. Excuse the crudity, but the nearest equivalent of the biblical fool in today’s language would be something more like stupid bastard or f—jerk, as said to someone who either has just messed up something important we were doing to meet a deadline or has just cut us off in traffic. One would hardly speak of a “Feast of Stupid Bastards” in the same celebratory sense.
The fool, in biblical language, is a combination of stupid perversity and rebellion against God and all that sensible people stand for. He is willfully perverted, rebellious, knowingly wicked to his own harm. The Old Testament book of Proverbs carefully delineates his soul. “The fool,” we are told, “is arrogant and careless” (Prov. 14:16). “A fool doesn’t care about understanding, but only in displaying his own heart” (18:2). “Like a dog that re-eats its own vomit, a fool repeats his folly over and over” (26:11). And so on and so on.
To brand someone “fool” in this biblical sense was a violation of the soul so devastating, of such great harm, that, as Jesus saw, it would justify consigning the offender to the smoldering garbage dump of human existence, gehenna. It combines all that is evil in anger as well as in contempt. It is not possible for people with such attitudes toward others to live in the movements of God’s kingdom, for they are totally out of harmony with it.
These Three Prohibitions Are Not Laws
Today one is apt to feel that Jesus is taking all this too seriously But what is it, exactly, that is being done in the delineation of this threefold progression of prohibitions from anger to contempt to verbal desecration? The answer is that Jesus is giving us a revelation of the preciousness of human beings. He means to reveal the value of persons. Obviously merely not killing others cannot begin to do justice to that.
By no means, however, is he simply giving here three more things not to do, three more points on a “list” of things to be avoided. Certainly, we are not to do them, but that is not the point. If that were all, the enterprising human mind would soon find its way around them. Don’t we already know that not getting angry is the way some people have of winning? And don’t we hear people say, “I don’t get mad. I just get even”? One doesn’t have to be mad to be mean.
So here as elsewhere in his lovely Discourse on the Hillside, we need to put the idea of laws entirely out of our minds. Jesus is working, as already indicated, at the much deeper level of the source of actions, good and bad. He is taking us deeper into the kind of beings we are, the kind of love God has for us, and the kind of love that, as we share it, brings us into harmony with his life. No one can be “right” in the kingdom sense who is not transformed at this level. And then, of course, the issue of not being wrongly angry, not expressing contempt, not calling people “stupid bastards,” and so on is automatically taken care of.
When I go to New York City, I do not have to think about not going to London or Atlanta. People do not meet me at the airport or station and exclaim over what a great thing I did in not going somewhere else. I took the steps to go to New York City, and that took care of everything.
Likewise, when I treasure those around me and see them as God’s creatures designed for his eternal purposes, I do not make an additional point of not hating them or calling them twerps or fools. Not doing those things is simply a part of the package. “He that loves has fulfilled the law,” Paul said (Rom. 13:8). Really.
On the other hand, not going to London or Atlanta is a poor plan for going to New York. And not being wrongly angry and so on is a poor plan for treating people with love. It will not work. And, of course, Jesus never intended it to be such a plan. For all their necessity, goodness, and beauty, laws that deal only with actions, such as the Ten Commandments, simply cannot reach the human heart, the source of actions. “If a law had been given capable of bringing people to life,” Paul said, “then righteousness would have come from that law” (Gal. 3:21). But law, for all its magnificence, cannot do that. Graceful relationship sustained with the masterful Christ certainly can.
We learn this in our discipleship to Christ.
Positive Illustrations of the Kingdom Heart
But the revelation of kingdom goodness relative to our interactions with others is not yet complete. Showing that anger and contempt are such serious matters only lays a foundation for the final move in this first contrast that Jesus makes between the kingdom heart and the older teaching about “rightness.” Now he states a remarkable “therefore” that leads us out of mere negations or prohibitions into an astonishing positive regard for our neighbor, whom we are to love as God loves.
Referring to what has just been made clear, Jesus says “therefore” (v. 23). Because the reality of the human soul and God’s regard for it in his kingdom are so great, what kind of positive caring makes us at home in the kingdom life? Two illustrations are given of what, once again, law could never capture:
First, you are with the Temple officials before the altar, about to present your sacrifice to God (Matt. 5:23–24). It is one of the holiest moments in the ritual life of the faithful. The practice was that nothing should interrupt this ritual except some more important ceremonial matter that required immediate attention.
Suddenly, right in the midst of it all, you remember a brother who is mad at you. Realizing how important it is for his soul to find release, and pained by the break between yourself and him, you stop the ritual. You walk out of it to find him and make up. That illustrates the positive goodness of the kingdom heart.
To get the full impact of this illustration we have to imagine ourselves being married or baptized or ordained to some special role, such as pastor. In the midst of the proceedings, we walk out to seek reconciliation with someone who is not even there. That pictures the kingdom love that is kingdom rightness.
Jesus’ selection of this scene to illustrate the quality of the kingdom heart continues the long-established prophetic emphasis in Israel, which always weighted the moral over the ritual. “Behold, I would have mercy and not sacrifice” (Hos. 6:6). Eduard Schweizer comments, “When a cultic act is stopped for the sake of one’s brother, as Jesus requires, cultic ideology has been fundamentally overcome.”14
Now just think of what the quality of life and character must be in a person who would routinely interrupt sacred rituals to pursue reconciliation with a fellow human being. What kind of thought life, what feeling tones and moods, what habits of body and mind, what kinds of deliberations and choices would you find in such a person? When you answer these questions, you will have a vision of the true “rightness beyond” that is at home in God’s kingdom of power and love.
Of course the legalistic tendency in the human self will immediately go to work. It seems never to rest. It will ask, What if my brother refuses to be reconciled? Am I never to go to church again? (“First be reconciled to your brother and then come and offer your gift.”) Do I always have to do this, no matter what else is at issue in the situation? The answer is, Obviously not! Jesus is not here giving a law that you must never carry through with your religious practice if an associate has something against you. He is not stating a law like “Thou shalt not kill.” The aim of his illustration—and it is an illustration—is to bring us to terms with what is in our hearts and, simultaneously, to show us the rightness of the kingdom heart.
We do not control outcomes and are not responsible for them, but only for our contribution to them. Does our heart long for reconciliation? Have we done what we can? Honestly? Do we refuse to substitute ritual behaviors for genuine acts of love? Do we mourn for the harm that our brother’s anger is doing to his own soul, to us, and to others around us? If so, we are beyond “the righteousness of scribes and Pharisees” and immersed in God’s ways. We can certainly find an appropriate way to act from such a heart without being given a list of things to do.
The second illustration of an action typical of the kingdom heart is drawn from the case in which we have an adversary before the legal system. Today it would probably mean someone is suing us.
Here Jesus tells us to be well disposed or kindly minded (eunoon) toward our adversary in the preliminary interactions that might lead up to a trial. Try, with genuine love for the adversary, to resolve the matter before it comes to trial. We might cordially meet with him or her, for example, and just ask with sincerity what we could do to help. That is the sort of thing the kingdom heart will do.
By truly loving our adversary, we stand within the reality of God’s kingdom and resources, and it is very likely we will draw our adversary into it also. Things are really different there, and a resolution manifesting the divine presence becomes possible. See what will happen. Venture on the kingdom. That is how we “seek” it.
If we do not approach our “adversary” in this way, we limit ourselves and our adversary to the human system and its laws, and we will endure the bitter fruit of it. We probably will not escape it until it has totally drained us. How realistic Jesus’ description is of a process we constantly see about us today! Currently some of our courts are imprisoning children because they refuse to visit their father who has left the family. Such a system, one can only say, may be unavoidable now, but it is too crude for human existence by anyone’s thoughtful standards.
It is crucial to realize that Jesus does not here say that we should simply give in to the demands of an adversary. To be of a kindly or favorable mind toward an adversary or anyone else does not mean to do what they demand. It means to be genuinely committed to what is good for them, to seek their well-being. This may even require that we not give in to them. But there are many ways of holding the line, some of God, some not.
Likewise, he does not forbid us to go to court. Yet how many people, looking for a law, have falsely supposed he does. But that is simply not there in his words. Nevertheless, a man of my acquaintance was in business with someone who took ruinous advantage of him. This man gave in to his partner’s illegitimate demands and actions and did not go to law over the matter. He presumed that Jesus had laid down a law to that effect. As it turned out, he was expecting God to see to it that he suffered no loss. But he suffered a great loss. And now he is very angry at God, and not at God alone.
Jesus here gives us a second illustration, then, of how the kingdom heart will respond. He does not tell us what to do, but how to do it. Indeed, go to court or not—as makes sense in the circumstances. But do whatever you do without hostility, bitterness, and the merciless drive to win. Be prepared to sacrifice your interest for that of another if that seems wise. And keep a joyous confidence in God regardless of what happens.
Standing in the kingdom, we make responsible decisions in love, with assurance that how things turn out for us does not really matter that much because, in any case, we are in the kingdom of the heavens. In that kingdom nothing that can happen to us is “the end of the world.”
Through these two illustrations we finally see the kingdom goodness placed side by side with the mere goodness of not killing, which then looks quite empty by contrast. If we made laws of these illustrations and followed them, would that make us right toward our brother or sister? Not at all. We could do these things and yet find many other ways to hate and hurt our neighbor. We would miss the whole point.
The Destructiveness of Fantasized Desire
The Poison of Sexual Desire Indulged and Fantasized
In his Discourse on the Hillside Jesus treats hostility at greater length than any of the other matters he takes up. This is certainly because it is most fundamental. If you pull contempt and unrestrained anger out of human life, you have thereby rid it of by far the greater part of wrong acts that actually get carried out.
But in this first concretely displayed contrast between the old and the new dikaiosune Jesus also gives us space to pick up on how he is treating his subject matter. Now it will be possible to deal somewhat more briefly with the five remaining contrasts brought up in his exposition of kingdom rightness.
The second contrast he deals with concerns sex. Of course he is right on target for today. Sex and violence are the two things that are repeatedly cited as the areas of our greatest problems, in life as in the media. Violence is the sure overflow of anger and contempt in the heart. Anger and contempt constantly intermingle, both with each other and with the torrents of fantasized gratifications that also inhabit the human heart: such as those for fame, drugs and alcohol, power, and money. Hungers for these dominate a social framework in which a seemingly unlimited range of desires are constantly pushing their claims for “liberation” into unlimited satisfaction.
In dealing with sex, as with verbal and physical violence, Jesus takes for the point of contrast one of the Ten Commandments as used in the current setting: “You shall not commit adultery.” Strictly speaking, this prohibits a married person’s having sexual intercourse with someone other than his or her spouse. As with murder, it is an absolute prohibition, and there is no question of its being right under any circumstances to murder or to commit adultery.
Yet, as we have seen with murder, the mere fact that you do not commit adultery with a certain man or woman does not mean that your relation to that person in the domain of sexuality is as it should be or that you yourself are what you ought to be with reference to your sexuality.
Jesus was confronted with multitudes of men who thought of themselves as good, as right, in their sexual life because they did not do the specific thing forbidden by the commandment. They were like those who thought they were right in relation to their fellow men because they had not killed them.
But Jesus was aware, as we may easily notice today, that the very same people who thought of themselves as sexually pure and right would follow a woman with their eyes, lavishing their lookings upon her, tracing out by sight the lineaments of her body with a look of absorbed lusting upon their face and posture. They obviously take great pleasure in this activity, fantasizing what touching, caressing, and entering this body would be like.
Everyone knows about this kind of activity, and there are few who have not at some time engaged in it to some degree. No doubt the same was true even in Jesus’ day. But it goes on among all types of men, including ministers and university professors, and, in this day of equal opportunity, among women as well and between members of the same sex. Jesus’ teaching here is that a person who cultivates lusting in this manner is not the kind of person who is at home in the goodness of God’s kingdom.
Job’s Eyes
In the book of Job, dated by some as the oldest book in the Bible, there is a very analytic statement of the course of sexual involvement (Job 31). As is well known, Job is protesting his integrity on all fronts. He is aware of the issue Jesus is addressing and has a well-thought-out policy concerning it. “I made a covenant with my eyes,” he says. He had, as it were, an understanding with them that they would not engage in lusting. “How,” he asks, “could I ogle a young woman,” a “virgin”? The salacious gaze would be seen by God And it would certainly lead into deceitful actions (v. 5). But God knows that none of this is a part of his life (v. 6).
Job is so emphatic about his purity in this area that he goes into great detail concerning the all-too-familiar course of wrong sexual involvement and its consequences. Obviously he knew exactly what goes on. “If my feet have carried me to the wrong places,” he says, “or if my heart has walked after my eyes, or my hand is defiled because it has touched what it ought not to touch, then let my children belong to others. And if my heart has been captured by the wife of another, and I have sought for an opportunity with her, then may my wife be possessed by other men” (Job 31:5–8).
