Adultery in one's heart

Father Nathan Monk just did a piece focusing on a passage that's always been a confusing one for me. The Sermon on the Mount has a section in it where Jesus goes over a lot of sins, and he takes time on each one to further clarify the meaning and severity of these sins. What Jesus says about adultery has always been of particular interest to me:

Matthew 5:27 "You have heard that it was said, 'You shall not commit adultery.' 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's interesting to me for a couple of reasons. One of them is personal; lust has, to be honest, been one of my biggest weaknesses throughout most of my life. The other issue is that I find the typical Christian interpretation of this passage to be confusing; is it literal or hyperbolic? Perhaps not surprisingly, these two issues end up being quite intertwined.

Starting with the interpretation issue for those not familiar with the Christian take on this passage, it's like this: verse 28 is totally literal, 29 and 30 are completely hyperbolic. Now while it's good that Christians aren't literally encouraging people to maim themselves over temptation, it seems strange to me this sudden change of gears in just one verse. Why is 28 literal when the rest is not? It seems strange for Jesus to make a jump like that, right in the middle of a thought.

This is where my particular flavor of temptation to lust comes in, and has been a point of contention between me and several pastors. Yes, I have had a problem with lust, but look at how Jesus talks about it in verse 28: "...anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart." If this is literal, there are problems both generally and particular to my own flavor of lust. Generally, the problem is that adultery in Judaism is a capital offense, so if you've literally committed adultery, you should be stoned to death, and so should the woman you lusted after! Does anyone believe that makes sense? Because it logically follows if you're taking it literally. As for my own lust, it has been my tendency that when I see an attractive person, I might be likely to imagine them naked, but I almost never fantasize about having sex with them; I just want to appreciate their attractiveness, and while I admit it is indeed lust, am I really "committing adultery in my heart" so to speak?

This is part of the problem of taking it literally: Jesus does seem to be saying that it's the act of fantasizing sex that is the problem, yet we get told that looking at someone naked is a problem in itself. I strongly disagree, as I am quite capable of looking at nude people without it being sexual at all. Even when I look at someone nude and do feel that I'm lusting after them, it's usually not fantasizing about sex, so does verse 28 apply? A literal interpretation of verse 28 is, in my opinion, really far too problematic. That's not to say that Jesus isn't saying something important about lust, or that lust isn't necessarily a sin in itself, but making it the exact equivalent of adultery? It doesn't hold water as far as I'm seeing.

So why do Christians want to make that leap to literal interpretation? I think a lot of conservative Christians have this desire to take the Bible as literally as possible...but not encourage cutting off hands or gouging out eyes, I guess? As I've heard it said many a time, cutting off your hand will maybe stop you from masturbating, but lust is in your brain, and you can't cut that off. I think there's more hyperbole going on in the Bible than a lot of conservative Christians give credit, even--and maybe especially--in the words of Jesus.

One of *them*

I like to try and assume the best of people, even though I'm a bit of a cynic, so I'm prepared for disappointment. Sometimes it can nonetheless be a bit shocking to be let down.

There's an understanding that I have about Christianity, and--silly me!--it's based on the Bible and the teachings of Jesus. There's this idea that is driven home repeatedly by Jesus and the various New Testament writers that foundationally, Christianity is supposed to be about love.

In the gospels, Jesus says that the whole of religion can be summed up by two rules, paraphrased by me as A: love God, and B: love people. The Apostle Paul has a whole chapter about love in the letter of 1 Corinthians. The Apostle John talks extensively about how God is love and how we should be loving because of this. So yeah, love, right?

Unfortunately, in America, there's this stereotype of Christians that are far from loving. They're harsh, judgmental, bullying, and downright bigoted. I say unfortunate because I have, for a large portion of the 30 years I have been a Christian, not seemed to have met these Christians. I thought they were actually rather rare, perhaps largely living in red states. On social media, I have often assured people that these stereotypical Christians were actually a quite vocal minority who seemed larger because of how loud and obnoxious they were.

And then this week I learned something. A lot of Christians voted for President Trump. Like, not just a sizeable chunk, but a majority of them. It was somewhere in the neighborhood of 60%, actually. I had to ask myself, who are these people? They're certainly not Christian leftists like me. They're not not even conservative but reasonable people like my wife, who despite having a lot of conservative values has never voted for Trump. No, I had to face up to it: it's them. It's those kind of Christians.

They're not a minority at all. The ones who claim persecution when someone says, "Happy holidays," instead of, "Merry Christmas!" The ones who consider the unborn more worthy of life than born people. The ones who want to legislate LGBTQ people out of existence. The ones who support Israeli genocide. It's those kind of Christians, and they're actually everywhere.

Maybe I should have guessed. It's different when you're an apparently white cishet Christian yourself and you interact with these people. They can be quite charming when you're considered one of them. But how many times have I seen the mask slip, even here in very blue California? Let someone know that you support the rights of Palestinians? Let someone know you don't condemn LGBTQ people or abortion? Let someone know that you *gasp* might consider not voting Republican? The incredulity, the confusion, even the ugliness and the anger that comes out can be shocking. Often, there's even an accusation that, "You're not a real Christian!"

I was wrong about American Christians. This is who they are. With Trump in power and Republicans controlling all three branches of government, I fear they're just going to get worse, too, out of boldness.

I've said a few times, and I've heard it from others, that sometimes it's embarrassing to admit that you're a Christian in America. I feel it now more than ever. I am an American Christian, and I don't want to be. God help us.