If your hand, your foot, your eye “causes you to sin, cut it off.” You see in both real and fictional court rooms all sorts of excuses for what causes someone to commit a crime — I was on drugs, my boy friend bullied me, the internet confused me, Slenderman told me to do it, eating Twinkies messed me up. The comedian, Flip Wilson, had a character, Geraldine, who claimed “the devil made me do it.” Jesus, however, does not look at any external factor but something in me that causes the sin. What is in my make-up that provokes the negative action? When someone cuts me off driving I have to remind myself not to let his (and it is usually a his) action get me mad. No one can MAKE me mad. I don’t want to give that kind of power to someone I don’t even know over my feelings. Instead, I have to look internally to see what I must “cut off” of my life. The list is long but high on the list is fear. In another place Jesus said, “Fear is useless, what is needed is trust.” If I can courageously face my fears and trust that God can handle them at least one pathway to sin will be closed.
