Stumps Might Be Better

Matthew 18:8-10

And if your hand or your foot causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life crippled or lame than with two hands or two feet to be thrown into the eternal fire. And if your eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into the hell of fire. See that you do not despise one of these little ones. For I tell you that in heaven their angels always see the face of my Father who is in heaven.

Tom Wright, Matthew for Everyone (Vol. 2)

So who are these “little ones”? They include weak, vulnerable children, of course, as we were thinking in the previous passage. But they also include those who are weak and vulnerable at other times of life, too: the cripples, the chronically sick, the elderly and infirm, refugees, women (in many cultures), any who find themselves on the human scrap-heap that our world throws people on to when it can’t think what else to do with them (31).

Anyone who has ever tried to break a bad moral habit will know that it sometimes feels like cutting off a hand or foot. Anyone who tries to stop a bad attitude towards others will know that it’s almost as hard as plucking out an eye. And the habits and attitudes that Jesus has in his sights in this passage are as had as any. Cutting off the “hand” that refuses to give to the poor; cutting off the “foot” that refuses to walk to the soup kitchen to help out; and, in particular, plucking out the “eye” that refuses to notice the weak, the vulnerable, the helpless all around us, in our cities, on our streets, in our wider world: all these pose a challenge every bit as severe as the day Jesus first issued it (32-2).

A. Orendorff

Like most people, I’ve always read vv. 8-9 extracted from the context of chapter eighteen, in particular from what Jesus says about the “little ones” and their “angles.” Vv. 8-9 have essentially served as a “take sin seriously” passage. In other words, this is how severe our war with sin needs to be: get ready to amputate, get ready to gouge. Such a reading works especially well with sins of a sexual nature (being that it’s our hands, feet and especially our eyes that most often get us in trouble).

Reflecting on the context, however, these verses seem to point in a slightly different direction. Still taking them as a warning against to consequences of sinful habits, the stress is not upon the damage our sinful members do to us but the damage they do to others—especially those, as Wright says, “who find themselves on the human scrap-heap that our world throws people on to when it can’t think what else to do with them.” The real horror of sexual sin, something like pornography for example, isn’t so much the pain it causes us or even those who love us, but the pain it inflicts upon the “little ones” it involves—the vulnerable, the helpless, the exploited, the powerless, the used. Compassion then, humanizing compassion, and not self-centered, personal interest, leads us to consider stumps a far better alternative to such dehumanizing violence.