A SERIOUS Commitment to Goodness -
Matthew 18:6-9, The Message - But if you give them
a hard time, bullying or taking advantage of their simple trust, you’ll soon
wish you hadn’t. You’d be better off dropped in the middle of the lake with a
millstone around your neck. Doom to the world for giving these God-believing
children a hard time! Hard times are inevitable, but you don’t have to make it
worse—and it’s doomsday to you if you do.
“If your hand or your foot gets in the way of God, chop
it off and throw it away. You’re better off maimed or lame and alive than the
proud owners of two hands and two feet, godless in a furnace of eternal fire.
And if your eye distracts you from God, pull it out and throw it away. You’re
better off one-eyed and alive than exercising your twenty-twenty vision from
inside the fire of hell.
The child that Jesus placed in the
midst of his teaching session with the disciples that we talked about last time
is still there in this passage. Jesus has
urged his mentees to rediscover their childlike faith and outlook and now,
probably looking sweetly at the child, he issues a particularly harsh warning; don’t cause children to lose that faith and
outlook which grown-ups need to recover.
Those who cause children to stumble will wish they hadn’t. The extreme threat-ladened language Jesus
uses here illustrates Jesus fiercely passionate love for children. This is a place where I feel a particularly
close connection to Jesus because I seem to share that strong urge to defend
and look out for the needs of children.
Jesus uses the warning against
causing children to stumble as a segue to a more general warning about anyone
or anything that causes anyone else to stumble.
There are a couple of important principles here. First, this teaching brings to the forefront
the truth of interdependence. What we do
does not just affect ourselves. We can
hardly do anything that doesn’t affect others.
Jesus is teaching us that we are, at least in part, responsible for those
results.
I am the oldest of three children
and so, many times when I was growing up, I got in trouble for violating this
principle Jesus is teaching. I had led
my brother and sister to do something that got all three of us in trouble. My protest at the time was that I hadn’t MADE
them do it; they made that choice themselves. In one of these particular times (I can’t
recall the details of the situation), I made that very argument to my
mother.
She said, “Eric, if you hadn’t made
the choice first, they would not have even thought they could make the same
choice.”
She had me. I don’t think I admitted
it at the time, but I admit it now. This
is not just a truth for those of us with younger siblings. We all make choices every day that affect the
choices of others. Living with the
awareness of that and acting accordingly is something Jesus teaches us to
do. Furthermore, if anything causes us
to veer off course, we need to think about removing it. We’ve mentioned before that Jesus likes to
use hyperbole to make a point and he does so here with the business of cutting
off hands and poking out eyes. The point
here is that there may be times when we need to put restrictions on ourselves so
that we can stay on the path we you know is right. If you are an alcoholic, it may be necessary
to make sure it’s never readily available whenever possible. If pornography is a problem for you, you may
need to look into available software that limits the websites you can
visit. Those are just two examples. These are just two examples of how self-imposed
restrictions can help you live the way Jesus has taught us.
The larger thread that runs through
all this teaching in the first half of Matthew 18 is that we foster that which
is good in us and others and we look to hamper and diminish what is not good
for us and others. The implication is
that we are looking for and aware of that goodness and are always actively
working to protect it. We feed and
nurture goodness and we starve that which hinders it.
Questions: Who is
influenced by what you do? Might it be necessary to impose some self-restriction
in order to get the results you know God wants for you?
Prayer: Lord, show us
how we affect those around us and how we are led astray. Help us be aware of these interdependencies
and work to love what is good and shun what is evil. Amen,
Prayer Focus: Spend
some time asking God to show you how you influence others and how you are
influenced as well?
Song: Jason Mraz -
Look For The Good
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